Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1248 ｜ Kirkism vs. Kellerism： Why the 'Third Way' Fails

00:00:01.000 Kirkism versus Kellerism. Which way of evangelism is actually more effective? Tim Keller was very

00:00:10.340 impactful in his apologetics and evangelism work, but Charlie Kirk has reached millions and millions

00:00:17.480 of people through his boldness, not only in politics, but also in the gospel. We've got a

00:00:24.940 debate going on right now about which way is better, and I will take you through both approaches

00:00:31.420 and what we should be thinking about this as Christians today. If you love this podcast,

00:00:37.900 please subscribe. YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe on Blaze TV, Google Play,

00:00:43.260 all the places. Leave us a five-star review. It helps us out so much. This episode is brought

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00:01:04.980 consultation. ConstitutionWealth.com slash Allie. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday.

00:01:19.980 Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. All right. There's been this debate raging online

00:01:27.460 about Charlie Kirk versus Tim Keller. At first, I was a little bit confused about this battle,

00:01:34.320 what the two had to do with each other, but I actually think it sparked a very interesting

00:01:38.800 conversation about how we effectively evangelize in this world that is increasingly hostile to Christianity.

00:01:46.560 So since Charlie Kirk died, there have been several declarations of the death of what is called

00:01:54.460 the Third Way. And the Third Way, if you don't know, many of you already do, but it's an approach

00:02:00.180 to politics and the culture wars and evangelism that was popularized by the late pastor and very

00:02:07.800 influential author Tim Keller. And it essentially argues that the Christian should neither be right nor

00:02:15.120 left and not really down in the nitty gritty of politics and cultural battles, but really stay

00:02:21.560 focused on the gospel. Keller would argue that you engage in politics and culture, but not in the kind

00:02:28.660 of direct, brash way that we see a lot of people on the left and right doing today. So that's what he

00:02:34.600 dubbed the Third Way. And in his book, Center Church, which I believe he wrote in 2012,

00:02:41.540 he says this, he says, the church must neither simply assimilate to the world's values nor

00:02:47.140 isolate itself from the world. And he says, the gospel gives us a third way to live in the world,

00:02:53.900 yet distinct from it, serving it while holding fast to our Christian distinctives. And honestly,

00:03:00.020 you might listen to that and you might think that sounds pretty good. However, Keller does argue that

00:03:06.440 Christians should adopt positions from both sides of the political aisle in order to be biblically

00:03:13.160 faithful. He wrote this in an op-ed in the New York Times in 2018, and he argued, quote,

00:03:19.640 the historical Christian positions on social issues do not fit into contemporary political alignments.

00:03:26.980 For example, he says, following both the Bible and the early church, Christians should be committed to

00:03:33.120 racial justice and the poor, but also to the understanding that sex is only for marriage

00:03:40.920 and for nurturing family. He says, one of these views seems liberal and the other looks oppressively

00:03:48.260 conservative. And I'll get into my thoughts on that statement just a little bit when we dig more

00:03:54.000 into this position. He also wrote a book called Generous Justice several years ago, in which he asserts

00:04:01.300 that Christians must not only preach the gospel, but also do justice, as Micah 6, 8 tells us. And he

00:04:07.920 goes on to define justice by looking at different concepts in the Old Testament. And he really makes

00:04:13.780 the case for what we see today as social justice, as using the government to try to create some sort of

00:04:21.880 equity or equality of outcomes. I'm not calling him a socialist, and I'm not saying he was on the far

00:04:29.100 left, but he certainly had progressive ideas for how Christians should actually carry out Micah 6, 8 in

00:04:36.540 America today. And now, depending on where you are, all of that might sound great to you. And there are

00:04:42.800 certainly parts of this philosophy that appeal to me. I mean, Tim Keller was massively impactful. He led a

00:04:49.800 massive church called Redeemer Prez in Manhattan. He authored 31 books before he died in 2023. And

00:04:58.080 several of his books impacted me, helped shape my faith, especially in high school when I was really

00:05:03.220 digging into theology for the first time. I still recommend many of his books to people who want to

00:05:09.040 learn more about Christian apologetics. Reason for God is a huge one. We had to read that my senior year

00:05:14.800 of high school. I'm still using and thinking through some of the incredible defenses for the

00:05:21.080 faith that are in that book. I really recommend it to you. Meaning of Marriage is Beautiful. We read

00:05:27.120 that when we were engaged. Prodigal God, life-changing book, Every Good Endeavor. Totally changed my

00:05:32.960 perspective on work. Again, another book I'm still thinking about that I read like eight years ago.

00:05:38.640 And then over 12 years ago, his little book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, planted the seeds for my

00:05:44.020 first book. You're not enough. And I quote that book and you're not enough. Keller was a really solid

00:05:49.140 theologian in so many ways. Huge impact. I have no doubt that God used him to bring many, many people

00:05:56.180 over his decades of ministry to the gospel. So when Keller spoke or when Keller wrote, I was inclined

00:06:04.020 to listen. However, whether Keller intended this or not, many of the people who have adopted his third

00:06:12.860 way position to politics and the gospel, people like Russell Moore, people like David French and

00:06:18.980 many others have all very demonstrably shifted to the left in the past 10 years. Moore wrote a book

00:06:26.020 condemning white evangelicals for buying a false political gospel by voting for Donald Trump. He has

00:06:32.140 been vehemently anti-Trump for a long time. David French, of course, another vehemently anti-Trump guy

00:06:38.880 who now writes for the New York Times. He now also uses preferred pronouns for men who identify as

00:06:44.760 women. So he's lying about the biological reality that God lays out for us in the first chapter of the

00:06:49.960 first book of the Bible. Both of these men profess Christianity. David French also endorsed Harris the

00:06:56.660 last election. They are a part of an organization called the After Party, which urges churches to avoid

00:07:03.680 getting into the muck and the mire of things like gender and abortion. And they lead this with

00:07:08.700 Curtis Chang, who dedicated nearly all of his public energy in 2021 to convincing Christians to get the

00:07:15.260 COVID vaccine. He said that Christian's vaccine hesitancy is linked to QAnon-fueled paranoia.

