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Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. This is gonna be a short podcast. I wanna remind everyone before I get started on it that today is pretty much, this is the day before Juan Riesco is coming, paint the wall black.
We're screening it, he's gonna speak. I'll be there, Liberty University, tomorrow night, 7 p .m. Link is in the info section if you wanna sign up for that. Hopefully there's some seats still available.
But if you know anyone at Liberty, send this to them. It is tomorrow night at seven. Then there's some snacks or I don't know, dessert, something will be provided, I know that. And it's gonna be good, I'm looking forward to it.
So the topic at hand, it'll be really short because it's just one clip, but Woke Preacher Clips tagged me in this and I missed it for some reason until someone sent it to me. So they tagged me in this.
This is from February, is it February 3rd or March 3rd? I put, it must be February 3rd, right? That can't be though, I thought it was March 3rd. I'm gonna have to go back and look. It is February 3rd, okay.
So it's from a February, this is an older, older in this, it's maybe not that old, it's from this year. But this is a chapel message that Matt Hall, who's the provost at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, flagship seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention where Al Mohler's the president, is the provost.
That's his role there. Big role, I mean, he's kind of the one, the logical one to take over if Al Mohler leaves. And so this, so basically Woke Preacher Clips on Facebook tagged me and insinuated I was one of the ones he was talking about.
And I watched this and I thought, you know, I think he is one of the ones I'm talking about. And I don't know for sure, there's certainly more than just me, but someone sent this to me as well and said, you know, John, I think he's talking about you here.
And this is, I wouldn't normally do this. In fact, this happened another time that was more obvious and I didn't even talk about it because it was just, it didn't serve any purpose really. But this one kind of serves a purpose because it's illustrative of something.
This is the way, and I don't know, put comment in the info section if you think you know what this is. I'm gonna try to describe it for you because it's beyond the quote unquote 11th commandment. Thou shall not speak evil of another Southern Baptist or another evangelical.
This is, it's beyond that. There's this, there's this kind of like unspoken set of rules and that have to do with the way that you talk about others with which you have a disagreement about. And basically it's you beat around the bush verbally, but you try to communicate emotionally to your audience exactly what you're saying and exactly who the bad guys are and lead them down the garden path to having the same, to thinking the same thing that you think without having to draw a lot of specifics, without having to get specific, without having to name names especially.
I don't know what that is, but it is so characteristic of Southern Baptists in elite positions. And it's not just Southern Baptists. I've realized this is greater evangelicalism has this problem. And I've started to wonder, like, is this even an evangelical thing?
Like, where did this come from? Like, this has to be more than just evangelical. Like, where is this? Because like, I mean, I've been at secular academic settings, I don't really remember this. You know, maybe it is there and I just was oblivious because I wasn't paying attention.
I mean, obviously politically speaking, people name names all the time and, you know, rake each other over coal sometimes. But if you have a position at a big evangelical institution, generally, you're not gonna be naming names much.
But you will still talk about people. It's kind of, I don't even know what word to use. I don't even know how to describe this. It's just so outside of my wheelhouse because I'm just pretty direct. It's like, you know, hey, that person said this and I disagree and here's why I disagree.
Point A, B, C, D. But, you know, this whole, like, let's tar and feather someone because of something they said, you know, when they were kids or something they believe in this other area and we're gonna bring that in and then we're not even gonna say their name.
But we'll describe so many things about them so people know exactly who we're talking about and we'll kind of, like, do this whole, like, this dance. Like, I don't get those things. I don't understand them.
I don't understand the lack of being direct because I'm just very direct. Like, here's what you said, here's where I disagree. So someone might have to help me with this. But, so I can describe it but I can't quite, maybe if I thought about it long enough I could explain it.
But Matt Hall exemplifies it here. Whatever it is that I'm referring to, Matt Hall exemplifies it. And we're gonna watch this. It is from a chapel, like I said, from February 3rd. It was interesting, in the intro to this chapel, I'll say this before I play it.
Al Mohler introduces Matt Hall and says all these glowing things about him. And one of the things he says, well, he's an elder and he sort of catches himself. He's like, well, he's been involved at his church.
