A Whistleblowers Guide to the Galaxy

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris and my little cat,

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Josie, decided she wanted to join me. We have a little area set up next to my desk where she likes to sleep and stuff and she just kind of woke up.

00:15

All right, you're gonna go over there now? You wanna go outside the room? Well, I had to let Josie go and I know some of you, you,

00:22

I have to disappoint you, I'm sorry. I know you want Josie to have her own YouTube channel so you can watch Josie.

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She's got a lot of interesting things she does, by the way. It might even be more interesting than the Conversations That Matter podcast.

00:34

It might actually get more attention. There might be more subscribers, but it's not gonna happen. So you're just gonna have to satisfy yourself with the little mentions here and there or when she jumps up on my desk or something.

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But no more Josie. We're gonna talk about some serious things here today. Some things that I've been toying around with,

00:52

I've been thinking about. The Ravi Zacharias situation has been ongoing the last couple of years and the kind of the final, unfortunately after his death, the final kind of cherry on top was a few weeks ago and I just, with the report,

01:08

I forget how many pages, 20, 15 pages, something like that. I haven't read the whole thing. I know enough. A lot of people have said a lot about it and I just have thought, man,

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I don't have much to add to this. I've asked the patrons, do you want me to talk about this?

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I don't always ask for their opinion on things, but this is one thing that I had a question on. I don't know.

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Would it help? And I don't think I have a lot to add, I'll be honest with you. But I did,

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I thought it was a good setup for what we're gonna talk about, which is whistleblowing. It's not a biblical word, but it is a concept that, there's biblical principles that come to bear on this and so I wanna talk about those.

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But real quick, with the Ravi thing, I think I agree with James White's analysis. For those who care what

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I think about this, James White had said that Ravi, according to the report, I guess, had spent like months alone in Asia.

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He was traveling a lot without his wife, wasn't really a consistently part of a local congregation and there is no office for apologists.

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I've gotten a little taste of this where you sometimes are giving people, well,

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I will say it, yeah, giving advice to pastors or pastors looking to you for things. I think sometimes you can get the sense,

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I don't think I've ever actually gotten the sense, but I know, I can see where this would lead if someone was in this position and it happened more consistently.

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You can put yourself in this position where you're kind of almost above them. The pride comes in, look,

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I know something they don't know, I can help them on this. And for me personally,

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I just want everyone to know this, I'm aware of that, I know that pride can be a weakness.

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It's certainly something that I'm not immune to and there's always an open door with people who know me, who

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I go to church with, for even people I don't go to church with, but I can't always respond to everything because I get a lot of messages, but there is that open door.

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Patrons can get ahold of me through Patreon probably in the easiest fashion because I do put more priority responding to them.

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But you can contact me if you have a concern, you can contact me. And I'll hear it out,

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I'm not above anyone. I don't have an ecclesiastical position because of this podcast. And I don't know what

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Robbie thought about that, Robbie Zacharias, I don't know if he thought he was an apologist and this was some office that was,

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I don't know, on par with being a pastor or over being a pastor,

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I don't know, I don't know. I think he honestly fashioned himself as someone on the university campus. He was an academic, he was a philosopher, he wasn't necessarily in the ecclesiastical world, but that's where his money came from.

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So anyway, it's, all pastors should be apologists and all

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Christians should be apologists on a certain level because pastors are supposed to be able to refute those who contradict and everyone's supposed to be ready to give them an answer if you're a

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Christian. So, hi Josie, are you coming back in here? Howdy, we're talking about whistleblowing, you wanna join me?

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She's, it's a beautiful day, I think she wants to go outside or something. Anyway, I just,

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I think that Robbie put himself in a dangerous position where it sounds as like he just didn't have that accountability and there was room for pride to come in and pride is the root of, it's just like all other sins stem from a pride of some kind.

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And then he gets in these positions where his wife's not around and like most men, after especially months of being somewhere,

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I'm sure he's having thoughts, he probably shouldn't have, or he's at least having desires that are leading to thoughts he shouldn't have.

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And there you go, I mean, it creates the issue it creates. And so I don't pretend to be an expert on all of it, but there seems to be some circumstantial things that shows the way that he was living his life and just weren't the best, it wasn't the best kind of situation for him.

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And was he a Christian? People have asked me that, I don't know. I wasn't ever a big

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Robbie Zacharias fan. I know many of you are and that's fine that he helped you along in many of the questions that you probably had.

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I used to listen to him when I first started college a while ago and I honestly kind of like,

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I don't wanna say graduated, but I did not, I felt like he said the same things in different ways often.

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And so I feel like I got my sense of Robbie and then I was kind of like, okay, well, I've listened to six lectures or whatever

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I'm done, like I don't really, and I moved on to other things. So I was never attached to him in that way.

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So I didn't know him well enough to know whether, hey, were there like signs in his lectures that he was compromised?

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I don't know, probably not. I'm sure he was just giving lectures on basic things, but they were basic, just so you know,

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Robbie Zacharias was very basic. He was art, he kind of had an artistic bent to him, and the way he would present his arguments were so kind of like outside the box sometimes, like someone would ask him a question and he would be like, well, it reminds me of a story.

