The Rise and Fall of The Gospel Coalition - Chapter 4 - The Grift Continued

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you are listening to The Rise and Fall of the

Gospel Coalition, Chapter 4. Where did those charges come from, do you know?

No, they're unnamed. That's part of the problem, right? So unnamed sources have presenting these things, which should make everybody take a pause.

I believe Jesus would teach us to take the vaccine as a part of God's gift to humanity.

Remember about what the Bible whispers about? And we ought to shout about what it shouts about. And the

Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

And you're wondering why multi -ethnicity isn't happening at your church? It's because you have a person that's black on the outside, but angloid on the inside.

All right, all right, I am looking forward to this. This is going to be kind of a part two to the most recent episode of The Rise and Fall of Gospel Coalition with Joel Webbin called

The Grift. And so this is The Grift Part 2. There's just too many tactics that the Gospel Coalition uses in their articles that it's gonna take a little while to kind of cover all of them.

And so I hope you enjoyed this episode kind of expanding on that topic. Now, one of the things

I did kind of want to talk about is really the emotional aspect to all of this.

Because, you know, let me give you an example unrelated. You know, a lot of people have noticed that people that find themselves single, you know, and they're on the market, so to say, for a partner.

It has become very common to talk about your previous boyfriend or your previous girlfriend in highly emotional terms.

Like, basically everyone became a narcissist like in the last 10 years, right? Like, my most recent boyfriend or girlfriend was a complete narcissist and was an abuser and stuff like that.

And the language, this emotional sort of language, has been ratcheted up. It's no longer is it common to just say, oh, you know, it didn't work out, you know.

We wanted different things in life, you know, things like that. No, no, it can't be that. Everyone's a narcissist and an abuser and things like that.

And this is not to say that some people aren't abusers. Of course, there are abusers out there, right?

And of course, there are narcissists out there and all of that. But it's just the way that it's been talked about.

It's just like overnight, like half the population became narcissistic. It's like it's just that's obviously not true.

And so you think about why is that happening, right? And I've seen some articles trying to explain this because I'm obviously not the only one who's noticed this.

But I think that it's because we put a very, very high value on emotions and juicing the emotions is the most important thing.

And, you know, when you're reading an article in a Christian blog or a Christian news article or something like that, you know, you really don't expect to be emotionally manipulated.

You know, you go there because hopefully there's some helpful information, you know, about the Bible or about God that, you know, you can use in your everyday life.

You go there for practical reasons. And unfortunately, I think what you end up getting doesn't really help you in that way.

It's not really information that can benefit you. It's more, you know, manipulation that that kind of juices your emotion, gets you to feel a certain way.

Let me give you an example of this, because one of the kinds of articles that we didn't talk about in the last episode that I really wanted to talk about were these articles that they're technically true, but the context that they're written in are totally subversive.

I've talked about this before, but I wanted to really drive this point home. It's like I'll give you a perfect example.

So during the pandemic and right around when the when the viruses were really, you know, intensely being pushed, it was getting to the point where, you know, you were going to get fired if you didn't get this vaccine or you were going to people were even talking about, you know, having these passports where, you know, you know, maybe you won't be able to go places or, you know, go shopping or things like that unless you were you got this vaccine.

And and many people were very hesitant about the vaccine for for a variety of different reasons. I mean, you know, some people thought that, you know, they didn't work or they were unnecessary.

That's kind of where that's kind of where I fell. It's like totally unnecessary to get this vaccine. I'm not going to inject myself with just anything just because you tell me to.

That's ridiculous. But some people had more moral problems with it as well.

A lot of Christians did. You know, these vaccines are produced using the abortion cells and stuff like that.

So some people had those issues. Other people had issues as far as the Constitution and all of that kind of thing.

Totalitarianism, whatever. There was a variety of different reasons why many Christians were hesitant or just outright refused to get the

COVID -19 vaccine. And so so there was that all that was going on.

It was high pressure situation and and and and and Christians were were hesitant.

And so John Piper chose that moment to write a pretty good article that was all about all the people that really knew that it was the best thing for them.

It was the godly thing. It was the right thing to get the vaccine, but we're being pressured not to get it in Christian circles.

