PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY = False Christianity

All right, hey folks, this is Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics. Today, I'm gonna be tackling a really important topic, of course if you've seen the the title, the thumbnail, this is definitely a topic that has been covered at quite a length by other apologists, but I figured why not why not throw my two cents into the arena in terms of addressing the topic of progressive Christianity?

Okay, and so what I want to talk about today and kind of just jump right in, I mean I'll share a few things beforehand, but just to jump right in, we're going to explore progressive Christianity. What is it?

How to recognize it? And most importantly, how to respond to it biblically, okay? Now, if you're a seasoned apologist and you're familiar with Christian theology and things like this, you might already have in your mind where you would go in terms of responding to someone who seems to be putting forth the ideas that are prevalent and characteristic of progressive Christianity, but for those who perhaps aren't equipped.

I mean, maybe you kind of are just getting into apologetics and you're just or you've come in contact with someone who kind of expresses the key characteristics of a progressive Christianity outlook and you're coming here to say, hey, maybe there's something helpful here that I could use when I talk to people who hold to perspectives that are along these lines, you know, this is the episode for you.

We're not gonna, we're gonna keep things in kind of the, not the lower shelf, not the upper shelf, somewhere right in the middle. Hopefully, this is not going to be a political or attack on social justice issues.

What I want to talk about is what progressive Christianity is, what are the key characteristics that help us recognize it? And then of course, how do we respond to it biblically? And then I'll offer towards the back end of this episode how to apply a presuppositional approach to engaging someone with the kinds of views that are typical and characteristic of progressive Christianity.

Okay. Now before I do that, I do want to give folks a heads up. I am experiencing some technical difficulty. If you can give me a thumbs up and you hear me clear and the mic sounds okay, what I hear in here, the volume is fluctuating, so I'm not sure how it sounds on the audience end.

So maybe someone can give me a thumbs up and say, hey, you sound great or hey, you sound like a robot or whatever the case may be. I almost canceled tonight because I've had technical difficulties with my laptop and stuff like that.

So that's just how the cookie crumbles as the saying goes. Okay. But anyway, I'm going to be having a live stream on Thursday as well. I'm going to be responding to Michael Sherman and another atheist individual and some principles that they've laid out and it's often used to critique religion and so forth.

And so that's what I'm going to be covering on Thursday. And then I've got a whole bunch of ideas out in the future. I'm going to be trying to plan these live streams twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

This of course is an exception because tomorrow obviously there are the debates, the political debates that, if we can call them debates, that I think most people are going to be watching. So I moved today's show to today instead of doing it tomorrow.

So there you go. So I'm being told that my volume is fine. And so I'm just going to assume that everything is good. All right. Well, let's jump right in. I want to begin by sharing a quote from the great Christian thinker J. Gresham Machen and I think it's very helpful and useful in setting a context for the type of things that we're dealing with today when we're dealing with progressive Christianity.

Because as King Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. All of the heresies and false teachings and distortions of Christianity and the desire to be relevant in the modern culture and things like this, this is something that the church has been dealing with forever, since the beginning.

And the temptation to remain relevant, whatever that means, has been something that the church has had to deal with since its inception. So I think this quote here by J. Gresham Machen is appropriate, especially given the fact that when we speak of progressive Christianity and we talk about some of its characteristics and what it tends to do to genuine Christianity, I think this is appropriate.

And so J. Gresham Machen said, what the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.

And so J. Gresham Machen in the early 1900s and 1920s was dealing with liberal Christianity, liberalism. And of course, he wrote his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism. I highly recommend folks check that out.

It's pretty cheap, but it's a very well-known book in which J. Gresham Machen does great work in terms of comparing and differentiating Orthodox Christianity with liberal Christianity, if we can call it Christianity.

Now, applying that to what we call progressive Christianity today, I think is really important. A lot of people who hear the word progressive, and a lot of people hear the word progressive and and think that it's just about being modern or inclusive.

