Trail Talk: Repentance is Better Than Course Correction

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Jon shares a piercing insight from Rosaria Butterfield.

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Hey everyone, some trail talk today. I was taking a hike and I had a thought that came to mind
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I wanted to share, because it is a piercing observation. And there was an email that Rosaria Butterfield sent to me,
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I don't know, a week or two ago, and she made this statement and it stuck with me.
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She said, evangelical leaders think that course correction is a substitute for repentance.
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Course correction is a substitute for repentance. And it's piercing and profound because it's so true, and there's so many examples of this.
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One of the first examples that came to my mind are the folks at First Baptist Church of Naples who were accused a few years ago of harboring racial animosity against a pastoral candidate who happened to be black.
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When you looked into the story though, you found out there was actually really nothing to that charge.
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The charge was, if there was a charge, it was that they didn't want a woke pastor and they didn't want a pastor who would change certain things about the church, and they wanted a pastor who was qualified according to the church's
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Constitution. And the whole documentary was made about it, you can check it out.
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You could probably just go on YouTube and type in First Baptist Church Naples and it'll come right up. But that stood out to me because I was in the rooms with some of these people, seeing their tears, hearing their stories, and that kind of thing kind of sticks with you.
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And the thing that I find still shocking about that is the lack of apology.
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At the time, the who's who of Southern Baptist leadership came out to denounce these horrible, racist individuals in the
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Southern Baptist Convention. Where are their apologies? Where are their apologies?
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Even though the evidence has been provided, it's been out there for years. That's one example, but there are many of them, unfortunately.
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And I could probably make a much longer video and give you a number of other examples of this. One of them right now that I've seen is there's been a shift among some to try to to change their tune on things like preferred pronouns, the existence of homosexual orientation, reparative therapy.
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And instead of saying, I was wrong, or I'm sorry that I harbored views that were not in accordance with or orthodox theology, you have leaders coming out and making new statements that maybe conflict with previous statements, but they haven't actually admitted or retracted or just acknowledged that they did make these erroneous statements that led many into areas that they should not have been entered into.
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And so when I look at Scripture and I think about this issue, the first example that comes to my mind is
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King David. When he sinned, it wasn't enough for him to course -correct, right?
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To just say, well, you know, I'm not an adulterer anymore. I'm going to be faithful.
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And I believe in being faithful. I believe in staying with your wife and not wandering, not having a roving eye.
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So fidelity is important to me. He didn't do that. He didn't make a statement like that. He repented, right?
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Part of repentance is course -correction, but the initial step is you have to admit where you've been wrong.
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There has to be some humility there, or else it's not actually repentance. And that is an issue that I think is so characteristic of many of the leaders we have, and not just in evangelicalism.
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This is pervasive, right? You have a lot of people who went COVID crazy, and where are the acknowledgments of this?
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Where are the apologies for these kinds of things? And I'm talking about people in our government and in society in general.
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Now that evidence has come out about the shots and about the extent to which this virus was was deadly, and the extent to which masks either helped or didn't help, and I'm not going into all that right now.
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You know that there's been admissions even from left -leaning sources that some of the things they initially said weren't accurate, but they're not actually real admissions, because they're not going back and they're not correcting things.
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They're not admitting, I should say. They're not acknowledging, retracting, and then saying, we apologize to you.
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We're gonna do better now. I'm sorry. Forgive us. There's none of that. Even with the people who were...
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now it's proven that we're lying, who were trying to drag people into this totalitarian agenda.
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There's no consequences, right? So it's just something you kind of shrug and you move on.
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It's course correction, but it's not repentance. And we see this,
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I think, more broadly with just the woke social justice stuff in general, especially when it comes to the
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BLM CRT issue. There's a knee -jerk reaction.
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I just saw this actually online the other day. There's a knee -jerk reaction if someone is referred to as woke.
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I'm not woke. And then you can pull all the evidence. Here's all the things you did, but that's, you know, it's this moving target.
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And, you know, what seems to be happening in my mind is there's a slight course correction.
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It's not fully course correction. I think we're all a little woke now. That's just like everyone now. Even on the conservative side, there's this...
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and I can show you, you know, tons of evidence for this, but there's...
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what happened in 2020 affected us greatly. But there's a little bit of a kickback against it, like a pendulum swing where we want to distance ourselves from that because we realize, well, that wasn't good.