That's what it looked like, at least. Because my understanding is that Matt Hall is actually not an elder. And I've made this point before. He's not an elder at a church, from my understanding, right now.
But he's teaching people how to be good elders. It doesn't seem to add up to me. That's one of the, I'm just saying that because I noticed Al Mohler kind of seeming like he's catching himself at the beginning of the intro of this video.
But the video itself, when it started, is on, it's a sermon on Genesis, the end of Genesis, where it's Joseph forgiving his brothers. I think, what is that, 50? Here's what he has to say, though, in the midst of that, in the story about Joseph's forgiveness and Jesus says to forgive.
And then Matt Hall launches into this, if you listen to it, it's kind of like, where did that come from?
Here we go. Oh, but if you have experienced the pain that Joseph has experienced, you know that the reality of this world is there are many who will do you wrong with evil intent. Indeed, there are some who will plan evil for you, against you.
I wish I could tell you that the sharp knives of evil plots and conspiracies were limited to the realm of politics. I wish I could tell you that they were only known in the halls and the corridors of corporate offices.
But far too often, they even show up in church life.
So he's saying there's these conspiracies just like Joseph's brothers. That's what it's like. They sold him into slavery, I guess. It was pretty drastic. And that's happening in the church, that they're acting like Joseph's brothers.
Well, what's he talking about?
Who's doing that? There are some people who will despise you, who will try to pull themselves up by pulling you down. It may be motivated by resentment. It may be motivated by envy. It may just be unmitigated and unexplainable hatred, but it's evil and God sees it.
And he's right about that. I mean, does anyone disagree with that? That there's people who do that in your job? And yeah, of course, obviously that's true.
So let's keep going here. You will be slandered and accused, sometimes even by those who profane the name of Christ in their sin to try to legitimize their attacks. You will be betrayed and hurt by those that you had trusted to have your back.
Folks will lie about you and then lie to you. God is not blind to that suffering and he himself will surely judge righteously.
I think the reason that some people thought, okay, Matt Hall has sort of taken a turn to talk about himself is because of how specific he gets here and all these different scenarios he's talking about and his expressions seem to indicate, okay, he's talking about things he's lived through with experience.
He's talking from experience right now. He's not talking about the text itself. This is experience he's had.
Our God is a God of justice. Odetta had it right all those years ago when she sang, you can run on for a long time, but sooner or later, God's gonna cut you down. But you and I can leave that judgment to God.
So I have to ask the question here. I mean, does this apply to all the Christians who have been slandered, nameless, faceless, well, some of them aren't nameless and faceless. Some of them are from history, actually.
I mean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary does this a lot with the founders of their seminary and wants to use them as the whipping post for all kinds of things. It constantly comes up. And now, because they're not here to defend themselves or why they made the decisions they did at the times in which they lived or anything like that.
So they will mention, I should retract what I said earlier, they will name names when it comes to people who are dead. Or Paige Patterson, he's an okay name, I think, to name. But in general, they don't do that to people who are living and can defend themselves and that kind of thing.
But when you promote things, like when Matt Hall has said, he's gonna peel back and show everyone what they thought was this tradition in their heathens, their family, in their church, this tradition of faithfulness.
He's gonna show them the rotting corpse of white supremacy. And that's actually what characterizes their families and their traditions. I mean, is that an example of slandering someone? Or does that just not count?
I mean, is God gonna judge that too? Things that Matt Hall has said that he has not apologized for, that he has not retracted. He's only given these vague statements of I don't agree with critical race theory.
And because it's atheistic or materialistic or naturalistic or something like that, which has nothing to do with the ethics that he's imported and preached in churches and at Southeastern, or sorry, Southern for many years.
I mean, that God's gonna judge that too. And I just, I have to just remind people who are watching this, Matt Hall's not, his hands aren't clean in this. But he's, anyway, he's, as a general principle, what he's saying is very true.
God is gonna bring every act into judgment whether good or evil. Says that in Ecclesiastes. And it's true that there are people that will cut other people down for the sake of their own self-promotion.