So so so the article was true because, yes, if you know that it's the right thing to do, whatever it is, whether it's a vaccine or something else, but you're feeling peer pressure to not do that right thing, you should ignore the peer pressure and use your

Christian freedom to do what you know is right to do. You have the freedom to obey

Christ. But this article, it's always true, but it was written at a time when all of the pressure, all of the arm twisting, all of the manipulation was being done in the exact reverse.

People were being pressured to get the vaccine against their will. People were being pressured to get the vaccine against their morality.

And so all the pressure, you're going to lose your job. You might not even be able to feed your family.

All the pressure was the opposite way. And so John Piper, in his infinite wisdom, decided to write the article that nobody needed to have written.

It was written in such a way that it was it was emotionally subversive.

It was it was it was gas. People call it gaslighting. People call it there's just it's always the exact opposite article that needs to be written.

We kind of covered this a little bit with the Brett McCracken, you know, countercultural scam article where everything he says is countercultural is really not countercultural.

But this is something that happens in Gospel Coalition materials all the time. And I think that that it is very emotionally manipulative to write articles in this way where you write a true article.

So it's very hard to argue against the John Piper article. You know, when I when I did my video about the John Piper article, it's like there's really not much to criticize about the article itself.

It's just the context is all wrong. Let me give you another example. And actually, our guest today is

John Harris, who did a really great job on a recent video called like the 14 Worst Gospel Coalition articles.

Anyway, it was an article about how how men need to be more submissive.

It's like submission is is not just for women. It's for men, too. And you need to be submissive to the government and things like that.

And again, it's it's the same kind of thing. It's the exact opposite message that needed to be told at that time during the pandemic and all the totalitarian nonsense.

We didn't need to hear that because what was being done to us was not in the purview of the government, not the kinds of things that you need to submit to the government for.

It's the it was actually stuff that they were overstepping their bounds and where resistance for a godly

Christian man is is is maybe if it's not required, it's at least OK to do instead of getting that encouragement through the scripture that you need to obey

God rather than men. If the government tells you church is too dangerous, you need to obey

God rather than men. And it's totally within your Christian rights to do so. And I would argue that it's probably a

Christian duty for pastors to keep that church open against the will of Caesar. And we needed encouragement because pastors were being arrested at the time.

There were there was a lot of pressure. Again, this is the same thing with the Piper article. All the pressure was to disobey

God. And so Kruger, in his infinite wisdom, decided that this is the time to write the article to men how to be submissive to the government.

Look, there was nothing wrong with the article itself in the details because, yes, we should submit to our governing authorities.

Right. That's very true. But that doesn't mean to the point where we disobey God. And that was the question that was being kicked around.

That's where all the pressure was. That's where the battle was raging. And so Gospel Coalition wrote the exact article we did not need in that context.

It's very emotionally manipulative because when you read the article, again, it's the same kind of thing.

You can't find anything really to disagree with it. And so it kind of baits you into not disagreeing with them writing it at the time.

And I have to hand it to them like this strategy of writing these emotionally manipulative kinds of articles is very effective.

It's very effective. And that's why women and men use this narcissism, you know, and abuser rhetoric when it's not appropriate.

Right. They use it because it's effective for their new partner. Oh, your boyfriend was a narcissist and abusive.

I can protect you. I can I can be the one to step in the gap and be the valiant knight and I can save you from all of this.

It's very effective to get someone to to treat you a certain way. And look,

I'm not talking about real abuse, obviously. I'm not talking about real narcissists. But obviously, 50 percent of the population didn't become narcissists in the last 50, last 10 years anyway.

And so it's a shame that Gospel Coalition does this. It's very manipulative. It's very emotionally manipulative to their audience.

And so in today's interview, I talked to John Harris and we kind of explore some of these topics a little bit.

And also, he gives advice. If you're if you're insisting on continuing to use

Gospel Coalition materials or even like the books or the study sessions for people that write for Gospel Coalition, we've got some tips for you that if you if you insist on doing that,

I don't recommend it. But if you insist on doing that, what kinds of things should you watch out for as you're reading and considering the kinds of materials that they put forth?

I hope you enjoy this interview. God bless. All right.

I am very happy to have John Harris on this podcast. I wanted to invite

John here because I recently saw a video he did like an hour long on his on his podcast,

Conversations That Matter. And it was titled something like the 14 Worst Gospel Coalition Articles or something like that.

