Cultish || The Pagan Resurgence: A Pastoral Perspective

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Welcome back to cultish everybody. It is me, the super sleuth here along with Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here.

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All right, guys, it's time to have a serious conversation here. Here at cultish, we are a hundred percent crowd funded ministry.

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And with that can come some challenges where we're currently at like 15 to 20%. That's we're meeting about that much of our needs in order to continue releasing episodes on a weekly basis for you guys.

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I mean, we want to be able to equip everybody with the tools necessary to enter into the kingdom of the cult with the power of the gospel, but we can't do that without your support, right?

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And again, we can't do that without your support. And we are so thankful for you listening today. And so go to the cultish show .com.

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You can see right there where we can partner with us and Andrew and I look forward to releasing more content and countering more cults very, very soon.

01:18

Welcome back to cultish everybody, where we enter into the kingdom of the cults. Again, we're going to do it different wild style this time.

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I've got my confidant, a very important person sitting right next to me. Used to be

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Elder Wade a long time ago. Actually, no, it was Brother Wade a long time ago. And now it's Elder Wade.

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Greetings. Greetings. And this is Pastor Wade Orsini of Apologia Church, Utah.

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My dear brother in Christ. We're out here trying to honor the Lord in Salt Lake City to conquer this city by power of the gospel, to see many

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LDS people come to faith in the true and living God, agnostics, atheists as well, and also to end child slaughter that is happening out here.

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So just to be faithful really, right? Absolutely. I'm excited for this episode and this topic because as pastors and also being in a valley with so many different cults and people coming out of a huge cult, the cult of Mormonism, they tend to stream right into the topic we're talking about.

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And so this is really important to me as a pastor and I'm thankful to be talking to Pastor Aaron about it.

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Yeah, me too. And thank you everyone for listening. We couldn't do this without you guys. But without further ado, let's introduce our guest today to start off this conversation, to kickstart it, to electric shock it.

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All right. We have Pastor Aaron White with us. Can you give us a brief, tell us who you are, what church you're a pastor of and what exactly we're going to be talking about today?

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My name is Aaron White and I have the joy of serving as the pastor for teaching and training at Redeemer Bible Church. We are in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

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And so that's right outside the Twin Cities from our front door to downtown Minneapolis.

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It's about 11 miles. I've been here for four years. I've been a pastor.

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I've had the joy of serving as a full -time pastor for over 14 years. Started in law enforcement and then worked in corrections and kind of came into the pastorate over a kind of extended period of time.

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But been a pastor for 14 years. Been married to Tanya now for 20 years. I've known her since high school.

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We have five kiddos. I have one daughter, four boys. My daughter is my oldest. She's 18, just graduated.

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We homeschool all five, all the way down to my youngest who's five. But again, we live right outside the

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Twin Cities. And if you know anything about the Twin Cities, it's this huge honeycomb of suburbs. And so our church is, like I said, 11 miles from downtown, but effectively we were a church in the

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Twin Cities. Nice. Nice. All right. So what are we going to be talking about today? Today?

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Well, probably a lot of things, but what I'd really love to talk about and what's kind of burdening me is I don't come to you guys as an expert on anything.

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So I'm a local church pastor in a major metropolitan area in the Midwest. We're part of the

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SBC. I'm a doctoral student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, focusing on apologetics.

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My doctoral work is kind of culminating in creating a new apologetics curriculum for the church. We have the joy of running what we call the

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Redeemer Institute here at our church, which is like an in -house Bible Institute. And I've taught apologetics there along with systematic theology and different things, but there's no grade in that, but we just kind of make it feel a little bit more advanced than Sunday school.

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So we did an apologetics course one semester last year. And I'm also an adjunct professor of apologetics at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis.

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I just got done teaching an apologetics course for them over the summer. So all that to say, what's on my mind as a local pastor who is raising children in this day and age, when

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I was saved, the Lord saved me at a secular university. I grew up in the church, but very much suppressed the knowledge of the truth that I had.

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Thought I wanted to be in a rock band, just kind of got by on my grades. But I was taking a class called

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Elements of Moral Philosophy my senior year and taught by a professor who was the son of a

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Baptist minister who had become a Buddhist. And the class was all about just basically epistemology.

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How do you know what's true? We're all a bunch of armchair philosophers, 20, 21 years old.

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But I essentially wanted to believe that relativism, moral relativism was true, because then I could keep going to the bars,

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I could keep cursing, I could keep doing all the things I wanted to do. But I made the mistake, and I think it was

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C .S. Lewis that said, young atheists can't be too careful about what they read. So I started reading the Bible that my family had given me before I went away to college.

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And just the dissonance between how I was living and what I was reading, the

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Lord just broke me. It was a February morning, it was bitter cold. I came back, and basically for the first time,

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I said, Lord, I deserve hell. I deserve your wrath. I grew up in the

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Bible belt. And so it was always, yes, ma 'am, no, ma 'am. And as long as you do those things, no one ever questions your salvation.

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But now I'm living in the Midwest. I'm on my own, I'm at college, and the Lord just broke me, saved me.

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And actually, I had one assignment left in that class. And I wrote on basically the validity of the gospel.

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And I got an A, but the professor asked me to come over for lunch. And so I actually had lunch with them. He's like, what happened?

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I'm like, well, I started reading my Bible while I was going to your class. And the Bible made more sense, no offense.

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So he was very gracious about it. All that to say, when I was first saved over 20 years ago,

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I immediately jumped into apologetics, just the way my brain works.

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My dad was a police officer for 40 years. He finally retired there in North Florida.

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And so I grew up around just there's right and there's wrong. And in evidence, my dad was a homicide detective for a number of years, and it's fascinating to me.

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I actually thought I wanted to go into criminal profiling, but I'm not smart enough. But nevertheless, I was intrigued by it.

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So evidentialist apologetics really grabbed me and helped me, you know, the least strobos and the case for Christ and all that.

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But now, 20 plus years later, I'm raising five children. I'm a pastor of a, by God's grace, a healthy church in a major metropolitan area.

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Everybody knows about Minneapolis in some sense. It's been infamous in the last, you know, three or four years.

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I'm teaching apologetics now with Bethlehem and just loving every minute of it. But when I had to declare a focus on my doctoral work, which is creating a new apologetics curriculum,

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I had read Peter Jones. And I know you guys have great respect for Dr.

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Jones, the other worldview, one -ism, two -ism. I just assumed that reform dudes knew all about this.

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And I just assumed that the conversations that cultish has been having for a long time, everybody was having that conversation.

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But the more I interacted with guys of very like -minded brothers, have a high view of the sovereignty of God, the inerrancy of scripture, the supremacy of Christ, time and time again, they would say,

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I've never heard of Peter Jones. Or this conversation is new to me. And so, all that to say my burden is not necessarily to give anything revelatory to you guys today.

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I mean, you've been in this fight for a long time. I come here as a local pastor who recognizes that local pastors can only focus on so many things.

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And there are some churches where that pastor, to be faithful to that flock, doesn't necessarily to ring every bell, because they may not be struggling with certain things.

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So, I'm very reticent to just give a blanket statement and say every pastor everywhere needs to stop what they're doing and study this.

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You know what I mean? But I think this has risen to a level of ascendancy where I just want to make sure we raise the flag to say, hey, local pastors everywhere.

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You can't focus on everything. Not everybody needs to be an expert on LDS or an expert on Baha 'i or whatever.

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But this amorphous, oneist, neopagan, call it what you will, this is a conversation that I do think every pastor everywhere needs to be part of the conversation because it's absolutely unavoidable.

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So, that's what I'm here to kind of double down on with you guys and to think through how do we lovingly convince fellow pastors to be part of this conversation and what does apologetics look like going forward?

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That's what I'd love to talk about with you guys. Man, that's awesome. I'm excited for this conversation.

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Quickly, can you give a brief description for the listeners here on what is oneism and twoism, oneism versus twoism?

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And what's the epistemology of oneism and the epistemology essentially of twoism, more specifically,

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Christian monotheism? Yeah, I would give a plug. When I taught my apologetics course this summer, part of the required reading,

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I gave the other worldview by Peter Jones. And I was surprised how many students had never heard of it.

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But of course, I made them do a book review and all of them were saying, I'm so glad you made us read this book.

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This is so helpful. So, a lot of that verbiage for the listeners who aren't aware, highly recommend to you the book,

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The Other Worldview by Peter Jones. And that verbiage is drawn a lot from Dr.

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Jones' work. He does a lot of work with Truth Exchange now. If you go on YouTube and go to Ligonier and type in Peter Jones, a lot of his older lectures are not that old.

