Can Al Mohler have his cake and eat it too, Part 1

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Schedule a campus tour today at admissions .temple .edu visit. Christians must be ready to give a direct and honest answer when we are asked a question about sin.

That might come, indeed it will come, with a considerable political cost, but failing to answer the question comes with an even deeper cost to both theology and doctrine and to personal ethics.

Trying to have your cake and eat it too is thus a metaphor for trying to have it both ways.

It is impossible. Welcome to the

Wrap Report with Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is the ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org

All right, we are going to jump right into this episode because we got a lot of material to cover and we don't have a whole lot of time to do it.

We're actually going to cover this in two parts, so this is going to be the first time

I think we've ever done it two parts on the Wrap Report. I am your host Andrew Rapoport and this is the

Wrap Report, and so to start off real quick, I want to give a review that we got in, and I'm really thinking,

Bud, that this must have come from our Daily Wrap Report, which is Monday through Friday, only two minutes long, because the review we got from TNN15, it's five stars, and it says,

Good Biblical Short Encouragements. I'm thinking after the last episode, there was an hour and 45 minutes.

I'm not quite sure that's what the episode they were referring to. But to get a review like that from TBN, I mean

Trinity Broadcasting, that's tremendous. No, no, no, that's TNN. Oh, we'll then edit that out.

So let's get into one thing. I hope that you listened to the last episode where Virgil Walker and I walked through, no pun intended on his last name there by the way, but Virgil Walker and I walked through Ben Shapiro's interview with Gloria Allred and addressed some of the things they were bringing up, especially the issue of abortion.

Some of her views. Now, if you listen to that, and yes, it was long, there was a lot of material there, and there wasn't a real good way to break it up, but I want to differentiate something.

If you listen to that, we are trying to teach you. We're teaching you how to see when people have failed arguments, how people respond to things, to evaluate arguments, to learn logic and how to evaluate things.

That's because at Striving for Eternity, we are a teaching ministry. Now, we're different from a discernment ministry.

We do discernment, and this podcast is going to be more in the discernment realm, but it's not the overall arching view of our ministry, because there are times we have to call people to be aware, to be discerning of others, and that's what we're trying to do here, but we're doing it as part of an overall teaching ministry.

That's the goal with Striving for Eternity. So, we're going to be addressing some things with Dr.

Al Mohler. Now, I have a lot of respect for Dr. Mohler, a very intelligent man.

I listen to his daily briefing each morning when it comes out, and we're going to be playing a lot of clips from his podcast,

The Briefing, from Monday, November 11, 2019. I will have the links in the show notes so you can listen to the whole thing and see that we're not taking things out of context, but what we want to do is address the fact that there are some things that Al Mohler, well, as you heard in the opening, can't have his cake and eat it too.

That metaphor is provided by him, and it's one we are going to kind of be encouraging to hold him to, because we think that there are some things that, in two areas that we're going to address, one this week and one next week, that we're going to address things that we see that may be a little bit wanting, maybe a little bit where Dr.

Mohler needs to re -evaluate just a bit. And so, we do this in a loving way. We're not looking to smear him.

We're not looking to tear him down, but we do want to call him out and call him to really evaluate whether he is trying to have his cake and eat it too, and be ready to answer direct questions.

And so, I want to play some clips of this, and then we're going to get into the topic that we would really like to see.

There's some things that he had on that briefing on November 11th, and I want to play a longer clip, just like I did last week, so you get the context, and then we're going to break it up and go through this.

So, here is a little bit of a longer clip. But the big point of the headlines is that Andrew Scheer was asked the question,

Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin? Now, that's an interesting question for a political leader to be asked, not so much being asked these days about anything related to the

LGBTQ array of issues, but rather being asked if one believes that homosexuality is a sin.

Let's just face it, there are so many in our society who do not want that question even to be asked. But in this context, the asking of the question was intended to embarrass

Andrew Scheer and to force him to answer the question one way or the other. The predicament for Andrew Scheer is that he is well -identified as a

Roman Catholic, and the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that even though all persons should be treated with respect, not only homosexual behavior, but same -sex sexual desire is unnatural.

It is objectively disordered. Thus, homosexuality is a sin, which means that Andrew Scheer, if he answered on behalf of the church of which he is a member, would have answered, yes, homosexuality is a sin.

But he refused to answer one way or the other. Colby Koch, writing for the National Post based in Toronto, summarized the situation this way, quote,

Andrew Scheer is being pursued by journalists and criticized by conservative colleagues because he will not give a straight answer when asked if he thinks homosexuality is a sin, end quote.

All right, now, I will say I agree with what he says. Let me bring you up to speed if you don't know who Andrew Scheer is. Andrew Scheer is someone who is a politician in Canada.

So this is a foreign country. This is not someone within Christianity. He is actually outside of Christianity.

He's Roman Catholic. He is running for political office.

I make that distinction because what you see is he's not someone who is a pastor.