Now, again, we don't exactly know who he's talking about, but we know what he's talking about from some kind of experience. That's what it sounds like, at least.
Let's keep going. You and I, brother or sister, you and I are called to mercy. God's people need to be reminded of this truth in every generation. Maybe we need it particularly at this present moment in American Christianity.
There are those on the This particular moment. Now, why? Because there are those on the political Political right and the political left who want you to believe that this world is all that there is.
And unfortunately And it's so vague. People, I mean, there's secularists, right? There are people who believe that. And they do exist. I mean, the political right's pretty big. The political left's pretty big.
But the fundamental philosophies of the right and the left only one of them is built for a more utopian here on earth. Let's create something that is not actually possible to create because of sin. That would be the left.
And then the right traditionally has been, they actually believe in some sense of divine rewards and punishments. And there is no utopia. That's kind of the fundamental, actually underpinning of conservative philosophy.
There actually is no utopia. So we shouldn't try to achieve that. We shouldn't try to achieve equality. There's such thing as hierarchy. It's actually inevitable. And what we need to do is, given what we know about human nature and its sinfulness, how do we create a system which reduces the impact of that sin?
And the separation of power is part of that. Free market's part of that. This is the kind of thing that conservatism is about. And I hear this, I heard this at Southeastern too. I remember Bruce Ashford preached a sermon like this.
The right and left, like kind of almost like they're equally, no, you look at their philosophy. The philosophies underpinning them are actually very different. And so, no, I disagree with Matt Hull here.
But how does he, he's putting himself and the people in the room. We're in the center here. We're not in the political right.
We're not in the political left. It's this third way thing. There are even those within Christianity who would appeal to your basest instincts, to your outrage and your fear, calling you to rage against your neighbor, to take justice in your own hands, to execute vengeance where you've been wronged, and to place your hope in endless culture wars and skirmishes.
Now remember, he's saying the right and left. So culture wars, endless culture wars, like that's somehow wrong. Let's pour water on that. Man, it almost sounds like it's this pietism that, well, it's more holy to just not get your hands dirty and get involved in those things.
Of course you can get too angry and stuff, but there are things to legitimately be, having a righteous indignation about, and to work towards, abortion obviously being the top of that list, to work towards ending, to work towards reducing, curbing.
There's nothing wrong with that. And people who talk about those things, who have legitimate concerns are totally within the boundaries of all that is right and good to be able to call attention to evil that's happening and try to address it.
I want you to notice, though, we're not talking about Joseph anymore, are we? We're not talking about, this is, we're straying here. He's talking about politics. He's putting himself in the center as the moderate.
He's chiding now people that get too political, essentially, and work on anger and fear and those kinds of things. And then watch what he says.
And they all stand to gain from your outrage and your fear. And in case you're wondering, they're happy to give you the link for their Patreon account or to have you register for their conference at a discounted rate if you register today.
But nowhere do we see this in the word of God.
Well, there it is. There it is. Patreon, registering for discounts at conferences. I mean, who could he possibly be talking about with Patreons and conferences? I mean, it sounds like it's, I mean, A .D. Robles, myself, Founders Ministries, perhaps.
That's who it sounds like he's probably referring to. I don't know for 100 because he didn't say the names of those people. But let's compare it to the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph isn't that there are just, it's all motivated by profit.
And of course, they're not trying to, it's not like there's, let's stir everyone up to get angry so we can make money. He's kind of, he's not in the story of Joseph anymore. But it's, he's talking specifically, and it's not political either.
The story of Joseph isn't like there's some political contest going on and that's part of it. No, he's completely deviated talking about something else. And it's about the current political situation.
And it's people, and he says from the right and left. I mean, usually if they're going to criticize conservatives in general, big evangelical institutional leaders, et cetera, generally they, Tim Keller does this all the time.
He'll talk about individualism on the right, but he has to talk about individualism of the left too in the same breath. He has to critique them both and do it from this kind of neutral stance where he transcends those things.