You know, there's that language, those buzzwords, right? Inclusivity and so forth. But when we talk about progressive Christianity, I think what we're dealing with is something that actually takes core Christian beliefs, redefines them, or outright rejects them.

And here's the kicker, and here's what we need to be concerned about. It still tries to wear the label of Christianity. And so progressive Christianity will redefine or outright reject key Christian doctrines and try to call itself Christianity.

Now, we need to know how to spot that because it sounds good on the surface when they say a lot of the things that they say, you know, you have the whole issue with homosexuality and love is love, and I remember when Black Lives Matter was a big thing and people talking about social justice and all these sorts of things.

It's very important that we don't get confused with what the Bible actually teaches about, say, for example, social justice. I mean, the Bible speaks of social justice. But what the Bible means by justice, okay, and how we ought to fight for those things is going to be very different than a lot of these kind of progressive movements and churches that try to adopt these platforms and so forth.

They're not necessarily the same thing, okay? What happens when words get disconnected from biblical truth is that we begin to have problems, right? What happens when people start saying things like, well, the Bible's a good book, right?

But it's not really God's word or Jesus was a great moral teacher, but we don't need to take everything he said seriously because, of course, and I'm sure folks have heard this before, you know, morality has to change with the time.

You can't rely on an old dusty book to get your morals, right? And the funny thing is people who say these things, sometimes they are professed Christians, and so you'll have professed Christians begin to diminish the authority of scripture and the things that they're saying in an attempt to cater to the world, in an attempt to be more accepting or accepted by the world, okay?

And this leads me really to my first characteristic. If we're trying to identify progressive Christianity, and because obviously churches who have adopted these sorts of mindsets that I'm going to be walking through, you don't see a big sign on the church, you know, welcome to the first progressive Baptist church, you know, you don't see that, right?

Oftentimes these things come out in the teaching. It comes out in different ways. And so you want to be able to be able to identify some of the key features of what we would call progressive Christianity.

Now, again, some of the features are characteristic of other movements that are unbiblical, but this is definitely some of the features that can be recognized from progressive Christianity as we see it today.

And the first point is this, and I think this is so important, okay? Progressive Christianity starts, okay, in whatever manifestation it comes, with a lowering of the Bible's authority. Isn't that right?

Every false doctrine that tries to seep into the church will often attack the foundations, and that is the authority of scripture. You might hear things like, you know, the Bible is a human book. It's full of wisdom, but, you know, it's full of cultural limitations that need to be updated, right?

What's the problem here, okay? When you turn the Bible into just another ancient text, which a lot of these people tend to do, you lose the foundation for the faith, okay? The biblical teaching is that, if you think about it, the Bible as God's word is not just good advice.

It's God's word, right? It is God's word, 2 Timothy 3, 16, right? This is the verse that came to my mind just when thinking about this. All scripture, all the graphe, all the writing, all scripture is God-bred and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

If the Bible is just a human book, how do we know what's true? How do we know who God really is? How do we know about Jesus, okay? If the Bible is not true, what is our authority? These are all the types of questions that we need to be asking ourselves.

And when we come in contact with people who engage in diminishing the authority of the Bible, you need to ask, you know, you need to ask those questions as well, okay? So this is very, very important to keep in mind.

Many false teachings, okay, will begin with bringing doubt upon God's word and hence doubt upon the authority of God's word. You see this with the cults as well, okay? You know, well, we have this new revelation over here, and when you bring Bible verses that contradict this new revelation, well, well, you know, we can't really trust the modern translations because, you know, the Bible's been corrupted and so forth, or it's been translated so many times and things like this, and you're right back into the thick of apologetics having to defend the historical integrity of the Bible, okay?

And by the way, if you're a presuppositionalist, that is still an appropriate thing to discuss. A lot of people think presuppositional apologetics is a shortcut because we get to just say, by what standard, right?

