Responding to "Exvangelicals" and Deconstructing the Faith (Pastor's Podcast)

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May 27, 2021

A recent popular term used by those who are departing the biblical faith is deconstruction or becoming an "exvangelical". In this interview, pastor Keith talks with Rich Suplita, a former atheist, about the arguments which are often used by those leaving the faith and the heart of the issue, which is that it actually is a "heart" issue.

00:20: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:23: My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
00:26: And I'm joined today by my good friend, minister and evangelist, Rich Suplita.
00:30: Hi, Rich.
00:31: How are you? Hey, Keith.
00:32: Good to be here.
00:33: I'm glad you're here.
00:34: And for those of you who don't know, maybe you're not familiar with our church.
00:38: Maybe you listen to this and you've not been paying attention to what's going on at Sovereign Grace.
00:42: But Rich is here this week and he is speaking at our church two nights this week.
00:48: Last night he spoke to our regular church attendees and he gave his testimony of how God brought him to faith.
00:55: And tonight he's going to be sharing the five fatal, what is it? Five philosophical failures of atheism.
01:04: Awesome.
01:05: Awesome.
01:05: So let me give you a little bit of Rich's history and we'll kind of go back and forth for a minute.
01:11: But Rich, I've already done a podcast where he shared his story on the podcast.
01:16: So if you want to know more about him, you can go back to that podcast and listen to the longer version.
01:20: But the shorter version is Rich is the former head of the atheist group on campus at the University of Georgia.
01:30: What was it called? The UGA? UGAtheists.
01:33: Okay.
01:33: UGAtheists.
01:34: And you were the faculty advisor.
01:35: Yes.
01:37: And while he was the faculty advisor, while he was an atheist, God used some events in his life to draw him to himself, to save him.
01:46: And now he is a man who goes out into the world and shares the gospel and goes onto campuses sharing the gospel.
01:55: So God has taken him from atheist to evangelist.
01:59: And so that's a wonderful thing and his story is wonderful.
02:03: And again, if you want to hear more about it, you can go on our sermon audio page.
02:07: Last night he shared his testimony.
02:09: We have a previous podcast where he shared his testimony.
02:11: But today what we're going to do is we're going to dive deeper into a recent phenomenon that has been going on in the church and one that was actually brought up by, we had a question from someone and the question was about deconstructing the faith.
02:31: And that's the term that has become popular and the idea is people who have some notoriety as believers are demonstrating their unbelief by saying, well, I've deconstructed my faith.
02:49: I'll give you an example.
02:50: One of the most recent examples, and I have a few here on my phone, is from one of the band members from the band DC Talk.
03:01: Now, you may not know, especially if you're a young person listening to this, you may not know who DC Talk is.
03:06: Do you remember DC Talk? I remember them, man.
03:08: Jesus Freak, Billy Graham came to Jacksonville back in the early 2000s and he had one of his Billy Graham crusades here and DC Talk was there.
03:18: And so this guy was here.
03:19: Well, one of the guys who was in the group, his name is Kevin Max.
03:24: Kevin has recently come out and said that he is now, he said he's been deconstructing his faith for decades and he calls himself an ex-evangelical.
03:37: Basically, instead of an evangelical, it's ex-evangelical, as if no longer an evangelical.
03:44: And he and he wrote this.
03:46: He says, quote, I've been deconstructing, reconstructing, progressing, whatever you want to call it, for decades.
03:55: I've been in the outsider, misfit, seeker club for a long time now.
04:01: Thank you for welcoming me in, but I've always been here.
04:04: He later posted, quote, Hello, my name is Kevin Max and I'm an hashtag ex-evangelical.
04:14: And one of the reasons for this question, I'll tell you who gave the question actually came, this one came from my wife.
04:20: You know, I get questions just about every week that I answer on the program.
04:23: And my wife noted to me that this Kevin Max situation is actually nothing new, that we have been seeing this.
04:32: We used to watch these two guys on YouTube a lot.
04:35: Their name were Rhett and Link.
04:37: Rhett and Link have this very humorous show on YouTube where they like give you ratings on foods and ratings on movies and stuff.
04:45: And they're just a couple of funny guys.
04:47: And they grew up as high school friends and they sort of do like what we're doing.
04:50: They sit at the table together and they answer questions and they do funny stuff.
04:54: Well, a couple of months ago, they came out.
04:56: One of their brothers, I think, is a reformed pastor.
04:59: And they came out explaining why they were no longer identifying themselves as Christians.
05:06: And so they would say that they have deconstructed their Christian faith.
05:11: And a few years ago, Josh Harris, who wrote the book Kissing...
05:16: I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
05:18: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:19: He came out, divorced his wife, became someone who now defines himself as an ex-Christian or somebody who's no longer a Christian.
