Matt Smethurst, Gospel Coalition, Wants You to Be Nicer

Yesterday I tweeted out this. I said, what we need right now are more men that can take a punch and keep pressing on. What we need less of is men who are concerned, grieved, discouraged, and saddened by mean-sounding words and criticism all while they play footsie with the new religion of the woke church.

I followed that gem up with this one. Time to find your testicles and reattach them immediately. This is a video about how to be a man online. Yesterday, Doug Wilson, who is, if you don't follow Doug Wilson, his blog is dougwills .com.

It's called Blog and Mayblog. He is worth following. He's always got some tremendous insights into what's going on. He is very prophetic in the New Testament way. So I highly recommend it. He said this about Big Eva evangelical leadership.

He says, our evangelical leadership has been prissy and fastidious. The word is precious, I believe. And leadership of this sort would much rather appear on a platform with someone who is helping burn down Minneapolis than to appear on a platform with George Washington, who was, you know, against that kind of thing.

He's absolutely right. I mean, there's no question about it that Big Eva leadership has been prissy. Prissy is the perfect adjective for what we have as our leadership. It's unbelievable how feminine so much of Big Eva leadership is.

They will come, they will grab their pearls and be shocked and appalled and grieved and saddened and all that if you say something that sounds slightly a little bit much. It's not about the content. It's about the tone.

I mean, how many times have you heard that kind of nonsense? And the problem is that Big Eva doesn't know what to do with social media. They don't get it. They don't understand it. And so what they try to do is they try to rewrite the rules of being a Christian in such a way that eliminates the disadvantage they have with social media because the reality is that people who are willing to talk straight, who are willing to cut to the chase, who are willing to be direct and say no to people, imagine that, like saying no to women, saying no to black people, saying no to people in general is like a lost art.

All you've got to do sometimes is just to say, no, I'm not going to do nonsense with you. I'm not going to believe nonsense with you. I'm not going to promote your nonsense. Just no. And that's all you really have to do, just find some spine to say no to people.

See, Big Eva doesn't have that. And so that sounds really mean to them, and they have a problem with that. So what they want to do is they want to rewrite the rules of social media so that their disadvantage and their unwillingness and their jellyfish spine and their feminine tendencies aren't so much of a liability.

And so you'll get articles like this from time to time. This is today from Matt Smethurst. He's the avatar for this kind of a squishy feminine perspective. Here's what he says. These are four ways to not be a jerk online.

Because as we know, like not being a jerk is the prime directive for a Christian. Like that's the thing we should be focused on. Let's not be a jerk. More than anything, I mean, look, I understand there's a revolution going on right now.

I understand that people are beating each other up in the streets. I understand that there's cities burning down and autonomous zones and all kinds of stuff. And I understand that the church is part of it and putting forward these lying narratives, stoking the race fires and stuff like that.

But the real concern that we really need to worry about right now is to not be a jerk because we all know that in Proverbs 37, it says, Thou shall not be a jerk, otherwise you can't be a Christian. Anyway, let's jump right into this because this is a perfect example of this.

Take Typed Words Seriously

Four ways to not be a jerk online by Matt Smethurst. He says this, he says the Internet can be exhausting and that's on the good days. Side note, if you're exhausted by the Internet, it's probably time to reevaluate your life because it's really not that big a deal.

The pull of our screens, the interactions they mediate is often more spiritually taxing than we realize or care to admit. I have yet to hear someone return from a digital fast and say, wow, that was terrible.

Usually it's more like, wow, I feel human again. Scripture calls, I mean, you know, you think about the persecution Christians used to go through and stuff like that and here we've got Big Eva complaining that social media is just too taxing.

It's just too much. It's just too exhausting. It's just spiritually, it's hurting me. And it's like, you know what? Grow a pair. How about that? Grow a pair. He says, Scripture calls us to honor everyone, 1 Peter 2.

That's true. Obeying that command has never been easy, but it's never been, but has it ever been harder than in our age of social media? Yeah, I know. We've got it harder than anyone. See, that's the truth.

Matt Smethurst is right. You know, we who have to endure mean sounding words online and like we have to block people sometimes. Can you imagine that? Like we have to block people and that's just really tough on Christianity.

He goes on. He says, Thankfully, Scripture gives us guidance. Here are four ways to be a faithful Christian online. All right. And of course, I'm going to give you my spin on this to make it actually worthwhile.

He says this. He says, Take typed words seriously. This is his first piece of advice for you to not be a jerk. Most believers are aware that Scripture has a lot to say about the power of words. The passages are numerous.