00:07:21.840 And he also, and this is why this is important, this is why this matters and is all connected,

00:07:26.880 he considers himself a third-way Tim Kellerite. And both Chang and Keller were champions of someone

00:07:33.620 named Francis Collins. And I'll remind you about who Francis Collins is and how he fits into the

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00:10:35.200 Okay. So Francis Collins, very well connected to Tim Keller. He was the National Institutes of Health

00:10:42.820 Director during the COVID era. He's been in public health for a long time. He and Curtis Chang led this

00:10:49.820 project called Christians and the Vaccine. He pushed really hard for vaccines, supported from what I

00:10:56.460 can see from my research, mask and vaccine mandates. He even spoke to churches via webinars,

00:11:04.160 telling Christians that it was their Christian responsibility to get the vaccine. He argued that

00:11:09.220 this was a way to love your neighbor. He argued that the vaccine was a part of God's redemption

00:11:14.780 story. Just think about everything we know and even then knew and did not know. And then to use the

00:11:23.080 gospel and someone's obligation by Christ to love other people, to tell them that they need to get a

00:11:30.120 vaccine that we knew so little about at the time. And we now know did not accomplish the things that

00:11:35.580 scientists and propagandists said that it was going to accomplish at the time. I mean, that is some

00:11:41.320 audacity right there. But Keller and Collins were close friends and Keller completely supported Collins.

00:11:47.420 They did podcasts together during this time, during this COVID era. Keller regularly wrote for Collins'

00:11:54.140 outlet, BioLogos. And Keller defended Collins many times, especially when he was getting a lot of

00:12:00.480 criticism from fellow Christians during the COVID era for the things he was saying.

00:12:04.240 And he actually compared him, Keller compared Collins to Daniel in the Bible. But Collins not

00:12:11.020 only supported embryonic stem cell research and the scientific use of fetal tissue a long time ago,

00:12:18.360 which people say encourages the discarding of these humans for money, but he also led the NIH when it

00:12:24.820 launched LGBTQ initiatives like Allyship in Action. His name was actually signed off on these things,

00:12:31.900 completely affirming things like transgenderism. He also, in 2021, apologized for the effects of

00:12:38.680 structural racism, which he claims set minorities back. So he is a left-wing guy. And yet he was

00:12:45.700 hugely supported by Keller and was hoisted up as an example of this third-wayism, of this faithful,

00:12:52.680 soft, but persistent presence that Christians are supposed to have in the secular world. And,

00:12:58.580 you know, Tim Keller also lauded people like, oh gosh, what's his name? He's one of the late night

00:13:06.360 comedian, Stephen Colbert. He also lauded Stephen Colbert, another, you know, very liberal guy and

00:13:13.040 said, this is a good example of being a faithful presence and sharing the gospel with a confused

00:13:18.280 world. So what we see over and over again, as positively impactful as I think Tim Keller was in so

00:13:25.460 many of his works, is that his third-wayism and its emphasis on winsomeness, so making the truth

00:13:31.960 attractive to a confused culture, that's what that's supposed to mean, has really become an excuse

00:13:37.060 for a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people to reflexively repudiate anything associated

00:13:44.040 with conservatism and Donald Trump and run the other direction. Because conservatism, white

00:13:49.220 evangelicalism, supporting for Trump, supporting Trump, voting for Trump, these things to this

00:13:55.740 crowd is often seen as embarrassing or unintellectual or unsophisticated, failing to

00:14:02.280 understand the nuances of culture. And so by this third-way crowd, this kind of group of evangelicals

00:14:09.500 who happen to vote for Donald Trump and be conservative and they're worried about the liberal

00:14:14.140 culture wars raging, they see those people really as a hindrance to the gospel, a hindrance to

00:14:21.300 evangelism to non-believers. Okay, so that's third-wayism. That's what we've got over there. And again,

00:14:28.640 maybe that was not the intent of third-wayism. Maybe that's not everything Keller was, but that has been

00:14:34.380 in prominent evangelical circles and public evangelical circles at places like Christianity Today,

00:14:41.360 the after party, all of that. That's been its effect. And then on the other hand, you have Charlie

00:14:47.580 Kirk, who evangelized on college campuses and to groups around the world while also intertwining

00:14:54.340 politics and culture war issues completely unapologetically. I mean, he unashamedly shared

00:14:59.560 the gospel with one student who would come to the front of the line. And then the next student,

00:15:04.340 he would also encourage them to adopt, you know, positions on capitalism and all kinds of conservative

00:15:10.780 principles and to always vote for the most liberty-minded conservative option on the ballot.

00:15:16.940 And he was very blunt in a lot of cases. He was very straightforward. He was extremely clear. And

00:15:23.200 from what I've seen, he really never changed his message and rarely from what I saw changed his

00:15:28.940 approach, no matter to whom he was speaking. And he was obviously a very unwavering Trump supporter,

00:15:36.580 a big defender of Trump. He said the controversial thing. He completely rejected worldly definitions

00:15:43.160 of racism and equity and social justice. And although he is so different from the third wayism

00:15:51.160 that we just articulated by Tim Keller, we have now seen millions and millions of people hear the gospel

00:15:57.800 and many people come to the faith because of Charlie's fierceness in telling the truth.

