Answering the Fool

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Podcast. Thank you. Thank you for joining us at Have You Not Read. With me today are Michael Durham, David Kassin, and I'm Chris Giesler. Today we have a discussion about an interaction with one of our podcasters and his travels abroad or maybe domestically, and I think at this point I'll kick it over to you to kind of fill in the interaction there and then the situation.

A Pastor Changes the Meaning of Ephesians 5

Well, in this.

Instance, I found myself in Albuquerque. It was a Sunday morning and I was supposed to leave very early, like five, six in the morning, and we had a change in the schedule, big huge change in the schedule, so then I wasn't going to be leaving until like two, so I had all morning, and unfortunately the church that I used to go to years ago was just really far away.

I would have had to get like a $30, $40 Uber, so I looked close to where the hotel was and I found a church that I thought I could worship at that morning. I looked through the website just a little bit, but it didn't have a really good statement of faith, but it was the service was going to start in about 45 minutes and it was a five-minute walk.

Okay, and there was another church on the other side, and I was like, well, I looked at that one as well, but they were very clearly on their statement of faith, this dispensational premillennial with this, this, this, and they were very, very clear with what they believed, and I looked over there and everybody was wearing suits.

I was like, I'm not really dressed for this. I may have to go to a little bit more casual, I don't know, maybe a church that's in the doorfront, or maybe a hipster church. I've been, I've been in those where, you know, you can come in, it's okay to wear a t-shirt, but they were very, they were very welcoming.

It was called City Church, and everybody who welcomed me in, you know, they're very, very smiley. They directed me towards the visitor desk and they had, they had free coffee, and I was like, okay, there's a plus.

Oh, and they said, by the way, you can take this coffee into the sanctuary, it's totally fine. I'm like, okay, this, this is gonna be great. Well, the pastor was preaching through Galatians chapter 5.

He started up with with 5, and he said, we're gonna get into a couple of uncomfortable topics today. You said it, Galatians. I'm sorry, Ephesians. Thank you, sir. Yes, Ephesians. Thank him. Somebody's paying attention.

It's Ephesians chapter 5, and he said, we are going to get into some difficult topics, and the Bible just says what it says, and we're gonna go from there. And I'm like, rock on. This guy's gonna be great.

And as he preached through it, I mean, and this is where, it's kind of where he starts. Therefore, do not be foolish, but be, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

He says, that's kind of the beginning of this passage. Be filled with the Spirit. And this is what it looks like, to be filled with the Spirit. And he goes through, just as I was saying, hymns, psalms, spiritual songs, going through to verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, and goes through, wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives, and kind of starts with that.

He said, okay, would it surprise anybody to know that the word submit is actually not in the Greek in verse 22? And I looked, I opened up my app, and that's technically true. I was like, okay, this is gonna be, this is gonna be interesting, because he's going into some Greek.

And he used that as a launching pad to have a very, what's the right word, egalitarian style of church polity. And as he was talking through this, he changed, submission didn't really mean submission.

And then he said, you know, it's actually not a command. Now husbands are to love their wives. And he went through that section really well. And he went through the above section really well. When he got to this wives section, it is, it was tortured.

So, quite literally, the Greek says, you know, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord. That's what it says. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body is the middle of the Savior.

So, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should in everything to their husbands. That's how the Greek kind of reads, because it's not, but it's pretty clear in the construction, that's normal way of speaking in Greek.

All right, as Christ, as the church submits to Christ, wives to their husbands. That's how it reads. Is there any other way to read it? It says, well, he made a huge deal. It doesn't actually say submit.

And the way he was presenting it, it was so awful. You could tell he was trying so hard not to make the women in his congregation mad. And I heard so many, and I started to pick up on his wife, the co-pastor.

Now, I didn't know this when I walked in. I'm looking up their website as he's preaching, and I'm like, oh, what did I just walk into?

Free coffee.

Free coffee. And I could bring it into the sanctuary. So, we may want to talk to our staff about that. And so, the fact that he was going through this passage and that he was actually pretty good on some of the stuff above, and he actually was pretty good in some of the stuff below, shows me he's just not ignorant.