05:30: And the guy from DC Talk, he says, I believe in Christ, but I believe in the, quote, universal Christ.
05:36: What is that? Well, it sounds a lot like classic liberalism.
05:44: And that's the thing that I thought you and I could really talk about today on the program is, you know, you mentioned something last night and I think today as well because we've been together for most of the day.
05:57: You mentioned, Rich, that there's not as many people who are the hardcore atheists that you may have seen 10 years ago when you were an atheist.
06:08: You were part of what you call the new...
06:10: It was called the New Atheist Movement.
06:13: And that really peaked with the writings of people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, kind of in the middle, that first decade of the 2000s.
06:24: And so you're saying that you don't see that as...
06:26: Because you're on the campuses, so you're talking to students.
06:29: You're saying you don't see that as popular now.
06:31: It's certainly faded in popularity.
06:35: And if a student identifies themself as an atheist up front, I'm finding that most of the time, if I ask them to...
06:43: Usually I say, OK, can you...
06:45: So you said you're an atheist.
06:47: Can you kind of explain what that means to you so I can get a better understanding? And at least half of the time, they'll say, well, I believe in something higher.
06:56: I believe in some sort of higher power.
06:58: Something got all of this started.
07:00: I just don't believe in any of the major religions.
07:03: Now, that's certainly not what the New Atheist meant by atheism.
07:07: Yeah, because guys like Richard Dawkins, they're so committed to their materialism.
07:11: Because it's really, it's not just atheism.
07:13: It's atheistic materialism, the idea that everything is simply the product of what we can physically measure or test.
07:23: And that's a very radical belief.
07:26: There's nothing higher than what we might call the natural.
07:30: But that is certainly what people like Sam Harris and guys like that, Christopher Hitchens.
07:38: And so what we find is that's not as popular.
07:42: It's not as popular.
07:43: And so what we're seeing today, and when you're on campuses, like you just said, you're seeing people, their response is, well, yeah, there's something out there.
07:51: We just can't know what it is.
07:52: And it's almost like a it's almost a fancy version of agnosticism.
07:56: Yeah.
07:56: And almost even agnosticism or an apatheism.
08:00: We get that a lot these days.
08:01: It's like, well, there probably is some type of higher non-physical truth or reality.
08:07: But I don't know what it is and you don't know what it is.
08:10: And you can't know what it is.
08:11: So we might as well just go on living our lives.
08:14: That's right.
08:15: That's right.
08:15: And that's interesting.
08:17: The concept is, is because I don't know, you can't know.
08:20: Exactly.
08:21: Yeah.
08:21: That's a strange idea.
08:23: But it's there.
08:24: Right.
08:25: And so when you look at like what Rhett and Link have and I use them, I know you're not familiar with those two guys, but they really did kind of strike me because I'd always enjoyed their program and things.
08:36: And I'm not saying that you can't enjoy something that's by an unbeliever, but it really did.
08:42: I had always thought they were believers because, you know, they grew up in the Carolinas and I had read somewhere they were homeschooled or they had homeschooled their kids.
08:52: And they really came across to me as these guys, you know, probably have, if nothing else, a biblical worldview.
09:00: Right.
09:00: You know, maybe not Christians, but certainly a worldview that.
09:04: Informed by Christianity on some level.
09:06: Yeah, exactly.
09:07: And then when they came and they did their podcast and it was huge, their podcast where they deconstructed their faith and it was long.
09:16: And I mean, and they gave their explanations as to why the doubts began to seep in and the things and and the things that I have noticed.
09:27: And I don't know if this is the same for you, but the things that I have noticed coming from a lot of these guys and here's another one, Paul Maxwell, who was a writer desiring God.
09:36: So he worked for Joe.
09:37: That was the Piper ministry.
09:39: Yeah, the Piper ministry.
09:40: This guy announces he's no longer a Christian.
09:43: And, you know, a lot of these guys are their arguments are some of the same arguments that the liberals were having a hundred years ago.
09:52: It's not as if they're inventing new arguments.
09:55: Nothing new under the sun.
09:56: Amen.
09:57: And so I think Piper's son was I don't know if he ever identified as one of his sons.
10:03: I don't know if he ever identified as a Christian, but he's probably in his 40s and pretty outspoken in his agnosticism.
10:13: And that situation is so sad.
10:16: I actually did a previous podcast because there were people who came out and said Piper is no longer fit to preach because his son is an unbeliever.
10:25: And I gave an explanation of Titus two or Titus, where it refers to the parent of a of a preacher or a parent of an elder or I'm sorry, the child of an elder being faithful.
10:39: What does it mean to be? What does that word mean? And but there were a lot of people who were coming against Piper hard and saying, well, your son's an unbeliever, therefore you are unfit.
10:49: Of course, Piper's retired.