00:16:02.480 Before I guest hosted Charlie's podcast last week, I asked my audience to please send me

00:16:07.780 testimonies of how God used Charlie's words to bring you to Christ. And I got so many emails.

00:16:13.360 You never know how many people are going to go through the trouble of getting out of the Instagram

00:16:16.680 app, typing in the email and actually doing it. And so I was shocked. It's just like my inbox was full

00:16:22.000 of people saying this is how God used Charlie to positively impact my life and push me back towards

00:16:27.220 church in the Bible. But this one testimony from a young woman named Jacqueline was so special that I

00:16:32.100 actually had her on Charlie's show to share it. But here's what she said in part of her email.

00:16:37.720 She said, I was also very deep into the new age. I read my Oracle cards and had tarot readings,

00:16:43.200 crystal energy healing, went to moon circles, carried crystals with me everywhere. She said,

00:16:48.400 I was definitely bitter and defensive towards Christians, yet I was always constantly searching

00:16:53.840 for a greater meaning. The deeper I went into the new age and the more focused on myself

00:16:58.660 I was the emptier I felt. I told myself I just needed to do more shadow work or integrate and

00:17:04.720 release my traumas. I mean, this whole email could be an entire podcast. When really, she says,

00:17:10.560 I just needed Jesus. In new age, everything is so focused on the me when really all our focus needs

00:17:15.580 to be on him. And then she goes on to explain that her husband always listened to Charlie Kirk,

00:17:21.680 that he always leaned right. And she says that at first she was so affronted by what he was saying.

00:17:26.620 She was so offended. It was so different, she says, from the mindset that she was in.

00:17:31.060 And then she says, the more I listened, though, the more it all made sense. The more I could feel

00:17:35.120 Jesus calling me. So I picked up a Bible and I began reading. She said, as I listened to Charlie,

00:17:40.900 the more my views politically changed as well. The more I read the Bible, I realized my views were

00:17:45.700 the antithesis of the Bible, completely incongruent. She says that now I have done a 180 on my views

00:17:51.860 religiously and politically. And I thank God for Charlie and his message. She says that unfortunately,

00:17:58.500 she's lost a lot of friends because of her views. She said a lot were hardcore liberals.

00:18:03.680 She said that she was fired from her job for refusing to sign something, stating that she would

00:18:08.920 use people's preferred pronouns. But she says, and this is all Christ, she says, I wouldn't change any

00:18:15.080 of it. I've seen the light and will do everything to stand in its glory. Yes. And amen. That's what Jesus

00:18:21.440 does. And we're just vessels. I'm just a vessel. Charlie was just a vessel. You're just a vessel.

00:18:26.380 But how incredible. Like she explained in her interview with me that she was very offended by

00:18:31.620 Charlie at first. She was very pro-abortion. And when she started hearing Charlie talk about abortion,

00:18:37.500 she was offended. And then God used that, though, to soften her heart. That speaks to her own humility.

00:18:43.000 That speaks to God's power. And when I shared that the other day, I got a comment on Spotify from

00:18:49.900 someone saying, I hated this show. Talking about, you know, relatable. I hated this show two years

00:18:54.880 ago. But now I'm coming to share the arrows and I'm on fire for Jesus. And I absolutely love messages

00:19:01.140 and comments like that. I get them pretty often saying, you know, I actually found you from some

00:19:06.820 Redditor who hated you or some page who hated you. And I just enjoyed hate watching you. And then they

00:19:11.520 stuck around. And, you know, God uses not me, but his truth to change people's hearts and minds.

00:19:17.620 And then another email I got about Charlie that I thought was really sweet.

00:19:21.600 She said, for the last four and a half years, I refused to reach out to my father

00:19:24.900 out of pride because of some words that were exchanged between us last. And then she said,

00:19:30.360 watching a video of Charlie speaking with a young woman whose parents were divorced and one conservative

00:19:36.240 and one liberal, she said, made her stop in her tracks. She said, he said, this is what Charlie said

00:19:41.700 to this woman in the video. It was her responsibility to honor her mother and father, according to the Bible.

00:19:47.620 And this woman who emailed me said, it made me reflect and admit to myself that the only reason

00:19:53.120 I haven't reached out to my father is due to my own hurt, pride, and ego. I've been thinking,

00:19:59.060 well, he can call me. He knows my phone number, but the Bible doesn't command my father to honor me.

00:20:03.880 It commands me to honor him. And so she said, she said, I've been a follower of you and Charlie

00:20:10.140 Kirk for many years. She said, the day after Charlie was killed, I called my father and had an hour

00:20:15.220 and 40 minute, I'm trying not to cry, an hour and 40 minute conversation after not speaking to him

00:20:20.020 in over four and a half years. She said that they have a long road ahead, but that Charlie's words

00:20:26.020 set her on the right trajectory. And I'm telling you guys, like I have received dozens and dozens

00:20:33.600 of messages just like that. And I'm just one person. And so I'm sure that all of the other people who

00:20:39.940 knew Charlie and have been talking about him have also received their own hundreds of messages.

00:20:44.700 And there are hundreds of thousands of videos and testimonies just out there in the public,

00:20:49.820 not to mention the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who heard the gospel shared

00:20:54.680 at Charlie's memorial. And so we've got to think about like, what is really most effective here?