He changed the meaning of this passage, changed the words. He didn't talk about the church submitting to Christ as a picture of marriage. He focused instead on the servant leadership of the husband and how they are to love sacrificially their wives, and goes through that passage really well.

I'm like, okay, you know what you're doing with the passage. You just chose not to read it the way it's written. And it's like, you know what? Maybe the word isn't in there. Maybe it's just some, but is there any other place that it does say that?

Well, you could turn to Colossians. You could turn to 1 Peter, and it uses that. And that word submit is be subject to, as in be subject to the earthly powers, be subject to your local government. It goes through over and over.

And it was interesting to sit and listen to someone take the word of God, who knows what it says, and then changes it to something that it doesn't say. So it is a, do we, do I answer this? Do I address this?

Do I talk to this pastor? I elected to not talk to him and to just thank him for their hospitality. And I walked out and went back to the hotel, changed and went out to the airport. And for about two days, I thought, do I respond?

He is not going to listen to anything that I'm saying, but do I respond? And I decided with some counsel from, from good brothers, that in this case, I was going to answer him. I was going to go through and says, look, this is a letter.

I wrote it to the pastor. I sent it to the church office and I sent it as an attachment. It wasn't an angry email. It was, you know, I thanked him for their hospitality and said, these are the people that were really helpful to me.

Thank you for putting them on staff, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then here's a letter that is for the pastor's eyes only. And I did not refer to his wife as another pastor. I just mentioned that there are some very nice people there and that you and your wife probably have something to do with that.

You know, that was, you know, just tried to give him a compliment before I unloaded both barrels on the attachment. And it was about, it really was about about four pages, but I just went through the passage itself and what I thought it meant and said, look, I really think that you were just trying to keep the women from getting mad.

And, and I mentioned that the women were very vocal and I didn't hear a sound from the men. The women were in leadership in that church, in the congregation, and his wife was was quite a dominant force.

The men were not leading in that church and it was a matriarchal society. It was, it was, it was amazing to watch. And some of the greeters were actually quite aggressive with me and they were all women.

Yeah. So you sit there. Yeah. Well, you know, it was just, it was, it was just, you know, they were just very effusive with their, and, and very, very, yeah, I wouldn't say affectionate, but you were just very in your face without it.

I'm like, thank you. You know, I appreciate that, but I'm going to take a step back here. It was, it was interesting. So this guy was a pastor and he knew better. He absolutely knew better and he deserved a written, written, written response, but not every situation demands that.

So Proverbs 26, verse four says, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. There are times to give a response to someone.

I am pretty sure that the church office, if they opened it up, they put that right in the, in this, in the, in the circular file there in the corner of the room, or maybe they sent it on to him, but he opened it up.

He goes, Oh, this is one of these patriarchal guys. And he just, you know, hit, hit delete. I've never received a response and I don't, and I'm, and I probably never will, but I would, I've prayed that he at least opened up, read it and says, Oh, okay, here's another one.

But when this question comes back up, maybe, just maybe it will jog his memory and encourage him to go back through the passage and preach it honestly, preach it with integrity, just like he said he was going to do.

This is uncomfortable, but it says what it says, and that should be enough. So my question to you guys, and I, and you guys gave me, gave me the advice that you probably can, can respond. I decided to, is there a time to respond?

Is there not time to respond? Is there a time that you could answer a fool time? You should not answer the fool. When were the, when are those times?

When to Answer a Fool and When to Let It Lie

Yeah, no, I think that's a really good question. And there's like, so there's the topic itself, like the patriarchy, and then there's the pastoral concern. Well, he kind of missed it on that. He's got a congregation.

There's people that aren't, they have an open Bible in front of them. Hopefully people were reading it and like, well, this, this is kind of not tracking, but that's a question that comes up a lot. We've dealt with some of those topics as far as like women in ministry and things like that.

We have a question we plan on dealing with soon, and you can hear some of the, the pastoral concerns in the question. And then there's the issue that you're bringing up as far as when do you, when do you address it and when, and when do you let it lie?