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They're there and you can kind of listen to what he has to say. You'll hear that verbiage of oneism and twoism.

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So, oneism, essentially, I think he says in the book that his wife helped him kind of come up with this nomenclature.

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So, oneism and twoism. So, oneism is taken from monism, this idea that all is one, as above, so below, everything is collapsed.

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Call it pantheism, call it panentheism, whatever it may be, but it's an eradication of boundaries. It's an eradication of distinction between creator and creation, so that all is all.

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And I know that seems a little amorphous, but you're exactly right if you feel the tension of that's very nondescript.

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But you're right, it's an eradication of boundaries, whereas twoism from a biblical worldview is maintaining and exalting in the creator -creation distinction.

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And I actually emailed Dr. Jones in my naivete, and I said, I'm a doctoral student.

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I love your work. I would love to extrapolate what you've done. Give me some research to do, anything.

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And he emailed me back, and I opened it up. I got super excited because I saw his name in my inbox.

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And he said, Dear Pastor White, just teach a twoist worldview, Dr. Jones.

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And it's like this Mr. Miyagi moment where I'm like, okay, we'll do that. When thinking of twoism, why is this important today, you think?

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Are we seeing a society, at least a modern Western culture, that is falling away from the twoism foundation that built modern

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Western society, and it's diving back into oneism? I think, just to plug a podcast, the

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Theology Pugcast, they did an episode called The Return of the Old Gods, excuse me.

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And it talks about almost like a covenantal exchange in a sense, where our society is turning away from the

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God of the Bible and now embracing oneism in its fullest. Is that why this conversation is important today for the listener?

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Are you seeing that society is going full -on into oneism, or what are your thoughts on that? I know

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I'm cheating a little bit, and I'm not going to quote Peter Jones the entire time, but he's just been so massively helpful.

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And again, I've been just amazed about how many people aren't aware of his work. But I have a quote here from The Other Worldview that I thought was just a wonderful summation to that question.

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Dr. Jones says, quote, The rules have changed. The trains have gone off the track. In our time, the old canopy of a more or less

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Christian civilization has been shredded and replaced by a new overarching structure of spiritual beliefs and practices.

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Many of the traditional plausibility structures that gave life meaning and significance under Christian influence in the

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West are unrecognizable. The meaning and context of spirituality and religion have undergone a paradigm shift no less fundamental.

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The notion of God now allows for polytheism or pantheism. The average millennial in the

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United States, for example, no longer defines a vital spiritual life as knowledge of and communion with the infinite yet personal creator and Lord of heaven and earth.

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Dr. Jones, the last sentence says, Spirituality has become a do -it -yourself hobby that blends ancient

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Eastern practices with modern consumer sensibilities, end quote. And so what was amazing to me is you read a statement like that, and you think that Jones is writing that in 2023 -24.

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He actually wrote that in 2015, which for guys like me in my 40s, doesn't feel like that long ago, but I mean, that's a decade ago.

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And I think what he's getting at is exactly right. And I don't know if I've coined this term or if I've just kind of gathered it and just absorbed it somehow, but I call it the nihilistic vacuum.

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That I think what he's pointing at, and he's much better at articulating it, but I think what we see is nihilism that gave rise to the militant atheist of 20 years ago, the forcement of the atheistic apocalypse that most of the apologetic material at the time was aimed at defending against.

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Because we are homo religiosum, we are man the religious, it's not going to live in that vacuum forever.

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And I think that this idea of the old gods rushing in, this DIY spirituality rushing in to fill the void is exactly where we are.

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So, nihilism couldn't stop two world wars, nihilism leads to suicide.

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And for most people, that's just not a real great alternative. And so, we try to scratch our religious itch another way and combine that with Carl Truman's work and the rise and triumph of the modern self and expressive individualism.

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And you've got this very interesting apologetic moment where I think we need to keep the original apologetic arguments that we've had in terms of cosmological arguments and presuppositional argument, all of them.

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But we're going to have to add to our toolbox a way to address a undefined neo -pagan culture.

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You know, what you just said, Pastor Aaron, it made me think of back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3, especially chapter 3.

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And really, there has always been two options.

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You're either going to worship the one true God, or you're going to worship the creation, which includes angels and demons and the creation itself and those made in the image and likeness of God.

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And there's just always going to be that. And it's like Scooby -Doo, we pull off the mask and it's like, oh, it's you again.

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You keep coming up in different forms. But basically, the promise is, if you do this, you'll be like God.

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And I know you talked about in your thesis, basically the relationship to Gnosticism and wanting this hidden knowledge.

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So then the hidden knowledge that Satan offered in Genesis 3 goes along with being your own

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God. And so, yeah, I just see that recurring theme.

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And I think as pastors, we start to lose sight of that. We start to deal with only symptoms and not the diagnosis.

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You know what I mean? And that's what we're doing. We're chasing symptoms. We're chasing symptoms, trying the best we can by the

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Spirit of God to do our pastoral ministry and disciple. But I think what you're calling all of us to is like, hey, remember, this is ancient.

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This is Satanic ancient stuff. And we've got to go back to dealing with the root of it and not just the symptoms.

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Well, totally. And so, some of what I'm going to tell you is anecdotal, but because this is not something where you can go, like if you wanted to study

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Islam, if you wanted to specialize in engaging with Muslims, which in the Twin Cities, ample opportunity for that, you go and get a

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Quran and you study it. And you get James White's book on what you need to know about the

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Quran and you study it. With where we're at now, Peter Jones would say maybe the

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Nag Hammadi Scrolls, the Gnostic Scrolls would be some form of revelation that you could actually study and engage with.

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But it's going to be this kind of multiple, very undefined cobbling together of things.

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And I think that's what makes it so confusing and disorienting for pastors is we want to be able to engage one -on -one.

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We want to know the other side. We want to understand. And some of that is because we don't want to make straw men.

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With this, it's really, really hard. So, for example, when I was an undergraduate 20 years ago, no smartphones.

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We had the old flip phone, Nokia or whatever that actually worked pretty good. But you had to physically go to Barnes and Nobles.

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And there's always been the New Age section in the back. Way in the back, you could go get

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New Age stuff and get the Satanic Bible and Alistair Crowley, whatever. I walked into Barnes and Nobles just four or five months ago with my wife and my oldest, my daughter, and right in the entryway.

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So, when you put something in the entryway, you're front -facing a product. And what you're saying is, this is important. People are going to buy this.

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This is hot. And I looked and I stopped and I started taking pictures because it wasn't just tarot cards and crystals and energy healing and things like that.

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It was. But it was tarot cards for kids. It was pendulums for kids. It was incantations for kids.

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And it was like, color your own tarot cards. And so, I told my wife, I said, there's always been this.

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That's not a shock to anybody. Certain theologians will refer to it like Gnosticism.

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It's like the perennial heresy. It just comes up all over again. Like that unmasking in Scooby -Doo you talked about.

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He has a bad habit of popping up all the time in different garb. The thing that's catching my attention as a pastor is the normalization and the monetization of it.

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That when you walk into a bookstore and it's front -facing and it's for kids, it tells me, okay, this is now becoming normalized.

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It's becoming monetized. It's sexy. It's cool. People are interested. And so, that puts it on my radar to say, okay, what does apologetics look like when that's becoming the norm?

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So, then there's a coffee shop right down the road from our church that I love going to. And again, we're in a highly educated, white -collar business hub of the

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Twin Cities, right? And so, there's these magazines I have in my hand.

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I get them. There's one there every month when I go to get coffee and I just grab them. Can I say the name of it or is that not okay? That's fine.

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Okay. It's called The Edge. And it's all businesses and things in the

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Twin Cities and in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. But it's all natural healing. So, here's just a few samples of things that you can get involved in here in the

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Twin Cities. They list them in the back. Intuitive development. In this series of four classes, you'll learn how to connect to your intuitive abilities and listen to insight provided by your higher self and guides.

22:05

Trust your inner guidance. And then you pay 75 bucks, you get into the class. There's another class.

22:11

Breathe in the new moon. Join Terry for an evening of soul breathing, heart healing, and soul connection by Zoom.

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You'll let go of stress, clear your blocks, raise your vibration to find more clarity, harmony, and peace.

22:25

And there's another one for energy healing. Join so -and -so from so -and -so for an afternoon of energy healing practice.

22:31

Receive a healing from another practitioner. All energy healing modalities are welcome like Reiki, hands -on healing, shamanic healing, quantum touch.

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Again, these things have always been around. The New Age movement is not new necessarily.