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And then by the end of it, he's answered the question. So I think that was what made him kind of popular in a way. He had a very, he could communicate with you kind of on an emotional level, but he wasn't, what he was saying weren't, they weren't like groundbreaking things.

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He wasn't, they weren't all that complex. He was a popular apologist in that sense.

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And honestly, someone who's a Mormon or a

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Jehovah's Witness or any member of a cult could probably articulate a lot of the things he said, probably in the same way.

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Now, he did share the gospel, as I understand it. I can't recall hearing him share it, but I'm sure he did.

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I mean, I know I heard him say things like, you need to have faith in Christ, just generic things like that.

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Did he ever really hit sin hard out of the park? You know, I mean, he talked about, you know, seeing things that were disturbed him, but did he really like go after his audience?

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It like, you know, like a Paul Washer or John MacArthur kind of way. Did he just spurge in, you know, you guys are depraved.

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You're going to hell without Christ. You need him. I don't think so. I don't know.

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Maybe he did, but I never heard that from him. I mean, he was more of a very gentle, articulate, soft, gracious sounding man.

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And I think that's what made him partially popular. So I don't have answers to a lot of the questions people have.

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I mean, I don't know if this analysis helps anyone, but I think if this, whether it's Robbie or anyone else, when someone falls, it's a devastating thing and it brings great dishonor on Christ when it's someone who claims to be a

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Christian. And in fact, Robbie, in his case, it wasn't just claiming it, but trying to forward the gospel in some way, being an,

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I mean, when you're an apologist, you're an evangelist, you're a philosopher, you're a theologian, you're all sorts of things. So very associated with the church.

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I think when he was at the, they introduced him when he was at Brigham Young University.

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I remember that as the kind of like the modern C .S. Lewis. So he had quite a stature.

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And when a person of that stature falls like that, it's just a devastating thing. But the thing

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I'm challenging everyone to think about is did you actually know him? And I understand you listen to him a lot, but did you know him?

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Did you know about him personally? Were you involved in his life? Well, no, for most people, you weren't.

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And so there's just a lot that can be hidden. There's a lot of deception that can go on when someone is in the limelight, but you only see what's meant for you to see in the limelight.

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And everything else behind the scenes is controlled, is kept secret. And so I'm not saying that to break all your faith in all

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Christian leaders or anything like that, but it just highlights the importance of a pastor that you know well, someone who's a shepherd in your life that you can see their life if it matches up.

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And there's no substitute for that in the internet land. I'm not a substitute for that. Robbie Zacharias isn't a substitute for that.

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So I still haven't arrived at the topic of discussion today. We're almost 10 minutes in. So the topic is whistleblowing.

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And in the Robbie Zacharias situation, I think just it creates a sort of a scenario that we can use as we approach this topic and talk about it more from,

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I'm looking at this more from a theological sense of protecting the gospel, but it also applies to an area like this where you have a man who's essentially, it seems like a predator of some kind.

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He's definitely got some issues and it's known. And then you're shamed though, if you're going to talk about it in some way.

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And I'm sure there's a lot of people in situations like this. And so I wanna give you some thoughts. I wanna, there's some organizations, there's actually multiple organizations.

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There's one particular I'm thinking about right now though, that there's some error at the organization, some very public error, a lot of it.

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And some of it's not as public, but the organization, it's a parachurch. And there's basically, there's an unspoken threat.

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Maybe it's spoken actually, mixture of unspoken and spoken threat, that if you share anything about it, that you're hurting the ministry, that you're letting everyone down, that you could lose your job.

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People feel this way. They've been, it's been insinuated if it hasn't been said. And the

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Southern Baptist Convention, by the way, is a lot like this. That's not the one I was thinking of, but the Southern Baptist Convention is a lot like this and in many quarters of it, not maybe everywhere, but in most,

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I think the major entities have a sense of this in some way. And there's just many parachurches like that.

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And it's sad to me, because I've talked to a number of people in this particular organization I'm thinking of right now, that are,

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I think they struggle with it. They see the error, but there's a sense in which, I think, they believe that there's an authority over them that they work for.

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And this authority is almost endowed with ecclesiastical power. That they're letting the whole church down almost.

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They're letting Christianity down. They're letting Christ down if they embarrass the organization by publicly talking about its shortfalls.

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Disclosing some of those. I don't think that's the way Jesus functioned. I don't think that's the way the apostles functioned.

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And it's kind of a sad thing to me to see what's happening in, broadly speaking, in evangelicalism.

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There's an institutional mentality there. And that's what I wanna talk about is sort of what prevents whistleblowing from happening.

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And if you're in one of these positions where your conscience, and I understand, some of these questions are hard, depending on where you are. Maybe you have a boss who's over you, and at least in a work sense, they might not be your pastor, but they're telling you they don't want you to disclose something that would take down the ministry or hurt the ministry.

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And I don't think that should ever be the intention. I think there's a lot of twisting going on when that fear keeps people back from telling the truth.

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The fear is like that they're somehow the enemy now. No, they're not. They're actually probably the institution's best friend if they're doing it from the right motive.

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I know I went through this with Southeastern when I decided to share my experience about Southeastern. I had to check some boxes in my mind.