So I thought we'd read the question because you can kind of hear some of that in, in what you were talking about.

Yes. The question is, the question, the person asking this says, I'm recently become aware of Christian patriarchy and believe it is true. As a result, I see how far I have drifted from God's ideal in my marriage and desire to lead my wife in this.

How do we guide our wives and family in this, especially given the feminist ground we've all grown up in? And I think David, you were observing that the feminist ground did not make for good exegetical plowing when you come to this, you know, not just this passage, but it wasn't like this is the only passage and it just doesn't fit the other ones.

And so you have to find some way to harmonize them. The other passages are pretty clear as well.

Yeah. I would say this passage is clear.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah. So then the question as far as the, the pastor did the sermon and then responding. So when we find that we hear something, how do we know, is this something I need to answer or do I let it fly?

The way I chose to do it with this individual was to go back over his sermon and I said, you said this, you said this, and I took careful notes. So I wanted him to know that he was listened to, that I'm not just hopping off, but I had a substantive disagreement.

Like when he said he started off with, no, Hey, this is, this is what it means to live in the spirit. Submit one to another. Okay. It does say that. Submit to one another out of reference for Christ, which is a general statement as akin to outdo one another in showing honor.

Treat one another as more important than yourself. It says this, this is a general statement that you are to have, have, we submit to one another out of reference for Christ. And on an individual basis, what does that look like?

Well, if you're a wife, it looks like this, your husband, it looks like this. When you have children, it looks like this. If you, uh, if you're a master, it looks like this. If you're a slave, it looks like this.

That is out of reference to Christ. And that's a pretty, pretty wide range. And it's like, okay, it's just, it flows. I have no idea how he's going to treat slavery. Oh, heaven sakes. He's probably going to, you know, blow, blow a gasket.

But he was so clear with his careful and it was simple as to the point of this is what husbands do. Boom. Yeah, clear. He had no trouble rebuking husbands or calling them to the, to, to a very noble endeavor as, as Christ loves the church and sacrificially does so.

Couldn't do that with the women in his congregation.

Which leaves them vulnerable and without instruction that the Bible gives.

He was quite frankly, he was cowardly.

Yeah. Doug Wilson has a saying about, yeah, there's a problem when you get to the stage of your exposition, when you're on the ground, flat on your back and your, and your heels are kicking up on the ground.

You know, this is the throwing a fit stage of your exposition because you don't like what the text says. It's like, I totally resent where this is going and that I have to preach this because what is it going to do to me?

Their perception of me, what's, what's going to happen? This is going to blow up. Yeah. And so if you're doing that though, and you're trying to find a way to make it fit, like, you know how it is when you're, well, I know how it is mowing roots and gravel.

Hey, when I was, when I was, you know, 15, 16, 17, you know, I was mowing our lawn at the house and it was just a bunch of roots and sticks with some grass here and there. And there's just certain ways you have to go over the roots with that mower.

You just, you don't treat it the same way as you do the rest of it. And when I went up to the, we'd throw that poor little mower in the back of the minivan and haul it up to the church and to go around and mow the gravel and the roots and the grass that was in between.

There's just certain places you just didn't know the same because you're going to put, you know, gravel into your shins. And sometimes the Bible gets treated that way. Certain passages get treated that way.

In preaching, I'm not going to go over this the way I do the other parts because of what's going to happen, the blowback, the kicks I'm going to get. And so you just treat it differently, but you have to be intellectually honest with yourself and say, I'm doing this differently because.

But to come at it from that angle, I would say, what is your responsibility as a pastor? And you have a responsibility to inform your congregants of some things. Yeah. When you go to that verse in verse 22, if you're reading from the critical text, from the critical manuscript, the word submit isn't there in the Alexandrian texts, but in the Byzantine texts and the majority text, it's there.

So in the majority of all preservation of scripture, it's there. That might be worth talking about.

He did mention that.

He did mention that. And even if it isn't, obviously it's understood in the context, that's the active verb as any bit of language learning about the Greek would tell you. And of course, in the other passages, as David has already said, that word is there in the other passages.