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What's catching my attention as a pastor in the trenches is the normalization of it. These businesses abound in the

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Twin Cities because people are paying for them. Sweat lodges, shamanic healing. So, I'm over here just so thankful for Cultish and wanting more and more people to log onto the program.

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And for your sake, I'll say they should become patrons of the show as well, of course. Absolutely.

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Because you're doing a good work. And because you're raising the flag on something that is becoming the zeitgeist of an age.

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This isn't tangential anymore. This isn't a hobby theology anymore.

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This is right here. Our neighbors, the lady next door who has a master's degree, makes a quarter million dollars a year, has a yard sign that says follow the science, will then turn around and wear crystals and follow her zodiac sign.

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The cognitive dissonance of our age is so disorienting. And I'm trying to help God's people navigate that with compassion, with clarity.

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So, do you agree? Disagree? Push back? I'm just trying to understand. Right. Your Barnes and Noble example is really,

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I think, spot on. Very indicative of what's going on in the culture. Because I remember going there.

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I was in high school around 2001, something like that, and going into Barnes and Noble.

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And you're right. It's like those were the weird things in the back that maybe had a very generic miscellaneous sign.

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And then, honestly, there was sometimes shelves that were dedicated to Christianity or Bibles and different types of Bibles.

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And now, really, goodness, what you're saying is like the

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Bibles have moved to the back, the sign for Christianity is small, and all that stuff is in the front.

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And that is really disturbing. Well, I mean, you can also see another branch of that in the public school system.

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You know what I mean? Like teaching mindfulness, self -aware classes, not prayer, but instead sit and think to yourself and channel your inner self or whatever in order to bring peace or something.

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All that weird stuff is going on in our society today. I think you brought up a really good point,

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Pastor Aaron, earlier talking about how we had the four horsemen of atheism. But now what we're dealing with is the bastard children of atheism is what

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I like to call it. These people that are left fatherless, motherless, and they have no explanation for the things that go bump in the night.

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So what do they do? They're angry with God. And instead of going to the God of the Bible for answers, which by God's grace, you opened up your

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Bible when you were in college, when you're in a crazy moral relativism class, and God saved your soul.

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But a lot of people, they hate that God. And so they'll go to any other answer to try to have some form of revelation to give them spirituality.

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Here's my question. Help me understand this, Pastor Aaron. If as above, so below, right, that hermetic saying from the

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Corpus Hermeticum, if that is true to these individuals, why then do people within this

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Gnostic framework have to find some type of method in order to receive revelation?

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Why is that needed in their own thinking, in their own epistemology, other than just thinking to themselves, right?

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Why is there always this innate need within human beings to that there has to be some revelation other than myself that has to come to me through some method in order for me to believe it?

26:28

So to implicate myself as a sinner, apart from the grace of God, I love to -do lists.

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I don't like to be in anyone's debt. I mean, even as a regenerate person, grace is hard because I like to pay my way.

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I like to have a clean slate. I like modalities. I like to do things. And mysticism is intriguing.

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It's cool to the unregenerate mind and to the unregenerate heart. And we like religion, we just don't want

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God. We like the modalities, we like the methods. And Gnosticism is always, in whatever form it takes, the idea of hidden knowledge.

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Whether it's, I mean, you know better than I do, but whether it's Madame Blavatsky, or the

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Theosophy School, or this, that, and the other thing, or Alistair Crowley, we are such suckers to want to be on the inside, to be the cool kids.

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And especially in such a kind of DIY spirituality where you can find a secret modality, whether it's

27:37

Druid gods, or Norse gods, or Native American gods, or I was just in Ireland last year, beautiful, but great conversations with the believers over there.

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We support some really solid gospel guys in Dublin. And just talking to them, because I mean,

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Ireland is steeped in Druids and Gaelic tradition and paganism is, it's normative in a lot of ways in post -Christian

28:03

Ireland. So, just talking to them about this, but we went to a lot of different ruins and not an obelisk, but it's certain like earthen temples and burial sites and things and from way, way back.

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And just, it's just all in human nature is whatever form it takes. It seems that we like to have some sort of modality, some sort of secret sauce, so we're on the inside.

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And I think they could take a million different forms. So, we'll see as Lewis, you know, he wrote that article,

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The Inner Ring, talking about just man's craving to be on the inside. So, I think that's what it is, man.

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I don't claim any expertise, but I can just implicate myself that apart from the power of the gospel, I mean,

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I'm a sucker for being in the in -crowd and knowing some sort of secret or having some secret modality.

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So, I get it. Like, I'm compassionate toward those that are drawn to it. I really try not to have a self -righteous attitude toward it, because I get it, but it's so dangerous and it's so seductive.

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So, yeah, that would be my answer, I guess. That even makes me think of the

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Pauline epistles, specifically the past oral epistles where, you know, of course,

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John warns about different false teachings and stuff, but specifically Paul talks to Timothy and Titus, and it's not even just twice, it's not even three times, it's more than half a dozen times that Paul tells these men, watch out for those who bring up these, he doesn't say conspiracy things, but that's kind of what he means.

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These things that are dealing with genealogies and these far connections, you know, maybe they were dealing with the book of Enoch even back then, like we do now, you know, but it's like sometimes, even as Christians, we so want that hidden knowledge.

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We want something fresh, we want something new, and Paul warns more than half a dozen times, like, be careful, you know, be careful with those who continue to go after those things and bring them up as, essentially, as primary, um, you know, rules of operation for the

30:24

Christian church or doctrines, you know. I mean, yeah, in Colossians, yeah, in Colossians chapter two, he says, all treasures of hidden wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, and then right after that, he says, abound in thanksgiving with your salvation, just as you were taught, and then see to it that no one takes you captive by empty philosophy and deceit, elemental spirits of the world, right, not according to Christ.

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Once we don't have Christ as a center hold in whom all true wisdom and knowledge is, we're going to get lost in all kinds of different things.

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It literally takes the God of the universe to save our souls so that we can actually find our fullness of what it even means to be human in him.

31:02

Like, that's just, that's just how fallen we are. Thinking of modalities, Pastor Aaron, what exactly is neo -paganism, and are the modalities that do you think that people use today are actually the same modalities that the pagans used in ancient times?

31:21

Because when I'm doing like my own personal research, let's say on the occult roots of Mormonism, or even on what this, what is it,

31:32

Samhain or Samhain, I always pronounce it wrong, Samhain or whatever, like the origins of Halloween, what the pagans claim.

31:39

What I tend to find is that we don't really know exactly what the modalities that the pagans used in the past were, and what people are practicing today, these quote -unquote neo -pagans, most likely aren't what the pagans did in the past.

31:56

So how do you, what is neo -paganism? Is it actually the rehashing of ancient pagan practices?

32:03

What do you think? Yeah, well let me give you a definition that I think is a good start, and this was by an article written not super recent, but again the content sounds really recent because it's so pertinent, but this is actually from the, so I'm a student at the

32:21

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, so I had to pull from that at some point, but I didn't do it just for that reason. I did it because I was surprised to see

32:27

Phil Johnson's name in the journal, but it's a journal entry that Phil Johnson gave to the

32:33

SBTS journal called What's New with the New Age? And he gives a stab at defining kind of what is new age, neo -pagan, what is it?

32:43

He says this, he says, because of the diversity of belief among new age enthusiasts and the amorphous nature of the new age network, a formal succinct definition of the new age movement is practically impossible.

32:55

And you could just substitute the term neo -pagan there, but he gives it an attempt here. He says the new age movement or neo -paganism, which we'll try to pull that apart here in a second.

33:05

The new age movement is a diverse and eclectic approach to spirituality that stresses individual self -exploration through a variety of beliefs and practices borrowed from a wide array of extra biblical sources and non -Christian belief systems, ranging from astrology to Eastern mysticism to science fiction and more.

33:29

So, I think Johnson does a good job of trying to nail the proverbial jello to the wall, because that's really what it is.

33:37

So, to answer your question, what is neo -paganism? Well, it's at the risk of being pedantic, it's modern paganism.

33:43

What does that mean? I mean, paganism is country dwellers, like what do we mean? It's just very broad. And that's where I would say he is right to say, you have to factor in Eastern mysticism you have to factor in where we are now with Carl Truman's work, which he's not the only one, but he's probably one of the most articulate in our time to say, how did we get where, like what has contributed to the zeitgeist of our age?

34:09

And he's culling together these different tributaries, whether it be Freud or Jung, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, music and arts.