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I had to ask myself, was it my responsibility? And I walked through in my mind what the scenario would be like if I was in the same position as someone attending campus to check it out to see if they wanted to go there.

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And I thought, they're not gonna get the right impression. They're gonna be wined and dined, and then they're gonna be smacked in the face with some social justice.

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And I didn't think it was right for that to happen. And I wanted the word to get out for people like that, like me, really out of love, in a sense, to know what they were getting into.

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So it was a risk to myself, in a way, and it's proved to have been a risk in some ways.

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But I wanted to help those people. So that was one thing. It was one area I felt I had a responsibility.

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I also felt like I had a responsibility to the institution to voice disagreement, which I did do.

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And when it came to public error, I felt comfortable being public about it. If it was in public, then you're posting something on a website or whatever, then

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I think it's perfectly fine to publicly oppose it. And certainly, we have examples of that in scripture.

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When it came to some of the private things, and I don't think I shared a lot of, I mean, I shared from my experience, but there were things

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I certainly held back. And I had to make choices about what was necessary for people to know what wasn't.

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Some things aren't. Some things don't help. Sometimes there's juicy things about a scenario that, hey, this would really paint someone in the bad light or something.

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But they're not, at the end of the day, they're just embarrassing things that wouldn't, they don't move the needle at all for whatever cause you're trying to further.

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They're not going to further warn anyone. They're not going to, sometimes those things can be just gossip.

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It can be just, you're trying to rip someone down just to rip them down to elevate yourself. And that's absolutely wrong.

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And scripture has a lot to say about gossip and what gossip is. And in my opinion, gossip is not sharing something about someone behind their back.

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That's not what gossip is. Gossip, in my opinion, there's actually, there's more than just in the word gossip.

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Because there's not like a biblical word meaning gossip. There's, you have different words. You have slander.

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You have, lying can be part of it. But in my opinion, gossip is the act of sharing damaging information about someone else for the purpose of elevating yourself.

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And it often includes lying. And that's forbidden. That's wrong. But I had to ask myself about that.

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Am I, is this gossip? And I came to the conclusion, no, this is not gossip. It's not lying.

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And it's not to elevate myself. Certainly, it was a big risk to myself. And it's killed any chance

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I had of ever being involved with the SBC, any of that. And I never had a plan of platforming any of my stuff after that.

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I just, I really just felt I had a responsibility to people to let them know, hey, this is what you're in for if you're gonna try to come here.

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This is, hey, laymen in the pews, you're not publicly, Southeastern isn't pumping out social justice to the pews.

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In fact, Akin likes to go around the president and he likes to talk to the pew sitters when he preaches at churches about how orthodox they are and stuff.

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But then you, when you're on campus, when you're a student, what you're funding, what your money's going to, some of it goes to like liberation theology, teachings that are consistent with critical race theory, that kind of thing.

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So I felt that there was, at the time, being in the SBC or just having come out of it,

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I felt a responsibility to those people. I mean, I go to church with people. Go to church, I remember a guy,

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I was a member of Southern Baptist Church. I was sitting next to this guy sometimes who was an elderly man. And just,

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I was thinking, man, this is what he's funding. He doesn't know what's going on on the campus, which he shouldn't, he shouldn't know.

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They're not advertising that, hey, we're going social justice. But I felt like those people needed to know.

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And so anyway, that's a roundabout way of kind of sharing how I thought through that whole process when

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I went ahead and I did some of that myself. I want to walk you through, though, biblically, some of the barriers,

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I think, to whistleblowing. I want to share with you what

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I think the Bible has to say and then contrast that with what many Christian institutions are saying and what assumptions are behind that.

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And I want this to help you guys. I want this to help people that might be in a similar situation. So anyway, there's a lot of wisdom that needs to be brought to bear on this.

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I don't have all the answers, but let me give you some general principles. Hopefully that should help.

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So first, the Ravi situation. We're going to use this sort of as a template.

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There were warnings going back, and I put some articles here from 2017, 2018.

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One from early 2018 is actually pulpit and pen. And I remember at the time, they were slandered.

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It's true. They were told that they were gossiping. They were slandering a good man, but they ended up being right.

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It wasn't the woke people. It wasn't the social justice crowd that was the first ones to really go after Ravi Zacharias and stuff.

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It was pulpit and pen. It was The Ordinary Times. It was this RaviWatch .com. There's on April, 2017,

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RaviWatch .com started a Twitter account and posted a lot of stuff through 2017, 2018.

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And you have, this was something that from Dr. Jordan Cooper. He said, those who spoke up about Ravi, apparently several in RZIM were labeled as unsupportive, divisive, and aiding satanic lies.

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And this was just for asking questions. This is a common tactic of abusive Christian leaders where questioning is at the very heart satanic.

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I've experienced this firsthand. May the Ravi situation not be forgotten. Okay, so what he's saying here is that the warning signs were there and they were.

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And yet this wasn't taken seriously. And those who would say anything were called all sorts of names.

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And this does happen. And we need to separate this from,

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I think, what the woke crowd would want to do with this. Here's some examples. I'm gonna point out some hypocrisy here.