No, actually, that's an appropriate question to ask, but we need to actually be able to defend the integrity of the Bible, especially from attacks by people who claim to be Christian, yet are drawing doubt upon God's word, okay?

Now, I think the key thing is here, when you draw doubt upon God's word, that allows the flexibility to then insert, to insert, you know, some new doctrine or some new redefinition of a biblical concept, and that's where you get kind of the false doctrine seeping in.

Remember what Jude chapter 1 verse 3 says, right? That we are told to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered, and if you read on, Jude goes on to talk about how there have been false teachers that have snuck in unawares within the church, and this example of progressive Christianity in our day, I think, is a perfect example of that.

And so, we want to keep that in mind. As Christians, we do not want to adopt a weak view of scripture, because it is a strong view of scripture that will equip us to combat this false version of Christianity that seeks to undermine God's word and then insert its new teaching or its new narrative, okay?

So, again, once you throw out the authority of scripture, everything else is going to crumble, and that's why folks who hold to kind of this type of progressive mindset, in terms of which the authority of the Bible is diminished, you know, things are going to become problematic really quickly.

Now, of course, people who are progressive in this sense might not think of themselves in that way. They'll just, you know, again, no one wears a t-shirt saying, I'm a progressive Christian, but when you start talking to people and you recognize that there is a disdain for the dogmatic nature of scripture itself, your antennae should go up and realize you might be dealing with a progressive Christian, okay?

So, again, these are going to be kind of important indicators to keep in mind. Another important feature that's characteristic of progressive Christianity is a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines, okay?

A rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines. And remember, this goes in a logical order. First, you doubt the authority of God's word, and that gives you the flexibility to either reject or reinterpret established biblical doctrines, okay?

So, this is where things get really sneaky, okay? Progressive Christianity reinterprets or outright rejects the most fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. You might hear things like, well, Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, right?

He just lives on in our hearts, or the cross wasn't about Jesus dying for our sins. It's just a metaphor for love. You know, you hear things where central features of the Christian faith are watered down, okay?

And this is where we need to stand firm. We need to point to the clarity of scripture, right? The Bible is clear about the gospel. Jesus wasn't just a good example. He is God in human flesh, okay? He is John 1 14, right?

In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God, John 1 14. The word became flesh. That's who Jesus is. He lived a perfect life that we couldn't live. He died to death that we deserve to die.

Romans 5 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's not a metaphor. That actually happened, and it is a central feature of the Christian faith, okay?

And a lot of these kind of progressive-minded people, again, not all of them, because progressive Christianity is kind of like nailing jello to the wall. There are different versions of it, and it manifests itself in different ways, okay?

One of the ways that it manifests is this rejection of or reinterpretation of core Christian doctrines, okay? So, for example, when you throw out the atonement for crying out loud, okay, you throw out the resurrection or the divinity of Christ, you're rejecting the heart of Christianity, right?

And if Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 14, he says, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith. Christianity, Christianity's central feature is the resurrection of Jesus and what that means in light of the scriptures that went before, okay?

We don't get to make everything a metaphor, and this is a very interesting point here because this seems to be common, even amongst unbelievers. I remember Bill Maher, if you guys know who Bill Maher is, he said that, you know, something along the lines of, well, you know, the problem is that people interpret the Bible literally when it was clearly meant to be metaphor.

Really? The whole Bible is meant to be metaphor? I mean, this is so silly, okay? You know, you don't really interpret the Bible literally, do you? Well, I think it's important to understand what we mean when we say that we interpret the Bible literally, because I interpret the Bible literally.

I interpret the Bible, and don't let people get away with calling you a fundamentalist because the word fundamentalism has a pejorative, kind of a pejorative sense. If you're saying I'm a fundamentalist simply because I interpret the Bible literally, we need to define our terms here, okay?

This is important, okay? Now, I interpret the Bible, okay, literally, but what do I mean by that? Okay, this is so important. I interpret the Bible literally, and what I mean by that is I interpret the Bible in accordance with its literature.