34:19

Don't forget Nietzsche, because you've got this whole ubermensch mentality, which you know,

34:25

Truman argues that the ubermensch in Nietzsche's mind would likely have been like an

34:32

Oscar Wilde type personality, like an artist, just completely transgressing every boundary.

34:40

So, you take all of that and mash it together in our age, where you've got expressive individualism, self -help therapy, all the media consumption and music, mix that and supercharge that with Eastern mysticism, a oneness view of the world, moral relativism, the balancing of opposites.

35:04

And that's where we are today with this neo -pagan mentality is, I would guess, again, to come back to kind of the focus of this podcast is pastors.

35:12

If someone comes to us and says, pastor, I love my neighbor. I was talking to him, really smart guy, hardworking, but he's into seances or he's dabbling with psychedelic drugs, or he says that he has a spirit guide.

35:30

I don't even know what that is. What category do we help our people have with this? I would tell them more than likely your neighbor doesn't have a super well -defined modality.

35:42

I don't think he's going home and reading the Nag Hammadi scrolls or the book of Enoch or whatever.

35:50

He's probably has grown up, depending on his age. He's a product of the 1960s or post -1960s university education, steeped in moral relativism, cultural

36:03

Marxism, probably a big consumer of music and movies and media, which a lot of that from the

36:11

Beatles onward has fostered the expressive individualism. Maybe he's dabbled in drugs to some degree.

36:21

So, that has led him to just the frog in the proverbial pot that's been boiling such that he probably doesn't give it a lot of thought.

36:31

I was just down at Southern talking to Dr. Timothy Paul Jones from my apologetics work.

36:37

He's done some work with some of his colleagues with a thing that they're just coining apotheism, where people are just apathetic.

36:45

They don't have a well -reasoned framework for what they do and why they do it. So, if you talk to this guy, this invisible interlocutor here, my neighbor that I'm trying to reach,

36:56

I think someone like that probably lives next to most of us now, where they're not going home and drawing a pentagram on the floor.

37:04

They don't have a severed goat's head on an altar. I mean, some of them might, but I think most of them are just the products of a post -1960s relativized, hyper -sexualized, hyper -media with the old gods still in operation, the perennial heresy of Gnosticism and secret knowledge all mixed in such that you probably have to take it person by person.

37:32

Let's call him Bob. You have to really get to know Bob and have a cup of coffee and figure out where Bob is coming from because he's going to sound like Jim at the office, but Jim's coming at it from a different angle and he's added in Druid stuff because of interest that he has or a movie that he watched.

37:52

And then if you do add in psychotropic drugs to the mix, which more and more people, and I saw this when

38:00

I was down in Sedona, more and more people are messing around with DMT, dimethyltryptamine or whatever. And even people that are not in drug houses, like they're working jobs, they're middle, upper middle class, but they're dabbling and some of them are making contact with entities.

38:16

So, this is where I, as a local pastor, I'm saying, man, it was almost easier to just equip your people to deal with atheists.

38:24

You know what I mean? Here's the battle lines, here's the atheistic arguments, get cosmological, ontological, just have that conversation, argue for the existence of God.

38:36

That's just not where we're at. And so, I'm trying to, as a pastor, imagine the people that are working with and living around the people that I'm trying to shepherd.

38:45

Do you guys have that where you are? Because I'm in the upper Midwest. I mean, yeah, I'll let you say what you think too,

38:50

Pastor Wade. Even when it comes to Mormonism, I would still qualify it under the branch of one -ism.

38:57

Ontologically, they believe that we are the same essence really as God and that we can become gods one day through rites and rituals, gaining this secret type of knowledge through divine revelation.

39:06

I mean, that's what they believe at the core. But when you're speaking to your Mormon out here in Salt Lake City, at least the younger generation, it's almost that we have to ask them, what do you actually believe?

39:16

There's no system. There's no framework anymore. They don't abide by any set of anything.

39:24

Yeah, that's the reality. So, we're doing the same thing, at least trying to equip even our people at our church to just be like, hey, get to know these people and ask them really what they think, and then get to the core of how can you have peace with God?

39:39

What is the gospel? Because they have a similar language as we do, but of course, different definitions for their terms.

39:47

But how do you have peace with God and what is the gospel can really shine a light in the darkness?

39:54

And I think even in the situation, if I'm talking to my pagan neighbor, what I'm going to first do in my

39:59

Christian framework is I'm going to think, well, if they don't know who Jesus is and he hasn't saved their soul, then they don't have peace with God and they know they don't have peace with God.

40:10

So, what's the only way to do that? Well, talk to the person and then try to give them the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation.

40:17

I don't know. That's my thoughts initially, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, Pastor Aaron said it.

40:23

I know that's my own experience. It's old as time.

40:29

I mean, the minimization of sin, the minimization of God, and the exaltation of self, and that's how you continue to go into these things and you continue to go deeper into this.

40:46

And what did Pastor Aaron say? I saw my sin and I saw who

40:51

God was and that's what happened to me. And I think you could argue that apart from a knowledge of sin and the holiness of God, you won't see the need for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

41:04

And so, as far as, and I'm sure, Pastor Aaron, you could talk more on how you best reach these type of people, but I would imagine that it involves those two things.

41:15

They've got to know who God is, how holy he is, and how sinful they are, because really, they have no metric.

41:24

If everything's relative and they can take from the cornucopia and the banquet of all these different ideals and all these things, then it doesn't really matter, but they must know they are sinners before a holy and righteous

41:41

God. Yes, and amen. 100%. So, here, let me tell you something kind of funny that's tragic and it'll reveal my stupidity.

41:50

So, I was a young cage -stage Calvinist, right? I thought I had discovered the doctrine of limited atonement.

41:57

I was certain that I had discovered it, because I just reasoned, you know, I was reading Romans 8, and I was reasoning, and then

42:05

I read John Owen, and I realized I had not, in fact, discovered the doctrine of limited atonement. The reason

42:12

I say that is when we use a phrase that, I don't know if we've said it yet, but inevitably we will, it's spiritual, but not religious.

42:20

You know, spiritual, but I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. I started using that verbiage, and I thought maybe

42:25

I had discovered something, and then I got this new book from Michael Horton, Dr.

42:31

Michael Horton called Shaman and Sage. It's the first installment of a multi -part installment, and the subtitle is this,

42:40

The Roots of Spiritual, but Not Religious Antiquity. Yeah, so, it's one of those, it's like, the only people coming up with new stuff are heretics, right?

42:49

So, I didn't come up with it, I didn't discover it, but I'm just digging into this first installment, and it's,

42:56

I mean, it's substantive, it's about 500 pages, but it's actually called The Divine Self, Volume 1, and Horton is as much as I can interact with it, it's really trying to get back to the roots of how we got to where we are, to where that verbiage really does,

43:13

I think, encapsulate the zeitgeist of our moment, people saying I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

43:19

So, again, I give credit to Michael Horton, not me, but I think that's a really helpful phrase, is that if you talk to the people that we're trying to shepherd in our churches, and again, part of this podcast is hopefully raising the flag and encouraging listeners, all of your listeners, but especially those in leadership in the local church, that there's a lot of things vying for your time, and you can't be, you know, a master of every topic and subject.

43:45

But I think what Dr. Horton is pointing at, that verbiage of spiritual, but not religious, is what most of our congregants are going to hear from friends, and neighbors, and coworkers, the people that we're equipping the saints to do the work of ministry.

44:00

So, the people that they're interacting with, I would wager now and increasingly going forward, what they're going to hear is, oh,

44:09

I'm glad you're a Christian, that's awesome. I'm spiritual too, but I'm not religious. And so,

44:16

I'm trying to get my hands on every resource I can. I pre -ordered Horton's work because I just want to devour it to try to understand because I think that verbiage really is where we are.

44:25

I'm spiritual. I'm not an atheist. That's not sexy anymore. That's not cool. I'm definitely spiritual.

44:32

I believe in energy. I believe in bad vibes and good vibes. I believe the universe has my back.

44:38

I believe the stars tell a story and impact my life. I think unfettered human evolution,

44:45

I think that we're getting better and better. At least we have the potential to. I think that I am divine in some sense.

44:52

I might even call myself God in a lowercase g kind of way. But I don't go to church.

44:58

I don't follow any creed. I don't adhere to any revealed text of any kind.

45:07

John Lennon's Imagine, that's kind of my theme song. So, how do you help those people?

45:12

How do you love them and not roll your eyes and go, come on? Because my flesh wants to say that.

45:18

My flesh wants to say, come on. You're committing intellectual suicide. You have to think through your worldview, but that doesn't lead my heart to love them very well.

45:27

So, I have to try to understand it so that I can be compassionate and clear. So, let me ask you guys this.