He's kind of like above those things. It's actually kind of a, it's that moderate thing, but it's not, it's actually, it's more than moderate. It's where we're not in either of those categories and the dirt from those categories and the sandboxes they're playing in.
We're in our own clean sandbox where we don't get that kind of dirt on ourselves. And of course though, it's so, it's not applying the same standard to the institution that he's working at. I mean, does, could you say that about the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?
Do they have money? I mean, do they have people that are donating to them? Do they have students who pay money for tuition? Or is it all free? I mean, is it just the expenses of the school that they pay or do they actually have some extra?
Are they paying their professors well? You see how this works. And if they're ever discredited or if let's say videos from the past that are now deleted by the school, that are erased by the school of Matt Hall and Jarvis Williams and others, if those videos were just posted, hey, here's what these people have said and it doesn't reflect well on the school, is the school, what's the, how does the school react to that?
Is the school concerned about its donors? Are they making phone calls to their donors? And I happen to know somewhat of the answer to some of these questions, which is why I'm asking them. Are they concerned about the reputation of their school?
So much, are they getting involved in the political battle that they find themselves in because they entered it when they posted those things and said those things, advocating ideas consistent with critical race theory.
In some cases actually were explicitly saying and attributing it to critical race theory. That's the thing that doesn't make any sense. Matt Hall has entered political debates in his own videos that many of them have been scrubbed.
Some of them are still online. You can still see some of the montages of things he said. He entered that over the course of years teaching there. And then when someone, when different people have called him on it, the response has been to sort of, to not actually respond to their actual concerns, not his actual teachings.
The response has always been to deflect, to deny, to disguise, smoke and mirror stuff. It's always been, I'm actually against critical race theory because, and then it usually something to do with materialism, atheism, naturalism, because its roots, its philosophical foundations are bad, which was never the question.
It was always the ethics. It was always the epistemology and the ethics. It wasn't the metaphysical foundation. And so it's a deflection. It's not directly answering. He's been involved in this. That's the thing I'm trying to say.
That's the thing I'm trying to say. Matt, are you gonna take, to take your own advice, apply what you're saying to your own institution and think through, I mean, honestly, I don't think Matt Hall will ever see this, but honestly, if he does, if he is listening, think through the things you've even heard and seen in backdoor meetings.
And are those things really above board? Is there a concern at your school among some of the people there at high levels concerning finances and concerning looking a certain way politically? And I mean, has there been in the past, have even things come out of your mouth to drum up hatred or I should say, anger of some kind, to use I think the word you used, have you ever done that?
Has Jarvis Williams ever done it? Has Curtis Woods ever done that? Against certain demographics, certain groups of people, whether it's white people or specifically certain kinds of white people, I don't know.
I mean, has that ever happened? And I think what you'll find is if you start asking those questions, you start applying his own standard to himself in the institution he works at, then it would at least give someone pause that, you know what, I'm trying to apply this to other people that have Patreons and discounts for conferences, but you know what?
Southeastern also has its own money-making machine going on. They have their own announcements about their tuition and the things that cost money there. So I just wanna put the shoe on the other foot.
And so it is a short episode, but I just thought it was instructive in some ways, a representative of the way I've seen many times big evangelical leaders respond to criticism. And I even put a question mark.
Is he responding to criticism? We don't really know, but if he is, this would probably be how it would look. And I've seen this all way too many times. The goal, I think, is to shame those who would get involved politically and who would call out bad teaching and those kinds of things.
And then of course, for me personally, I'll just speak for myself, I can't speak for everyone else. For me personally, if I was gonna try to make money, this isn't what I'd be doing. Yeah, I do have a Patreon, it's true.
And I have that, and I was very specific about why when I first started it was because there was certain equipment that I needed to do some of the projects. And now, of course, I'm helping to make films and that kind of thing.
Still is gonna be ongoing travel expenses and equipment associated with that. I never intended to do this full-time and I'm not doing it full-time. I still have a side business and I still have a number of other endeavors that I'm pursuing.