And so I wanted to to invite John to talk about kind of what he went in, what he went into in that video and just Gospel Coalition in general.

So, John, welcome to the show. Thank you, A .D. It's good to be here. Appreciate your podcast and your work and excited to be featured on the infamous

Gospel Coalition Rise and Fall podcast. That's right. That's right. So what do you call yourself?

Are you the president of Conversations That Matter, the the grand poobah? What's your title? I am the lord and master of Conversations That Matter.

I found her, you know, I don't really have an organization per se. I just talk on a webcam and write my thoughts down.

And it became something. So I don't take myself too seriously. That's very good. That's very good.

Speaking of taking yourself too seriously, I wanted to ask about the Gospel Coalition video that I'm referencing now.

Obviously, this is not the first time you've talked about a Gospel Coalition article, but you were cataloging the 14 worst

Gospel Coalition articles, which I'm sure was hard to narrow it down. But I guess I wanted to just ask you just generally, why is

Gospel Coalition important enough to do a video like this? I mean, this is an hour long and you went into some depth.

What's the point? Well, I still get email sometimes or messages from people who say that they have helpful things or they've found helpful things in the past from Gospel Coalition articles, and they're confused as to why the

Gospel Coalition might take some of those helpful articles and insert or mix them with unhelpful or leftist political articles.

And so there's that crowd. And then there's another crowd, I think, that still needs help convincing.

They may see some things here or there that might be questionable, but overall, they still think Gospel Coalition is solid.

And I just wanted to show them evidence. That's my whole motive. Here's just 14 articles. And originally,

I was supposed to do 10 articles, and it kept getting fanned out because I kept finding articles. I'm like, well, I got to include this one.

And finally, I just cut it off. And I'm like, I can't do 20 articles here. So we're just going to stop it at 14.

And if you look at the 14 articles that I talk about, then I think there's no question in the mind of at least an

Orthodox believer, there's compromise here. This isn't just a one off. This isn't they had a bad day.

There's something more intentional than that when you keep repeating error. And I could have probably put 30 articles in there or 40 articles that were all problematic in some way.

But I chose to narrow it down to the ones that I dislike the most from the articles I've read. Yeah, yeah.

And I'll include the link to your video in the description of this of this podcast so people can go check it out.

One of the ones that I thought was the most interesting was when I wasn't aware of because what I did was in my mind before I watched your video,

I said, OK, what would be if I had to pick the worst articles? Which ones would I choose? And there was a significant amount of overlap in our lists.

But that being said, there was one that was early on. It was I think it was from their academic journal that you had mentioned.

And it was what was what was significant about it was not so much what was said that was pretty common, but it was just so early.

And I think a lot of people have this idea that Gospel Coalition, they used to be awesome. And now they've kind of transitioned.

And I think your point was, no, they've kind of had this strain all along and we just didn't notice it as much in the beginning.

I thought that was pretty helpful. John, what got good? Well, I was just saying,

I agree with you. If you go back and you look at especially their academic stuff and not just their popular articles, but their charter, look at some of the events that they've hosted and courses they offer, like their course on Derrida and Foucault.

Then you're going to find it's been there all along. It's just kind of become more pervasive at different points when they think they can push a narrative farther at a particular political moment.

They'll double down on something that's always kind of been there, but you haven't noticed it until they decide and they make an editorial decision probably and say, now we're going to put out a bunch of articles on this.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right. So I'm going to ask you a kind of a hard question here. So if you had to pick one, what would you say is the single worst article?

Or if you can't pick one article, maybe like a style of article, what would you call out in that regard?

That's hard in some ways, because it depends what issue you want to focus on. For me, it's called the gospel coalition.

So I think there's a subversive opportunity. If you call yourself the

Christian coalition or the Christian group or something related to Christianity and someone comes in and it's like all

Islam, right, that would be subversive because someone thinks they're getting Christianity and they're not.

So if you call yourself the gospel coalition and then you put on an article like the Paul Tripp article called

My Confession Towards a More Balanced Gospel, April 9th, 2018, and then the whole thing is about pushing a false gospel, then you've just infiltrated your audience because they think that it's gospel coalition.

The title of the article is about a more balanced gospel. And then when they read it, they're getting a kind of a retooled

Galatian heresy. And it's about the gospel of God's justice instead of the gospel of grace and how we need to mix these two somehow.