10:51: That guy gets it from all angles.
10:52: I know.
10:53: I know.
10:54: And you know what? So many people are they really they cut their teeth on Calvinism with Piper and then they go back and bite him because, well, they don't like his views on this or that.
11:05: And I don't like everything he has to say.
11:07: I mean, he was never my favorite preacher.
11:09: I think Piper has just his mannerisms don't always fit.
11:14: You know, I'm a Sproul guy.
11:16: I like Dr.
11:16: Sproul's mannerisms.
11:17: And I always I didn't really care for Piper.
11:20: But Piper's message, don't waste your life.
11:23: If you've never listened, if you've never heard, don't waste your life.
11:27: Go find it and listen to it.
11:29: It's a it's a book, too, right? Yeah.
11:31: Yeah.
11:31: It's my wife's favorite book.
11:33: Yeah.
11:33: I mean, honestly, it's it's it's stirring.
11:39: You know, people often talk about Paul Washer and how much, you know, the shocking youth message.
11:45: And that's a powerful message, too.
11:46: You know, I don't know why you're clapping.
11:48: I'm talking about you.
11:49: You know, we all we all love Paul Washer.
11:51: But but Piper was so instrumental.
11:54: You know, I heard the guy who the guy who did the atheist or I'm sorry, the Calvinist movie.
11:59: You see the Calvinist movie? There's a movie called Calvinist.
12:02: That's the title of it.
12:03: And it's about check that out.
12:04: Yeah.
12:04: It's about reform theology and how it's growing in evangelical churches.
12:08: And he said Piper was a gateway drug to Calvinism for a lot of people.
12:12: And I thought it was kind of funny.
12:14: Yeah.
12:14: So like I said, you have these guys that are coming out.
12:18: It's not all guys, of course.
12:19: But, you know, the ones I have here, the D.C.
12:21: talk guy, Josh Harris.
12:23: Here's a former editor of CCM magazine comes out as gay, announces divorce.
12:30: And of course, you know, it's like you said in your your testimony last night.
12:36: A lot of what brings this out is sin, you know, specifically sexual sin.
12:43: I've noticed not exclusively, but that tends to be a recurring theme that we see here.
12:48: A person walks away from the they deconstruct their faith.
12:52: And then a month later, you find out they're divorcing their wife.
12:57: And again, we're not saying that's always the case.
12:59: We're just saying there tends to be a tie between not wanting to live under God's rule and deciding that, you know, better what God should think or how how God should be based upon your life.
13:16: And that really is that's liberalism and liberalism.
13:19: If you go back to, you know, the later part of the 1800s, first part of the 1900s and when when liberalism was taking hold in the denominations, the first thing that began to go was the miracles.
13:33: Well, we just can't tolerate the idea of resurrection.
13:37: We know people don't really raise from the dead.
13:39: How can we believe, you know, a Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago, son of a carpenter? How do we know what's really important is the spirit of the story.
13:49: That's right.
13:49: You know, I'll never forget John Dominic Crossan.
13:54: You are you familiar with him? Heard it.
13:55: Familiar with the name.
13:56: He's Jesus Seminar.
13:58: Those guys, very liberal.
14:00: And they're part of an old school liberalism that isn't popular much anymore.
14:04: Him and Robert Price and a bunch of other guys.
14:06: And he told the story of Jesus feeding the 5000.
14:11: And he said, it's not a miracle.
14:14: Jesus simply convinced the people that had food to share it with the people who didn't know.
14:21: And in that sense, it's even a bigger mirror.
14:23: That's right.
14:23: It's a it's the miracle of socialism.
14:26: It's a social miracle.
14:28: That's right.
14:28: He he he caused the haves to share with the have nots.
14:34: And that was that was how he, in a sense, deconstructed the narrative of Jesus taking five loaves, two fish and feeding 5000.
14:43: Nobody can do that.
14:45: Nobody can make something out of nothing.
14:47: Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this go all the way back to like Thomas Jefferson? Well, yeah, the Jeffersonian Bible.
14:53: Right.
14:54: Yeah.
14:54: Where you just cut out the parts that seem supernatural or a little too far fetched.
15:00: Yeah.
15:01: And keep what's left.
15:03: A few years ago, a movie came out.
15:05: It was called Time Chasers or something.
15:09: It was a it was a science fiction movie done by a Christian group was not done well.
15:15: A lot of Christian movies.
15:17: Forgive me, as most listeners will know, I have sort of a background in movies and like movies and Christian movies tend to be sort of cheesy.
15:26: Yeah.
15:26: I hate to say it.
15:27: We don't always do well with our with not all of them.
15:31: Some are good, you know, and there is a place for a cheesy movie.
15:34: That's right.
15:35: I will say this.
15:36: The God's Not Dead.