45:36

No, go ahead. I was going to say, how do we help someone disentangle from that? I'm not religious.

45:41

I'm spiritual. I'm spiritual, not religious. How do we, as Christians, try to break through that?

45:48

That's a tangled web. Yeah. Well, I think, well, there's a number of ways, but without getting too prescriptive, knowing that all of these are very unique.

46:01

But to try to find a bridge to the gospel, something that I have done is most of these people, and I'm speaking in very broad terms, but most of the people in this spiritual but not religious category, in our current,

46:17

I don't want to get too political, but in our current cultural moment, political moment, everyone seems to have some sort of outrage. What I go looking for is their outrage.

46:28

What are they outraged by? Because they're more prone to their outrage, whether I agree with it or not, probably won't, because it probably won't accord with God's word.

46:38

But I want to identify their outrage and say, okay, we're going to do a little bit of moral apologetics here.

46:44

And that's one thing too, in the world of meta -apologetics, I'm not beholden to one particular discipline necessarily.

46:52

At times, I sound like a presuppositionalist. At times, I sound like a classicalist. At times, I sound like an evidentialist. It's like kind of a

46:59

Swiss army knife depending on who I'm talking to. But if this person says, I'm spiritual but not religious, I say, okay.

47:05

And we get to talking, we're having coffee, and I found out that they're just absolutely outraged over the idea that anyone would not agree with same -sex marriage, or that anybody would want to hamper the abortion now.

47:19

If I'm talking to my neighbor and I say, yeah, they have a mobile abortion clinic in Chicago at the

47:26

DNC, and they say, well, why isn't that a good thing? I'm outraged that you would not think that that should be there.

47:32

That's going to give me some sliver, hopefully, some little in to ask them that age -old question that as presuppositionalists, we love to ask, by what standard?

47:46

Now, it depends on if the person is going to entertain that conversation, but I think that is a fundamental question that we can ask and say, hey, on what basis are you so outraged?

48:00

How does your worldview support this idea of moral objectivity? Even Immanuel Kant had the categorical imperative, and maybe if they've read

48:11

Kant, maybe they would say, well, I just think categorical imperative, there's a sense of oughtness. I haven't thought it through a lot.

48:19

I don't want to put a whole lot of definition to it, but I do think there is an oughtness to life. Okay, well, let's drill down on that, and hopefully do it in a way that's compassionate and loving, that doesn't drive you away, but I think moral apologetics is trying to identify the outrage may give you an in, but I think that goes to my other point.

48:42

There's a lot of talk at the academic level of ecclesial apologetics of the church itself, and it's evidence of the resurrected

48:51

Christ, and it's the love among believers that is across social boundaries, and monetary boundaries, and racial boundaries.

49:00

The church itself is an apologetic to a fallen culture, and so if that person would let me have that conversation about their moral outrage, and on what basis they have that, and maybe chip away a little bit, one of the next things

49:11

I want to do is say, hey, man, you're spiritual, right? I'd love you to come to church with me. I would love to have you sit with me and just hear the word of God, and we can go get lunch afterward and talk about it, but I want, especially for guys that have the blessing of being in a healthy local church, where God's people are going to interact with them, they're going to love them, they're going to hear the word exposited faithfully,

49:32

I think the church isn't apologetic, and so I would love to have them come to church. What do you think? Maybe I'm off,

49:38

I don't know. No, I think that, you know, if you look at the etymology of religion, and if you look at, you know, what

49:45

James says about that in James chapter one, you know, religion being the, you know, the open expression of how we live out our faith in Jesus Christ, I think they are religious, you know.

50:03

I'm sure you guys would probably agree that they're religious in some sense. They go to particular systems or expressions of how to live out this false, you know, spiritualism, and so it's like, okay, you're spiritual but not religious, so how do you increase that spiritual nature?

50:25

How do you feed that spirituality? Oh, this is what I do. I do this.

50:30

I do this. I do this. Okay, well, can I tell you what I do and what the

50:36

Bible says, and then I think your idea of getting them to go, like, getting them to, you know, come to church and maybe get them to admit that, oh, wait,

50:47

I am religious, just in a different way, so let me see how you're doing it, and then really, hopefully, they get faced with their sin, the gospel, the truth of God's Word, and obviously, that could definitely be a great way to do it.

51:03

You know, I believe as a pastor, the worship service is for the saints to worship

51:09

God, but, you know, obviously, all throughout even the New Testament church, there were times where, you know,

51:17

Gentile idol worshipers were walking in, checking things out. I don't think there's anything against that, necessarily.

51:23

Yeah, I think anytime the Word of God is being rightly divided, the Word of God never returns void, so it's going to have its function, and it's going to have its role in that person's life,

51:33

I think. Just don't cater to the unbeliever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise. Exactly, and we don't sacrifice for the goats, right?

51:40

It's fresh sheep in terms of the service, and that's why it would be beneficial for them to hear the Word of God there. In terms of the individual, as a pastor myself, when

51:49

I try to think of people who are stuck within this spiritual loop, I try to, at least when

51:56

I'm having a conversation with an individual, I want to think about what God's Word says about them, not what they say about themselves all of the time.

52:04

Number one, God's Word says they do not have peace with God if they don't know Him. Number two, all humans are innately religious, meaning that they look for some form or modality in order to exercise that religion.

52:17

With Christianity, it's the sacrifice of Christ that gave me peace and reconciliation with God through Jesus' shed blood, through His sacrifice.

52:25

But the person who denies the sacrifice of Christ, or maybe ignorant to the gospel, will look for self -sacrifice.

52:32

And within this Gnostic framework or the Neo -Pagan framework, typically that self -sacrifice comes in the form of asceticism, whether it be from specific diets or from taking psychotropic drugs, licking toads, right?

52:47

Like all these weird things. They're damaging their bodies because the underlying presupposition is that the fleshly material realm is subservient to this higher spiritual form where knowledge can lie.

52:57

So what do they do? They hurt themselves. Literally, they sacrifice their own bodies in order to try to get revelation or peace with God in some way.

53:05

So I think it'd be helpful in a conversation with them is not necessarily go to them, look, you're sacrificing yourself for only something

53:12

God can do, but to bridge the gap, to bring the gospel in context. Look, you're doing all of these things to try to have peace or gain wisdom, but none of it's working.

53:22

Just appeal to the truth. It's never going to end. It's a cycle. It's cyclical. All of this knowledge, this so -called wisdom that you've bound yourself up in is relying on the sacrifice of your own body, of your own flesh.

53:35

But it was God who sent His Son, who sacrificed Himself on the cross so that I could have peace with God.

53:41

It's not through your works. Your righteousness is nothing but filthy rags, but before God, you're a sinner in need of that sacrifice.

53:49

And one method of that is, yeah, get to church, hear the gospel, hear the Word of God rightly divided and have conversations so you can bring that up.

53:57

I guess it's really seeing the other person in the situation, maybe it's not like a massively tangled web of spirituality, but really saying, let's call it what it is.

54:08

Let's name it so we can have dominion over the fact that though it may be really confusing what they're in, we can actually now give the gospel in context.

54:16

And when they're honest, their lives are never better. I remember before the

54:22

Lord called me to the pastorate, I worked in a sea of cubicles in my neighbor cubicle.

54:29

This young lady just got out of college and she had all her crystals set up. She had them around her neck.

54:36

She would sometimes even just sit there and she was completely catatonic, very odd.

54:43

When there was sickness around in the office, she would do things like with the law of attraction or speaking positive things so that, no,

54:52

I don't actually get sick. I never get sick. But then finally, there'd be some moments where she would take back the facade and show that there were a lot of trials and hardships going on in her life.

55:08

And it's like, I think that's also a good place to go like, okay, this is not actually helping you.

55:18

We have a basis of why suffering can be good. No one else, no other worldview has the basis or an understanding of how suffering can be redeemed, that all things can be used for good.

55:33

And especially in light of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

55:39

ISKRA Yeah. You're right, brother. To put an apologetic term on that, the problem of evil.

55:46

Going back to your question earlier, Andrew, about just what are some apologetic inroads with our friends and neighbors that are the spiritual but not religious category.

55:55

And I think brother Wade is right that the problem of evil, problem of suffering, the emotional problem of evil, not necessarily the logical problem, like, sit down and give them a syllogism for how

56:07

God is good and yet there's evil. That's not what we're talking about, but getting to know them. And inevitably, once we get past all the being divine self and higher self and positive energy and say, yeah, but how is life?