This has been very helpful for me and I've been able to do more of it because of people who gave on Patreon. But it was never to get, and it's not, it's not making me, just for people to know, I'm not trying to say, I'm not disclosing my financial statements and everything and I'm not showing you, hey, look how poor I am, feel sorry for me, because I don't ever wanna do that.
If you feel inclined that you wanna give to what I'm doing and my projects, then praise God, if you can't, that's fine too. And if, I remember something Francis Schaeffer said years ago about, someone asked him, what happens if people don't give to LaBrie?
And he says, well, then we downsize. And that's how I feel. Okay, I'll go back to fixing things like I used to, I'll go back to handyman stuff, I'll go back. Honestly, there's part of me that, on an honest personal level here, I think about that sometimes.
I really enjoyed going out and repairing things, which is what I did for about 10 years. And I miss it sometimes. And this stuff, going through this stuff, I mean, it's sometimes soul ripping. It's just, to go through men sometimes who are heroes or used to be, and to see, man, they've compromised.
And I'm gonna need to pick this apart and explain it to people and give them kind of some courage and hope. And I want them to understand and to be able to have answers and here's how I would engage it to help them know how maybe they could engage it.
Search the word of God for, compare what they're teaching to it. Writing another book now on this and write the chapter on the gospel is what I'm finishing up right now. And it is hard. It is very hard to go through some of this stuff of people teaching at evangelical institutions and seeing how they've corrupted the gospel.
And not something that I think anyone really likes to do. This is, again, I don't know about others, but for me, I don't see the personal, like the selfish benefit or whatever. It's not there for me. And it never was.
I blacklisted myself when I came out with my story about Southeastern. There's no way for it. Like with Matt Hall, there's no way I'm ever, I'm never having his position. I don't want it really. But there's never, like I'm not, I can't rip him down to build myself up or anything like that.
It doesn't even work that way. It doesn't build me up to, actually, it's caused me a lot of, a lot of people are giving me grief about that kind of thing because of how much they respect Al Mohler and they respect Southern.
And so, you know, who are you, John, that you're, what are you so smart that you can come out against them? And it's like, no, it's not me. It's, I'm just, I wanna point you back to the standard. I wanna point you back to, as Martin Luther said, you know, reason and scripture.
I wanna just point you back to that as much as I possibly can. Those are the standards. It's not me. I just wanna help you, lead you down the garden path to see those things if I can, as, you know, faulty as I may be.
But I'm not even planning on doing this forever. This isn't, this isn't a long-term thing. This isn't, so his, what, the motives he's attributing to possibly someone like me, they wouldn't apply to me.
You know, maybe there's others who, I don't know, do have those motivations. But you see, I hope you see how he's communicating on this emotional level. He is trying to pull your, he's pulling the heartstrings a little bit.
There's these evil, angry group of people that for their own self aggrandizement and their political, their political agenda, they're willing to just run roughshod over people. And then, you know, it's their Patreon accounts apparently that they're really after filling those up.
And they're really after getting you to their conference and stuff. And so my point is it's hypocritical, number one. And number two, it's just not necessarily accurate. It's certainly not accurate across the board.
And then number three, it's just, it really is deviating a whole lot from the text he's supposed to be preaching from. And if this is what's passes for preaching at Southern Seminary, and this is supposed to be, you know, your base camp for exegetical preaching and understanding how to go into a church and preach.
I mean, is this really, I mean, I encourage you, go listen to the whole thing. Is this really where you want to learn? If you're someone looking to go to seminary, is this who you want to learn from? I would say no.
I would say I learned a hard lesson going to Southeastern. I realized afterward all the money I spent and what I didn't really gain. And I thought I would gain. And so that's my challenge to those considering possibility of maybe going to a place like Southern.
Yeah, nothing personal here. It's just, I do care about people and I do, I want them to make wise, informed decisions. Doesn't have to be even decisions I like, but I want, I think of myself when I was trying to choose seminaries and I, you know, there was all sorts of pros and cons depending on where, you know, Southeastern, I'll be honest.
When I was going to Southeastern, I thought there's this huge lake there. Man, I could just go bass fishing all the time. I thought that was, it's gonna be great. And I never went, I never went. Those are the superficial reasons, but there's all kinds of legitimate reasons that people look at seminaries and compare and contrast.