And if we don't, we don't really have the gospel. And people who don't understand the gospel of God's justice, which we find out is basically the

BLM narrative, they don't actually have the gospel at all.

So it leaves you wondering at the end, like, am I even a Christian? Do I even have the gospel?

What gospel did I believe in when I wasn't going and marching with BLM? So that to me, that's the single worst narrative.

That article, for some reason, I just can't stand more than some of the other ones.

But there's a number of articles I know that I've read in the past that use this kind of language. This one was just so overt.

Yeah, I remember that article very clearly. And that was definitely one of the ones that, you know, you and I had some overlap before I watched your video.

I kind of I didn't write it down, but I just kind of thought them through. And yeah, that Paul Tripp one, I agree.

There's something about it that's that's just extra egregious. Like there's nothing like that special about it.

It's not that unique, but but just the way it's written, it's it's very egregious. So I completely agree with you.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the styles of of argumentation that Gospel Coalition use.

One of the things I noticed, and I mentioned this to you beforehand, many times you were pointing out these false dichotomies, these false dilemmas.

You you would you would read the kind of the premise of an article and you'd say it's not either or or it could be both.

How it could be both at the same time. And they use this strategy of creating these weird dichotomies as if it's either this or this.

And it's really never that clean. Why do you think they use that strategy so often?

Why is it why is it part of just the way they argue? That's a good question.

I don't know if I know the full answer for that because it's very muddled for academics. But my experience being in academic circles and particularly

Christian academic circles, which is where I've spent most of my time, they tend to they tend to use kind of their own terminology when they talk to each other.

It's almost like a language sometimes. And Gospel Coalition strikes me as an attempt by many who live in this

Christian academic bubble to come down as prophets from on high with their academic language and their confusing way of relating to one another, where they over nuance everything.

And they all feel smarter at the end of the day for their contributions to intellectual thought.

And they're they're trying to bring this down to a layman level in a way. And so for me, it reminded me, give me flashbacks to sitting in class at Southeastern or something and hearing professors use bigger words to try to come up with the difference between to make distinctions between things or to combine, whether it's separating or uniting certain concepts.

They would just do it in academic speak. And you're just not used to that in the real world. But with Gospel Coalition, they try to bring it to a layman.

And so so you'll have weird like combinations sometimes they'll make where, you know, you're

I'm just trying to think like your love for your family, right, is somehow united to some some like Nietzschean or some some like some motive in you to try to control.

They over -psychologize like your love for your family, and they then will link it to idolatry or so.

These things are strange to, I think, most layman's ears because we're like, who thinks like that?

But I'm just telling you, if you go to any seminary, just about, you're going to find people who do think like that.

They're just very abstract. They're not concrete. They've lost touch with the real world. And we should all feel sorry for them, in my opinion.

I'm glad that you brought that up, that, you know, it could be that this is coming from this this this kind of like high minded academic place.

You know, it just kind of occurred to me just now. I was just talking to my brother about this yesterday.

You know, I mentioned to him, you know, you can always tell when there's somebody out there that they've read a lot, but they don't really have a whole lot of understanding.

Like just with the word choice that they use, you know, they'll use big words when it's unnecessary to use a big word.

They don't they use words that they know full well that most people don't understand.

And they're trying to communicate using these kinds of words. We were just kind of making fun of there's a character in Seinfeld named

Jackie Childs, and he's a he's a lawyer. And, you know, he he'll do these things where he'll just use three big words in a row.

He'll be like, that's egregious, outrageous, preposterous. And it's just like, right, you could tell he's trying to impress you. And it always it's always so transparent to me when someone's trying to impress you with their vocabulary.

It strikes me that sometimes gospel coalitions come across that way, where it's like they've got this knowledge is very specialized knowledge that they got, you know, with their seminary training or whatever.

And I'm not against seminary training, but like and they want to dazzle it like that. They write these articles in order to dazzle like the common man.

And I don't know, I just keep it just it just something that occurred to me when you're saying that. It's just I don't know.

Anyway, well, we like that because it makes us feel smart. And that's the actually if you look at the two people who founded

Gospel Coalition, if you read their charter documents, Tim Keller is one of them. And it's very

Keller esque. And I'm sure D .A. Carson's has he's the other one who founded it, has his influence there.