You see, a lot of these people will cry metaphor and figure of speech and these sorts of things, and in doing so, they weaken central core doctrines of Christianity, but we need to understand that the Bible comprised of 66 books, 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament, right?

It's written in different genres. And so that dictates the way we interpret the scripture and the way we interpret, you know, books of the Bible and portions of scripture. So we interpret the Bible literally is to interpret the Bible in accordance with its literature, okay?

And that's the way we should interpret any piece of literature. We interpret literature in light of the kind of literature that it is, okay? So don't let people get away with just saying this is a metaphor, that's a metaphor.

Jesus didn't really do that. That was only to set an example for, you know, set an example for us. It's not literally true, okay? So we want to be very careful of the rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines.

Now again, you might be saying, well, how is this distinct to progressive Christianity? Isn't this prevalent in other views as well that we don't identify as progressive Christianity? Well, of course, yeah.

You can see similarities, right? But this is something that I've seen in terms of people who we would identify as progressive Christians or what we identify as progressive Christianity, what we see is a rejection or reinterpretation of really important doctrines.

I mean, you see this oftentimes when people reject, you know, substitutionary atonement. Now people can reject substitutionary atonement for any number of reasons, but a lot of people who are Christian, you might hear people say something along the lines of, well, you know, I reject the atonement as traditionally understood because that's cosmic child abuse, okay?

You'll hear something like that. Now again, is that unique to a progressive Christian? Not necessarily, but this is definitely the line of thinking that a lot of people hold when they begin to reject core doctrines like the atonement or, you know, other features of the Christian faith, right?

Now again, this isn't new. This is something the church has been dealing with for a really long time, right? But this is something we need to be able to stand against, standing firm on the authority of God's word and standing firm on those core doctrines that are the essential foundations of the Christian faith.

Now you might be asking, well Eli, how do we know? How do we know what is a core doctrine, okay? And it's very easy to know what the core doctrines are because the Bible typically gives us qualifications for those core doctrines, or you can make inferences based on explicit teaching in scripture and draw conclusions that a doctrine is essential and definitional to the faith, okay?

For example, Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Notice the qualification. If you don't believe that I'm the I am, you will die in your sins. So the qualification is if you don't believe this thing over here, you know, namely that I am the I am, you will die in your sins.

So believing Jesus is the I am or believing Jesus that he's God, right? That's a quotation from Genesis 3 14, where God tells Moses his name and Jesus is claiming to be the I am, unless you believe what Jesus says about himself, you will die in your sins.

So the deity of Christ is essential, okay? You know, the apostle Paul says in Galatians chapter 5 that if you believe you're justified by works, you are cut off from Christ. That's essential. If you believe you're justified by your works, then you are violating an essential feature of the Christian faith, namely that we are not justified by our works, we're justified by our faith.

And yes, I believe the Bible teaches faith alone, and yes, I believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone is an essential feature of the gospel, okay? I do. I believe that that's true, okay? And yeah, you can throw James chapter 2, and James chapter 2 is easily responded to.

It's not the topic of this specific, you know, video, but we often hear, well, you know, the Bible, the only time the Bible mentions faith alone, it's preceded by the words not by, we're not justified not by faith alone, James chapter 2.

I have a video somewhere on my channel addressing that, but be that as it may, I do think that an essential doctrine is, okay, justification by faith alone. I think we should be able to teach that, defend it, okay, and stand firm on attempts to reformulate those doctrines, whether it's the doctrine of the Trinity or justification by faith alone or whatever the case may be, okay?

So again, super important to keep in mind trying to recognize or being able to recognize a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines, all right? Now, before I go to the next point, I want to welcome folks here.

Now, we have kind of a bigger audience than when we started, so welcome, guys. We are addressing progressive Christianity, some of its key features, some of its identifying features, and so far we have discussed point one, it often is characterized by a diminishing of the authority of the Bible, point two, it is often characterized by a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines, and I'm about to move into what I think is really a key feature of progressive Christianity, and I think this is probably what most people experience when they encounter someone who comes from this perspective.