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So Russell Moore had written this whole article about how basically he's the hero, I guess. He had told, he's not gonna have

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Ravi Zacharias speak at the MLK50 event. Well, great, Russell Moore. Thanks for telling everyone, right?

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He didn't tell everyone. Well, there wasn't anything brave about it. He just quietly didn't let

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Ravi come, okay. And then, you know, he even says in this, this

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Phillip Bethencourt, he shared this about Dr. Russell Moore. For the first time,

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Dr. Moore has publicly shared, publicly shared. This is the first time Moore has publicly shared how he canceled

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Ravi Zacharias from speaking at MLK50 after Laurie Ann Thompson's, I guess, credible story emerged.

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Really? So Dr. Moore is now brave enough to come out publicly, whereas he wasn't two years ago.

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I mean, this is self -indictment. I don't even know Phillip Bethencourt realizes what he's sharing here and how it paints

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Dr. Russell Moore, because it really does paint him bad. Like, you really, Dr. Moore, you had all these concerns and didn't say anything.

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You had a platform to do something about it. And you have the gall and the nerve to travel around the country and talk about the caring well in the church, sexual abuse in the church and how bad it is.

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And yet you didn't say anything about Ravi publicly when you could have. It's interesting, isn't it?

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So the other thing is, see the humor in this almost, it's just so ironic.

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Dr. Russell Moore prevents Ravi from coming to speak at MLK50. So woke preacher clips on Twitter had put this, if you're enraged about Ravi Zacharias, but make excuses for Martin Luther King Jr.,

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you've been colonized by the world of flesh and the devil. He uses the word colonized on purpose, I think, because that's the woke people love to use that term, colonized.

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You've been colonized by the white culture or something. He's saying, well, look, you can't even see the irony of this.

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You're saying that Ravi Zacharias is so bad, just beyond the pale, you can't have him speak at a conference to honor someone who did the same thing

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Ravi Zacharias was doing. Do you not see the irony? So Martin Luther King Jr.

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gets a pass and you have a whole conference in his honor and he must be quoted all the time. And yet the guy, he was also a sexual, at the very least, ran around on his wife, according to some of the

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CIA records, much worse, a predator. And that's okay,

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I guess, because he's woke or something. So I'm just pointing out, the woke crowd often has extreme hypocrisy on this stuff.

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Now, Rachel Denhollander said something that I thought was very revealing about this. She said, stop offering fixes and prevention when you have, and she's saying this,

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I should say, it's in a Twitter thread, there's more to it, I'm just reading a section. She's saying this to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries who have then asked her to come, to come help them clean up the mess, reform

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RZIM. Now, I agree with James White, there's no reforming this. But Rachel Denhollander thinks, well, we, or the

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RZIM thought they could bring in Rachel Denhollander and reform it somehow, I guess. So she says, stop offering fixes and prevention when you have spent no time learning from those who have sacrificed so much to be able to truly understand.

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So there's a group of people, these are the new priests, those who have sacrificed so much to truly understand abuse, its dynamics, prevention, and response from those who sounded the alarm years before your theories.

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Use your voice and platform to point to the work they have done, the price they paid, the cost of not listening or earlier.

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Point people to the wise counsel purchased at great cost. Wait to speak until you have faithfully spoken when it would cost.

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Here's the thing though, Rachel Denhollander goes around, she speaks at Caringwell conferences, and there's this idea that it's those who, there's the new priests, those who know so much, they've studied the dynamics of abuse.

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They're so informed on this, Rachel Denhollander being one of them. They have the right to speak about this.

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They're the ones that are enlightened and you who let this happen, you're the ignorant ones. Actually, let me offer an alternative to this.

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Scripture's clear on the sin that Robbie committed. Scripture's clear on what accountability should look like, which wasn't being followed.

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And I'm about to show you what scripture says about confronting sin and doing so publicly. We have a source of authority.

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It gives us guidelines for this kind of thing and it wasn't followed.

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And now the ministry doesn't need, excuse me, Rachel Denhollander, the ministry does not need to platform anyone.

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It doesn't need to point to anyone who's an expert on this. It needs to close down. It's Robbie Zacharias, International Ministries.

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Robbie Zacharias is done. Close the ministry down and give the assets to ministries who have been faithful.

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That's what it needs to do. It doesn't need to now, it doesn't need to be this hollowed out shell that serves as an endless example of how this ministry should have listened to the woke enlightened people who study abuse.

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No, we already have a word on abuse and it wasn't followed. That's the problem, it wasn't followed. Wasn't that we need more information and just all these nuanced insights or something.

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No, it's actually pretty simple stuff and it wasn't followed. So I think the social justice crowd wants to take advantage of this in a way, to point to their work as being so much better because they believe the victims.

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Rachel Denhollander posts stuff like that all the time. How much she believes the victims. I believe you without evidence even sometimes.

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And because she's enlightened, she studied the dynamics of this. I'm sure she does know a lot of things about, she's a lawyer, so she understands

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I'm sure some of the legalities and stuff of a lot of this stuff. But the things that are in question right now aren't things that are so nuanced no one can understand.

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They're things that are very clear in scripture. They didn't follow scripture, time to close shop. It's as simple as that.