56:22

More than likely, they're going to be touched by the fall. Someone has cancer, someone's sick, someone's hurting, they've been hurt, they've been sent against, whatever the case may be.

56:31

So, going back and revisiting the problem of evil and all of its variegated forms is probably going to be an apologetic inroad as well.

56:39

And to kind of dovetail back to what you guys were saying, when I talked about ecclesial apologetics, there's a massive caveat there.

56:48

So, you talked about the positive confessions and things. If you go to a hyper charismatic church or the word faith type churches where that's essentially what they're doing, is this positive confession.

57:01

If you take them to that kind of a church, it's just going to lead to syncretism. So, when you talk about ecclesial apologetics, that's the presupposition there, no pun intended, is that it's a healthy church with healthy leadership.

57:17

And if they come, they're not going to be invited to the Lord's table, they're going to be fenced in that regard.

57:23

But if you, just speaking to pastors, if you have labored and the Lord has been kind and brought about not a perfect church, but a healthy church, you've got solid biblically qualified elders, the word is exposited weekly, and the people that you shepherd are theologically astute and love

57:43

Christ. And if you take an unbeliever into that type of a church where proper fences are in place, but yet they're going to hear the word handled, and they're going to look around, and it's not just the pulpit ministry, which is necessary, but they're also going to interact with God's people who are well fed.

58:06

And I just, I'm obviously biased because I love my church, but we've just got a lot of really solid, mature believers, both young and old.

58:18

But I've watched some time and again, people wander in, because again, we're in the Twin Cities. So, we have new faces coming in all the time.

58:25

We're not a consumeristic church, we're not a revolving door, we have healthy membership practices and discipline practices and baptism, all of those.

58:35

But inevitably, people come in from all different walks of life, which is good in some sense.

58:41

And yes, they're hearing the word exposited and Christ exalted. But I also see our people engaging with them and staying after the service and taking them out to lunch after the service.

58:52

And I've seen the Lord do some amazing things. So, I guess there's a big caveat that if you're not in a healthy church, that's just going to basically lead to syncretism, maybe don't bring them.

59:04

But if you're a pastor in a healthy church, maybe you do have an apologetic tool that, not that you want to use it this way necessarily, but if you've got a healthy church and it's like, man, if your spiritual but not religious neighbor is willing to come with you, yeah, we're preaching to the book of Mark, you should have him come.

59:21

And we'll love him and talk to him. What you got me thinking, Pastor Aaron, is that,

59:27

I think, help me explain this if I'm not explaining it correctly, but it's got my mind, my little wheels are turning.

59:35

But when I speak to the spiritual but not religious person, there's almost an assumption from both of our parts, from a

59:41

Christian and one of these individuals, but that the Christian thinks and acts in a certain way that makes them maybe xenophobic, racist, all of these different things.

59:53

So, when you're bringing them into the church around other Christians, sometimes it might shatter their assumptions of what the

59:58

Christian body and community is at large. They're like, wow, these people are actually listening to me and caring about me because it's not just within their regular echo chamber.

01:00:07

Yeah. Okay. So, to capitalize on that, I want to hear from both you guys on this. So, like I said,

01:00:12

I was just down working on my own doctoral stuff and having these conversations down in Louisville. And one of the conversations was at this particular moment, with millennials,

01:00:21

Gen Z, whatever, people aren't asking, is it true? That was our generation.

01:00:27

I'm in my 40s. 20 years ago, we want to know, is it true or are you a poser, right? Right now, he says, in our moment, people aren't asking, is it true?

01:00:36

They're asking, is it good? Is it beautiful? And there's a lot of ways to come at that.

01:00:42

So, we spent a lot of time just thinking through as apologetics majors, how do we respond to someone who says not, is

01:00:49

Christianity true? That's not their concern. They're saying, is it good? Is it beneficial? Is Christianity good for the world?

01:00:56

Is it good for me? Now, that's not to cater to needs. We preach the word and we let the chips fall where they may.

01:01:02

But what I mean is, to your point, in terms of shattering their own presuppositions and biases, if you come into a healthy church where the gospel is uniting

01:01:13

God's people under the banner of Christ and people from all different walks of life and color of skin and young and old are all rejoicing in the

01:01:21

Lord together, where do you find that in culture that is so divided and so toxic and so violent and outraged at everything?

01:01:34

They walk into the church, this little outpost of the kingdom, and I see it every

01:01:39

Sunday. I look around and go, these people hug each other. These people, sometimes we have to encourage them to leave so we can set the alarm because they just stick around after church.

01:01:50

And it's not because they're an interest group or they share the same hobbies. They share Christ. And their kids are playing, and they're talking, and they're rejoicing, and they're sharing life and praying for one another.

01:02:01

And I mean, that is a kind of apology. It's like going back to the second, third century apologetics, you know, with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus where they're before the pagan governments and they're like, hey, we're not the problem.

01:02:14

We're a blessing to the city. We share everything except our wives. We're not your problem. Please stop torturing us.

01:02:22

Where else are they going to see that? So if you have a healthy church, I think in a way, it can be part of your apologetic conversation to say, hey, come with me.

01:02:33

You're going to hear the exclusivity of Christ, and that may offend you, and I'm going to run that risk. But you also might have some of your biases knocked down about what you think we're all about.

01:02:42

That's good, man. I believe even Jesus kind of speaks about that. I believe it's from John 17 where he says, they will know that we are one by the way that essentially they treat each other.

01:02:51

And then John the disciple echoes that all throughout 1 John of how we love one another, right? It's like if the outpouring of our faith comes from the object of our faith, who is the way, the truth, and the life, who is

01:03:03

Jesus Christ, we'll have an outpouring of practical holiness in our lives, stealing a little phrase there from J .C.

01:03:08

Ryle. But that means we love God because we have a reconciled relationship with him so that we can love one another horizontally.

01:03:16

But you can't do that without God being the object of your faith, right?

01:03:21

So we have Paul saying that there's in the gospel, no Jew, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free men and women, but Christ is all and in all, right?

01:03:29

Breaking down these barriers so that we could love one another, that only happens when the object of our faith is correct.

01:03:35

But when we have people whose object of their faith isn't the God of the universe, the

01:03:41

God of the Bible, what does it create, right? Male, female, stargender, cisgender, transgender, asexual, you name it, all it's going to do is create barriers with one another and it's going to end with no one being unified.

01:03:57

But like you said, within the Christian church, they will know God by, they will see the love of God by how we love one another.

01:04:05

I mean, that's what I hear you saying. Yeah, I'm just thinking about finding out what's true versus doing what feels good.

01:04:21

Those two questions you brought up in Generations and ultimately,

01:04:30

I just used the word, but I think ultimate good. I don't think people are really defining what goodness really is, what benevolence truly is, and they're taking that and they don't know what ultimate good is.

01:04:48

And so we've got to define it. We've got to talk about what goodness really is. And that's a communicable attribute of God.

01:04:57

Goodness is from God. True goodness cannot be separated from the nature of God.

01:05:06

And really, and that's really what it is too, is something that's truly good is goodly true.

01:05:14

You know what I mean? They go hand in hand. And so really, when

01:05:21

I think about those questions, I'm thinking about defining what goodness is and will what feels good, according to you, let's hear your definition of good.

01:05:31

Let's look at the Bible's definition of good. Let's see where your goodness will take you.

01:05:37

Let's see what ultimate goodness gets you in Christ. And then you tell me where people go who think doing what feels good, where they go, is that really good?

01:05:54

Is that the best place to experience goodness? And so, I don't know, that's just kind of what comes to my mind.

01:06:00

Well, in talking to you guys as pastors and for all the listeners, but especially pastors or aspiring pastors, because I mean, think about being a guy who's just coming into the ministry in your 20s right now, looking for the next 40 years of ministry, eschatology notwithstanding, you know, how do you prepare them?

01:06:20

And how do you kind of cast a vision for them in that regard? So, I look at it and I go, okay, we live at a time where spiritual but not religious is kind of just the mentality that we're up against.

01:06:37

We don't want to bring people to church if it's going to lead to syncretism, yes, but if you have a healthy local church,

01:06:43

I think it can be unapologetic in some sense in that regard. What do you think about this?

01:06:54

The idea of theological education, and I don't mean formal seminary education,

01:07:00

I mean, just thorough discipleship, a lot of the arguments that I get into or when anger takes over and my apologetics, my evangelism is when typically

01:07:13

I don't know an answer or I'm confused or I feel like I'm coming up short and all of that is this hubris, all it is, is pride.

01:07:21

But I think informing the mind works for the purpose of love, like there is a way to be compassionate without compromise.