He's not someone who's preaching in churches. I think there is going to be a distinction in that we have to hold people who preach

God's word to a higher account. And so I'm going to say at the outset,

I agree with what Dr. Moeller is saying here. I think everything he said is right.

And that's actually where the problem is. Now, some of you may be saying, well, who do you think you are?

You're saying that you're to address some things with Dr. Moeller. And do you know him?

Have you have you reached out to him? Well, I have no way to reach out to him. Anyone wants to give me his phone number,

I'll be happy to call him and address these things privately. But he actually gave me permission to do this.

In fact, he gave all of us because this is what he had said. But I hope to do so absolutely consistently and absolutely biblically with fidelity.

And I invite you and all others to interrogate every aspect of my life and show me where I may come short.

OK, he said that at the Shepherds Conference during a Q &A. I was there. So he invited us to let him know where we think he's falling short.

So I want to break these clips up, Bud, and go through these. And then I want to apply these in an area that I think

Dr. Moeller is falling short. So let me play this first clip that we heard a shorter version of it.

On the question of, you know, do you believe homosexuality is a sin? Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin?

Now, that's a question that he was asking. It's a question that needs to be answered, I believe.

He says for a Catholic politician in Canada, it needs to be it.

It should be asked. In fact, he says a little bit more emphatically. Let's listen. Let's just face it. There are so many in our society who do not want that question even to be asked.

And we would agree with that. There's a lot of people don't want that to be asked.

They wish that we wouldn't address the issue. But I have to agree with Dr.

Moeller, because here's what he ended up saying about this. Not only homosexual behavior, but same sex sexual desire is unnatural.

It is objectively disordered. Thus, homosexuality is a sin. That seems pretty clear, doesn't it?

That's absolutely clear. That's absolutely clear. So, what we see is he's saying, you have to question whether you believe homosexuality is a sin.

There are people who don't want this to be asked at all. And I think that he just laid out a very clear thing.

This is abhorrent behavior, and it is a sin. Now, he says the church should have a position on this.

Let's play that clip. Which means that Andrew Scheer, if he answered on behalf of the church of which he is a member, would have answered, yes, homosexuality is a sin.

So, he's saying that a politician in a foreign country, in a foreign religion, should answer that question, yes, because that's what the

Catholic Church would say. And he's the whole thing was he was holding this man to this position.

And his issue is that he refused to answer. And this is what he says about that. But he refused to answer one way or the other.

Okay, so he refused to answer. And that is the issue that he has with Andrew Scheer.

This first part of his episode on the briefing, he was very upset with the fact that he didn't answer.

And that when he did try to answer, the answer wasn't strong enough for the people there.

And let me play, Bud, this will be a three minute clip, but this is the politics of it. And this is all set up.

We want to make sure we give the proper setup for this. Let me play a three and a half minute clip of what he said about the political issue.

And then we'll break this up a bit. And I want I really want to lay this groundwork before we get into the issue that I see where Dr.

Moeller, I think, is having an issue. Yeah, one of the issues to note here is that the political situation in so much of the

Western world, Canada, here is an illustration that political change, that moral change is now happening so fast that there is now a shadow on any party that may have at any time held to any position that might now be described as socially conservative.

But when you consider the controversy now swirling around the conservative leader in Canada for not giving a direct answer, and as we know, that really means the right direct answer in the view of the media and the culture.

And so what we see from what you read there, Bud, I mean, let me play some of the clips that he had said with this in that section, because he says his issue is that it wasn't answered strong enough.

The pressure is now on because he did not avoid being dragged into this controversy.

Now, how did so many of his colleagues want him to avoid it by saying that there is no question that the conservative party is and always must be absolutely pro abortion, absolutely pro

LGBTQ. The thing to note is that Andrew Scheer basically said just that, but evidently he did not say it with enough emphatic force to please even his conservative colleagues.

Okay, so Al Mueller is saying that he did say that it was wrong, but not with enough force to make it clear he holds to it, not with enough force to make it believable, basically.

And this is the thing. He is saying that the, you know, let me play this clip where the political situation is to never be going against the

LGBT community is the argument, and there's this push against not saying anything against them.

But this is what Al Mueller had said on the briefing. One of the issues to note here is that the political situation in so much of the

Western world, Canada here is an illustration that political change, that moral change is now happening so fast that there is now a shadow on any party that may have at any time held to any position that might now be described as socially conservative.

Okay, so we are seeing this in our culture as well in America where people go back in time and hold you to things that weren't believed back then.

This makes it very hard to maneuver in culture right now because people are holding you to a standard, to today's standard, to not the standard when people say it and did things, and they're being held to hold to a standard that hasn't happened yet.

So how do you, how could we possibly know, Bud, what the future standard is to know that we are not supposed to say certain words or do certain things 10 years from now and we got to apply them today?

Yeah, that's completely unreasonable. But then you're dealing with a postmodern mindset where everything is momentary, relativistic, and, you know, tolerance is the key so you can never expound anything firmly and finally as a valid answer to any kind of question.

And where we come to this and where I see the issue is that he says that we have to be ready to give an answer.