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So that's my response to how the social justice crowd would want to react to this and how some of them are reacting. Now, here's what needs to happen first.

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This is, we're getting into the nitty gritty here. If you're in a situation where there's questions about the leader, about the direction of the organization, that kind of stuff, the first thing that needs to happen is you need to try to establish the truth.

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You may not know all the truth. Rarely do you ever know all the truth, but at least enough to know that some of the suspicions you have are confirmed.

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So number one, this is 1 Timothy 5, 19. Do not accept an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

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Now, Robbie wasn't an elder, but I think there's a general principle in scripture. You want to make sure there's a pattern there of some kind, that there's two or three witnesses coming forward saying, yeah, this is what he's doing.

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This is what he, his character, that kind of thing. 2 Corinthians 13, one. This is the third time that I am coming to you on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

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Every matter shall be confirmed. Deuteronomy 17, six. On the testimony of two or three witnesses, a man shall be put to death.

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This is civil law. But he shall not be executed on the testimony of a lone witness. Now, what I'm showing you is that this applies to civil law, but it also applies to ecclesiastical law in the church.

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You're not supposed to be entertaining an accusation, or I should say accepting an accusation.

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You can certainly do your investigation. That's with one, I think you can have a one witness saying something and then ask questions about it.

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Obviously. Otherwise, you couldn't, you know, if someone comes to you and they're like, hey, so -and -so did this.

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He's like, well, I can't listen to you unless you get a friend to come and tell me. No, it just means you hear it, but you're not gonna accept it as truth without another line of authentication.

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And Ravi had multiple lines of authentication. In 2017, there were multiple lines of authentication.

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There were text messages. Ravi was a witness himself in a way, because he had his text. He wouldn't deny what was going on.

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So you can certainly ask questions and then people can even incriminate themselves in that kind of a thing. So I'm not saying not to ever investigate, but I'm saying you don't just, if one person just makes an accusation, there's no other way to authenticate it.

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And the pastor is saying that didn't happen. You can't, you know, or someone else, not just a pastor, but you can't authenticate it.

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You can't say, well, that must be true just because so -and -so said it. So don't accept the witness.

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Now, so you need to establish the truth here and you should have at least a high bar enough that you're not just accepting hearsay.

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So if you heard someone say something, that they're a witness and you're a witness, you heard it.

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So right there, you know, if you're a witness to something yourself, then you can accept it as true because you're part of it.

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And so what I'm trying to say is if you're a witness in an organization that has a problem, theological or whatever, then you can go ahead to the next step.

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But if you don't even know the truth, if you're in an organization and you just hear rumors about something, then, and you can't confirm any of it, then don't go spreading that around, essentially is what

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I'm saying. Or don't take, don't accept it. Don't accept it as this is necessarily the truth.

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So 11th Commandment rules, that I call the 11th Commandment in the SBC, and it applies across the board, I'm finding on evangelicalism is, you, in the

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SBC, it's you shouldn't say anything bad about a Southern Baptist. But it's really like, if you work at a big university, you shouldn't say anything bad about someone at the university.

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You shouldn't say anything bad about someone in whatever club you're part of. Here's four things that fall under this heading of the 11th

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Commandment. Number one, don't personally confront public error. That's self -preservation.

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Don't go up to someone and confront it personally. Number two, don't publicly correct error. So publicly,

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I should emphasize that, don't publicly correct error. So don't personally confront public error, don't publicly correct error.

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So that's institutional preservation. You might hurt the institution, you might hurt our witness or whatever.

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Don't publicly correct error by name. So if you fail one or two, don't go to three, don't name names.

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Vaguely, I mean, this is what J .D. Greer did last week. He's gonna talk about all those evil racists in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, but no one knows exactly what he's talking about. I mean, we do know, he's suggesting it, but no one knows specifically what names are they.

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Well, that's because you're not supposed to do it by name. That's an institutional preservation kind of thing.

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And then always trust the leaders, another institutional preservation rule. So just, whether they're pastors or not, they might not have any authority over you other than maybe you get a paycheck from them or maybe you don't even have that.

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You're just part of the same club. More often than not, that's the institutional tendency. They don't control you, you're not over them.

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They're not over you, and they're not your pastor. They're not over you in that sense. So there's no work -related or ecclesiastical -related authority.

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They're not a part of the government, but you're part of the same club. So it could hurt you to damage that relationship. You gotta think about the relationships in the institution you're part of and how to get along with people and stuff.

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And that's part of what we're facing now, is that tendency. So let's go over these rules, unspoken rules, one by one, because I think they serve as the main barriers that prevent people from exposing deeds of darkness, as Paul would say.

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Number one, don't personally confront public error. Well, Matthew 18 basically says to personally confront.

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If your brother sins, go and show him his fault. If he listens, you've won your brother. If not, two or three witnesses so that it can be confirmed.

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If he doesn't listen to them, take it to the church. If he doesn't listen to them, then he's a Gentile and tax gatherer.

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And that's the progression from private to public. Sometimes this is used, though, to prevent whistleblowing encounters from happening, because it's like, well, have you publicly, you know, this is a public error.

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You should never respond or have an opinion about it that's negative if you haven't gone to that person first.