We know them. They are neither confusing nor obscure. He says this. Death and life are in the power of the tongues. Proverbs 18. On the Day of Judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak.

And for your words, you will be justified. And by your words, you'll be condemned. Matthew chapter 12. He says, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, and may give grace to those who hear.

Ephesians 4. He says, Do some of us still harbor the idea that typed words are somehow less direct, less real than spoken words? Surely Jesus won't subject them to the same scrutiny. Twitter is too trivial for Judgment Day, right?

The reality is that when we stand before King Jesus, our online selves will be held to account. Our online selves are our real selves, after all. So this is a really strange way to see this. I don't really know if anyone thinks that online words are different than regular words.

That doesn't make any sense at all. But there actually is something to it here. I mean, he does quote some Bible verses, so we have to take this seriously. The problem is with this article, and with every article, it discounts the rest of Scripture as well.

Here's something that Paul says. He says, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up. But the reality is that we know that the Bible also says that there's a time for building up and a time for breaking down.

We also likewise know that Paul himself, who wrote this verse, was, you know, at times, very biting with people and vicious with people. He had a bit of a serrated edge to him as well. More importantly than Paul, though, because, you know, you got to remember, Paul told people to cut their testicles off, right?

And so he said, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, and at the same time in Scripture, told people to cut their balls off. So clearly, there is a time for talk like that, that also fits with this verse, right?

Jesus, likewise, ripped people from time to time. And he didn't only rip unbelievers. That's a common retort that I'll get. He says, well, yeah, he said that to the Pharisees. Yeah, whitewashed tombs, vipers, that kind of thing.

That was the Pharisees. They were unbelievers. Yeah, he called his friend Peter Satan. Okay? He called his friend Peter Satan. So clearly, there's a time for serious language and a serrated edge and a little bit of bite to your word.

There's a time for it. And the Proverbs, which he also quotes here, I mean, again, this is a common tactic of Big Eva. They always leave out stuff that they don't like. This is a very common tactic of all kinds of teachers who want to do shenanigans.

They leave stuff out in their articles and in their ideas. Yes, death and life are in the power of the tongue. Yes, that's fine, but you can also tell people things like, go throw yourself in the river and drown.

It'd be better than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. That's acceptable because Jesus did that. Okay? But I think this is true, though. There's actually something to this. We should take our typed words seriously.

This is why you should never use the propaganda phrases of your opponent. Lots of people that I know, they don't use the word gay. They don't use the word LGBT. They use the word sodomite. And I think that there's something to that.

Don't use your enemy's propaganda. You see, when you use the word gay, that's an intentionally softened word. They want to soften that gut reaction that you should get when you think about sodomy. There should be an ick factor there.

Lots of men have talked about this. There should be a revulsion to that because it is contra what God has said should happen. So, sodomite is a way more powerful word. We should take those words seriously.

Maybe we should actually take a lesson from people like that and say, yeah, I want to take my typed words seriously, so I'm going to stop using your propaganda. Replace sodomite for gay. You understand what I'm saying?

Replace adultery for affair. That's another one. People don't use the word affair because that's a word that you will have to give an account for God for. Why are you softening that sin? It's adultery.

Fornication. These are words that we should be using, right? So there's something to what Matt Smethurst is saying here, but I don't think it's what he's saying because he seems to be saying, don't be a jerk.

And I don't know about you, but if I told a bunch of people to cut their testicles off, Matt Smethurst would probably call me a jerk. Anyway, he goes on. He says, humanize the other tribe. In his book, How to Think, A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, Alan Jacobs reflects on the human tendency to be constantly clarifying and widening the chasm between our perceived opponents and ourselves.

We depersonalize in order to delegitimize. Yet such social habits come at a steep cost, and not just to our enemy, Jacob observes. He says, quote, we lose something of our humanity by militarizing discussion and debate and we lose something of our humanity by demonizing our interlocutors.

When people cease to be people because they are, to us, merely representatives or mouthpieces of positions we want to eradicate, then we, in our zeal to win, have sacrificed empathy. We have declined the opportunity to understand other people's desires, principles, fears, and that is a great price to pay for the supposed victory in a debate.

This doesn't mean we should downplay truth, but love remembers this. People are far more than the sum of their sometimes mistaken positions. The image they bear doesn't ride on the views they hold. Besides, some of our views are wrong too, so we must proceed with humility, not cowardness, not tepidness, not silence.