00:21:01.900 Again, Tim Keller, hugely influential in his own rights. Decades of what I would call faithful ministry.

00:21:08.900 Obviously, there are many things that I didn't agree on in his approach, and we'll get more into

00:21:13.920 that. But I'm sure that there are a lot of solid Christians out there who can credit Tim Keller and

00:21:18.660 his wisdom for their conviction. I am someone who can say that I was very positively affected by him,

00:21:27.080 but I'm more in the camp of Charlie Kirk, just unapologetically, like pushing back against the

00:21:32.320 darkness in the culture, knowing that some people won't like it, but also feel like that is a

00:21:38.280 responsibility that we have. So here's what I want to contemplate today. Is there a biblical and

00:21:44.840 unbiblical way to discuss politics as a Christian? Is it okay to not discuss politics as a Christian,

00:21:50.420 to not care about politics as a Christian? And I don't think actually either people in this camp would

00:21:56.460 say that, but there definitely are Christians out there who say, Jesus is coming back. We shouldn't

00:22:01.120 care about politics. Is that okay? Should we at any point forego or minimize our political views,

00:22:07.880 our culture war views in order to evangelize and to appeal to a non-believer? Another question I think

00:22:13.340 we should examine, does tone matter? And this is interesting, and I don't know that we'll have the

00:22:19.120 fullness of the answer to this today, but it's interesting to ponder, why does Charlie's approach

00:22:24.300 typically lead people to the right? And why does Tim Keller's tactic typically lead people to the left?

00:22:31.900 So we're going to dig into this today. We're going to look at some specifics on each person,

00:22:37.620 Keller, Kirk, Kellerism versus Kirkism, and how they approached things. And then I'll tell you

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00:24:36.620 Okay. So let's look at Kellerism more on the third way. So Keller told Premier Christian News in 2018

00:24:43.960 that it was harder to be an evangelical Christian in the U.S. with Donald Trump as president.

00:24:49.020 He argued that Christians were having a harder time sharing their faith with non-believers

00:24:53.580 who would turn away from the church because it was too Republican. And we've heard this over and

00:24:57.980 over again. And I've personally heard this from people who claim to be Christians, that people

00:25:04.360 like you are turning people away from Christ. People like you are why people are leaving the church or

00:25:09.420 why they're not coming to church. And I just want to be like, well, I wish I could give you access to

00:25:15.080 my inbox because that's just not true. Now that's not to say that I or anyone is going to be

00:25:20.980 everyone's cup of tea. But this idea is very prevalent that anyone who is conservative or who

00:25:28.480 votes for Donald Trump is pushing people away from the church. So Tim Keller argued, the skeptic

00:25:34.140 wants to believe that Christianity is just another political party, that really everybody is in it for

00:25:39.020 power. And so it just plays into their hands. And he's talking about if you are staunchly right or left

00:25:45.480 Republican Democrat. He said there's been a danger everywhere in the West where a church becomes so

00:25:51.000 identified with political power that is always alienating to a lot of people. He said the high

00:25:59.360 number of white evangelicals who have identified with Donald Trump in the Republican Party, that's a

00:26:03.380 stronger political identification that's ever happened in my lifetime. And of course, he worried about

00:26:10.920 that. We referenced a 2018 New York Times op-ed a little bit ago, and we quoted him saying that

00:26:19.360 really Christians should be committed to principles and values that we see on the right versus the left.

00:26:25.700 He says that we should adopt racial and social justice of the left while keeping in line with

00:26:31.400 biblical sexual orthodoxy of the right. And that's really how to walk that line and commit to the

00:26:38.800 third way as a Jesus follower and a Christian. Of course, I completely disagree with that because

00:26:44.220 I would say how the left defines things like racial justice and equity and equality and compassion

00:26:52.380 and empathy are not aligned with the Bible. You could say that we should care about people of all races

00:26:59.920 and we should seek to honor them by making sure that they have the same dignified rights as everyone

00:27:07.060 else because they're made in the image of God. But that is not how the left defines things like

00:27:11.980 racial justice and social justice. And so I know that I'm kind of debunking a lot of what Keller was

00:27:18.600 saying as we're going, but it would be hard for me not to. I don't want to go through this and you

00:27:23.200 think that I think that these positions are completely valid. I think that there are valid parts to his

00:27:28.620 approach, but I'm already seeing the problem with it is that it's just not true that the left wing in this

00:27:36.580 country defines things like justice the way that Christians should define them. He says that

00:27:43.520 Christians should think of how God rescued them. He did it not by taking power, but by coming to earth,

00:27:49.000 losing glory and power, serving and dying on a cross. How did Jesus save? Not with a sword,

00:27:54.300 but with nails in his hands. I saw this so much in 2020 saying that, you know, we shouldn't care about

00:28:01.300 our rights. We shouldn't care about liberty. We shouldn't care about our constitutional freedoms

00:28:05.880 because we should just be willing to lay those down in service to our neighbor. Often that was

00:28:11.620 used to say, get the vaccine, wear the mask, do the social distancing, pull your kid out of school,

00:28:18.480 do online learning for two years, all of these things. And I'm like, but who's going to stand up for

00:28:24.300 the rights of the people who can't speak for themselves? See, this is toxic empathy. Toxic

00:28:29.940 empathy urges you to ignore the people on the other side of the moral equation. So you put all

00:28:35.420 of your empathy towards one group and you forget about the people on the other side who are being

00:28:39.400 negatively affected by focusing only on the desires of this other group. And when it came to COVID,

00:28:45.860 we said, okay, we got to, you know, supposedly save all these people by doing these things. And then we