So to try to work around it in that way is egregious. And in this case, you can, David, you feel compelled to respond to this because this is not actually well-intentioned. This is not something where somebody is trying to be well-meaning.

This is somebody who is actually not being well-meaning. Maybe he's not sinister, but he's being self-serving in this.

Yeah. He's definitely put himself in his position first versus doing what he knew the text said, which would be as Chris, as you had mentioned, most helpful for the women in that congregation.

It doesn't appear from your discernment, from what you can see, it didn't appear that there's going to be anybody who's going to hold them accountable in that context. In the providence of God, you were there to give him an opportunity to reflect and say, hmm, I need to be more faithful in my exposition.

Hopefully that's the case. Please convict him by that. So in this sense, I think there is a good opportunity. Now the merits of when do we engage? It's the question. Obviously this was a definite egregious thing to treat the text this way, but that's going to happen in a lot of contexts.

I remember back in the 2018, 2019 post-revoice, moving on into the full onset of COVID -19 lockdowns and all of the wokey exegesis that happened, there's a lot of incidences like that in the churches where there was egregious handling of the text.

And I'm going to give a clear, robust explanation of this part of the passage, but when I come over here, it's going to be some tortured, weird kind of workaround. And yeah, we're never going to talk about Christian slave owners and how they treat their slaves properly.

We're not going to ever talk about that. And so there's parts of the Bible that get mowed normal, parts that get mowed weird, and then parts that don't even ever get.

Touched. That's how you get more weeds. Yeah. Then you've got more of a mess to deal with.

You do. And so we've seen a lot of that. When is it our responsibility to say something? Well, again, I think we have a freedom to, I think we have a liberty to. Of course, the manner in which we approach it is we need to be thoughtful about that as well.

But I would be like David, I would be more compelled to write a letter or say something where I see a pastor in the course of, he's been charged by the same great shepherd that I serve. Here's an under shepherd and he's not handling the text well.

And it's detrimental, truly detrimental to the church and to the people there. I feel more compelled to say something in that context than perhaps another one. For example, I've talked about this before, but last year and the year before, we went out to abolition day at the state Capitol and very strong biblical religious themes being dealt with.

And there's screaming charismatic women and stuff like that. And I don't feel compelled to do anything about that. But then you have people who are saying things to the church folk that are there, including people who are under my watch care as an elder, and people from my church are being told that they need to repent for abortion being present in the state and the nation.

Basically, you're guilty, you need to repent and confess the sin of living in a state where abortion exists. It happens. Well, to me, that's pastoral abuse. I think it's an improper hermeneutics. I think that it's bad application.

And so I say something to my own congregants about that. I get the word out and say, by the way, there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And no, you are not guilty for abortion.

And please don't bear that burden. Thank you for going out there and opposing abortion. That's probably what should have been said. Thank you for coming up to oppose abortion, not you need to repent. So I try to handle that with my own congregants.

I don't feel compelled to go. I mean, I appreciate the folks who said stuff like that. Again, I don't think that they were being sinister. I think they're being well-meaning. I think they really, really are entrenched in their understanding of why they would say that.

I think they have been thoughtful about it. I just disagree with them. And so I'm not going to go try to rebuke them or so on and so forth. If I ever was in a conversation with them, I would counsel them and encourage them to kind of get off that talking point for all sorts of reasons, doctrinal and practical.

But I don't feel compelled to go rebuke them or send them a letter and say anything, especially, you know, I look, they put way more effort into this whole movement than I ever have. I show up, I try to support it, but they put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and I appreciate it.

There was another guy who got up there and well-meaning politician guy, he got up there and told an Old Testament story and just completely allegorized it into the political fight we were in. And we all had a good little chuckle about that.

You know, just the, it wasn't the David and Goliath and five smooth stone thing, but it was pretty close. I mean, it was just straight up allegory. 5 smooth stones become 5 bills. Yeah, exactly. We all chuckled about that.