Okay, that is the issue. And let's take a look at this, so let's hear what he has to say, because now's where I want to bring up our concerns.

To a view that is in conflict with the LGBTQ revolution, we're watching that happen all over the

Western world, but we're also noticing something else of even more fundamental importance for Christians. Christians must be ready to give a direct and honest answer when we are asked a question about sin.

That might come, indeed it will come, with a considerable political cost, but failing to answer the question comes with an even deeper cost to both theology and doctrine and to personal ethics.

Okay, so part of what he is saying here is we have to be ready to give an answer.

And I would agree with that, we do. We must be ready to give an answer when challenged.

And this is the thing that I have issue with Dr. Moeller on, because as we evaluate this, what

I end up seeing here is that there is an issue that where someone has been asked the very thing that he asked.

Here was the question that he was asking, again, of a foreign country's politician who's a

Roman Catholic, and his concern is this question. Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin?

Okay, is that a fair question to ask of a Roman Catholic Canadian politician?

What do you think, Bud? Well, I think obviously the journalists were trying to trap the guy because of his conservative leanings, but in the context of the political arena, that was a valid question, given the narrative of culture in our time.

And I believe so too. So here's where I see this issue where Dr.

Moeller has said we should investigate his life and show where he comes up short. Well, this is where I believe

Dr. Moeller comes up short. He's willing to challenge a foreign country, a politician in a foreign country and a foreign religion.

And I talked with this about this issue we're just going to discuss with Justin Peters, and he had a very interesting take on this.

He said he should be more concerned, Al Moeller should be more concerned that the guy's

Catholic than his position on homosexuality. Yeah, we've got a gospel issue to get to first before we start dealing with some of these moral issues, which are clearly sinful, but you don't have an answer without the gospel.

Yeah, I mean, what's more important for Andrew Scheer, that he gets homosexuality right or the gospel right?

Exactly. And so Justin's point was he should be concerned that this guy is not saved.

That's the real issue that needs to get addressed. And I am totally on board with that.

But how much more if Dr. Moeller is going to be challenging Andrew Scheer to be clear in giving a clear answer when asked about homosexuality, when he says be ready to give a direct answer.

Okay, well, this is why I think that there's some, I want to use the word hypocrisy, but maybe that's too strong.

Maybe the real issue is, can he have his cake and eat it too? Because we're not talking about a foreign country, a foreign vocation, politics, or a foreign religion,

Roman Catholicism. I want to talk about someone within the same country who is in the same vocation as Dr.

Moeller, someone who gets, who stands before Christians and preaches God's word and is in the same denomination, not some foreign denomination.

They are Southern Baptists and that is Beth Moore. Why? Because, and we've dealt with this on this podcast where I had one of the people who put this letter out to Beth Moore.

Here was the very first question that was asked for Beth Moore to answer directly.

There's confusion with her position on homosexuality. She hasn't been clear about it.

In fact, when she did write something negative about homosexuality in one of her books, it was pointed out that it was in one of her books and she went back and edited that out of her book on Kindle.

And so you have to wonder where she's at. She has not answered this question directly.

And here was the question, the first question that was asked, do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful?

Let's go back and listen to what Al Moeller said. Is the question, do you believe that homosexuality is a sin?

Sounds very similar. Yeah. Not only homosexual behavior, but same sex sexual desire is unnatural.

It is objectively disordered. Thus homosexuality is a sin. Now, Dr. Moeller doesn't seem to have a problem answering that quite directly.

So the question is, why doesn't Beth Moore? In fact, Beth Moore went after the several ladies that put this open letter to Beth Moore out there saying, why didn't they come to me privately?

Why didn't they? Well, because she doesn't make herself available for that. But Dr.

Moeller, the question is, if you're saying that some foreign politician who's in a false religion needs to answer that question, then how much more must somebody who is in your same denomination who has been spoken about as maybe being the president, that her name is being thrown out there as the president of your denomination.

One that it seems you may want to be president of that denomination. How much more should you ask

Beth Moore to answer this question directly? This is not the

Catholic church. This is not Canada. And it's not a politician. This is a woman that is in the

Southern Baptist convention, the same as him, both in a, in leading positions of that, both teaching the

Bible and both within the same country. So as we look at this, we must have asked

Dr. Moeller, are you trying to have your cake and eat it too?

Because I want you to hear what he says about this Canadian. He was saying it's, he needs to answer.

You know, he can't just sit here and not use clear language.

He criticizes the language that we can't beat around the bush. Let me play some clips here.

And what you have here is the archdiocese negotiating with the Catholic school board in a way to accept the language while saying that it does so only in keeping with the official teaching of the

Catholic church and quote, through the lens of the Catholic faith as articulated by the teachings of the church and protected in legislation end quote.

So now that was him referring to us later in that same podcast that I referred to, because there was a change being done within the archdiocese where they they're changing the language.

Now he is against the changing of the language, but you know what Beth Moore is doing the very same thing.