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And actually, most translations translate, Matthew 18, 15, as if your brother sins against you.

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So the nature of it is a personal sin against you, an offense, and that's when you go and you show him his fault in private.

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There's nothing in this to prevent, you know, you from calling the police when nine, you know, burglars in your house claims to be a

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Christian. I guess, you know, I guess I gotta privately confront them. You know, your daughter or your son sinned.

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Well, they claim to be Christians. I guess I gotta, you know, I can't, I gotta go through this whole process before I can implement the rod of discipline.

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I don't know. It's not, it's not talking about things that are, you know, Paul even,

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Paul would be breaking Matthew 18 on certain occasions, and so would

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Jesus, I guess, when he's talking about certain people that, you know,

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Pharisees, for instance, or, you know, Paul talking about false teachers or on hearsay, things that he hears about what's going on in a church.

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He writes a letter and names the names, et cetera. You know, were they violating this?

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No. Number one, it's if your brother sins. So it's not, it's not someone who's not a

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Christian. So it's applying to Christians in an ecclesiastical context. And number two, this is for restoration to the body of Christ.

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It's when there's a damage from the fellowship and the fellowship needs to be restored.

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So that's the whole context here. It doesn't mean you can't publicly correct public error without going through this process.

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You can, but this is, you know, at the base level, there's a, there is confrontation going here.

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And the reason I brought up this passage just to share that whatever the circumstances, even if it's the most minor thing, and you're just saying it bothers you, this is a sin, and that you have the green light to confront it.

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So don't think you don't have that. You can't confront public error. You're not, you know, because you're a low man on a totem pole or whatever the case may be, you just can't confront it.

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Yes, you can. If you have access to that person, you can confront it. So, and this is, again, this is in a church setting.

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Most parachurch organizations though, I mean, you are dealing with a brother or sister on some level. So you try to follow this to the best of your ability.

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Rule two is don't publicly confront error, correct error.

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So, all right, okay. So you're gonna confront, all right, whatever. But just, you know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna, let's not even use the word confront.

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If you're gonna express your disagreement to someone, right, because confrontation's bad, you shouldn't do that. But don't disagree with them publicly.

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Do it in private. Well, Galatians 2, 11 through 13 says, but when Cephas came to Antioch, this is

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Paul talking, I posed him to his face. Why? Because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of the certain men from James, he used to eat with the

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Gentiles, but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

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And the rest of the Jews joined him. Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. So Paul was doing this and it was having an effect.

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He was a role model for others who were following his example and it was a perversion of the gospel if you read

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Galatians 2, adding to the gospel, adding works to it, adding circumcision to it. So Paul publicly confronts

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Peter, who's an apostle. Didn't matter how big of a platform he had and the authority he had, he needed to be confronted about this.

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And the reason cited is, look at the damage he's doing. People needed to see that there was an opposition that was public and this is what we're lacking right now, guys.

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I'll tell you, I've had a number of people high up, even in SPC settings, say, yeah,

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I disagree with this. I think it's horrible. Even Al Mohler's doing it, the Southern Baptist Convention. I think it's horrible what's happening in Southeastern, what

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Danny Akin's doing. And will they come out though and publicly, like Paul, oppose the person to their face?

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Will they say that they've done it publicly? No, doesn't really happen much, hardly at all. Russell Fuller was one of the few people that I've seen actually do this.

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And so that's an example we have in scripture. There are circumstances to publicly correct error and one of them is when it's having, it's actually for the love of people like Barnabas, for the love of others.

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It's having an effect on them. Because you love them, you gotta expose it. Rule three, don't publicly correct error by name.

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Okay, so you're gonna correct the error, but okay, let's not even say correct or confront, because confrontation's not good.

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We'll say that you're going to express a disagreement. Well, if you're gonna say something publicly, you better not say the name because that'll just hurt our institution.

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So you do it like J .D. Greer did last week and you talk about these racists and no one knows who they are, these nameless, faithless racists who are apparently everywhere in the

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SPC. How about what a numerous scriptures say about this? Philippians 4 .2,

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I urge Jodea and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Wow, naming their name publicly and even thousands of years later, reading their names.

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It is actually reported that there is more immorality among you and immorality of such as does not exist even among the

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Gentiles as someone has his father's wife. I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of their flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of Lord Jesus.

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1 Corinthians 5, 1 and 5. Paul is talking about someone they would have known about.

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You think the people in Corinth are like, yeah, we know the guy who's doing that. So again, that's a public embarrassment right there.

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2 Timothy 1 .15, you know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including

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Phagellus, I hope I'm getting this right, and Hermogenes. And again, naming names.

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2 Timothy 4 .10, for Demas, having loved this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Cretans has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.

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We know that also Paul called out Alexander the coppersmith. So there's a lot of examples of this. It's just a little sample.

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Jesus did some of the same things. He publicly opposed the Pharisees to their face. So it is perfectly fine if people know who you're talking about.

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In fact, they should know who you're talking about because otherwise it's just confusing. They should at least, I mean, either you give a category for exactly what you mean or you say, this is the person, this is the sin, this is where it's located from, you got to deal with it.