15:39: Remember that one? The original, the original God's Not Dead.
15:42: There was a movie that came out at the same time called A Matter of Faith came out about the same year, two years later.
15:48: And it was the same idea.
15:50: Girl goes to college, meets an atheist professor, and the atheist professor was played by Harry.
15:59: I forget his name, but he was a big name actor back in the 80s, played on Night Court.
16:03: He was the judge from night.
16:04: Oh, right.
16:04: Yeah.
16:06: Well, he he played the professor and he played the atheist.
16:10: And rather than like in the movie that that that God's Not Dead, you know, the atheist professor was very rigid and hard and mean.
16:16: Well, he played a very loving, concerned professor, but he was an atheist.
16:22: Which is actually, I would say, having been an atheist professor before, probably not accurate, more accurate.
16:28: That's you're much more likely to run into that than one throwing down the gauntlet on the first day of class.
16:33: By the end of the semester, all of you are going to walk away from your faith.
16:37: Yeah.
16:37: Don't really see that.
16:38: Yeah.
16:39: That's the thing about God's Not Dead.
16:41: Movies like it.
16:42: They paint a picture that's not legit.
16:44: That's what I always thought.
16:45: A Matter of Faith was a better same same subject matter, but a much better.
16:48: So so my recommendation, go watch A Matter of Faith.
16:51: I actually talked to the director of that film because I wrote a review for him.
16:54: Yeah, it was good.
16:56: That was a good one.
16:57: Now that took me off the original topic.
16:59: We've kind of strayed here a little bit.
17:00: That's all good.
17:01: You get two ADHD guys together.
17:03: Exactly.
17:04: Exactly.
17:05: But but the idea of when we're we're dealing with the concept of of what is it? What's caught? What's the source of all this? You know, where are these guys coming from? And you look back at guys, like I said, like John Dominic Cross and going back to the 1800s, you go back and you say the first thing they did is they said, we're going to deconstruct the miracles.
17:30: Oh, time chasers.
17:32: That's what you had to get me back to where I was, the movie time.
17:34: OK, because that movie was about a guy in the 1800s going forward in time.
17:40: And what he saw was he saw he had had the idea, well, we just need to take out all the miracles and just teach the morality of Jesus.
17:47: And so he goes 100 years in the future and he sees the product of that, which is what we have today.
17:52: We have a moral Christianity that doesn't believe in the miracles of Christianity.
17:56: And it was a pretty powerful film, even though, again, it was cheesy.
18:00: But well, because the you know, the golden rule today is is thou shalt be not shall be nice and thou shalt not offend anyone.
18:07: That's right.
18:08: And so that is the de facto moralistic.
18:11: What's it been called? I think moralistic therapeutic deism.
18:14: That's right.
18:14: Which is kind of the de facto religion of most Americans has replaced a biblical Christianity.
18:22: That's right.
18:22: If you ask people today, do you believe in God? They'll say higher power.
18:28: Something had to get it started.
18:29: Something got the ball rolling.
18:31: That's deism.
18:32: But then the next question is, well, what do we know about this God? We don't know anything.
18:37: And the rise in the nuns, which we talked about, you know, people when you ask them, well, what is your religious affiliation? I have none.
18:44: Yeah.
18:46: And for a moment, I just want to address the issue of when when people start deconstructing the face, the faith, sure, miracles.
18:55: But it's also the morals of the faith.
18:58: Yeah.
18:58: And I think that people have a bigger issue with.
19:04: The command not to fornicate than they do with the command or with it, with the teaching that Jesus fed 5000 people, because even among believers.
19:16: There is this battle for libido, you know, the battle of sexual sin, and it's not like you said.
19:23: We said earlier, it's not always sexual sin, but it's often that becomes the catalyst.
19:28: And people will say, well, you know what? I just know better.
19:32: I know what I know.
19:33: You know, I've had people tell me directly, God wouldn't have put this person in my life if he didn't want me to be happy.
19:40: Right.
19:41: And this person is now in my life and I want to be happy, but I can't be happy knowing that he's going to condemn me.
19:48: So I have to I have to come up with a way that I'm no longer condemned.
19:52: You got to you have to adjust the standard and somehow make yourself the the arbiter or society, the arbiter of the moral standard rather than God.
20:03: That's right.
20:04: And again, what is the universal Christ? He's the Christ for everybody.
20:09: Yeah.
20:09: I mean, again, I didn't have to buy your Christ.
20:11: Exactly.
20:12: He's not going to judge anything.
20:15: He's not going to judge anybody.
20:17: And so what we see, the deconstruction where it was with Thomas Jefferson and the other liberals that came along after him, they were deconstructing the miracles.
20:27: Now we have the deconstruction of the morals.
20:30: Yeah.