Humility. Yes, this is very true. I agree with this. There's some truth here. But again, you can kind of see that this is, again, trying to leave stuff out here because Jesus Christ was perfectly humble, and yet he called the Pharisees, as a group, a brood of vipers.

Now, he didn't just say, and that means all Pharisees are this way all the time. In fact, he spoke to people as individuals. You know, if you remember Nicodemus, he came to him and he spoke to Nicodemus directly and specifically, and he knew that Nicodemus was an individual.

And so, yeah, we don't want to necessarily judge each individual as we judge the group, but group dynamics are at play here as well. There's nothing wrong with identifying that. Paul talks about Cretans and stuff like that.

So, anyway, the point is that, again, this leaves things out. See, this is the effeminate version of Jesus that has, yeah, he's humble, meek, and mild, but we define those in a way that the Bible has no idea about that definition.

It's a very effeminate version of Jesus. You see, Jesus was humble, perfect humility, and yet he got uppity at times. And so, if we're going to seek to follow Jesus' example, we want to be humble the way Jesus was humble.

And that means when people are coming into the church and saying, whiteness is wicked and white evangelicalism is evil, like Gospel Coalition says, then we can come at them with ferocity and say, no, we will not have any of this.

We'll just say no to you. None of this. And if we have to zing you, we will zing you. Because Jesus zinged people. Paul zinged people. The prophets zinged people. And so, if we're going to follow Jesus' example of humility, sometimes when somebody comes into the church to try to have a meal of the sheep, we'll zing you if we have to.

You understand what I'm saying? So, let's not have the effeminate version of Jesus. Let's have the actual biblical version of Jesus, and that'll be fine. And so, thanks for this advice. Maybe you should take some of it with your Gospel Coalition.

I mean, you're the editor, right? Take some of your own advice. But, yeah, I think we're probably a little further along than you are on that one. Number three, he says, give the benefit of the doubt.

Jesus' words in Matthew 7, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, are so familiar that they're easily forgotten. But the golden rule is in effect each time we pull out our phones.

One of today's most insidious temptations, amplified by social media, is to slander and shame. Why assume the best, we quietly think? Why not pile on? It's not like they know me. Plus, there are retweets to be had.

The word slanderer appears 34 times in the Bible as a designation for the devil. He is a great accuser. Mirroring his methods on social media is not unfortunate. It's not mistaken. It's satanic. Slander is a form of vandalism, too.

It defaces God's most valuable property on earth, human beings, divine works of art, who bear his signature. No wonder James says reckless words arise from hell. No wonder he anchors the whole discussion in the Imago Dei.

Crafted in God's image, every person possesses infinite dignity and worth and should be treated as such. This can be easy to forget when scrolling through the comments section or staring at a headshot, but pixels can never shrink personhood.

Our online interactions must reflect this fact. Again, I don't know anybody who thinks our online interactions don't matter or they're different or they're not part of our lives or all of a sudden we can slander people because we're online.

The reality is that people slander online and offline, but there's a problem here. And unfortunately, Matt Smethurst, you and your little cronies have participated in this problem because you have this weird idea of slander, where slander includes true things that are said about people, but they're said in a public forum with mean-sounding words.

See, slander actually has to be untrue about somebody. So when I say that Gospel Coalition promotes white, I'm sorry, critical race theory and critical race theory ideas, lots of you guys would call that slander, but it's completely accurate.

It's completely accurate, so it's not slander. I've had phone calls with probably, I don't know, maybe 10, 20 people where they are very mad at me because I've slandered. And almost every time, as soon as I talk to them, they always back down from the charge of slander.

You know what? You're right. You didn't slander, but I have a problem with your tone. Really, for Gospel Coalition and for Big Eva in general, slander and tone have become synonymous, and that's actually not true because this is what you guys do.

You take biblical words like slander, redefine their meaning, and then accuse us of sin. It's not going to work because we understand what the Bible says about slander. You see, slander is not just a tone problem because if slander was just a tone problem, Paul has a slander problem, Jesus has a slander problem, the prophets have a slander problem, God has a slander problem.

That's the thing. So many of you guys will just want to use those interchangeably. It doesn't work that way. It's the same thing you guys do with justice. You say, well, what are you, against justice?

And we're like, no, we just know that justice means something in the Bible, and you've changed the meaning to mean perfect equity or perfect no disparities and stuff like that, and we're just not going to go with it.

You see, as men online, we understand that giving the benefit of the doubt does not mean that we need to be naive to the nth degree. So if you're starting to talk, like Tim Keller does this, he talks about justice, right?