But Keller seems to be, in my mind, the giant behind Gospel Coalition. And if you listen to Keller sermons, it's the same thing.

You walk away from a Keller sermon thinking that you have just experienced something that was just blew away all the paradigms you once knew.

And now you understand so more clearly or it's really not clear, but you think you do and you feel smart about it.

And really, you just had kind of a TED talk that was had a Christian veneer on it half the time.

And Gospel Coalition's like that, in my opinion. It's very Keller esque in conveying all these these words and these concepts.

And sometimes they really don't have much to do with the situation that's in front of you. But you walk away feeling good about it somehow.

Actually, I don't know if you knew this, John, but I came into the faith through Tim Keller's teaching, essentially.

And I attended his church and I would be I was overt about this. Like at the time,

I was very attracted to the fact that I didn't feel like I was listening to a sermon. I felt like I was in a in a college lecture hall.

And I was saying that not ironically, like I was like, that's awesome. You know, I love that.

And then as I grew up in the faith, I kind of realized, well, you know, that's actually not what preaching really is.

Maybe that's actually not such a good thing in any case. All right. Let's let's shift gears here.

One of the other things that I noticed in the articles that you highlighted was sort of a very distinct anti -American or anti -Western culture bent.

And one of the things that I that that that kind of came to mind is that one article about Christmas traditions and how like, you know, the article was it was essentially encouraging you to incorporate the

Christmas traditions of non -European sources. And and I just it's just so stupid to me.

Like, why even make this a big deal? But it's not the only time they've written articles like that. It's not the only one that you've highlighted.

What do you think the motivation behind writing articles like this, where it kind of puts American or European traditions like on the defensive almost like you almost have to like justify them almost.

And every other cultural tradition, it's not doesn't not only do you not need to justify, but it's just assumed to be helpful or something you should do.

Like, what is the point of that? Why is Gospel Coalition doing that? OK, so here's my best shot at it.

There could be multiple explanations for this. I think this is probably the most correct one for most of the authors out there.

The Gospel Coalition is an elitist adjacent organization. In other words, in their charter document, they talk about wanting to be countercultural.

The elites, though, that are running our industries, our media, our politics, they also think of themselves as countercultural, even though they're running pretty much everything.

All the tools of control and power are in their hands, but they think that they are actually the underdogs, which some people say that's a uniquely

American thing. I don't know, but for whatever reason, they posture themselves that way.

And the left does this in general. They tend to posture themselves as the victims that they can't really ever give up victimology, because if they do, their whole philosophy collapses on itself.

There has to be a boogeyman out there who is causing all the problems. And I think Obama was really one of the first recognizable big names to do this effectively, where he was the president of the

United States and he would constantly blame powers outside of his control for the problems the country faced.

It was never really his fault. He was always the victim. He he lacked the the the control to be able to actually fight like big business or, you know, prejudice and all these really powerful forces.

Right. But he's like an elite of the highest order. Like he has more power than anyone.

Like he shouldn't you would think most responsible adults, when they have authority in a situation, they don't just blame other people for their failures in dealing with problems that they should be dealing with.

So I think it's a similar thing. That's just how elites tend to think in our day and age and especially elites on the left.

And I think Gospel Coalition is just mimicking that they're they're an elite adjacent organization.

So they don't have any like they know their lane. They don't have any visions of being able to jump from influencing evangelicals to influencing

Hollywood necessarily. Right. Or they're not trying to do that. Right. That would be like maybe the cross politic crowd or there's other

Christian groups that they actually want to go into these cultural centers and take them over or provide alternatives that are viable.

Gospel Coalition isn't doing any of that. If you notice they have one audience and that's evangelical

Christians. And and so it's it's not really an evangelistic tool so much as it is a way to signal to evangelicals how they're supposed to think, how they're supposed to react.

And so they're the kings or the queens of of evangelical land,

I think, in their minds. They would never say it that way, but they are the elites at the top of the hierarchy, the unofficial hierarchy in Big Eva.

And as the elites, they must signal to everyone else that whatever problems are out there, whatever threats the church is facing, number one, they have control.

But number two, they don't have control. So they'll say peace, peace when there is no peace, because we're here and we're not worried and don't see that as a threat to your church.