But before we do that, I want to give people a heads up. Please don't miss the live stream on Thursday, Thursday. And I will be, folks have been following a little bit of my interaction with Jacob Brunton, who is a, let's just say he is not very fond of presuppositionalism.

I did a video, well, it's the video previous to this one, responding to his claims that presuppositionalism is immoral, and so I provided a point-by-point refutation for each of his points, and then Jacob Brunton offered a brief response via a video on Twitter, and I'll be responding to his response, and so I'll be doing that in the near future.

Hopefully, folks will keep their eyes out for that one. But nevertheless, let's continue here. And if you do have questions, I will try my best to answer the questions towards the back end of this episode.

Okay, if you see me continually adjusting my mic, my volume keeps fluctuating, so I don't know what's happening here. This is technology, and we're live, so that's just how it goes, right? You just got to roll with the punches.

Technology is great when it's working. When it's not working, you know, it can be a little frustrating. As long as you guys can hear me, that's fine. All right, so here's another key feature of progressive Christianity, and I think this is the one that most people are familiar with, and that is an emphasis upon personal experience over the Bible, okay?

Personal experience over the Bible. Now, again, do you have to be a progressive Christian to place your personal experience over the Bible? No, but that is definitely a key feature that we often see, okay?

You'll hear things like, well, I just follow what feels right to me, or I feel that God is speaking to me. It's almost like a personal revelation sort of thing. I've had this spiritual experience, and so, you know, that's my truth.

It's almost like a almost like a post-modern relativistic flavor of Christianity, but of course, that doesn't really work within Christianity because Christianity is quite dogmatic, right? You know, things aren't up to our personal experience, okay?

You know, the problem with experiences is that they're subjective, right? What feels right to you may not be what's actually true. Isn't that right? Okay, we have to be very careful of that. Proverbs 14 .12 says that there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end, it leads to death, okay?

If your experience contradicts the word of God, it's your experience that needs to change, not the scriptures, and a lot of times with these folks is everything is being run by the emotions, okay? And sometimes we need to, metaphorically speaking, now I'm speaking in metaphor, we need to smack people upside the head with truth.

This is so important, okay? It sounds like a cliche, and we hear it all the time, you know, people like Ben Shapiro might say this, but truth doesn't care about your feelings. That's true. That's so true.

It doesn't, truth doesn't care about your feelings. It doesn't matter about your experience. Does your experience correspond to what the Bible teaches? Because if your experience contradicts the word of God, then away with your experience.

Well, but it's my experience. Yeah, but experience has to be interpreted. This is why it's so important to keep in mind the issue of worldview. This is why I place such a great emphasis on worldview on this channel.

Even your personal experience is worldview dependent in terms of how you interpret it, okay? This is so important. And so we want to be careful, right? A key feature of progressive Christianity is this emphasis over experience over the authority of scripture, okay?

Jesus didn't call us to follow our hearts, okay? As the song goes, listen to your heart when it's called. Is it calling for you? I don't even remember that song came out, man. Oh, man. That's probably the theme song for all of progressive Christianity, right?

Although it came out before progressive Christianity came along in the form that we see it today. But so there you go. Jesus didn't call us to follow our hearts, right? He called us to follow him, okay?

In John 14, 6, he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Truth is not something you create. It's something you submit to. I'll say that again. Truth is not something you create.

It's something you submit to. Jesus Christ didn't say, I have the truth. He says, I am the truth, okay? This is really important. So we need to understand what we need to listen to what Jesus says, not what our emotions are telling us, okay?

And it's often this fluffiness with respect to emphasizing experience over scripture that then also leads to the redefining of the biblical categories of love and justice. Isn't that right? Love is love, we will often hear.