Okay, cool, let's talk about justice. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that we're going to actually talk about justice. And then Tim Keller goes on to say that a perfect example of an injustice is that I pay differently for my car than a white person paid differently for their car.

A white person paid less than I paid. That's an injustice. And then it's like, okay, so that's actually not an injustice because different people negotiate differently, and so that's not really a problem for a Christian.

The Bible doesn't say that people need to pay the same price for the same item. That's not biblical. And so that's actually not about justice. That's actually Marxism. That's actually socialism. And so some effeminate, big evil leader like you, Matt Smethurst, would say, well, that's slander.

You're not giving the benefit of the doubt. It's like, no, I gave the benefit of the doubt. I thought we were going to talk about justice, and then you started talking to me about Marxism. So I heard you out, and then I identified what you were doing.

You were replacing Marxist justice for the biblical justice, the law of God, and I'm not going to go with you there. So I don't have to give you the benefit of the doubt anymore. I heard you out. You know what I mean?

Like, I heard you out, and I'm not going to be naive about this. I'm not just going to assume after you've proved otherwise that if you're using the same words that I'm using, that you mean the same thing that I mean.

I mean, do we have to give the benefit of the doubt to Mormons when they say that they believe in the Trinity? They use the word Trinity, so I guess it's the only thing. Unless we want to be satanic, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, right?

No, I mean, we understand what they're doing. They use the word Trinity, but they don't mean the same thing. And so there's nothing wrong with that. You see, being a man on line requires you to not be naive, because being naive is a sin.

Okay? Being naive is a sin. Don't be stupid. The Bible commands God's people to not be stupid. There's probably a hundred proverbs about that. Don't be stupid. And so, yes, there is a benefit of the doubt that we give to believers, but for so many of you, including yourself, Matt Smethurst, we're way beyond that point, because you abuse words, you abuse the Bible, you abuse your flocks, and we're just not going to have it anymore.

So eventually, the benefit of the doubt runs out. You know, we warn them once, warn them twice, and that's the end of that. So, anyway, slander is not the same thing as a tone problem, and benefit of the doubt is not the same thing as being naive.

Nice try, but we're going to continue to be men on line. We're not going to be like you, because you don't know what to do with social media. Anyway, encourage liberally. This is my favorite one. The Bible is filled with summons to give, to serve, to sacrifice, to lay down our rights, but one command is unapologetically competitive.

Outdo one another in showing honor. So, how are we faring in this competition? Biblical encouragement is a rare currency these days. Therefore, it's deeply valuable. Assuming the best, seeing the best, and identifying the best in others to the praise of God's grace isn't natural for self-absorbed sinners like us.

It requires self-forgetfulness, but it showcases a more excellent way. The Puritan Thomas Watson once said that a humble Christian studies his own infirmities and another's excellencies. If we reverse this order, studying our own excellencies and another's infirmities, we will likely grow a platform.

We just might lose our souls. And so, you see, here's the real rub here. He doesn't like that A .D. Robles' YouTube channel is growing. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like the fact that Gospel Coalition likely puts a lot of money into their YouTube channel and is not able to have as many subscribers as Apologia Studios.

He doesn't like that. He doesn't like the fact that I'm able to get more retweets than him or more views on my videos or more interaction with my stuff than he's able to get. He doesn't want me to grow a platform.

And so what he says is, a growing platform is a sign that you are not encouraging people. You're not seeing the best in people. You're not praising people. You're not encouraging people. And it's like, he's trying to set this up so you're suspicious of a guy like me.

But the reality is that I know that so many of you have reached out to me talking about how encouraged you are by the content that I put out there. And that is humbling. That is humbling because I am intending to encourage.

You know, somebody reached out to me the other day. This is a big name. Someone you would know. Someone who's respected in big Eva circles reached out to me today. And he said this to me. He said, he expressed a little bit of surprise that I've been able to, quote unquote, convert people away from the social justice movement, away from the woke church movement given my tone and stuff like that.

And I said to him, hey, here's the thing, man. Here's the thing. I'm actually, my audience is not the other side of this. Because I know that this is another religion and so the only thing that the other side, the only thing that will change their mind is if God changes their heart, right?

And the gospel is the only thing that will change their mind. My audience on my YouTube channel, I admit I'm preaching to the choir. There's no question about it. Most of my videos are aimed at Christians.

People who are already Christians. People who are either dabbling in some of this social justice stuff. They're not fully woke yet. Or they've got friends and they're wondering how is it that my friends, my pastors, my favorite authors, how is it that they're abandoning the faith in droves?