She doesn't want to use the clear language. My challenge to Al Moeller would be that he would do what he expects this foreign politician to do.

Dr. Moeller, you are a leader in the Southern Baptist convention. You should be asking

Beth Moore to come out and clearly answer the question.

Her refusal to answer is the very same thing that you're criticizing with this politician.

And it's the language that she changes, that she tries to get around, that you have issue with when others do it.

And so I think what you end up seeing here is you see an area where Dr.

Moeller is just not being clear in what he's doing.

He is going to talk about the fact that language is never neutral.

And you know, I want you to see how he talks. So we see him speaking of a foreign politician.

They must answer the question when it comes to the archdiocese. You can't change the language. Okay. Yeah.

Let me insert something here because I don't want to intervene on your conversation about the language because that's so critical these days.

But just consider the timeline here, Andrew, of what you've laid out. This particular briefing was released

November 11th. The open letter that you have read, the open letter to Beth Moore, that came out in June, so five months before Moeller in this briefing, is making the very point about having your cake and eating it, too, but that we are to be ready with answers that are clear, not confusing.

We can't avoid them. He's asking that of a politician in a foreign country in a false religion.

And just months earlier, someone with, I mean, I'm looking at Beth Moore's Twitter page.

She's got almost a million followers, a woman in the SBC who has not been quiet or unseen over the last year of SBC life.

He had to be aware, I would think, that this topic of her view on homosexuality had been out there.

It was an issue. There are over 500 women that had co -signed this open letter to her, all with no response.

But he didn't use his platform in June or July or any of the subsequent months to speak to this.

But here in November, when it's a foreign politician, false religion, another nation, then this topic's going to come up, and he's right in his answer.

We do need to be able to give an answer. We need to give it clearly and promptly, and it needs to be biblical. Peter commands us to do the same thing in one of his epistles.

So Moeller is right. I think the duplicity is that it's easy to call out in what he's seen here in culture, but he's not doing it in his own backyard.

And I think what this is, maybe to apply a passage of Scripture that many people use, and I'll use this here, is

Matthew chapter 7. It seems that Dr. Moeller, like the

Pharisees, can recognize a toothpick in the eye of a

Canadian politician, but he's ignoring the two by four in the eye of the

SBC. Let me read all five questions that were asked of Beth Moore and see if these fit in the thing that Al Moeller is saying should be answered directly.

Do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful? Number two, do you believe that the practice of homosexual lifestyle is compatible with holy living?

Well, Dr. Moeller clearly doesn't think so. This is what he said. Listen, not only homosexual behavior, but same -sex sexual desire is unnatural.

It is objectively disordered. Thus, homosexuality is a sin. Okay, so he says more than just homosexuality is the sin.

He's saying it's inherently a sin. He's saying that even the desire for someone of the same sex, not even just because we know there's a lot of people that want to say, well, hey,

I can have the desire. The desire is okay as long as I'm not giving in on the desire, as long as I'm not acting it out.

And he's making it very clear the desire itself is a sin. That is a prevalent belief in evangelicalism today, that the desire is not a sin.

It is very clear from scripture. This is a principle. The desire to sin is sin.

And he, you know, I played that a couple of times now, but you can't get clearer than what he said. He's very clear.

He could answer, as we see, number one, do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful? I think he would say yes, very clearly.

He did. Number two, do you believe that the practice of homosexual lifestyle is compatible with Christian, with holy

Christian living? It seems Dr. Moeller would say no. Number three to Beth Moore, do you believe a person who dies as a practicing homosexual, but professes to be a

Christian will inherit eternal life? Number four, do you believe same -sex attraction is in and of itself an inherently sinful, unnatural, and disordered desire that must be mortified?

And number five, why have you been so silent on the subject in light of the desire to quote, teach the word of God unquote?

Now, number four, that quote that we played from Moeller, he makes it pretty clear that same -sex attraction in and of itself is inherently sinful.

So I think we know where Dr. Moeller stands on this, and I think he's in the right position. But if he's going to demand of a foreign politician, that that foreign politician who's running for political office, he's not a teacher of God's word.

If the foreign politician must answer this, but Al Moeller doesn't seem to think he's in a position in a leadership of the

Southern Baptist Convention to ask one of the best known Southern Baptists to answer this.

You know, I think Al Moeller may have an illustration that fits that.

When I was a little boy, I was often befuddled by some of my mother's expressions, several of them as a matter of fact, which often falls to children, but one of them in particular, she would sometimes speak of someone trying to have his cake and eat it too.

I couldn't understand the difference between having and eating, because when she offered me a piece of cake, she would say, would you like to have a piece of cake?

Only later did I figure out that what she actually meant was someone having the cake as in keeping it or saving it and eating it at the same time.

That's the contradiction. Trying to have your cake and eat it too is thus a metaphor for trying to have it both ways.

It is impossible. It is impossible. I agree. And this is what Dr. Moeller is doing.

He's trying to have his cake and eat it too. He's he's trying to say that a foreign politician who's a

Catholic must answer the question about homosexuality, but Beth Moore gets a pass.