At the same time, there's all these big, powerful forces that we must stand against courageously because they're going to rip us to shreds.

And you'll notice the two categories they put them in the peace peace when there is no peace are the leftist threats are the from other elites.

Right. The other elites are fine. You know, they have to have alliances with the other captains of various industries and organizations.

And yet conservative ideas, conservative threats end up being the big sometimes they don't even have a person or an identifiable movement that they can really tap into.

But they'll they'll make out like there's something out there that we must be very afraid of and or the world will just go spinning off into the abyss.

And so that's I think that that's the strategy I think they're employing is that they're an elite adjacent organization.

They have to be the underdogs against these powerful forces and support the other elites who are also thinking of themselves as underdogs, if that makes sense.

So last thing I want to talk about, so in the article or in the video, rather in the beginning, you kind of mentioned that, you know, you personally never found

Gospel Coalition that helpful. You know, a lot of it you kind of identified as sort of kind of fluff pieces, things that aren't really all that insightful or helpful, whatever.

A lot of people do find it helpful, and that's fine. You did indicate that not every single Gospel Coalition article is just chock full of bad stuff from top to bottom.

But I guess here's the thing. I get asked this question a lot. You know, they'll say something like, A .D., you know, my my my my pastor or my my

Sunday school class. They're using so much Gospel Coalition material, and I'm worried about it because I know they're compromised.

Like, what should I do? Right. You know, is it worth making a big deal of it at my church?

And so, you know, I want to give you an opportunity to ask that question. In your opinion, if someone asks you that, what do you say to them?

That's a good question. I don't think it's a sin to share a Gospel Coalition article per se, obviously. I think that you have to be wise, though, and it's a matter of prudence and wisdom.

The Gospel Coalition, in my opinion, and this is after spending a lot of time reading their website,

I think that there is a goal behind what they're doing. I think they're trying to push the

Overton window left and they're using all kinds of different strategies to do it.

They're massaging theology to do it. And so if you regularly read Gospel Coalition or you just really try to pick through and and take the good and then throw out the bad, then you have to put,

I think, a disclaimer there if you're going to participate in that. Because people with less discernment are going to think that anything

Gospel Coalition puts out there, it must be good if you just regularly share their articles.

Even if you're just sharing the good ones. But you rightly said that I never found much helpful with the

Gospel Coalition, even their supposed good articles. I would read them. And at the end, I was like, why did

I read that? That was, yeah, it didn't tell me anything really new, which, again, it goes back to the

Keller sermon thing. I don't think the point is always to communicate new information with some of their articles.

It's how you feel at the end of it. I think you walk away having a buzz, kind of like you've things haven't necessarily been clarified, but you definitely think you're you're more you're smarter.

You've been reinforced in your thoughts about yourself. And so so, yeah, I just don't find anything like very practical about it.

And I tend to be a practical person. That's just me. Yeah, I think you nailed it there. It's a lot of the materials that are put out by Big Eva and Gospel Coalition in particular, they're written and they're designed really more to get you to feel a certain way.

And and they'll use different tactics to do it. But it's more about transferring a feeling more than information.

Because, look, when I when I read when I read an article or a sermon, you know,

I've studied the Bible a lot. And so it's I don't always get new information, but I'm always getting information.

Gospel Coalition articles really aren't like that. You're so right. You finish reading one and you're just like, what was the point of that?

Like, I didn't I don't I didn't get any like there's nothing there. And and then you at the same time, as you as you know, that you're seeing people on Twitter share it and saying how helpful and how great it was.

And and I think that that's how you explain that. It's because they're talking about the feeling they're talking about the emotions, not so much the info.

Yes, yes, no, I'm totally tracking with you on there and I don't know fully how to explain that feeling.

I just I know it's there because it they use all kinds of vague terminology that they lead you to conclusions that you didn't know.

Sometimes you're even being led to necessarily. Right. And sometimes it's a maze like you open the door and there's nothing there like they led you down a path.

But you're like, what is what is this? There's nothing practical about any of this. So, yeah,

I agree. Totally. You get to the end of an article and I notice this for myself.

I'm like, well, I should hate all white people or something. And I'm like, I don't know why. I don't know why I should be doing this, but that's how

I feel at the end of this article. And I also feel like I'm not a white person. Like I've separated myself somehow from all of that, even though I clearly am.