20:30: And honestly, that wasn't the thing I think that are necessarily the liberals wanted to give up.
20:38: Because if you go back to the look at the, you know, the mainline denominations, the seven sisters of the mainline Protestant denominations, you know, your Presbyterian Methodist, you know, and by that, I mean, the liberal wings of those because there are conservative Presbyterians, obviously there's conservative Methodists, there's but the liberal wings, you know, they weren't necessarily immoral churches, but they were abandoning the miracles.
21:04: They were abandoning what the Bible said about Jesus being God and the command of faith.
21:11: How can we say somebody has to believe in Jesus? How can we be so narrow minded? But by abandoning that, it opened the door of the floodgate of where we are in regard to in regard to sin.
21:24: Yeah.
21:24: And the new thing, and I think you would agree with me on this, the new thing that we see that is really taking hold is now not only is the Bible commanding me a morality that is, I'm not going to hold to, whether it's sexual morality, those things, but it's it's it also teaches a morality I can't accept.
21:48: For instance, the Bible teaches slavery.
21:51: I mean, have you ever heard that? Oh, yeah.
21:53: Yeah.
21:54: You know, what's the what do you usually hear on campus from people? Well, it's always they like to say, use the term or the phrasing, your God, I can't believe in your God that would condone slavery.
22:10: And so it's a set up, you know, clearly those types of what you call it in our conversation earlier, the bomb, the bomb, the bigot bomb.
22:18: Yeah.
22:19: How they want to the real objective is to make it appear as if you if you hold to biblical Christianity, then, you know, you're you're the dreaded caricature of the hate speech filled bigot that is, you know, lurking behind every bush in modern society, the enemy of the left, the enemy of the liberal media.
22:45: Yeah.
22:45: And I think this plays into these types of deconstruction stories, because obviously you're talking about people if they're questioning they have claimed to be Christians for decades and now they say they subscribe to the universal Christ.
22:59: They're questioning the teachings of the Bible.
23:02: I would say chances are you're looking at a false convert, right? You're looking at a person who is is unregenerate.
23:08: And so the real motivation is to retain some element of spirituality, but to be to come across as socially pleasing, socially soothing, that you're on the right side of history.
23:22: Oh, that's a big phrase.
23:24: Yeah.
23:24: That was one of the first phrases I heard as I was exiting the secular worldview and and kind of God was working in my life to to put me on the trajectory that I am now.
23:35: But I hadn't heard that.
23:37: And I heard the phrase, you know, well, we've got to be on the right side of history, which was referring to the LGBTQ revolution.
23:46: Yeah.
23:46: And, you know, a lot of times since then, I've used that same.
23:51: Thought and I've said, well, for me, I want to be on the right side of eternity, I want to be on the right side of truth.
23:58: Capital T truth.
24:00: I'm not so concerned about being on the right side of human history.
24:03: But for an unregenerate person, a person that the Holy Spirit is not alive inside of them, then it's going to be very, very easy to to cave to the social pressures.
24:15: Yeah.
24:16: It's interesting, too, because we've been talking a lot about apologetics, you and I, and of course, I'm teaching apologetics and you're going to be giving a lecture tonight.
24:24: But from an atheistic worldview, purely materialistic worldview, who cares if you're on the right side of history? You're going to go back to stardust.
24:31: What does it matter? Ultimately, it doesn't matter.
24:33: It's arbitrary.
24:35: Absolutely.
24:35: So, you know, when someone says that, well, don't you care if you're on the right side of history? Not if you're right.
24:41: Not if you're right.
24:42: Eventually, the sun is going to swell and consume the earth.
24:46: And, you know, what did C.S.
24:48: Lewis say? At the end of the day, it's not even a story.
24:51: That's right.
24:52: So it doesn't matter.
24:53: You're on the right side of history for this little slice of time, subjectively defined history.
25:01: And then it's not even going to be history at some point because humans are going to go extinct.
25:06: That's right.
25:07: That's right.
25:08: I heard a very sad statement.
25:12: Well, when I say it's sad, it was just it was it was I don't know who said it, but it was somebody posted it on Facebook as a quote.
25:20: And it was sort of a I don't remember if it was an anonymous quote, but it basically the statement was, don't think you're too important because one day somebody is going to think about you for the last time.
25:32: And the idea was most people are not remembered.
25:37: Right.
25:37: You know, very few people make it into the history books.
25:40: Very few people are your Martin Luthers and your John Calvins.
25:43: You know, and the idea was one day somebody is going to think about you for the last time.
25:46: Then you're going to cease to exist.
25:49: Right.
25:49: Because when you die, your only existence is going to be in the mind of other's memories.
25:53: And then when their memories go away.
25:55: Yeah.
25:56: And for most of us, you know, what is that? That's your grandchildren or perhaps your great grandchildren.