Yeah. Beth Moore, whose name is being thrown out there and it's being questioned, can a woman be the president of the

SBC? And her name is being put up there. Yet she refuses to answer this question. And what did she do when when pushed?

She's she's backpedaled when she did say that homosexuality was a sin in her book.

And I'll put a link to an article that Justin Peters wrote where he pointed this out because Beth Moore put a blog post trying to explain why she edited out saying that homosexuality was a sin in her book.

She took that out of her book and she gave some explanations and those explanations really didn't hold water.

And so as we look at this, you end up seeing that Beth Moore is not answering the question.

What she's doing is playing games with words. She's changing language and she wants to redefine things.

She wants to go after the women who had the nerve to put this out there and ask this question of her.

But throughout this, and this is why I want to play some of these clips about language, because when the when we see this

Archdiocese that wants to change the language, Dr. Mueller speaks strongly against that as well. He says you can't just play games with words.

He says language isn't neutral. Listen to this. But as we're thinking about the necessity of clarity and the danger of confusion, evangelical

Christians need to keep very much in mind that language is never neutral. And that's the whole point here.

Okay. Did you hear that? Yeah. No neutrality. No neutrality.

Language is never neutral. And the thing that's so interesting is he's making it clear.

Let me just play this part again. Evangelical Christians need to keep very much in mind that language is never neutral.

And that's the whole point here. Okay. So who is he speaking to at that point? Evangelical Christians no longer politicians, right?

Right. This is the thing. He's he's making this as a point that we must address it.

Listen. Clarity and the danger of confusion. Clarity. We have to have clarity. And there's a danger with confusion.

Well, Beth Moore has not been providing clarity. She's been providing confusion.

She hasn't directly answered the question. She's challenged people why she should be asked this.

Some of her answers have been my life is out. The people know what I believe. Well, clearly people don't know what she believes.

And Al Mohler doesn't seem to want to ask an evangelical what her position is.

An evangelical leader, what her position is. This is the problem of trying to find a way out of the situation.

You we have a culture that is going to come hard against anyone that's in public speaking against homosexuality.

And maybe they don't want that pressure. Maybe maybe it's a money issue. Maybe, you know, hey, if you if you come out against homosexuality, you're going to lose some of your platform.

You can lose some of your money. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But Dr. Moeller clearly seems to think that you can't try to find a way to have it both ways, because when it came to the archdiocese, this is what he said.

Now, what we need to note here is that the acceptance of that language is actually quite incompatible with the official teaching of the

Roman Catholic Church. But this is not a predicament by any means limited to Roman Catholic schools and institutions, because we see some evangelical schools and certainly many other schools with different religious heritage and identity trying to find the same way out.

They're trying to find the same way out. And my question is, Dr. Moeller, are you trying to find your same way out of confronting

Canadian politicians that are Catholics and not being willing to confront a

Southern Baptist Bible teacher here in America? Because if you're not willing to confront

Beth Moore, then there's no reason you should be calling us to say that Canadians should have to answer.

Canadian Catholics have to answer. Yeah, true. You see, he's trying to find a way out.

This is and I've never been a Southern Baptist. I understand, but you have been.

I have been. What is the 11th commandment? Yeah, you will not utter anything disparaging about a fellow

Southern Baptist, particularly one with a platform like Beth Moore. And that's what I think we see.

Okay. What it looks like to me is that we're seeing he doesn't want to confront a fellow

Southern Baptist. I don't know any other way about this, but the reality is since Dr.

Moeller has put this out there in his briefing on the 11th, I do believe we have the right to hold him accountable to say, okay,

Dr. Moeller, you need to answer why you're not challenging

Beth Moore. And I hope someone gets this to Dr. Moeller to say, listen, now you don't have any excuse.

Now, you know, people are holding you accountable to saying, if you want to say that this politician must answer the question, that we can't avoid it, that we have to be ready to give a direct answer.

Beth Moore has to give a direct answer as well. And she's not doing that. No. And, you know, just to add to that, the context that we're in right now, the

SBC has their annual convention coming up this summer. It has already been indicated

Al Moeller is going to be nominated for the presidency and more than likely will be the next president of the

SBC. It would really be beneficial for him in a leadership position like that, much less in light of the platform that he has now, demand an answer to these questions with a

Bible teacher and wannabe or not wannabe preacher. But a woman with profound influence in the

SBC ask her to answer these questions. What does she think the answer to these questions would be?

She's got millions of followers who read her books and study her lessons. And this at a moment like this in culture, this is a critical issue.

There's no reason to get this wrong. And just as Moeller has said, there's no reason not to provide clarity and a direct answer to it.

I would say that if Dr. Moeller wants to be the president of the SBC or is even nominated and gets it,

I definitely think he should require all Bible teachers that are part of the

SBC that they should have it in writing that they've answered this. Because part of the thing that was mentioned, and I believe it was in the original, that open letter, was they pointed out the fact that, you know,

Lifeway had pulled, or was going to pull, what is it, the

Message Bible, I think it was, because that guy came out and made some statement that he was supporting homosexuality.