But I don't feel compelled to go like, you know, dude, you know, again, why? He was, it was well-intentioned. And in the end, what he was saying, the principles of what he was saying was in agreement with the Bible.

And so I'm like, okay, look, I'm not, I'm not going to go pick on him for that. I'll pray for him. Just, I'm glad to hear his warm devotion to Christ and his best attempt to try to encourage the troops, so to speak.

Thankful for those kinds of things. But I don't see in the context of a pastor in a church where there should be more accountability, that seems to be a bit more serious than...

Like a lay person.

Yeah. And, but if there was, but if there was perhaps something that happened within the movement, abolitionist movement, and they brought someone in, let's say they put a Catholic priest up there in front of everybody.

And he was starting, and, you know, he started calling on Mary and inviting everyone else to do so. And then we're going to have words with the movement leaders and say, this is why we ain't coming back.

Because I don't think you should be doing that. I don't think they would either, but anyway.

Do you think that the Proverbs that David read, and it's, what is that? Proverbs 26?

Yeah. 26 verses four and five.

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Very next verse, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Rather than this being the metric for discerning when, is this more of the how?

Yeah, definitely how.

Because when I think of like my college days, I'm taking a biology class and it's evolution, evolution, evolution. And I'm a Christian. But if I try to get into the fight and say, well, scientifically speaking, and I try to argue for the biblical faith using evolution and convince them that evolution is wrong using science, that's answering him according to his folly.

I'm joining him in it. And he's smarter than me, so he's going to think I'm hot stuff, I'm wiser. But if I stand, you're foolish. You're not even right out of the gate because God says this in his word.

I'm not answering him in the same way. I'm not using his metrics to answer his folly. I'm using, I'm not joining him in that same fight. And so it seems like this is the method in how to disagree. But then the question is when, like when to step into that?

Answering According to Folly Without Joining It

Yeah. So, well, part of that is, so there's a connection point that if the, if for your example, if somebody is pushing the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis and they're doing so with just basic arrogant assumptions.

Okay. Well, if I were to answer back to him, I'm not even using science or whatever, but if I were to answer back with arrogant assumption, am I not engaging in the same folly? Even if I were to use different authority sources, like I'm claiming a different authority point by what standard, I'm using a different standard than he is.

But if I'm using the same haughty attitude, then I'm still doing it according to that folly and I'm just being just like him. So if I were to use unbiblical assumptions, also that will be answering him according to his folly being like him.

So there's more than one way to be like the fool in answering. So sloppy exegesis for the point of self-preservation, if I were to be offended by what he said, because it opposes my basic positions and that makes me feel insecure.

So I'd come back with my own, like, you know, slop, you know, I'm also trying to preserve Phil because I'm trying to, you know, like, you know, you disagree with my position that threatens me. I want to try to preserve, you know, how I feel confident about what I believe in.

So I'm going to come at you with a bunch of slop too. Well, I'm answering the fool according to his folly. Even if objectively from God's point of view, more or less, I may be in the right side of things, maybe possibly, but I could still be answering the according to his folly being like him because of the way I'm approaching it and the motivations are all wrong.

So this has a connection to when, right? Because when do I do this? Definitely not if my motives are all bad and if I'm not ready to answer, then I'm being told right then, it's not the time, right? So we are to be prepared, but what if we're not prepared?

If I'm not prepared, I need to take some time to prepare. There's preparation of heart, preparation of mind, preparation in getting counsel, preparation in crafting an approach. You know, David, you didn't stand up in the middle of service, right?

And just kind of confront him to his face or right after the service go, you know, just go kind of...

Go off on him.

Right. So there was a timing, but part of the reason why you chose the means of your response and the timing of your response were connected to doing it well.

I wanted to make sure my response was substantive and that it was careful because I admit for about the first 24 hours, I was hot. I was angry, not at him just being a liberal. That's not it. It's that I knew that he knew better and that he was being purposely evasive for his own benefit.

He didn't want to lose his position. He didn't want to make his wife mad and he was making a very good living doing what he was doing. Now he might be a true believer in this view, but the cognitive dissonance that he had to engage in, he could do this well, didn't do that well.