And some churches who support that whole mentality will say things like this, okay? Love is love. And I was just talking about this with my students, okay? And I asked the students, I said, is love good?

Is love good? Now, this is my logic class. We talk about these sorts of things in logic class. And I ask my students, is love something that's good? And most of the students will raise their hand, okay?

Almost 90 of the students raise their hand. And I ask the kids, well, think about this. Is love a good thing? And the answer to that question is, it depends. Because the goodness of love is going to be dependent upon its object.

The Bible says don't love the world. It's not good to love sin. It's not good to love evil. And so we can love darkness over the light. And in that sense, that kind of love is not a biblical love. And so when someone says love is love, we need to ask them, what do you mean by that?

What does that mean? You see, because if you claim to be Christian, then love needs to be defined within a biblical context, okay? Now, love, I think, is one of the most misunderstood concepts in our culture today.

And progressive Christianity distorts it even more, okay? You'll often hear things that Jesus was all about love. He didn't judge people, and neither should we. Now, of course, if you're well-seasoned in the scriptures, you're going to be very quick to point out the importance that Jesus didn't just say, you know, don't judge people.

There's more to the verse, right? Jesus says, you know, first remove the log out of your own eye so that you can remove the speck from your neighbor's eye. And so that's not telling us not to judge. It's telling us not to judge hypocritically, right?

That little detail is important and actually takes the steam out of that popular concept that Jesus says, don't judge, and so you shouldn't judge, okay? So we are to judge, but we're to judge wisely and non-hypocritically, okay?

Was Jesus all about love? I mean, I don't even know what that means. He was all about love. I mean, Jesus is also the one who condemns the Pharisees and calls them, you know, children of the devil. Okay?

Does that mean he didn't love his enemies? No, of course he loved his enemies. But when you say he's all about love, it almost gives this impression that Jesus never talked about hard things or he never condemned things.

Yeah, Jesus was about love, but he also flipped the money changers' tables over and made a whip and started whipping people and kicking them out of the temple, right? That's what Jesus did also, okay?

And so people will say things like, you know, he didn't judge people, neither should we. Again, someone who says that obviously is not acquainted with the biblical teaching, and if they are acquainted with the biblical teaching, what are they going to do at that point?

Well, they often reinterpret or reject certain portions of scripture that they don't like. These are, again, key things to hold on to, okay? Now, in reality, Jesus did talk a lot about love, and I'm not denying that, but he also called people to repentance, right?

Isn't that true, too? Okay, it's not just love. This is the problem with a lot of churches today. I mean, completely independent from progressive Christianity. There's a problem in the church today when there is an overemphasis upon one of the attributes of God to the exclusion of other attributes, right?

God is love, but he's also holy. He's also righteous. He's also just, and all these other things that we need to keep in mind, okay? But when we overemphasize one attribute of God, then we have a mischaracterization of who God is, okay?

And just from a logical perspective, you think about it. True love doesn't mean accepting everything that people do, okay? It means wanting what's best for people according to God's standard, not our own standard.

I'll say that again. True love doesn't mean accepting everything as it is, accepting everything that somebody does. It means wanting what's best for people according to God's standard, not ours. In John 8, 11, Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, before you say anything, okay?

Oh, it's a textual variant. Fine, it's a textual variant, but the point still stands, okay? Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Now, if you don't like that passage because it's a textual variant, go to another passage where Jesus tells someone, go and sin no more, all right?

Jesus didn't just love people and just say, you're fine the way you are. He encouraged people to go and sin no more, all right? So Jesus spoke the truth, but he spoke the truth in love and emphasized the importance of repentance and a transformation as well, which of course is initiated and worked through by the Holy Spirit.

We get that, right? But the point, I think, still stands. Love without truth, if you think about it, really isn't love. It's enabling, okay? And a lot of this progressive mindset is, well, you just got to love people, and by loving people, it means accepting what they do, okay?