Yeah, right. And they, so Lifeway, Southern Baptist Lifeway, was willing to take a stand on that.

Which, well, they also pulled, I think, Jen Hatmaker when she came out pro -LGBTQ.

I think they pulled her resources from being sold there as well.

Yeah, and so, I'm just looking at the open letter, so yeah, Jen Hatmaker and Jonathan Merritt were the two,

I think. So, what we end up seeing is, I think that Dr.

Moeller should say, based on what he said on the briefing, if he's going to require politicians to answer questions directly about homosexuality,

I think then the Southern Baptist pastors and Bible teachers should have to answer clearly.

These questions that were asked were very clear, very direct, and he was saying that politicians should answer them directly.

Do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful? Do you believe that the practice of homosexual lifestyle is compatible with holy

Christian living? Do you believe same -sex attraction in and of itself is inherently sinful, unnatural, and a disordered desire that must be mortified?

Those three questions, I think every single Southern Baptist should be required to answer directly if Al Moeller is going to be the president of the

SPC, because he's requiring this of others. He's saying people can't get away with not answering.

You cannot refuse to answer. I mean, that's what he said. Listen, but he refused to answer one way or the other, and he's saying that's a bad thing.

Yeah, you can't. That's political. And that's political. This is not ministry we're talking about.

That's political. Correct, and so how much more, how much of a higher standard is it now?

We're talking about the SPC. I think it's a higher standard you have to answer if you're going to require it of politicians.

And when the people are trying to find a way out, and he's going to say, when it comes to the issue of trying to change language to make it more acceptable, this is what we see going on.

We see people that play games with words so that they can try to find a way out of not answering things they don't want to answer.

In the question with the school that he's referred to in that episode, he's talking about them changing language and saying, well, we want to change the language, but we're going to change the language, and we want to have it both ways.

We want to say that these words mean this, not what the culture says they mean.

Listen to what he says here. In worldview analysis, the biggest problem here is the assumption that you can accept language without accepting the new moral reality that the language brings, especially this kind of language.

Okay, we agree with that. Yeah. And, but, you know,

Beth Moore wants to say she's answering a question without actually answering the question, and Al Mueller doesn't want to call her out on this.

I mean, as someone who's a leader in the SPC, who's following all these things around the world, you think he's going to pay more attention to what's going on in the

SPC, and when you have one of the largest leaders, someone who has millions of followers, and, you know, is an

SPC person that's being named as president, you think he's going to pay attention to what's going on with her?

And I've never once, on all of the briefings that I've listened to, never once heard

Dr. Mueller say anything about Beth Moore. Like, ever.

Maybe it's because there's a cost if you answer or not answer, and he had something to say about that as well.

And we can see on so many of these issues where there are denominations and Christian institutions and schools and even school districts that are effectively on this moral challenge trying to have their cake and eat it too, or they're trying to avoid at all costs having to make a decision that will cost them one way or the other.

But the lesson for us all is that that cost is going to come inevitably. Is that cost going to come,

Dr. Mueller? Well, that cost is coming to you, maybe right now.

You're, this is the exact thing that we see. He is not trying to get an answer from her.

She's not being expected to answer. No one's, everyone's backing her in her non -answer.

He asks for clarity. Where is her clarity on answering these questions?

The, the attack was on the ladies who put this, who had the nerve to put this out there. Dr. Mueller, you must, you must respond, right?

I mean, you, you, we cannot allow this to go unnoticed that you, that Dr.

Mueller is willing to call out foreign politicians, but not people within his own denomination.

Exactly. No, there needs to be consistency. If we can do this in the context of a, of a heathen culture, expecting some kind of clarity that ought to rightfully be forthcoming, how much more should a man of his stature, of his platform, demand the same within his own denomination?

It's inexcusable. It needs to, it needs to happen. Because, let me play this again, because you just nailed it.

Who is he speaking to in this quote? Listen. And we can see on so many of these issues where there are denominations and Christian institutions and schools and even school districts.

Okay. So he's not speaking to Catholics, politicians, no, he's speaking to people in house.

So if you can criticize people outside the Catholics and say that,

Hey, that's going to apply to us. Well, it does apply to us. And when some ladies asked Beth Moore to answer directly, she never did.

And they were attacked. Dr. Moeller, if you're going to have some integrity, you have to stand up for these women that asked this open letter of Beth Moore.

And you must challenge Beth Moore to answer clearly.

She is, he's, she's within your denomination. He talks about the fact that you cannot choose the language and the meaning.

This is what Beth Moore is trying to do as well. He's referring to it with this, with this school that wants to use gender neutral language so that they can not get in trouble, but they want to define how they mean by that.

And he speaks against that. And at the end of the day, even as you might try to say, I'm going to accept the language, but I'm going to define the terms myself.

That's not going to work because the people who are determining the words that are mandated eventually will also determine the mandated meaning of those words.