26:01: That's that's it.
26:02: So if if this life is all there is, if you were talking about materialism, so-called naturalism, if that's true, that's that's it.
26:11: You're on your way out.
26:13: It reminded me when you were saying that of a poem.
26:16: I remember reading in high school and I I've brought this up in the context of evangelism a few times, but it's called Ozymandias was one of the pharaohs.
26:26: And I need to commit the poem to memory.
26:28: It was Shelley, Percy Bish or Bishay Shelley.
26:33: OK.
26:34: And it's it's it's the scene.
26:37: It's a short poem is the ruins of one of the kingdoms of one of the pharaohs in the sands of Egypt.
26:46: And they see an engraving on the stone where it says, my name is Ozymandias.
26:52: And as a Christian, this next part will send chills up your spine.
26:56: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, he called himself.
27:00: Look on my works, ye mighty in fear.
27:05: But the scene was these crumbled.
27:09: Statues, these barely discernible remains and then just sand sweeping over it all.
27:16: And, you know, you think if that's true, you know, I know it's a very different topic, but if it's true, if if naturalism is true, you're talking about one of the most influential, mightiest men who in our society can aspire to something like that, only like maybe presidents or kings in the modern world.
27:34: Yeah.
27:36: But, you know, the sands of time erases it all.
27:40: Amen.
27:41: And it just mocks those who would seek to make a name for themselves in this in this present world.
27:49: That is wow.
27:51: Yeah, that's it's powerful to think about it, and honestly, this is where this is where we are.
27:58: We are we are we find ourselves when we're discussing with people who are not believers.
28:05: You know, what is it that you do believe in? And oftentimes it's, you know, like I have relatives who are unbelievers and some of them are very antagonistic against me being a minister, my wife being the wife of a minister and a Christian.
28:21: And, you know, oftentimes I remember one time sitting with one of them.
28:25: This has been years and years ago.
28:26: And she was just sort of being somewhat abrasive about the faith.
28:32: And I just finally looked at her, I says, well, tell me what you believe.
28:38: I said, tell me what it is that you hope in.
28:42: What are you living for? Yeah.
28:45: And she just sort of sat there and sort of just sort of mused for a minute.
28:48: And well, and I don't remember everything that she said.
28:52: So, again, this is better than a decade ago.
28:54: Yeah.
28:54: But she just sort of, well, I just don't think y'all know anything more than I do.
29:00: So I said, you know, OK, so it's not that you have hope.
29:05: It's just you're satisfied in not knowing.
29:09: There's no joy and hope or anything.
29:12: It's just you, you know, and Dr.
29:15: Price, the book that we're using for the apologetics course, Dr.
29:22: Frame, he said this, he said he said an intellectually honest agnostic would go to church every other Sunday.
29:31: He said, because if you really don't know, you would be honestly giving both sides a chance.
29:37: He said an intellectually honest agnostic should be in church every other week.
29:42: And I thought, that's great.
29:43: He said, but it's not.
29:44: He said they're just willing to say we don't know and nobody can know.
29:48: Nobody can know and generalize that to everyone else.
29:51: That's right.
29:52: That's right.
29:52: And it's a sad life.
29:54: But, you know, again, going back to kind of where you started there, I really do think the theme that you're seeing play out with these deconversions or whatever you want to call them, deconstructions, is another form of bowing to, bowing to sin, clearly, on a personal level, but then bowing to social pressure.
30:14: Would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely.
30:17: Absolutely.
30:18: As we've talked a lot over the last two days, everywhere you look, the greater social world is pointing people away from God, whether it's the television programs where the very theme songs I talked about earlier is an ode to evolution.
30:35: Right.
30:35: Or the, you know, or the movies take for granted that the world is billions of years old and that we evolved from lesser life forms.
30:46: And all of these things are no longer spoken of in popular culture as optional beliefs.
30:54: It's if you don't believe in it, as Richard Dawkins said, you are either ignorant or you're evil.
31:00: Yeah.
31:02: Those are your two options.
31:03: Yeah.
31:03: Yeah.
31:04: You say stupid or evil or do you say ignorant or evil? Maybe there were three, like stupid, evil or ignorant.
31:10: I remember him saying evil and him saying, but I'd rather not think that way, you know, that they're evil.
31:15: Yeah.
31:16: But it really is.
31:18: That's the idea.
31:19: Yeah.
31:19: If you question any of this, you're a science denier.
31:25: You're a malignancy on society.
31:30: You know, your beliefs, your views are spreading hate.
31:35: You're endangering the environment.
31:37: Basically, you're just the social enemy number one, if you're a Bible believing, Bible affirming Christian.
31:45: And that's probably, you know, I don't want to be the doomsday scenario person, but if you look at the trend of society, there's no reason to think that that's going to change in the Western world, in the United States anytime soon.