00:28:50.720 ignored the loss of learning, the depression increase in abuse and anxiety and all of these

00:28:56.300 kids who had no political capital, no voice, no say in any of that. And those of us who were standing

00:29:02.120 up for them, we were told you're not loving your neighbor. You're not doing a good job of being a

00:29:07.880 Christian. And so that's not explicitly what he says here, but this kind of logic carried into 2020 to

00:29:14.920 manipulate a lot of Christians into being quiet when we saw what really was injustice. The government

00:29:21.080 saying that you are going to lose your job if you don't get this vaccine that you're not comfortable

00:29:25.600 with, that you might not be ethically aligned with, like that is an injustice. But it's ironic that

00:29:32.040 the Christians who talk so much about social justice saw us as an impediment to loving our neighbor when

00:29:38.740 that's exactly actually what we were trying to do. And you also see this talk of power and

00:29:44.340 empire. He doesn't use the word empire here, but this is also a line of reasoning that is

00:29:49.820 lodged at conservative Christians. It is, we are accused of just wanting power. That's why we're

00:29:55.400 aligning with Trump. That's why we're conservative. And we're trying to turn this nation into Christian

00:30:00.220 nationalism and theocratic fascism and Christo-fascism, all of these crazy words. But traditionally,

00:30:07.340 it's conservatives who are voting for less government. Like either we're fascists or we're

00:30:12.060 Second Amendment proponents. We can't be both because fascists always want to take away people's

00:30:16.640 guns. Fascists are the ones killing people for saying things and for having opinions that are

00:30:21.920 calling for people to be terrorized, that are terrorizing pregnancy centers because they don't

00:30:28.880 like what they're doing, who are trying to assassinate Supreme Court justices because of how they decided on

00:30:33.560 the Dobbs decision. Like if you want to look at what fascism actually is, if you want to look at people

00:30:38.660 who want complete and total power, then I'm not sure that it should be the right that you're

00:30:44.140 primarily looking at. That's not to say there aren't power hungry people on the right. That's

00:30:48.580 absolutely true. But it's not fair and it's not accurate. It's not factual to say that just because

00:30:54.220 people voted for Donald Trump, that they want power and empire and all of this. And also, I just want

00:31:00.100 to say, and it's pretty obvious like where I'm landing on all of this, but I just couldn't wait till the

00:31:05.880 end to like try to debunk some of the things here and try to push back against it. This whole thing

00:31:10.940 about power, that Christians should not seek power. Well, someone's always going to have power

00:31:17.980 and the people who have power affect policy. And what do we know about policy? It affects people.

00:31:24.780 It affects the vulnerable people most. It affects children in and outside of the womb. It affects the

00:31:30.000 poor, the sick, the elderly, the vulnerable. So shouldn't we care about the person in power,

00:31:36.540 who that person is, what their worldview is, and how that affects the policies that then affect the

00:31:41.260 people that we are trying to love? Why wouldn't we want the person in power to have a Christian

00:31:46.320 worldview or at least the people around him to have a Christian worldview? And I'm not arguing that Trump

00:31:50.980 is a Christian and that he has a Christian worldview, but the people around him are a lot closer to a

00:31:55.520 Christian worldview, as we saw at Charlie's memorial than Kamala Harris, who was openly hostile to

00:32:00.320 Christian values in every way. So it is okay for Christians to want to be in positions of power.

00:32:06.160 He is using the example, the self-sacrificial example of Jesus to say Christians should not try to seek

00:32:12.220 power in any way. But remember, the story of Christianity did not end or start when Jesus died.

00:32:21.700 The story of Christianity started when Jesus defeated death, when he rose from the grave and

00:32:29.500 Jesus is coming back, not as a baby in a manger, but as a warrior, as a savior, as a messiah. And I'm

00:32:37.780 not saying that that is necessarily like our model for how we should form the government, but I also

00:32:44.780 don't think Jesus dying on the cross means that Christians are not supposed to try to obtain government

00:32:50.620 offices that have influence on policy that then affects people. I mean, that is a complete rejection

00:32:56.660 of the founders' ideas. Certainly, our founding documents are just replete with acknowledging that

00:33:03.060 we were created by God, that morality and truth are created by God, that we were given rights by God.

00:33:08.280 Without that, do you think that we have all of this goodness and the effects of righteousness that

00:33:14.360 we still have parts of today? Like in recognizing the needs of the vulnerable? No. Like Christians

00:33:21.540 have recognized that Christians need to be affecting policy in order for good things to happen to weak

00:33:26.620 people. And so it's just, it's wrong. It's wrong to say that Christians should not be seeking power.

00:33:34.400 Power should be used to restrain evil and to advance righteousness. That's a very good thing. That's a good

00:33:40.400 thing for our most vulnerable neighbors. When Christians say, oh no, I'm just going to get out

00:33:45.120 of that. Guess what? Babies inside the womb at 40 weeks gestation get murdered. Kids who say that

00:33:53.460 they're confused about their gender, they get their genitals chopped off. Parents lose custody of their

00:33:58.800 kids because they won't affirm the opposite gender of their child. Drag queen story hour goes on. Kids are

00:34:05.200 read pornography in schools. That's what happens when Christians are not in power. So if we love our

00:34:10.080 neighbor, Christians should absolutely seek influence. Okay. That's my rant on that. All

00:34:15.120 right. Let's talk about what he thought about like racial and social justice and all of those things,

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00:35:40.020 So he believed in systemic racism, that America is systemically racist. In 2012, he said it is a

00:35:46.640 system that excludes and marginalizes people on the basis of race, even though most of the