And that's the thing, you know, we're going to get into that quote a lot more with the next week's topic.

But we, the thing that we see is that you cannot, you just cannot say that she gets to say, well,

I'm not going to answer. What we see here is this. What we're trying to say is that we see, we agree with Dr.

Mueller's position in what he said on the November 11th podcast.

He is 100 % right. We cannot refuse to answer.

We cannot let people who claim to be Christian when asked the question, is homosexuality a sin?

In this culture, it cannot be ignored. You cannot refuse to answer.

You cannot try to have it both ways. You can't have your cake and eat it too. That was what

Dr. Mueller was saying when it comes to Catholic politicians and Catholic schools.

How much more for Beth Moore? So my challenge, and if there's anyone listening, any of you who maybe know

Dr. Mueller, my challenge to you is for his integrity, for his integrity, he needs to get

Beth Moore to answer that question. He has. He's answered it outstandingly. A 10 second clip, 10 seconds is all it took.

Let me play this again because you can't get clearer than this. With the issue of answering those questions that were asked very directly of Beth Moore.

Okay. Do you believe homosexuality to be inherently sinful? Do you believe the practice of homosexual lifestyle is compatible with Holy Christian living?

Do you believe same sex attraction in and of itself is inherently sinful, unnatural, and a disordered desire that must be mortified?

And in 10 seconds, Al Mueller answers it this way. Not only homosexual behavior, but same sex sexual desire is unnatural.

It is objectively disordered. Thus, homosexuality is a sin. Okay. I mean, it almost sounds like he was answering these questions asked to Beth Moore.

It really does. I mean, the language is the same. Exactly. Natural, disordered.

Exactly. He's right. And like you said, this letter came out before the podcast, so it wasn't that the letter was written based on the podcast, but the fact is that he can answer this so clearly, so definitively in just 10 seconds.

Beth Moore has never done that. In fact, Beth Moore seems to have done the opposite. When she was clear about saying homosexuality was a sin in a book of hers, she edited that out.

Out. Right. That is not moving toward clarity. That's moving toward playing games with the language that he spoke about earlier in those clips.

No. And the title of the transcript that his broadcast had says, there is no refuge in ambiguity.

Christians must always be prepared to give an honest answer. And that's what was asked of Beth Moore.

And that's what she hasn't done. So if any of you know Dr. Mueller, I do.

I want to make it clear. It may come across or sound like I'm very much angry or upset with Dr.

Mueller. I don't know the man. He's a brilliant man and has been used greatly by God to train up many men.

And I think that what we see from Dr.

Mueller is he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Yeah.

And he says you can't do that. He says you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You can't have it both ways. Here, I'll play him in his own words. Notice the argument that you see in so many circles now in which people argue that the

Holy Spirit is moving in opposition to the revealed Word of God and Holy Scripture. Be ready to recognize and to oppose that argument whenever and wherever it is found and from whomever it shall come.

Understand that it is absolutely contradictory to claim that the Bible is the Holy Spirit inspired

Word of God and then to claim that the Holy Spirit is moving the church or moving individual believers in a way that is contrary to the

Word of God. This is an effort actually to nullify Scripture. It's an effort to try to transcend biblical authority and instead use the authority of experience that is claimed to be by the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit in opposition to the clear teachings of Scripture. Now, the reason I find that so interesting is that almost sounds verbatim what

Beth Moore's argument was. I mean, when she was challenged, you know, her argument was she's a

Christian, she's a Bible teacher, she's just preaching the Word of God. Very similar.

And, you know, Dr. Moeller, he understands we can't give in.

He said this on that show. But the point here for Christians, I hope, is very clear, and it comes down to this.

We do not exist as an island. We exist ourselves, our churches, our denominations, our schools.

But I hope the worldview point of all of this becomes clear for Christians. It is true that we ourselves, our churches, our schools, our denominations, our congregations, do not exist as islands any more than Saudi Arabia does.

But our response can't be the response of simply resigning ourselves or capitulating to the fact that we are just going to have to join the moral monoculture.

We can't do that. Okay, so we can't do that. Well, Beth Moore can't do it either. Is it going to be hard to remain biblical?

Well, let's ask Dr. Moeller. But all these stories taken together today demonstrate just how difficult, indeed, just how expensive remaining faithful to biblical

Christianity is going to be in our lifetimes. Expensive? What's the expense?

You see, I believe that there is some of that expense that maybe Dr. Moeller doesn't want to have

Beth Moore have to pay. Yeah, I think you're right.

There is definitely an expense, practically, in a fiduciary way, that permeates the

SBC with her, particularly Lifeway and the multitudes of followers that she has.

So can we go without answering? Why would we do this podcast episode?

Well, we do this because of Al Moeller's own warning. Beth Moore has not answered these direct questions.

She's tried to avoid it. She is fellowshipping and teaching alongside with people who openly promote homosexuality.

She's been very close in getting closer with people like Joyer Micah that we've dealt with on previous episodes here with the

Red Letter Christianity and her arguments there. She openly promotes homosexuality, and Beth Moore is having those relations.