It was maddening. And I knew I needed a little bit of time and you guys gave me the perspective that I thought that I needed to give a good response. But I'll tell you right now, I desired to talk to him alone right after that.

And I knew that would have been a bad idea. But yeah, that's what my flesh wanted and I'm really glad I had to catch a van. So I ran out of there right as it ended and I booked it back to the hotel and took a shower.

Do you think, excuse me, do you think that ties in? You were talking about the timing and preparing and then your example of giving some time to cool down. Jesus, when he's talking about, you see someone has a speck in their eye and you've got a log and how are you going to see to take the speck out, take the log out of your own so you can see better to take the speck out of there?

Because when we're dealing with sin or failings or any type of thing, we're all in that condition and we're all prone to that. And we can always make a bad situation worse by adding to it. And so having the discernment to say, I'm in a state where I can do this now, or the mode that you do it in writing in person or whatever, it's going to vary.

But it seems like that's an issue that Jesus is telling people, don't just go around poking people in the eye, examine yourself.

Yeah. And I will say that when you hear someone misusing the scripture in that way, and it could be on a variety of different topics, but when you see people misusing the scripture that way, and I mean, it gets me riled up.

Is that less of a speck in their eye and the.

Log is in their eye when they're messing with the text that way?

Well, you should always, I mean, you should always recognize that when you hear somebody manipulating scripture and they have a platform where they are manipulating the scripture, they're to be accountable in how they are handling the word of God and how many people they're influencing.

You see pastoral malpractice going on intentionally, because again, this is for the aggrandizement or the preservation of the pastor. It makes me angry. And that's not necessarily bad. As it's been said, anger in and of itself is not a sin.

Wine isn't a sin and strong words aren't a sin. Easy to sin with these things. Okay. I think it's harder to use strong words than anything else and to not misapply them. I think that's the hardest thing James tells us.

It's hard to tame the tongue. It's also hard to handle your wine, hard to handle your anger. These are not bad things. They're just challenging, difficult. So we want to handle them well. But when I hear people doing nefarious things with the scripture and they're in a position of spiritual authority and they need to be held accountable, I mean, I get pretty angry.

And that usually launches me into study and writing and working these things out, wrestling them out. Because inevitably, if it's in the water, if this is getting passed around, I'm going to end up engaging with folks and trying to help shepherd folks and counsel folks who are going to be affected by this stuff.

Like for example, the Revoice movement from 2018, 2019, and so on. All the Wilkie McWilk base stuff that came down the pipe, all of it, as I see it coming, it's making me angry because I can see what they're doing and I know it's going to be problematic for the folks in my church.

And lo and behold, it ends up being that way. And I've got to be ready for that. But you see people with these opportunities and they're totally mishandling it on purpose. They're being nefarious in that.

That's what really gets on me. And so then it's like, how do you handle that? And I feel like at some point, something needs to be said, something needs to be done. And sometimes I end up encouraging those who God has gifted to do it well, and giving them ability to do it well.

Some people There's some really good people that are out there,.

They're so quick on their feet to be able to do that stuff.

Yeah. And so for instance, conversations that matter with Jonathan Harris, I don't agree with everything John Harris writes and says and does, but he does such a good job of bringing a proper biblical polemic against a lot of this nonsense.

And he's done so for a very extended period of time. And he does so humbly. And again, I don't agree with how he does everything or what all he says, but nonetheless, I've sent him a few notes over the years to encourage him.

So I wanted him to know, I appreciate what you're doing here, man. And I'm glad to hear that. And he takes a different approach on some of the things to deal with it. But I feel the need to respond sometimes.

Yes, I do. But what is my responsibility? Well, I think in some cases, I'm not necessarily I'm not responsible, but I am free. I am free to respond. So for example, I think I am free to respond if I hear somebody at Abolition Day saying some kind of stuff that I think is ultimately not good for the saints.

I'm free to respond to that. But if I am going to respond to that, then I should do so in the way that would be pleasing to the Lord in a way that is appropriate to the context in which it was. I'm not their spiritual accountability.