But in the course of reading this article, I've almost been able to separate myself from the sins of others.

And I noticed that with a lot of their social justice stuff. So, yeah, this is really a kind of a part two to an episode

I did most recently with and I did it with Joel Webben. And he mentioned, you know, look, if you're going to read a

Gospel Coalition article, you need to really set aside your whole day to really work through it, because it's going to be a maze, like you said, you know, you got to be careful with a lot of the emotional manipulation and stuff like that.

Do you have any advice for people? Like, let's say someone's just insistent. Look, I'm going to continue to read Gospel Coalition articles.

Look, you eat the meat, you spit out the bones. I still get value out of it. Do you have any tips or anything that you could kind of employ to make sure that you're not drinking the poison along with what you perceive to be good food?

Wow. Yeah, there's probably so much that could be said, and I'll probably think about this later and think I should have said something different or more, but I think look out for the third way thinking they tend to posture themselves as transcending earthly categories.

So if you have liberal and conservative, in fact, they have an article up there right now, A .D., August 25th, it just came out,

CRT versus classical liberalism versus Christianity, and they employ it in this article. So they want to set up a dichotomy.

There's the left, there's the right. So you have CRT, classical liberalism, and then there's the Bible, right?

And the Bible transcends these categories. Now, that's not a one -off for the Gospel Coalition. That's a strategy they employ quite regularly with a number of different topics.

Somehow, the Bible is always different than the options that you have available to you.

And so you have to go to the Gospel Coalition to learn, what is the Bible telling me that's different from these other two options?

And I think maybe that's what actually makes us feel good, is we have access to this knowledge that others don't have access to, where we can prophetically speak to both camps, even though we do it more to the right than the left, but we can prophetically speak to them and tell them that we're different.

We have better knowledge. We have the Bible. So I think there's so many opportunities in that framework to mess up.

Are they accurately representing the two options, or do they have to cartoonize one of them?

Do they have to strawman the conservative position so that it's different than what it actually is?

Like, is the conservative position pro -racism, right? Something like that. If the conservative position is misrepresented, then it's easy to come in and say, well, we have the solution to that.

So I would look out for that. And then also on the solutions that they're pointing you to, are they really actually biblical?

You have to ask that question. Is it the full spectrum of everything the Bible teaches on this particular topic, or are they taking a few verses, taking a few concepts, misapplying them, trying to create a veneer of Christianity so that you'll think what they're selling you is the biblical position when actually it's the soft leftist position?

So that would be my advice in a nutshell when you're reading Gospel Coalition articles. That is good advice.

One thing I found, John, and I don't know if you agree with this or not, but when you're reading an article and they will oftentimes in parentheses, they'll put a scripture reference.

And the idea is, of course, this reference kind of proves what I just said here in my own words.

I would recommend, whenever you see that with a Gospel Coalition article, pull up that scripture reference.

I have seen some of the biggest stretches I have ever in my life experienced.

Scripture twisting is not even a strong enough word. And all I did was pull up the reference that said that they claim said something else.

Tim Keller did this about paying fair wages. And I clicked on the reference, and it was about stealing.

It was literally about stealing money from someone, like saying you were going to pay them $10 and not paying them anything.

That's not the same thing as fair wages as we understand in our common vernacular, right?

We're talking about minimum wage laws and stuff. And if you didn't click that reference, you just trusted him.

The time for trusting a lot of these people is past. And I know there was a time you felt like you could trust anything Tim Keller said.

And nowadays, that's not the case. We know that that's no longer the case.

Yeah, that's great advice, John. Thank you so much. Let me give you a quick example from an article that just came out today. This is

Chris Watkin. He literally, I'm going to just quote a sentence for you here, or two sentences. The Bible avoids

CRT's tragedy of perpetual conflict as well as liberals' incrementalism. Instead, it has an eschatological vision of radical transformative reconciliation, in which members of every tongue, tribe, and nation will sing praise with one voice, and all injustice will be held to account.

This grand vision motivates practical efforts in the here and now. Now, you can guess what verses they're quoting.

Revelation 7, 9 through 10. Revelation 20, 12. And guess what verse they use for the grand vision motivates practical efforts.

In other words, this is the key. This is, you should be striving for this diversified church today. 1

Corinthians 1558. That's the verse they use to prove that we should be striving for this multicultural church.