31:59: I would say if if things eventually get better, they're going to get worse for the time being.
32:05: Yeah.
32:06: I was a lot of the guys I listened to, a lot of guys I respect starting to trend towards post-millennialism, which is the idea that the world is going to become Christianized.
32:17: I'm an amillennialist.
32:18: I'm not going to ask you to share with the world where you are.
32:21: I'm the pan-millennialist.
32:25: But I appreciate the optimism of the post-millennialist.
32:31: But one of the things that I did hear one of them say was he said, as a post-millennialist, I still think we're in the early church.
32:41: That was his argument, that we're still in the early stages of Christianity, that it has yet to grow to where it's going to be.
32:49: And I mean, that's a powerful thought, right? I mean, we don't know that Christ is going to come in the next hundred years or the next thousand years.
32:56: Christ could tarry for another three or four millennia.
33:00: We don't know.
33:02: But the way it stands right now, I think you're absolutely right.
33:06: I think we are seeing, at least in the United States, the deconstruction of the faith is actually coming with an overall deconstruction of Western civilization.
33:18: Sure.
33:19: And the social costs of setting yourself over against these new narratives is only going to increase.
33:28: Absolutely.
33:28: And so this is what we try to prepare our students with when we disciple them, is like, you know, your commitments to Christ are likely...
33:37: I don't think people are going to arrest you.
33:38: I don't think you're going to be thrown in jail, deprived of food.
33:42: That's probably not going to look like that, but rather what's been described as a soft totalitarianism, where the system is so arranged that you're going to lose an enormous amount of opportunities.
33:58: The types of schools your kids can get into, the types of employment you're eligible for, how much are you allowed to travel, where and when, how frequently.
34:07: These social privileges, we see this happening in China right now.
34:10: Well, it seems very much, I think, to any clear-minded individual that something like that right now, like their social credit system, is in the makings in the United States before our very eyes.
34:23: And that's frightening.
34:24: It's amazing that you mentioned that, because that idea of the social credit system, I mean, how long before our credit score is going to include our participation on social media, our participation in political voicing of opinion.
34:40: I mean, you know, honestly, let's just say, you know, you and I, we have a credit score and they say, but you know what, if you go to an abortion clinic, that's going to go against your credit, because that shows you as a dangerous...
34:54: And I know you do, Rich, and I've been, but I don't go as much as you go.
34:58: You go pretty regularly to the abortion areas and you preach and you hand out tracts and you try to talk to people.
35:05: You know, how long before your picture of that abortion area is going to be what brings down your social capital? Sure, sure.
35:13: And the thing about this system, and you know, China has learned this, it's vastly more effective than kind of the hard totalitarianism.
35:21: Yeah, absolutely.
35:22: Because the average citizen, we're talking about unregenerate people here, but they begin to internalize.
35:30: They begin to identify with the agenda of the state.
35:33: They end up policing and enforcing socially the same policies that are in line with the ideologues behind them.
35:41: And so in turn, they become the ideologues.
35:44: And so it's, once you get the system, and this is all manipulated through mass media and those types of things, once you have it in place, it kind of maintains itself.
35:54: I think clearly that's where, if we're not there yet, we're getting there very rapidly in the United States.
36:01: Yeah, absolutely.
36:02: I see it among the young people.
36:06: Not so much in our church, but within the broader young people that I come in contact with.
36:12: And I used to work in public school.
36:14: I was a substitute teacher for eight years.
36:16: And it was in a rural school where a lot of the kids went to church, but still their attitude about social issues, their attitude about things like social justice and the expectation that this is the way this is, it's just, it's taken for granted.
36:35: There is no critical analysis.
36:38: It's just this, you don't believe this.
36:40: So you're an outsider, right off.
36:42: You're a Bible-believing Christian, therefore you must hate gay people.
36:46: You must, that's just, that's the way they think.
36:50: They've already completely marginalized you.
36:55: You're labeled, you're stamped as other, and your voice is disregarded.
37:01: And that's just on the social level, nevermind the implications for things like employment, governmental participation, and those sorts of things.
37:09: It makes sense why someone would feel the need to deconstruct their faith, because they've got to fit it into this new narrative.
37:16: They've got to fit it into what they're being force-fed, whether it be socially, through entertainment.
37:23: I remember sitting in a, I was substitute teaching, and I was sitting in a room, it was a lunchroom.
37:31: I was with other teachers, so it was only about three of us in there, and we were all eating our lunch.
37:35: And typically I didn't talk to the teacher, because I was a sub, so I didn't really know them, but every once in a while a conversation would come up, and they would invite me in to opine, and I would.
37:47: And something came up, and I think it was about discipline.
37:51: And I think I mentioned spanking.