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Rule four, always trust leaders. Well, tell that to Jesus. He was saying, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like personal greetings in the marketplace and seats of honor in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets who devour widows' houses and for appearance sake offer long prayers.

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These will receive all the more condemnation. Hmm, got some ecclesiastical leaders there and look what

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Jesus did. Acts 17 .10, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea.

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He arrived, he went to the synagogue and they were noble minded and they received the word with great eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

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So they applied, they put Paul to the test. Is Paul really giving us the truth? They questioned him.

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They didn't just trust him, they confirmed it. Titus 1 .9, holding firmly the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.

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Who are those who contradict it? False teachers, he's talking about elders. Elders, pastors, they need to be able to refute those who contradict. You can't always trust someone who's a leader whether it's the church or somewhere else.

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You can't just trust someone because they're a leader. Hopefully there's some trust there but trust is earned over time in relationship in seeing the effect of trusting and how it's worked out in the past, et cetera.

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So anyway, those four rules don't work.

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Now here's those four barriers. Now here's something that this is sort of a grid that I have that I put things through.

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You have questions to ask before sharing information about someone else. This applies way beyond just whistleblowing. First of all, is it any of your business, right?

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You go into a quarrel that's not your business and that's gonna be a lot of grief for you.

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And sometimes the grief is worth it but are you willing to make this your business? Is it within your purview?

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Do you have a responsibility here? And if the answer is no, then don't say anything and pray to God about it.

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Perhaps you can share it with someone close to you but that's it. And even then, and that's like a husband or wife,

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I guess, but even then, you should be careful to protect this person from information that they cannot handle.

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So if it's your husband or wife, you may not even wanna share it with them. So don't, I have a warning here though.

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Be very careful you do not simply shirk the responsibility to avoid inconveniencing yourself. This is just as bad as gossip because it flows from the same selfish root motivation.

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So you're just saying, well, that's not my business. Head in the sand ostrich. Well, that's really bad. There was a video recently in New York City.

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I think it was like a rape or something, but people just walking down the street, not doing anything, not intervening, not their business.

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Really? You're right there. You can do something about it. So I'm thinking more of an,

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I'll give you an example. Like, I don't know. They're not your kids and someone else is, they're not abusing them to the point where you need to call the law enforcement, but they're letting their kids watch movies you wouldn't allow your kids to watch or something like that.

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Well, it's not really your business. They're not your kids, right? If you're babysitting them, then maybe you don't need, you know, they're at your house and they don't have to watch those things, but you have to figure out, is it my business?

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And if you're part of an organization that is compromising, it's your business. You're part of the organization. On some level, it's your business.

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If it's a leader who's compromised in your organization and his decision is affecting others in your organization,

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I can't see how that wouldn't be your business in some way. If it's,

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I mean, some organizations are so big you lose the human scale element and then it's, you know, it's hard to know what's your business and what's not.

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You know, there's a different department and you're in a university. Is that department, what they're doing, your business?

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Well, it could be. It might not be. It may be that one department's completely compromised and your department's not and, but you know, at the very least, if you care about people, you probably should say something.

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You probably should at least, at the very least, privately go and see if you can confront it. So that's the first question.

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Is it your business? Second question, yes, it is your business because it directly affects something you're responsible for.

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This rule takes some wisdom to apply, but most of the time it's obvious as to whether it affects you.

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For instance, if you're trying to protect someone else you are connected to, you have a responsibility. So this comes from, you know, your friends, family, coworkers, your country, your church.

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I mean, if it's affecting those things, it can become your business and you have the power to do something about it, then you should do something about it.

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Assessing, now, of course, we all have limited time. There's only 24 hours in a day as well. So you have to take that into account as well.

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But don't use that as an excuse. If you really, it's on your mind, it's on your conscience. Don't use it as an excuse.

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So assessing responsibility. Here's some of my thoughts on this. In every institution, there are levels of hierarchy that God has established.

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We must be very careful to leave the things we're not responsible for in his hand. And as a general rule, we have the responsibility to confront a brother in sin.

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There are other times that we must notify a spiritual authority. When it comes to those who are dangerous, especially heretics, we must warn those who have the potential to harm.

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And there's a number of passages on this, guys. This is a whole different ballgame. When it is false teaching, you need to sound that alarm bell.

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And that's what I'm seeing in a lot of Christian institutions and they're not willing to sound the alarm bell. That is very concerning.

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This could be something as small as they're looking to sell you something that's, and that's why they're friendly to they're spreading heresy or planning on killing someone.

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Sometimes you may also need to warn people about slander against yourself. Jesus had to do this in Matthew 5, 17.

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It is right to protect your own reputation or the reputation of those you love. When in doubt, talk to someone who's godly and who can offer counsel.

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And there's a number of scriptural passages referenced there for you guys to check out to see this is all backed up, what

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I'm saying. So the question is, what's your motivation in sharing this information? This is another thing.

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And then look, sometimes this can immobilize you. Don't let it immobilize you. If it's the right thing to share the information, share the information.

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But if you're trying to avoid gossip, if that's a concern that you just don't wanna gossip, then examine your heart.

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If you have a pure heart and you want to warn someone else about something or warn someone themselves about their own personal sin, then go for it.