00:35:50.400 individuals in the system are not probably intentionally trying to do it. So we're all

00:35:54.700 complicit. And here's what he said in June, 2016 sought one. My pastor friend said, uh, studies

00:36:01.700 have shown, have pretty much proven that if you have white skin, it's worth a million dollars over

00:36:06.300 a lifetime over somebody who doesn't have white skin. If you have that asset of white skin right

00:36:12.180 now, historical asset, then you actually have to say, I didn't deserve this. And also I'm to some

00:36:19.560 degree, I'm the product of, uh, I'm standing on the shoulders of other people who got that through

00:36:24.080 injustice. I don't believe that at all. People in Appalachia would like a word. I'm thinking a lot

00:36:31.580 of people are probably waiting for their white privilege check to come in the mail. Um, I know

00:36:37.860 that young Ukrainian woman who was killed on the train in Charlotte just a few weeks ago, I'm sure that

00:36:45.660 she would have liked to cash in her white privilege at some point. Um, certainly when we look

00:36:51.880 statistically, it's just not true, especially when we consider affirmative action, which very often

00:36:58.380 prioritizes Hispanic and black applicants over very well qualified, even more qualified in many cases,

00:37:06.760 white and Asian applicants. When we look at violence, for example, we see that it is much more likely,

00:37:14.920 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics for a black person to murder or assault a white person

00:37:20.580 than the opposite, despite the fact that white people make up a much larger portion of the

00:37:25.120 population. And so I'm wondering like, where does this white privilege and all of the benefits that

00:37:32.360 it offers, like, where is it kicking in? Um, he disagreed with conservatives who put out the

00:37:40.040 statement on social justice and the gospel in 2018. Um, he, because they very rightly, Tom Askell and

00:37:49.840 Votie Bauckham and others said, look, we deny unbiblical social justice and we look to God to

00:37:56.980 define what justice is. And yes, the government has a part of that. Um, but Tim Keller said, no,

00:38:03.780 that's wrong. He said, it's not so much what the statement says, but what it does,

00:38:07.360 it's trying to marginalize people talking about race and justice. It's trying to say

00:38:11.040 you're really not biblical and it's not fair. And that sense, I thought it was completely fair.

00:38:16.940 You can go read the statement on social justice that came out, um, a few years ago. It was exactly

00:38:23.240 spot on in 2020. He published a series of essays talking about the sin of racism, the Bible and race,

00:38:30.500 a biblical critique of secular justice and critical theory. That's good. So I'm not saying he was far

00:38:35.540 left, I'm not saying he was always wrong, but he certainly adopted left-wing thinking about

00:38:40.960 whiteness and racism and equity and defined these words. I would argue not how the Bible defines them,

00:38:47.000 but mostly how secular progressives defined them. And here's a kind of strange thing that he said

00:38:53.040 in June of 2021. So that too. Recent immigrants or African-Americans who've been here from the

00:39:00.240 beginning, but who, because of slavery, then Jim Crow laws, then redlining, then everything

00:39:04.780 is they've just, they've got no money in their networks. They just don't. And if you send them

00:39:10.640 out there and say, raise your own support, they can't. So then what happens is in so many of these

00:39:15.640 evangelical organizations, they basically are, because they can't do that, they never move up

00:39:20.960 and, and really become a part of the power. So he claims that non-white missionaries can't raise

00:39:28.120 their own funds because of the lack of white privilege. I think that there could be a lot

00:39:33.160 of reasons that we could analyze for that, that have nothing to do with the melanin count that someone

00:39:38.040 has. All of this plays into this idea that we are split up by oppressed versus oppressor. Everyone

00:39:45.680 who has black or brown non-white skin is on the side of the oppressed to some degree. And everyone

00:39:52.420 who has white skin is on the side of the oppressor, or at least the privilege to some degree. And that

00:39:59.240 is not a dichotomy that we see supported by scripture. In fact, I would say that's the sin of partiality

00:40:04.520 because God is not looking at us based on these arbitrary categories of our skin color. God is looking

00:40:11.120 at us as individuals. So he's not, if a black person commits some kind of injustice towards a

00:40:16.860 white person, he's not saying, well, let me just, the scales are a little different because of the

00:40:22.460 races involved. No, in that case, the black person is the oppressor. He doesn't care less about black

00:40:28.420 on black murder or white on white murder. He doesn't care less about those things. That's not how he's

00:40:33.100 judging things. And so that's not how we should judge things. Also, as we talked about, he was good

00:40:38.060 friends with Francis Collins, who he claimed was a very faithful presence. Now, remember Francis

00:40:43.920 Collins, under his leadership, the NIH funded research that violated Christian ethics, such as

00:40:50.880 mastectomies and puberty blockers for minors, fetal tissue studies using aborted remains, an app tracking

00:40:57.180 sexual behaviors of young teens. As I said, he promoted the vaccine very regularly, especially when he was

00:41:05.440 talking to Tim Keller. Here's thought three. And it has, I guess, spilled over in the vaccine

00:41:11.600 situation. And it breaks my heart to see why this has become such a nasty situation so often between

00:41:19.240 people oftentimes quite educated who have bought into particular conspiracy theories about how vaccines

00:41:26.200 are intended to just make money for pharmaceutical companies. And we all know that they're actually

00:41:31.420 harmful. And again, I'm not saying that Keller said that, but he is extremely supportive of

00:41:37.560 platforming this. And this is someone who he believed was emblematic of his third way approach.