01:07:31

And so, one thing that we're doing is kind of back to Peter Jones's point is, well, just major on majors, ground your people in biblical worldview, ground them in biblical cosmology, ground them in biblical epistemology, anthropology, all theologies, ground them, equip the saints for the work of ministry so that they are able to have those conversations that are very different, very surprising sometimes.

01:08:02

I mean, it can take any number of forms, whether this person is spiritual in the sense of they're into actual occult practices or they have spirit guides or they're practicing seances or they're taking drugs or whatever the case may be.

01:08:16

If we do our due diligence as pastors to ground them theologically, doctrinally, biblically, to get their feet steady on the ground, it seems to me that that would work for the purpose of love, right?

01:08:30

So, that they're not losing their footing, they're not going out trying to do pretty advanced apologetics with a very thin, vapid evangelical tropes, you know what

01:08:42

I mean, that just aren't going to stand up. But if we do our due diligence to ground our people, and that's the kind of church I'm envisioning, having someone like that walk into where you've got a congregation on the main, have got their feet on the ground theologically, and because of that, their hackles aren't up, you know, because they're trying to defend themselves, that they're settled, they're joyful, they know what they believe and why they believe it.

01:09:06

And because of that, they have a much more settled demeanor to give a reason for the hope that they have with humility and with respect.

01:09:15

I guess that's what I'm thinking through in terms of ecclesial apologetics with the religious. And it's an encouragement to pastors that, yes, this is confusing and off -putting.

01:09:26

You know, someone might listen to these episodes and go, okay, I got to study Gnosticism, Hermeticism, I got to read the

01:09:32

Satanic Bible, I got to do this, I got to study the cults. Sure. But at the end of the day, be found faithful with what you've been called to do, which is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, preach the word faithfully, and so that they know what they believe and why they believe it.

01:09:50

And that, I think, will pay dividends in terms of a settled, courageous, grounded people who, because they're settled and courageous and grounded because they know what they believe, somewhat paradoxically are then in a better position to love their neighbor and to have some of these crazy conversations and not get hyper defensive about it.

01:10:14

But I do think informing them about modern new age, modern neopaganism, at least at a 30 ,000 -foot level will help to inform their minds and soften their hearts so that when they do have their neighbor tell them,

01:10:31

I believe basically science is God, but I also believe

01:10:36

I'm God. I believe an object of truth in a laboratory, but I also have an angel that shows up at my bedside and tells me things at night.

01:10:45

What do you do with that? So, I think informing the mind will have an impact on the heart.

01:10:51

So, if I were to talk to a young guy just heeding a call to ministry and he says,

01:10:57

Pastor Aaron, this is a lot, man. This is a lot, lot. I would say, well, yeah, but it's really not that complicated.

01:11:07

Preach the word of God faithfully, exalt and rejoice in the supremacy and exclusivity of Christ, because that's going to be the battleground.

01:11:16

I read R .C. Sproul's biography by Stephen Nichols and how back in the 80s, they were fighting for the inerrancy of scripture.

01:11:23

It was all bibliology. That's where the battlefield was. I'm like, yeah, yes and amen, that will always be a fight.

01:11:30

But what we're fighting for now is the exclusivity of Christ. That's what's going to cause you to lose your head in the marketplace of ideas.

01:11:37

So, I would tell that young man, hey, preach the exclusivity of Christ, preach the word of God, educate your people, inform the mind, but inflame the heart.

01:11:48

Be a hopeful, cheerful, Godward, Christian, hedonist leader who doesn't look dour all the time.

01:11:56

Don't be slapdash to use a D .A. Carson term, dismissive.

01:12:02

Recognize that life is hard in a fallen world, but we've got the gospel. Even though this is very disorienting, we have the answer.

01:12:13

So, if we equip our people to know what they believe, why they believe in, I think we will serve the purpose of love on the backend better than saying, hey, we're not into all that doctrine and stuff.

01:12:25

You need to go love your neighbor. That's not going to work. Amen, man. I love that.

01:12:31

I think that's a great way to look at it. It's like, man. So, when people, at least in the church body, the church congregate, when they're hearing the word faithfully preached and they're growing in the grace and knowledge of their

01:12:42

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I mean, that's what we're called to do. That's what all of us are called to do as believers.

01:12:50

And of course, that ought to increase our love for one another because the salvation of the other individual that you're speaking with, the reason why you're giving them the gospel is so that they can have a reconciled relationship with God, not to win an argument.

01:13:03

And when we know Jesus more, then we'll understand more of how it wasn't that my wit or my cunning, any of those things saved any other individual.

01:13:13

It's literally God himself that saves somebody. The Holy Spirit comes in, takes the heart of stone, replaces it with the heart of flesh.

01:13:19

The gospel comes in and pours light into our lives. And we want that person to be in a relationship with God because God deserves all of the worship and glory, right?

01:13:28

Glorify God and enjoy him forever. We want that other individual to do that. And I think that it's a beautiful way to look at it too.

01:13:35

I think even like on an overarching view, when we think about the spiritual but not religious, my heart breaks for the individuals because it makes me think that they're trying to resurrect a

01:13:48

God that could never resurrect from the grave, right? So they're trying to put say they're trying to reconstruct or resurrect paganism by putting on dead men's bones and they're puppeteering it and calling it alive, right?

01:14:03

But there's only one God who resurrected from the grave and he has a body, right?

01:14:09

A glorified body sits in heaven on a throne and he is conquering the nations today. Like that's the true

01:14:14

God who can give you peace, a true empty grave, not a puppeteering of dead men's bones.

01:14:20

And when you wear dead men's bones, you're going to die spiritually in the long run and your body is going to be destroyed as well.

01:14:28

Like that's the reality of this spiritual but not religious. God actually says that there is no spiritual person until God saves your soul.

01:14:36

He says you're natural, not spiritual. And we want them to become spiritual. It's like you say you're spiritual, not religious.

01:14:42

I want you to actually know the spirit because the only one who knows the mind of God is the spirit of Christ.

01:14:49

And you have to have the spirit of Christ in you in order to know the mind of God. And we have that through his word revealed, right?

01:14:55

Through the Holy Spirit. So it's all in love and it ought to be in love because we just want God to be worshipped, not ourselves, you know, not our own cunning or wit.

01:15:03

What do you think? So for me on that note, my last question, well maybe not, we'll see.

01:15:13

One question that I have, we've talked about preparing, learning this topic a bit, you know, like you said,

01:15:23

Pastor Aaron, not having to become an expert, not being overwhelmed with everything, but preparing, then getting into the conversation, then finding these people.

01:15:33

And we talked about how we could get into a conversation, how we could connect and make a bridge to the gospel.

01:15:41

And then really what I want to know from you, Pastor Aaron, is once someone like this turns to Christ, what is that like in pastoral ministry?

01:15:52

Because I know that that's one area that I'm continually growing as a new pastor.

01:15:58

And one thing that, and I'll just say an observation that I have being here in Utah around these cults and everything is, and then

01:16:08

I want to hear what you have to say, is I keep seeing churches all over this valley trying to come up with a new and better curriculum to help, you know,

01:16:24

Mormons or whoever who have come out of their situation and, you know, and with this new curriculum you'll be able to cut off all baggage and it'll all be gone, and they have different tactics and, you know, different curriculums and different programs.

01:16:44

And maybe I'm just too simplistic because I started to get really overwhelmed and really have these expectations on myself where I was like,

01:16:53

I got to learn all these different classes and ways to help these people who have turned to Christ from their cult and help them, you know, cut off the baggage.

01:17:03

But then I noticed all of a sudden, I think I was just reading one of the

01:17:08

Pauline epistles, and it just struck me that, you know, in the

01:17:13

Gentile churches you had a small population of Jews. They were from the local synagogue.

01:17:19

Paul would start there first. There'd be a few of them. And then you'd have a population of God -fearers or proselytes who were

01:17:28

Gentile by birth but turned to the one true God, and they were waiting to hear the gospel.

01:17:35

Many fulfillments of Isaiah and the minor prophets and so many things.

01:17:42

And then the third people group in these Gentile churches were pagan idol worshipers.

01:17:50

And I look at the way that Paul taught and instructed and challenged them, and because, you know,

01:17:58

Mormonism is so anti -grace and it's so workspace, and really everything with this oneness is workspace.

01:18:06

We've talked about that. Because of that, I felt like I had to start making so many nuances and disclaimers, like, and by the way, when

01:18:15

I say, you know, you've got to do this, it's all by grace. And I'm like, what am I doing? Paul said, stop doing this.