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But if you know your heart is wickedly trying to elevate yourself and put them down, then consider whether you should share the information.

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A general rule is this. If you are concerned that what you say might get back to them, don't repeat it.

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So we are excluding situations in which the person will physically harm you or if he or she knew you told the truth about them or wartime situations having to do with espionage.

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I realize this doesn't encapsulate everything, but in general, in daily life, these are some wise principles,

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I think, to help guide you through this. And then last but not least, some final thoughts on motive.

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Bible has something to say about fearing men. John 12, 43, for they love the approval of men rather than the approval of God.

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Talking about the Pharisees. Galatians 1, 10, for I am, am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am

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I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. So this is where I think a lot of the root of this is.

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This hesitancy to share. It is a fear of men. It is a fear of damaging an institution you're part of, which inevitably leads back to damaging you.

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It is self -preservation. It is weakness in many cases. I understand sometimes there's questions about whether it's your business.

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I understand sometimes there's questions about private things and whether or not you have the authority to publicly share those things.

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You need to confront things, so especially if it's the perversion of the gospel, you have to confront that directly.

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It's not a matter of even, oh, we just have a disagreement that we can navigate. If it's perverting the gospel, then that's not a disagreement you can navigate.

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That's a one -way conversation in the sense that you're confronting. Hopefully people understand that's what confrontation is.

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It's not a dialogue of, I mean, it could end up being a dialogue or lead to a dialogue when you confront something and then the person wants to have an explanation or discuss it with you, but initial confrontation is this is wrong.

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You're doing it. It's wrong. Stop. Or step down or whatever. So there needs to be when it's perverting the gospel, when it's perverting the truth of Christianity and you're in a parachurch organization, confront it.

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Second, if it's something that is going to harm someone physically or otherwise, emotionally, whatever, if it's really causing damage, you need to think through loving those people as well, not just loving yourself, but loving those people who might not have the discernment you have, might not be as strong as you are.

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How are you going to help them? So bringing it back to the Ravi Zacharias situation, there was a whole bunch of selfish people, it sounds like at RZIM, who knew about this.

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I'm not saying everyone working there, I don't know, but there was enough that knew about it that didn't do anything. Why didn't they do anything?

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Why even now aren't they just going to close the ministry down and why are they trying to recover this thing? Last I heard at least.

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I don't know. But these are my guideposts when I think about whistleblowing and I think if you're an organization that's compromising, you need to confront it.

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I don't care how you confront it. Start off private, fine, but if you're seeing it's having public damage, if you're

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Paul looking at Peter and Barnabas is following his example, you gotta go for it. You gotta publicly whistleblow on this stuff and it's not a matter of embarrassing them, it's a matter of loving those who they're abusing.

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So establish the truth and confront the sin and that's my challenge. That's my challenge to people to have a spine and really, let me say one last thing.

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This is I think really important for those who are in parachurch ministries where you have donors backing you.

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The parachurch ministry answers to who? The church. Parachurch answers to the church.

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There are people in the church who are backing the ministry, right? The parachurch. There are people in the church who are donating to whatever this organization is.

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They're the bosses or at least they're the ones that the accountability lies with them.

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The donors need to know what they're funding, guys. And when you work for an organization and you have people over you who are compromised on basic truth, gospel even, categories, and they're promoting this stuff, people are buying into it, it is evil, it's wrong and they're not taking you seriously and you've tried to confront it from the inside, let's say, and you're getting the runaround.

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I can't see how it's not your responsibility to go public. The donors need to know about this. Those people in the organization, yeah, there might be some kind of a hierarchy in that organization, but they're not pastors.

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Are they your bosses? Well, if you're being funded by, if you're directly getting funds from donors, if you're a missionary or something like that, they're the primary ones you should be answering to.

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They're the ones that are putting you in that position to do that work. Think about them, add them to the equation, please.

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Add all of those to the equation who are being affected by this quote unquote ministry. I just challenge you with that.

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Stop thinking about the relationship just between you and whoever's over you, who's a supervisor, and they're gonna get you in trouble or you'll get them in trouble if you say anything.

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Once you're down that path and there's intimidation going on, unspoken or spoken, then the organization's gonna be done because there's no mechanism by which to self -correct.

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The only way to correct something like that that I know of in an organization is the pressure has to come from the outside.

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And sometimes, unfortunately, with selfish people that get into these positions, the only thing I understand is money. So that's just some practical, hopefully, wisdom there.

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I have a little bit of experience with that in the SBC, seeing kind of that dynamic play out and how it works.

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I wanna remind everyone too, Bobby Lopez, who was fired from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, also put out a resolution a few years ago for the

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Southern Baptist Convention on whistleblowing. It was not accepted and it should have been, or at least something equivalent.

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It's been a problem for a while, guys. And I would just encourage you, trust in God for your future.

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Trust in God that he'll provide for you if you do the right thing. And I look forward to some people coming out and sounding the alarm on some of these things.

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And yeah, I just wanna encourage you guys. I wanna encourage you. Ultimately, we play for the court of heaven.

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We're not playing for the court of men. And I wanna leave you with that. So God bless. Until next time, have a good day.