Important: Tom Ascol at the SBC

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So I'm here with Brother Tom Askle, Founders Ministries. First I want to say, Brother, thank you so much for your faithfulness and everything you've been doing.

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Well, thank you. What's on the forefront of your mind right now? What are you most concerned with at the moment? Yeah, well, those are two different questions, actually, for me, because I woke up this morning and began to just rethink the things that are true.

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And really what's been on my mind most of this morning is the fact that we have a great God who has sent

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His Son into the world, who has conquered sin, death, and hell. And so the crucifixion, man, I mean, just think what it was like for those hours, for those disciples.

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Everything's up in smoke. Everything's over. They worked hard, had all kind of hopes, and they saw Him dashed on a

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Roman cross. And three days later, the Lord Jesus arises. Everything's new. And that's what

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God does. I mean, God always brings resurrection out of crucifixion when He's accomplishing

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His eternal purposes. So I'm not discouraged by the nonsense that has gone on at the

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Southern Baptist Convention the last couple of days. And there have been some good things as well, but there have been some really bad things, and I'm saddened by that.

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Disappointed in the way that certain things have happened and haven't happened, the narratives that have been spun, the way the motions and resolutions have been handled.

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You know, I've not agreed with all those decisions. But this is a big, cumbersome, complex kind of organization, and it's designed to move slowly.

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And so, you know, I don't understand all of it. I try to do the best I can. But I tell you, I've been overwhelmed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people

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I've talked to that are very concerned about the direction of the convention and very grateful for those that have been trying to speak up to correct it.

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And so, you know, I believe by and large that the churches that affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention are not going to be happy with all the direction that we seem to be going.

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It's just a matter of getting those churches awakened, educated, and then present.

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They need to show up. Because if you don't show up, you're not in the room, you don't have a voice. And whoever's in the room gets to elect their people, and then their people control how things are done.

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And that's where we are now. So, if you're talking to Southern Baptists and you're saying, here are some fundamentals right now we need to be standing on, and some things you need to be most concerned about, resisting, speaking out against, what are those issues for you?

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Pragmatism. I mean, pragmatism is the bedrock on which all this other stuff has emerged.

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Critical race theory, intersectionality, those are bad ideas and they're ideologies that we've seen over the last year and a half, at least, with what's going on in our nation.

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I mean, everybody's awakened to them. People have accused me of following President Trump because he came out against CRT and then we started speaking about it.

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Well, we were talking about CRT a long time before Trump was, and I'm glad he finally got on board. Right. Nevertheless, I mean, it's just, everybody, we saw it on the streets of our nation last year in 2020.

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I mean, this is the outworking of this. Folks are getting tired of being told that just because there are certain color of skin, that they inherently have certain never to be overcome sins.

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Right. And they don't believe it. They read their Bible. And so I think, I mean, that's important, but that's not the main issue.

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Critical race theory is not the main issue. How did we let this stuff in? We let it in because we had a superficial commitment to the confessions that we say we hold to.

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We're pragmatic. And it's pragmatism that allows people to sign the confessions of faith and then say and do things that are contrary to those confessions.

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And they think they're being consistent. I'll just give you one example. I mean, Ed Litton is our new president, and I don't know

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Ed. You know, people that know him say he's a great guy. I don't know. I don't have anything bad to say about Ed Litton, but he came out.

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I'm a complimentarian, and we don't think women should preach, and I know other people do that. And then videos come out of him and his wife preaching together where she says, this is our last sermon in this series.

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Now, I'm just quoting Kathy Litton. And you quote her, and people say, how dare you?

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Why are you doing that? Well, here's a brother that says, I'm a complimentarian. I don't think women should preach.

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And his wife is saying, this is our last sermon. Now, is that duplicitous? Is he trying to pull something over on us?

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My guess is he's just operating out of a pragmatic type of approach that, no, we signed the confession.

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We believe all that. But hey, we've got a really good opportunity here, and my wife can help me preach these sermons. And so I'm going to do that because it'll be so much better.

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I mean, I've heard this. I've heard this language from good people that they'll say, well, yeah, we did this, but look, we had two dozen people get saved.

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And it's like, oh, OK, well, then that justifies doing it. It's pragmatism that I don't want to be too hard.

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Well, I do want to be hard, but I want to be understanding. It's deadly. It's deadly, but good people have been sucked into it because this is the air we breathe in the

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West and especially in America, and that air has permeated everything, and so it has become kind of a default mode even for good

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Christians. They just need to be taught how to think biblically and rigorously so that they understand that, hey, everything in the world needs to be seen through the lens of Scripture, and God does speak about everything in the world.

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So you mentioned, and it's a very important aspect of this whole thing, is God's Word being our certainty, being our grounding, our foundation for all of life, that without Christ, there's no foundation of knowledge and wisdom, and that's an important element,

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I think, for every evangelical to understand in this moment we're in in the West is, yes,

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Jesus has something to say to this. Yes, God's Word addresses this. We have at least, you know, we don't have to have a full description of molecular biology in Scripture, but there is a foundation to understand molecular biology with principles we have in the

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Word of God, and so, yeah, we need the Word of God to speak to all these issues, to address them, to work through them, and you mentioned principle versus pragmatism, right, standing on principles from God's Word, His revelation versus what is pragmatic.

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What would you want people to understand in terms of where you're moving and what you're trying to address and the areas you're trying to minister in, in terms of the issues of principle?

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What do Southern Baptists need right now to stand on in terms of principle? Because we have a number of different issues coming at Southern Baptists, whether it's explicitly from Marxism or Neo -Marxism, whether it's things that come from the

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Franklin School, wherever this conversation goes, what are the main issues right now in terms of principles that Southern Baptists need to be standing on as you get into the next year?