That's my audience. I'm preaching to the choir. I'm telling you, man, you're not crazy and it's okay to be a man online. You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian. You don't have to be naive to be a Christian.

You don't have to be just a lovely person that's just adorable. You don't have to be that way. You can speak directly. You can just say no. You can refuse consent and you can say, look, I'm going to call a spade a spade and that's it.

I'm not going to nuance this to death and say, oh, well, you know, that's not God's best for you. I'm not doing it. I'm not going along with you guys. That's my audience. I'm preaching to the choir. I totally admit it.

And so that's what I aim to do. I encourage people all day long. I encourage people all day long. And, you know, this is the thing, Matt Smethurst. I encourage the people that you slander. You see, this is an article that is projection personified because Gospel Coalition has now made a point that they're just going to slander people and they don't care.

And I'm talking about the actual definition of slander, like when you say something about someone that you don't know is true, intended to hurt their reputation, like what you guys did at the Night of Lament the other day.

You slandered people, you slandered individuals, but you also slandered entire groups of people because you have no freaking idea whether there are tons of white supremacists in your church. You have no idea if so and so was a racist and this was a racially motivated crime and this and that.

You have no freaking idea and yet you're comfortable saying it all day every day, shouting it from the rooftops, and that is why your platforms will die. It's not because I'm not encouraging people. It's not because I'm not showing honor to one another.

It's not because I'm not seeing the best in others. That's not why I'm growing and your platforms are going to go away. That's not what it is. It's because I'm telling the truth to people. I'm not lying to people.

I might be wrong about some things, that's true, but I'm not lying to people and you are lying to people and about people. You're taking the CNN narrative of their systemic injustice and stuff like that.

It is demonstrably false and you're going with it. You're lying to people, man, and people can see it and they don't like it. They're sick of it. They're sick of being lied to. They're sick of people smiling in their face and stabbing them in the back.

This is a great article because one of the other things that it demonstrates, Matt Smethurst is expert at this. He's expert at crying out in pain as if he's being beaten all while he's beating you. You see, you see, you're slandering me while he's slandering you.

You see, this is a liberal tactic. They want to set the rules up in such a way that they're the victim as they're victimizing you and the reality is that Christians are seeing through it and Matt Smethurst, the stock of TGC, the stock of Gospel Coalition and the amount of people that take your word as gospel truth, that's shrinking.

If I was, if TGC was a stock, I'd be shorting the heck out of it right now because this is a losing tactic. We all see through this. Everyone that's against what you're saying is a jerk. We get it. We've been there.

We see how this works. If they don't agree with you, well, they're a jerk. They've got a tone problem. They're slanderers. It's all baloney. We all see through it. We all see through it, Matt. You see, we can be men online.

We can speak directly. We can call it out for what it is and the reality is you don't know how to be a man online. What you know is your effeminate tactics. It's basically like, it's not even effeminate.

It's like high school effeminate. You know what I mean? It's like the mean girls table. That's what it's like. We see through it and you can put these kind of like stylish photos on there and you can do whatever you want.

You can keep trying. You know, every month or so you put out an article like this or how to be a Christian online, how to not be a jerk online and the reality is that we're not interested in how to not be a jerk online.

We're not interested in how to be a priss online. We're not interested in it and that's what it comes down to. These articles are how to be safe online. How to be safe. How to be like a nerf gun. How to get nerfed online and the reality is we're not going to lay our weapons down.

We will not be nerfed by you. You see what I'm saying? I'm not trying to be safe online. I'm trying to be a threat. I want to be a threat to the zeitgeist. I want to be a threat to the kingdom of Satan.

I want to be able to kick down those gates of hell, right? And sometimes that requires violent sounding words, right? That requires someone to be able to take a punch or to put themselves in a situation where all of a sudden the gates of hell are starting to fight back.

You see what I'm saying? Like that's the reality. Like we're not trying to be precious lovely men online. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to be warriors and the thing is we want to be warriors in every area of life, right?

So we want to be warriors at home. We want to be warriors in the public square. We want to be warriors at work. We want to be warriors online as well. There is nothing worse about online interactions than there is in everyday interactions.

I know that's the message that you're putting out there but that's just not the case at all. Online is part of real life. We all understand that and so we're not going to lay our weapons down. It's not going to happen.

This is a nice strategy but it's not going to happen, Matt. We are not trying to be safe lovely gentlemen online. We're not prissy like you guys. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. Matt Smedhurst, I'd love to chat with you one time, sometime.

Anyway, God bless.