Well, if she's going to have relations with people like Jen Hatmaker, with people like Joyer Micah, then

I think it's a fair thing to say, can she get away with it?

Can we not answer? Is it okay for Beth Moore not to answer

Al Moeller? Do you think it's okay? That should underline the predicament in which we now find ourselves and the challenge that we now face.

If we are not very careful, we will become just another part of the monoculture. If we are not careful, then we will find ourselves, morally and theologically, well, there it is, trying to have our cake and eat it too.

If we are not careful, we will find ourselves faced with a microphone and ask the question, for example, do you believe that homosexuality is a sin?

And then if we're not careful, and if we're not biblical, simply looking back and blinking and staring, saying nothing.

That, let's just say, is not a Christian option. Those are your words,

Dr. Moeller. That simply is not a Christian option.

You said that about a Catholic. How about Beth Moore? I think that Beth Moore needs to answer these questions.

And if Dr. Moeller is going to put this out to challenge all of us, that we can't not answer.

And he's a leader within the SVC. How much more should he be challenging

Beth Moore? If he's willing to challenge a foreign politician, he must be willing to challenge

Beth Moore. And if he is not, well, I mean, he did say that if there's anything in his life that comes up short, we should let him know.

This is what he said. We feel you've come short here. And so our challenge is for Al Moeller to challenge

Beth Moore to answer these questions clearly and directly like Dr.

Moeller did. Not a fun topic. No, not.

And, you know, not with the intention, as you pointed out at the opening. You know, this is not a discernment gotcha moment.

We want Moeller, Dr. Moeller, to do the right thing. And we don't want to have to wait until Beth Moore runs for city council when it might cross his political landscape for him to do with her what he is doing with a politician in Canada.

Theology is at stake. The faith is at stake. We're to contend for that. He should be expected to expect her to give a biblical response.

And I'll make it clear. You think that I'm wrong on this? You think that Dr. Moeller doesn't have to answer for this?

You could email me. If someone with Dr. Moeller, if you would like to speak to me about this, I would be happy to sit down and discuss this.

You let me know where you think I'm wrong. I'm fine with that. You can email me info at striving for eternity dot o r g info at striving fraternity dot o r g.

Be happy to talk to you. This isn't about trying to see who's right and wrong.

It's about trying to say, are we living what God wants us to do? You were very clear, Dr. Moeller, in the episode that you did.

You made it crystal clear. The only thing we're trying to do is hold him to his same standard.

That's all. Now, next week, what we're going to do is we're going to look into a different area where Dr.

Moeller, I think, has come up short. That is in the area of social justice.

We're going to look at some of the same things that he said on the same episode, but we want to take a look at them and compare them to basically what has been said or not said about social justice.

Again, if you're at G3, if you're listening to this and you're down at G3, please come and find us, check us out.

I know we didn't play any commercials or anything, but I'll just mention some things at the tail end of here as we close out.

We are going to be having the trip to Israel, so go to, if you want to join us, go to 2021israeltrip .com.

2021israeltrip .com. We will be still taking some folks. We have more than half of the bus filled, and once that is filled, we cut it off and that's the end of that.

You may want to get it in now. For folks to know, for the month of January, I was told that they are cutting the deposit that you put.

It was $500 a month, but for the month of January, it is only $300 a month.

You have until November to make your decision. If you choose not to go in November and you choose not to go on the trip, you get all but $125 back.

If money's tight after Christmas and you only have $300 to save your spot, maybe you might want to do that.

Some folks will say, but I'm not from New York area. That's where the plane is flying out of. Well, a lot of people are not flying out of that airport.

We have people coming from Canada. I think it was four or five different countries that are represented.

They're going to meet us in Tel Aviv and there's a cheaper price and you find your own way to Tel Aviv. I think it's over $1 ,000 less to find your own flights.

But you are coming to Florida to pick me up, right? Let me think about that.

No. I think you were coming to New York because you wanted to experience what cold weather was like.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. It's a brisk 53 right now. Yeah. Okay. Just stop.

But you can join Bud and I. We're going to be on that trip. I should also mention, look in the show notes.

I'll have a link for the Christian Podcast Communities contest that we're running. We're running that until the end of February.

So check that out. Ways to enter. A lot of ways to enter. I think 125 ways to enter.

So you can get a lot of entries in there. The more entries, the better chance of winning. Someone is going to be winning over $1 ,000 worth of books and DVDs, CDs, and different podcasters keep sending me stuff.

So we keep adding things in. Just added a new movie that I was given, Spirit and Truth.

So that got added in. And so I got some new books that were given to me.

Those got added in. So that keeps growing. So if you want to win that very large box, go to podcasts .strivingforeturning

.org slash contest, or just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org

and the link will pop up to go to the contest there. So check that out.

Make sure you enter a lot. You can enter every day, actually. So check that out. That would be appreciated if you just share that with your friends and get the word out and you get entered into the contest with a greater chance to win.

So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

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