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Well, we're hearing a lot about social justice we have over many years now. Well, we need to understand that justice exists because of God.

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God's the just one. God says what's righteous, what's unrighteous, and we need to get our definitions from there, because if you don't, you'll be moved quickly, and that has happened at this convention.

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It's happened, you know, pretty regularly in evangelical life today where we're told to believe all women or the victims get the last word and the first word because we have to sympathize with them, and if we don't even empathize with them, then we're being harsh and unloving.

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Well, take this example. If a woman has engaged in an adulterous relationship with her boss for 20 years and then comes out and says,

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I was abused by my boss for 20 years, and I'm not responsible for anything that happened, and if she gets affirmed in that way of thinking, and those who affirm her are doing it because they say, well, she's been victimized, and she's been abused, and no, she's not responsible, and to tell her she's responsible is to heap up guilt on her, and we mustn't do that because she's a victim, and we need to show compassion.

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All they have done is cut her off from the grace of God and Jesus Christ who deals with real sin, and that is happening.

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That is happening. Doesn't mean that abuse wasn't involved, but if you tell someone that what they have done that is in violation of God's Word is not in violation of God's Word, then they don't need the remedy that Jesus Christ provides according to the

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Word, and they live the rest of their lives in this basis of, well, I really haven't done anything wrong, and it breaks my heart, so it's that kind of fundamental thinking that we need to say, no, the

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Bible does speak to what's right, what's wrong, so the whole issues of justice, matters of love, what does it mean to be loving?

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If somebody is in sin, you're not loving them by letting them go in sin. You try to help them.

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That's wrong. What you're doing is wrong. Well, you offended me. Well, Jesus offended people.

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He didn't sin, and we can be jerks. I know. I'm not advocating that, but it's those kind of things where we have just been discipled by the world more than we have by the

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Word, and it's the fault of pastors. I mean, we own the responsibility. It's the problem of the pulpit.

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Absolutely. Absolutely. It's on us, and we've got to do a better job, and we've got to help our brothers together, collectively, to own these responsibilities.

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It seems to me that in history we can have many, many examples of Christians tend, we always tend to have a problem of falling off a cliff, one side or the other, rather than staying balanced.

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So we oftentimes get overruled and overrun by our emotions, and so on issues we'll go off cliffs, one side or the other, opposite sides of the spectrum.

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And on the issue of abuse, sexual abuse, I think we can have a balanced perspective that says wherever there are failures within the church where we have not treated victims with God's justice, in other words, where we needed to be more harsh and direct things to the state and allow

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God's deacon, the state, to actually execute proper justice. If there's been any failures in any context of any local church or any organization or convention, we need to own up to that and say, yeah,

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God's justice is what matters. We need to uphold the rights of victims the way that God commands us to in His law, and so you can hold that position without falling off a cliff and saying, believe all victims.

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Because Scripture does also give you, on the other side, the balance of saying we live in a fallen world, people lie.

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I mean God's word even has remedies in His law for people who will actually put forth false testimony in court.

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The assumption there is it's possible for someone to lie in accusation. And so the balance is, of course, to say we need to do a better job of holding

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God's standards of justice for victims, but at the same time also uphold God's standards for righteous judgment and knowing unequal weights and measures, no personal favoritism.

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In other words, I think it's important to say that this seems controversial because of the emotionalism today. Controversial to say that just because someone says something doesn't mean that I have to believe it immediately.

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I need to follow God's standards and say, are there two or three independent lines of witness and evidence in this? Is this person telling the truth?

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Can I investigate it a little? Make sure I actually treat the accused with God's standards, with the assumption of innocence, until I can actually prove them guilty.

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And if I'm able to prove them guilty, and it's something that's justified at this point, uphold the rights of the victim supremely and make sure we handle that with a strong hand of justice that God commands us to.

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So in this issue it seems like the emotional content of it all blurs the lines so we don't hold to what

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I think God would want us to, and that's upholding justice and the rights of everybody, the accused, the victims, and to come to God's standards of how do we conclude the matter.

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And I think you're right, brother, is God's Word provides the standard of justice, and we're not looking to that.

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No, we're not. And so people, even in this convention, there's third -party investigations being promoted everywhere, it seems like.

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And some of those who are advocating them say, well, yes, the Bible has a basic level, a basic standard, but we need a higher standard.

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And these experts have the higher standard. Yeah. People that don't hold to God's Word. You know, they think they do.

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That's the problem. But we need experts now. I mean, how many times are we hearing this, you have no expertise, you have no expertise.

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And I'm thinking, well, 1 Corinthians 6 is in the Bible, we're going to judge angels, so Paul thought that that was enough for us to be able to settle matters between each other where there's differences and controversies.

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And it's not that God's way has been tried and it didn't work, it just hasn't been tried. Yeah, it hasn't been done by us.

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It hasn't been tried. Yeah, it hasn't been done by us. So we need that. I mean, we're starting this Institute of Public Theology in Founders, and a large part of the impetus behind that is because this type of biblical reasoning about all of life is not as common as it should be.

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And we want to engage the world we're in, not the world that we wished we had grown up in or we hope to see one day, but the world we're in right now in terms of the

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Lordship of Christ over everything. And so, I mean, that's really what motivated us to start this

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Institute of Public Theology. Yeah. The belief that the Word of God has something to say about everything.

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Absolutely. Right. And you can apply biblical law, biblical standards of justice to all these matters and come to proper

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God -honoring conclusions. That's right. Rather than going elsewhere for those answers. Absolutely. And there are some things that are matters of indifference.

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Praise God, we'll enjoy the indifference. That's right. That's exactly right. Thank you, brother. Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much for all you're doing.