00:41:44.340 And then, OK, so a lot of the defense that I see of Tim Keller is, well, he was strong on things like

00:41:51.540 sex and marriage and gender. And while I do believe that in his heart of hearts, he was,

00:41:57.700 I do think that his emphasis on winsomeness actually made him compromise or it made him so

00:42:06.840 careful about threading the needle that it was sometimes confusing about what he actually believes.

00:42:13.020 So here's one thing he said about abortion in 2022. This was a second tweet. And so the first tweet

00:42:22.280 doesn't change anything about what he actually says, but that's why it starts with every year.

00:42:25.820 So I know abortion is a sin, but the Bible doesn't tell me the best political policy

00:42:30.600 to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which political or legal practices are most

00:42:36.600 effective to that end. The current political parties will say that their policy, you know,

00:42:42.040 most helps is most helpful or whatever. That's not, that's, that's not true. Thou shalt not murder

00:42:49.220 is a pretty good basis for us having the same kind of law here, right? This is so typical of the like,

00:42:58.140 I'm holistically pro-life, which means I'm against borders and I'm against the death penalty.

00:43:03.780 But when it comes to actually killing a baby, it's nuanced. No, it's really not complicated. Abortion

00:43:10.840 ends an innocent human life. It's always wrong to end an innocent human life and therefore should be

00:43:16.640 illegal to take an innocent human life. And this is what I always press people. Should it ever be

00:43:22.760 legal to leave? Should it ever be legal to kill an innocent person? In what case should it be legal

00:43:29.500 to kill an innocent person? And typically people will say, well, no, this shouldn't ever be legal.

00:43:34.920 So why does that change based on the size or location or stage of development of the baby inside the

00:43:40.320 womb? He's not really thinking about this from the perspective of a baby. He is arguing that

00:43:44.380 it's kind of like up in the air, whether or not babies in the womb should have a legal right to

00:43:50.680 not be murdered. Should people of all ages and sizes have a legal protection against murder,

00:43:58.700 a legal right to not be murdered? And if not, why not? And which people? Is it because they're small?

00:44:06.520 Is it because they're young? Those seem like really arbitrary reasons to not grant someone the legal

00:44:10.320 right to not be murdered. And by the way, the pro-life cause is not just about reducing abortion.

00:44:15.820 That's part of it. It's not just about reducing abortion, though. It's also about doing the right

00:44:19.640 thing, which is granting someone the legal right to not be murdered. And even that if that reduced

00:44:24.580 abortions by zero percent, that would still be the right thing to do.

00:44:29.500 Keller threaded the needle also on homosexuality. He claimed that the Bible says that it is not God's

00:44:34.040 plan, but also that Christians should love our neighbor, which of course is true. But here's what he said.

00:44:39.060 You read the Bible and the Bible has reservations. The Bible says homosexuality is not God's original

00:44:45.320 design for homosexuality. Okay, there you have it. The Bible also says love your neighbor.

00:44:51.520 The Bible also, in fact, the Good Samaritan parable, which is how Jesus tells us to love

00:44:56.640 our neighbor, you put a Jew and a Samaritan there. So what Jesus is trying to say is everybody is your

00:45:02.400 neighbor. Gay people are your neighbors. People who are of other faiths are your neighbors. People

00:45:07.500 other races are your neighbors. And it's the job of a Christian to do what Jesus did on the cross,

00:45:16.000 which was to give himself for people who were opposing him and people who didn't believe in

00:45:22.080 him even. Okay, true. We are absolutely to love our neighbor no matter who they are and how they

00:45:28.040 identify. The question is, and I'm not sure that Keller ever properly defined this, what is love?

00:45:34.460 And can you have love without truth? I'm not sure that you can. Love never rejoices in wrongdoing,

00:45:40.380 but rejoices with the truth. That's what the God who is love, 1 John 4, 8, says in 1 Corinthians 13, 6.

00:45:46.560 And I do think that he spoke the truth. I don't think he was always a coward. But again,

00:45:50.700 we should ask ourselves why people who follow in the way of Keller seem so often to use the third way

00:45:58.940 to veer to the left. He argued in a series of essays from fall of 2021 to summer of 2022 that the

00:46:11.320 decline of evangelicalism is due to, quote, the conservative church politicization that has turned

00:46:20.140 off half the country. And so he really believed, it seems, that it was all of the people, mostly down

00:46:29.780 south, that were causing the problems, that we have failed to evangelize. That's why he focused so much

00:46:39.400 on what he called winsomeness and the importance of trying to use charm to win people over, which,

00:46:50.660 as I will explain a little bit, I do not disagree with. I do not disagree with that, that we should

00:46:56.020 be actually as winsome as possible. The problem is when winsomeness leads to compromise. And there is

00:47:03.440 a reason why so many people who claim to champion this cause of winsomeness and the third way end up

00:47:12.040 being very cowardly when it comes to just being able to stand up for right and wrong.

00:47:18.260 McLean Bible Church, David Platt's church, they have a pastor named Mike Kelsey. He said some super

00:47:24.340 woke things back in 2020, so this didn't surprise me. One of you sent me this sermon and was like,

00:47:31.700 you've got to watch this. I go to McLean Bible Church, and then I watched it, I sent it to Megan

00:47:37.020 Basham, and it's been circulating because it's so crazy. This person couldn't just say, you know,

00:47:44.140 this Charlie Kirk was a person who delivered the gospel and he got assassinated for that. He had to

00:47:49.980 also say this, this, I believe, is product of third wayism, satan. In fact, in some cases, I was

00:47:56.800 shocked that so many professing Christians were rationalizing things that were so demeaning

00:48:01.640 and unchristlike and not just rationalizing things he said, but idolizing him as the prototype for a

00:48:08.340 new generation of Christians. And here's my point in all of that. This is not just Charlie Kirk. This is

00:48:15.000 all of us. Every single one of us is tempted to talk to or about people in ways that not only dishonor

00:48:25.180 them, but the God who created them in his image. He also says in that clip that he spent hours watching

00:48:34.180 Charlie Kirk videos, hours watching Charlie Kirk videos, and that he watched them all in context

00:48:39.780 and that the context didn't help, that he actually said things that were just so denigrating to image

00:48:47.500 bearers of God. Now you'll notice that in this sermon, he didn't give an example. He didn't cite his

00:48:55.000 sources. He didn't say this is exactly what he said, and this is why it is unbiblical and wrong.