And that's just that. Again, love without truth isn't love. It's enabling, and that's not true love, okay? And justice, we talk about justice, for example, biblically speaking, is not about aligning with whatever, you know, whatever cultural movement is popular at the time, okay?

It's about standing on God's righteousness, which calls us to love our neighbor and confront sin, okay? That we need to confront sin. Progressive Christians don't tend to focus or preach on sin, because what?

They're diminishing and reinterpreting those categories, okay? Or they kind of remove hell, you know, out of the picture, right? People will reject the traditional understanding of hell and God's judgment.

Why? Well, because God's loving. He wouldn't do that, okay? So you get these sorts of, you know, these sorts of things that kind of come into play here. So now, how do we respond to people who hold to this?

Now, again, progressive Christianity. These are just the characteristics that I've identified, okay? But the shape that it takes, whether a church that is progressive and builds an entire platform on promoting certain political narratives or social narratives, okay?

These sorts of things. Churches that do these can look like a whole bunch of different things. It depends on what their emphasis is, right? It's not this, you know, there's no list of things that says progressive Christians or progressive Christianity is this, this, this, this, this, this, this, right?

Okay, it's going to differ from, you know, church to church, person to person. But in general, if we kind of know what to look for, you know, how do we respond? Okay, this is key. So how do we deal with this, right?

How do we respond when someone says, well, you know, the Bible isn't authoritative in the way that you think. That's kind of an outdated view. We need to change with things. Or Jesus was a great moral teacher, but his morality is a little outdated.

And so I think God would, he loves us so much that he would want us to change with the times, right? And so therefore, then you insert false teaching, right? Well, here's some key points I want to kind of give to you.

Simple, they're not over complicated, okay? When you're talking to people who come from this mindset, okay, first and foremost, you want to point them to the authority of scripture. Well, they don't accept the authority of scripture.

I don't care what they accept. Okay. I don't care when the atheist doesn't accept the authority of scripture. That doesn't make the scripture superfluous and it doesn't make the scripture inappropriate to quote.

Okay, we're defending the scripture. If you want to get into the details as to why the scripture is authoritative, go for it. Right. But we want to call people to the scriptures. Don't argue on the basis of opinion with them.

Okay, right. Remember that passage in Proverbs? Don't answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be a fool like unto him, but then answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Okay? We don't want to do that. When the, when the, uh, progressive Christian wants to reject the authority of scripture, that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that we succumb to that and then throw out the authority of scripture.

If the progressive Christian wants to argue their point and throw away the authority of scripture, that is going to be detrimental to their view. For if you lose a foundation of authority and truth, what are they standing on when they make their progressive Christianity talking points?

Okay, right. It's going to be human opinion versus the authority of God's word. Show them that the Bible is reliable and that it's authoritative, right? When they're, when they're doubting whether we should understand the scriptures as inspired, go into 2nd Timothy 3 .16, right?

There's nothing wrong with those. Those are traditional passages, but I think they're very useful in discussion. When you're talking to a progressive Christian, hold firm on core doctrines. Do not waver.

Stand firm on those clear essential features of the Christian faith and, uh, defend them. Be able to defend them. Don't just say they're wrong. Give them reasons why they're wrong by defending those doctrines that they're attempting to reinterpret or redefine.

You know, you need to be able to grapple with the text and show, you know, well, they're wrong. Okay, as simple as that when it comes to the clear essential features, right? We want to be clear about the gospel.

We want to be clear about the divinity of Christ, his death, his resurrection, right? These aren't just theological ideas. They are the heart of Christianity. Okay, very, very important. You also want to, when you're having discussions with these folks, you want to keep the conversation centered on truth, okay?

It's easy to get sidetracked by emotions or cultural pressures, but we have to remember that truth doesn't change because culture does, right? Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.

Okay, so you want to be very, very careful, okay? We don't want to get sidetracked. We don't want to get over emotional. We want to think logically. We want to think biblically and we want to argue straightforwardly in a way that stands firm on the authority of God's word.