37:53: I don't remember if that was the context, but it was something along the lines of disciplining children.
38:00: And I just said what I believed, what I believe the Bible teaches.
38:04: And the lady just was appalled.
38:08: And she looked at me, and she said, you think like a caveman.
38:15: And she had no fear to say that to me.
38:18: She had no idea.
38:19: She didn't know me.
38:20: But to just say, you're so ignorant that you think like a caveman.
38:25: And I thought, you don't know me.
38:28: How do you know anything about me? She doesn't know anything about your relationship with your children.
38:31: She knows nothing.
38:32: But because of one statement I said, and again, I don't remember the context.
38:37: I just remember being called a caveman and thinking, that is where our young people have to understand that's going to come.
38:47: And because of the, they don't want to be a caveman.
38:52: Just like I told the story earlier about the atheist, my conversion story.
38:56: And I didn't want to be stupid.
38:58: He says, I'm too smart to believe those things.
39:01: And I didn't want to be stupid.
39:04: So I think a lot of this deconstruction in this exvangelical, they are abandoning the parts that would oppose what we might say are the parts of the faith that the world cannot accept.
39:26: Right.
39:26: Because no one is saying, Jesus said, love your neighbor.
39:30: We don't believe that.
39:31: Right.
39:32: Everybody's saying, oh, yeah, you should love your neighbor.
39:33: Now they'll redefine love.
39:35: But nobody's deconstructing love your neighbor.
39:39: They're redefining it.
39:40: Yeah, redefining.
39:41: But what they're deconstructing is when Jesus says, be holy as I'm holy.
39:46: And if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery.
39:50: Oh, well, we can't, nothing wrong with pornography, you know, whatever, you know.
39:53: So we have to deconstruct that.
39:56: Sure.
39:58: But, well, I want to wrap up and we're getting, we've taken our time.
40:03: And listener, I appreciate you being with us today.
40:06: But I want to conclude with a thought.
40:08: And if you have anything to add, you're welcome to.
40:10: But I want to conclude with this thought.
40:12: If you are a person who is struggling with your faith, and maybe you have seen people like this guy from DC Talk or Josh Harris or somebody else, and you've seen them begin to deconstruct and you're starting to toy with that idea, well, maybe I should begin to take my faith apart.
40:33: Let me tell you this.
40:34: The Christian faith is able to stand up to scrutiny.
40:38: I believe that wholeheartedly.
40:41: But let me encourage you to go to the Bible, not to run from the Bible when you're trying to understand your faith.
40:49: What does the word say? It tells us it is God-breathed.
40:55: It tells us that it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for rebuke, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.
41:05: And when Eve was in the garden with the serpent, his first statement to her is, Hath God said? And that statement has not stopped in the millennium since that first interaction.
41:24: Satan's question to us is still this.
41:27: Do you believe what God has said? And the deconstructionist is saying, I don't believe what God has said.
41:33: But I encourage you to hold fast to the word of God, because if we do, we will not be put to shame.
41:44: Brother, did you have anything, any thought? Well, I think that's great.
41:48: I agree wholeheartedly.
41:51: I like to remind when I do these types of talks to young people, especially, of course, anyone, but especially the young people, that how did Satan approach Eve in the garden? The word of God says that the serpent was the most subtle of all of the creatures that the Lord God had made.
42:12: He doesn't show up with the horns and the pitchfork.
42:16: He shows up in a very appealing way, in a winsome way.
42:21: He's subtle.
42:22: He insinuates himself and the power of the nuance.
42:28: And that's what I see.
42:29: Again, nothing new under the sun.
42:31: The same tactic, the same strategy that he's used so successfully since Eden is the one he still uses today.
42:40: So my encouragement to you, again, as the brother has said, be mindful, be watchful for the devil is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
42:52: And if you do have questions about the faith, that's part of the reason why this podcast exists.
42:57: I try every week to give answers to questions, real questions, difficult questions about the faith.
43:05: So if you have a question that you would like for me to answer, or if you'd like to forward it to Dr.
43:11: Sepulveda, if he could answer it, he will.
43:15: He's available.
43:16: He has a Facebook page.
43:17: He has a website, askaformeratheist.com.
43:20: And if you can't get a hold of him, you message me.
43:23: You can message me at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
43:29: And if you forward it to Rich, I can get it to him as well.
43:33: I want to thank you, Rich, for being with me today.
43:37: It's been a pleasure.
43:37: And thank you, listener, for being with us and coming and paying attention to the program.
43:44: It means a lot.
43:45: And I appreciate you listening.
43:47: So thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
43:50: My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.
43:53: May God bless you.
43:55: Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
43:58: If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
44:02: And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on our future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
44:10: As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
44:16: All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
44:22: He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
44:28: May God be with you.