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All those businesses that were destroyed, that wasn't good. And so I'm not woke. I'm against that on some level, at least the crazy aspects of it.
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But there's no actual acknowledgement, retraction, repentance for the part that someone may have played in it.
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At least I see a little of it, and it's certainly not from the people that I focused on so much on this particular podcast.
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And so anyway, I just thought I would share that with you and encourage you. That's not Christian. That's not the way we're supposed to act.
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It's not enough, you know, for Peter to get up and say, I'm going to sit now with the
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Gentiles and not acknowledge that I was just giving cover for the
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Judaizer heresy, right, and Galatians. It wouldn't... that wouldn't have been enough. There has to be some kind of an acknowledgement that, you know,
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I was wrong to do what I did. I set a bad example. I was leading people in a bad direction. That hurt people.
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And here's the good news at the end of the day with this. This is what I genuinely don't understand.
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God is faithful. He forgives us. And I'm not saying sin's not a big deal.
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I don't want someone to take me out of context here. Sin is a big deal. But God justifies us.
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If we're Christians, we are justified. And so we shouldn't be getting all bent out of shape.
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We should actually expect to sin at times. We're going to. And then when we do, the appropriate response is to repent.
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If it's a public sin, you apologize publicly. If it's a sin that hurt people, you apologize to the people that you hurt.
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And so, you know, for me, because I think this is just ingrained, and it was ingrained since I was a young kid, it's not a big deal to get something wrong and then say, you know what?
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I was wrong. I'm going to humble myself. Please forgive me. Or at least I retract that. I acknowledge that I had poor judgment, even if it's not a sin, technically.
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And then you just move on because you're human. And if it's a sin, we have a sinful nature.
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And then you just praise God. You know, God, thank you for taking it. Thank you that Jesus Christ lived the perfect life.
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And I have his righteousness before you and not my own. And then you can rejoice. And it's an occasion for showing the love and the redemption of God.
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These evangelical leaders who just refuse to do this on a myriad of issues are failing to show case repentance.
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And in so doing, honestly, they're bringing shame, I think, to the name of Christ.
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They're denying a potential opportunity to share the good news of the gospel and to model humility for younger
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Christians who might be, I want to say less mature, but sometimes I think the leaders are less mature in some cases.
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It's just not good. It's not good. And that's just not Christian. And we need to get back to a very
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Christian way, I think, of approaching things, which means that we acknowledge our mistakes when they're pointed out.
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And, you know, we don't shrug them off, but we just say that I was wrong and God is right on this and this is what he says and now that's what
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I'm going to pursue. And here's the amazing thing about this.
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I really truly believe this. Not only are you forgiven, but I don't think anyone would think the less of you for it.
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I know I wouldn't. You know, I've said this before, but even some of the wokest guys that I've critiqued, if they came forward and just acknowledged all of it and truly repented of it and course corrected after doing that and showed people a pattern of repentance here that this isn't just some trick they're doing, they actually have a change of mind on this issue,
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I'd be the first to accept that, to, you know,
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I wouldn't maybe make them the leader because they'd have to build trust up again, but I would certainly include them and, you know,
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I would think of them as as brothers, even if they've gone into heresy and they've acknowledged that and they've truly repented,
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I would be the first one to welcome them and to say, hey, we're one. We're brothers and I'm gonna treat you as a brother.
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But I don't see it. I see so little of it. So little of it. And that is,
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I think, one of the biggest things that concerns me about the state of Christianity because it shows something under the hood.
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If you trace it and you peel all the onion layers back, you get to something that is extremely concerning and ugly and it's ultimately pride, but it's the kind of pride that can be used to justify about anything if you really want to.
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And it shows that we have a leadership at the higher levels. And so I would encourage you if, you know, you happen to be one of these pastors or leaders that did go down the wrong path on especially the issues that were so overt in 2020, then acknowledge it with your congregation.
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If you said things to your congregation, just acknowledge it. Just say, hey, I just want to let you know, I know this is two years ago, but I was wrong when
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I shut down the church for six months and precluded you from worshiping the
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Lord. If you really believe that you were wrong, don't just course -correct and say, well, next time we'll do better.
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Say, we were wrong. We were wrong for that. You know, I hope that makes sense to everyone and I hope it's encouraging to everyone and maybe inspire some of you to do that.
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I just, I don't want to lament it. I want to show the way out. But I was just walking on the trail and it came to my mind and I just thought, you know, this is something that I should share with y 'all.