01:18:22

Do this. You know what I mean? And of course, he addressed the diagnosis, the root, and he gave how to deal with symptoms.

01:18:32

He didn't just deal with symptoms. But you know what I'm saying? There's this moment where it's like, you know,

01:18:38

I can say thou shall not commit adultery without having to say to people who have come out of cults, but by the way, you're still saved.

01:18:47

I know I just said a really hard thing from God's word. It's you know,

01:18:52

Jesus said in John 14, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So I'm not trying to say just preach law or anything like that, but what

01:19:00

I've just come to find is Paul didn't have any special recipe. He just gave the truth and that was enough, and he dealt with it.

01:19:08

So I don't know, maybe you've seen different. No, brother. I think it is good to ground ourselves as you were talking, and we've been talking, and I'm trying to imagine, you know, a younger pastor and someone that I would encourage, which we have pastoral interns at our church that are just coming out of, you know,

01:19:25

Bethlehem Seminary and different places here in the Twin Cities, you know, to encourage them. On the one hand, it's kind of like the dissonance we live with as Christians.

01:19:34

You know, we're sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That's just reality for a believer. We're already not yet.

01:19:39

So on the one hand, the spiritual but not religious, I don't want to call it a movement because it's not even that well -defined, but it's just the spirit of the age.

01:19:48

It is overwhelming because it's so hard to define, and it's so voluminous, and it's everywhere but it's nowhere at the same time, you know.

01:19:58

I would say you need to lean into this. You need to read Peter Jones. You need to read Michael Horton.

01:20:03

You need to listen to Kultish. You need to get in on the conversation with guys that are thinking through these things, and at the same time, don't lose sight because we're

01:20:13

Bible guys. We believe in authority and inerrancy and sufficiency. Like, okay, yes and amen to the super confusing spiritual but not religious conversation of our day, and we're talking about apologetics, okay?

01:20:28

What is like the proof text, the primary proof text for apologetics in Scripture? Not the only, but if you're talking apologetics, you're going to have to deal with 1

01:20:36

Peter 3 .15, this whole idea of apologia, that to speak away, like this is where we get the defense.

01:20:43

And so, I say, okay, there's your text. Now, pan out, do proper hermeneutics.

01:20:48

What's the context? Verse 15, I'm looking at my Bible. But in your hearts, honor Christ the

01:20:53

Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

01:21:02

And you don't have to be an expert on 1 Peter to know that the context primarily is suffering.

01:21:09

Christians that are living, they feel like exiles. We're at home, but not at home. Some of us are being persecuted to the point of death.

01:21:17

Some of us are just being persecuted through isolation or indifference or slander, whatever the case may be.

01:21:23

It's kind of like where we live right now. There's various levels of, we just don't feel at home.

01:21:30

And so, how do we get to that? So, what I'm not saying is, that says only speak when spoken to, right?

01:21:35

Our apologetics is completely as a response to, no, that is not.

01:21:40

There is a polemic edge to apologetics. But one time I did, I was like, okay, well, when has 1

01:21:46

Peter 3 .15 in that way happened to me? When an unbeliever, a pagan idol worshiper has asked me for a reason for the hope

01:21:56

I have. And not to be too simplistic, because I know life is complicated and people are complicated.

01:22:05

But what came to my mind, because the next verse, verse 16, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

01:22:17

So, there's something about my ethic. There's something about my life that is good behavior, because I'm doing it in Christ by the power of the spirit, in the context of a hostile culture that would make them say, hey, what makes you tick?

01:22:31

The only time that pops in my mind directly is when, this is a few years ago, but we were at a grocery store and my wife's a stay -at -home mom, we homeschool our kiddos.

01:22:42

That's just where we're coming from. We try not to be the super weird homeschool family. I don't think we are. Maybe we are.

01:22:49

I don't think we are. We were just out going grocery shopping and the kids were doing their thing. My kids are not perfect.

01:22:55

Surprise, surprise. They are children of Adam, but they live and breathe the air of a healthy church where the gospel is preached and we do family worship.

01:23:07

We repent as parents when we sin, not perfectly, but we try to exalt Christ in what we say and do.

01:23:14

So, we weren't walking around the grocery store singing the doxology. They were being kids. My boys were punching each other, goofing around, having a good time.

01:23:21

I'm having a good time with them. My wife is trying to keep all of us out of trouble. We're just together, products of grace.

01:23:30

A lady stopped us and it was engaging us.

01:23:35

She didn't say that. She didn't say, hey, give me a reason for the hope that's in you. I mean, no. But essentially, that's what she was doing because she's like, it's so good to see a family together.

01:23:46

It's so good to see, are these all of your kids? You seem like you're so happy. This is so good to see.

01:23:52

It was almost kind of awkward, but it was wonderful at the same time.

01:23:58

And we kind of walked away and I'm like, did we get to the gospel? A little bit, just surface level stuff about where we're coming from.

01:24:05

We're believers and God's been kind to us, merciful. But she initiated.

01:24:12

And I look at that and say, I think on the one hand, this issue of spiritual but not religious neo -paganism, crystals and occult practices and all the stuff is really off -putting, but we got to deal with it.

01:24:26

And at the same time, the primary text on apologetics has something to do with a proper

01:24:34

Christian ethic, not letting things die the death of a million qualifications, just loving

01:24:40

God and as the overflow of loving God in Christ, loving our families, living faithfully, not flippantly, but with joy.

01:24:52

I'm a Piperian in some sense, Christian hedonist. We love God and joy forever. And there's a real actual existential joy in our lives.

01:25:02

And that might be your apologetic inroad. And I think if you're in a church where it's, and I think

01:25:08

Ortlin was the one that articulated this for nine marks, but gospel doctrine, gospel culture, where it's not just doctrine and then everybody can't stand each other.

01:25:19

That's not helpful. But if it's gospel doctrine, and that is producing gospel culture where you've got, whether it's the microcosm of your family or the macrocosm of the local church, but there's a delight.

01:25:31

These aren't mindless people. They are not going to allow syncretism. They are not going to fudge on proper ecclesiology, but they actually love each other and they actually have hope for the future.

01:25:43

And they actually enjoy Sunday morning and they actually enjoy being with their kids and actually enjoy the things of earth in their proper place.

01:25:53

I think that's normal church life. And if we can embrace healthy, normal gospel centered church life, that may be our strongest apologetic as we, in some sense, go back to the second and third centuries.

01:26:10

That's good, man. I love that. The living, the streams of living water come out from the church, right?

01:26:16

We got to make sure we're not damning up those streams. I agree 110 % when the body of Christ is actually functioning as the body of Christ with Christ as the head,

01:26:26

I think there will be worldwide implications and the heavenly realms will be shaken. I believe it's in Ephesians where it says the manifold wisdom of God made known through the church.

01:26:39

Ephesians chapter, oh man, I'm going to butcher that off the top of my head. If it's chapter three, I think it might be chapter three.

01:26:44

I could be wrong. I'm sorry, guys. I don't have the whole Bible memorized, but that's what I'm hearing. And I love that.

01:26:50

I love that. Pastor Aaron, I think this is a great spot for us to end the conversation today, but we're going to continue this conversation and we're going to talk with Pastor Aaron and see if we can think of a few more episodes that we can do in order for this to be super helpful for the listeners and pastors as well that are listening to see if we can sharpen up the church through the word of God in order to show through the church and through our faithful gospel proclamation to these people who say that they're spiritual, not religious, that the truth can only be found in Christ, in Christ alone, that you can have peace with God.

01:27:27

So Pastor Aaron, is there anywhere that people can find you? Let's say people are by the

01:27:32

Twin Cities, things of that nature. Yeah, I'm at Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

01:27:41

Minnetonka is famous for a lot of things, but it's where Prince had his recording studio here back in the day.

01:27:50

But we're in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Redeemer Bible Church. I am happily one of the staff pastors here.

01:27:58

You can find me at Bethlehem College and Seminary. I'm an adjunct professor of apologetics there, and we love our brothers and sisters down at Bethlehem and the work that they've done.

01:28:08

Yeah, that's really the two places where you can find me, but I'll probably just point you to guys that are smarter than I am, because thankfully, there are some really good resources out there.

01:28:16

But I just want to make more leaders in the church aware of them. And as they become aware of them,

01:28:21

I think this conversation is going to grow and continue, and I think will bear a lot of fruit for generations to come.

01:28:27

Praise God. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Yeah, this has been a blessing. But all right, guys, well, until next time, we'll see you as we enter into the kingdom of the cults.

01:28:36

Have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for your consideration, and enjoy the next episode.