And I just, I know for me, I wanted to know the word of God well, and I wanna know how to communicate it well. And I have to say, I don't think it's being, it's not being done that well. And this sermon is, it's just, it's not like it's the worst sermon ever, but it's just one example of that.
And this is Matt Hall inserting his political agenda into the sermon. And then communicating on this sort of emotional more level, and it isn't us versus them kind of thing. You know, here we are, the moderates, the neutral, the right motivations kind of, and then there's these evil people trying to pull you apart with their political operations, but that's what Matt Hall's doing.
He's the one inserting his own political agenda into a text, into Genesis, and the story of Joseph and his brothers and forgiving them. And so anyway, I just thought I would say that, and I would like to end with this, you know, if Matt Hall would, and I've said this, I think every time I've talked about Matt Hall, which hasn't been that many, but if he would just come out and apologize, just own up to it.
Just like Joseph's brothers did with a much more major offense, but with the things he said that have been absolutely not true, that, you know, the famous one is him three times saying how he's a racist because he benefits from the system that allocates privilege to him.
I mean, that's directly from an understanding of critical race theory. That's where he got that. I mean, yeah, sure. Does it predate critical race theory in some way? Yeah, I mean, there's the new left critique.
I mean, you had certain elements of that in the earlier critical theory, but that's where it was systematized. That's where the idea today, where people are getting it. And he's said far more, much more than that.
But if he was willing to just come out and apologize, say, you know what, I was wrong. I was wrong, and I thought about it. And you know what, guys, I'm so sorry that I said that. That's not what sin is.
That is a misunderstanding of sin. That's benefiting from a system, supposedly. Number one, the critique is way off. Are you even benefiting from that? But number two, let's say you are. You know what, that's not sin, just passively benefiting, and you can't do anything about it, and it means you're a racist and stuff.
Just apologize for it. And apologize for all the other things, and then move on. And then let the chips fall where they may. Instead of this, kind of like you have to make some statement against critical race theory that means hardly, that doesn't even engage the criticisms and the concerns, and then pretend like nothing actually happened.
And pretend the people that have the problem are the ones that are playing your old videos that many of them have been deleted now from Southern Seminary's website. So that's what I would encourage Matt Hall to do.
Be like Joseph's brothers, and apologize. And you don't have to apologize to me. It's not apologizing to me, but just humble yourself to the people that pay the bills, because Matt Hall's getting paid.
It might not be through Patreon, it might be through a much more, because look, Patreon's the only way that some of us can pretty much fund what we're trying to do here. He has the way greater, far complex, efficient mechanisms to fund his job.
So he's getting paid by people and donors, ladies and men and children, even in some cases, in the SBC, giving even their offerings and stuff. I mean, there's so many, as far as I understand, but it's also students with tuition.
It's also people that are paying for the endowment and stuff. So he's getting paid, and just apologize to them. I'm sorry. And I think they would be willing to forgive. And I know I would. I know if I was in those positions and I had been wronged in some way, or misled, I would be more than willing, in a heartbeat, to forgive that kind of thing.
And that's one of the questions that I encourage people asking. Why haven't those previous statements that so many of you are familiar with, why haven't? And if you're not, just go to YouTube and type in Matt Hall racism, or something like that, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Why haven't those things been apologized for? And that would be maybe a little bit better of, if you're gonna try to draw a parallel between the story of Joseph and his brothers, maybe that would be one.
So that's all I had to say about that. I thought it was interesting. But it started off, I thought it was kind of funny, because I was like, just name names, and just be a man and name the names. And then it's ended up, as I've talked about it, I've gotten more sad about it.
But tonight, if there are still tickets available, which I don't know if there are, you can go to the info section, click on the link, come to the Paint the Wall Black premiere. Well, it's not a premiere, but the showing of Paint the Wall Black at Liberty University.
Juan Riesco's gonna be there, I'm gonna be there. A number of folks are gonna be there. And I hope it just blesses you, and benefits you, and encourages you, and that's really the goal.