1 Corinthians 1558 says, Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the

Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. What does that have to do with Revelation 7 and having a diversified church?

It's unreal. It's always, yeah, it seems like it's every day or every week, there's always an article like this, and they just put a

Bible verse there, and you think, well, I should go work for a multicultural church. Oh my goodness, my church is too white or something.

And there's nothing actually behind it. The Bible verse they're using does not support their argument.

Well, thank you so much, John, for joining me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. All right, stay on there,

John. Now, I know that in this audience, I don't have to convince you about how helpful

John Harris is. Most of you guys love his content as well. That last point, or the second -to -last point he made, regarding sort of the

Third Way, the way the Third Wayism kind of works out with Gospel Coalition articles, I found that so helpful, because it's almost like no matter what the topic is, they want to present themselves as presenting the real truth.

The two options you have in front of you can't possibly be the truth. The Bible transcends it all.

The Bible's way is completely different. I think this is why you end up getting weird, nuanced takes about things like abortion so often.

Because on the table, you can either have all the abortions you want, or you can have no abortions.

We're going to outright ban abortions, and we're going to treat it like murder. And they're like, even though that is so obviously a biblical take on murder, they have to present you something that's different than that, because they've committed to this

Third Wayism, that the Bible has to be totally different than what you would expect it to be.

I found that so helpful, because so many times Gospel Coalition will position themselves in that way, and they take these weird positions on things, like closing church, for example.

That's another example. It's like during the pandemic, you could either close church and love your neighbor, or keep your church open and hate your neighbor.

The Bible's actually pretty clear about that. Have worship. That's what the Bible commands you to do.

And if you're too scared to go to worship, don't go to worship. But of course, they had to present themselves as, no, no, we have to have the radical

Third Way. It transcends both. And it's like, no, actually you don't. No, actually you don't have to do that.

It's not like the right is always wrong about everything, just like the left is always wrong about everything.

It's not that the biblical way, the way of the cross, has to be different than those two options.

Sometimes it is, but it doesn't have to be. And so on the issue of abortion, should we ban it or not, it's very clear in the

Bible that we should ban it, even though that's what a lot of people on the right want to do.

The fact that the people on the right want to do it doesn't make it so that you have to maybe come up with a different way, or a nuanced approach, or split the difference, or whatever it is.

It's a very interesting point, John. One more thing I kind of thought of as well about what

John said. He mentioned that Gospel Coalition and Big Eva, they're really like elite adjacent, right?

And he mentioned that in a particular context. And actually what that made me think of, and this is my opinion, is that the

Gospel Coalition, it is my opinion, that they do want people to vote

Democrat. They want to liberalize the church. They want to move the Overton window leftward. I think that that is beyond question at this point.

But I think that their highest goal is really to be sort of the trusted resource, the elite adjacent evangelical resource for the coming world.

Whatever's coming down the pike for us, they often talk about the post -Christian world and things like that.

And when you read those articles, you don't get the impression that they're not pleased with being a post -Christian world.

As long as they're the ones that are in the seat of authority, I think that that's kind of what they're angling for.

So even though I do agree that Gospel Coalition does intend to move the church leftward,

I don't really think that the left -right dichotomy is really the most important thing. I think the most important thing is that they're trying to be the establishment version of evangelicalism.

It's like they're totally fine with Liz Cheney, right? That's totally fine because that represents the establishment.

You see, it's not really left -right. That's not so important to them. It's more about the establishment.

Honestly, I totally believe this with all my heart, that if they were in the position to make themselves like the evangelical -approved version of Snopes or like the evangelical fact -checkers, if they were in that kind of official or unofficial capacity, they would love nothing more than to be that.

They would embrace sort of the World Economic Forum -style censorship so long as they're the ones deciding what are the approved evangelical positions versus the non -approved.

Again, I don't think it's so much left and right, although they do want to move the church leftward. I mean, so does

Liz Cheney, for that matter. But as long as you're institutional, they're in support of the institution.

They have an ultimate standard, and it's whatever the institutions are saying.

That's why you end up with things where you've got to take a nuanced position on abortion, or you end up with things where it's like, to shut down your church because of COVID and stuff like that.

I thought that was pretty insightful. In any case, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll see you next time on The Rise and Fall of the