00:49:02.300 So to a bunch of people who have probably never heard Charlie Kirk in context, this person who got

00:49:08.640 assassinated after sharing the gospel over and over again, they all think, well, yeah, I know that she

00:49:16.200 just condemned political violence, Mike Kelsey, but it does seem like this guy had it coming. Like, I don't

00:49:23.220 think that we really should be honoring him as any kind of Christian hero. I don't really think that we

00:49:28.520 should be watching his videos of him sharing the gospel because he said things that were so denigrating

00:49:34.280 to image bearers of God. They've just been convinced right there. They didn't ask him to

00:49:39.160 cite his sources. They didn't ask for evidence. If you go to this church, you should. Like, he made

00:49:43.980 the argument, give me your specifics. Give me your examples. This is the same thing I've been saying

00:49:48.020 since 2020. When your pastor is talking about racism, what you're guilty of, and the injustices

00:49:53.460 that you've perpetuated, tell me. Which one specifically? I want to know, do I bear the collective guilt of

00:50:00.060 people who kind of looked like me who lived in the same relative geographical region 200 years ago? Is that

00:50:06.180 how justice works in the Bible? Is this how pastors should talk here? This, to me, is a product of third

00:50:13.360 wayism. This kind of tone policing without ever giving any substantive evidence of what you're doing is just

00:50:19.620 also really bad logic and a bad rhetorical strategy. But this is what we see over and over again. So let's

00:50:26.780 contrast this to who Charlie Kirk was and how he did things. And then let's look objectively. Obviously,

00:50:33.180 y'all know which camp I'm in. But let's look objectively and ask some questions. And yes,

00:50:37.180 I'm going to bring some nuance into the conversation as we try to go through, like,

00:50:43.160 what is the right way to approach all of this? And we're all trying the best that we can and we

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00:52:00.320 Okay. So Charlie was completely unafraid, as we know. I probably don't need to tell this audience

00:52:05.940 how Charlie talked and who he was and what he stood for. Not only did he talk about politics and voting for

00:52:12.420 Trump alongside talking about Christianity, but he was also unashamed to say that America does have

00:52:19.240 a Christian foundation. We played a clip, I think last week at the end of the episode, just talking

00:52:24.220 about how often God was mentioned in the founding documents. And someone tried to say, oh, it was

00:52:29.540 only four times. Well, four times is a lot. Four times is actually a lot. They were acknowledging that

00:52:34.320 we were created by God, endowed with certain inalienable rights. That's the basis for all of this.

00:52:38.760 And that they looked to the Hebrew Bible, to the Old Testament and the New Testament,

00:52:43.380 but to see the principles of justice, not to create a theocracy, but to say, okay, there

00:52:48.400 is a moral lawgiver, as C.S. Lewis would call him. And we have to look to him to decide what

00:52:54.500 is just and what's not, what's right and what's wrong, while also giving the maximum freedom

00:53:00.400 possible so that this can be a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

00:53:04.840 And we've fallen a lot since then. But that's why we have that. I believe it's John Adams who said

00:53:12.900 that our constitution was made or our form of government was made for a moral and religious

00:53:18.680 people. It's really not adequate for any other kind of people, which is part of why we're having

00:53:24.000 so much trouble today. So Charlie was very adamant about that. And he was right about that.

00:53:29.960 The state charters in the very beginning, in order to hold public office, like you had to be

00:53:35.580 a Protestant Christian, except for, I think, in one colony. That was a requirement.

00:53:40.100 So people who say that this was not a Christian country, that we shouldn't interweave Christianity

00:53:43.860 in politics, they're just wrong. Of course we should. Here's him arguing some of that. Stop five.

00:53:50.720 John Adams seamlessly said the constitution was only written for a moral and religious people. It was

00:53:54.980 wholly inadequate for the people of any other. The body politic of America was so Christian

00:53:59.340 and was so Protestant that our form and structure of government was built for the people that

00:54:04.000 believed in Christ our Lord. One of the reasons we're living through a constitutional crisis

00:54:07.700 is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government and

00:54:12.300 they're incompatible. Okay. I didn't actually know that that clip was going to say exactly

00:54:17.320 what I had just said, but obviously he's absolutely right. Charlie didn't believe in a state

00:54:23.820 church. Of course, none of us do over here, by the way, but believed that policy should be

00:54:28.820 influenced by Christian doctrine, just like you, atheist progressive. You believe that the

00:54:34.540 government should be influenced by your atheist progressive doctrines. Well, we believe that we've

00:54:39.460 got better doctrines and we do. Stop six. If a kid is sitting in a, in a, in a desk and another kid

00:54:45.240 and he hits the other kid, should the teacher say that's wrong? Yes. Teachers teaching morals.

00:54:50.460 Well, if the kid goes and steals his lunch, is it for the teacher to say, don't steal. If the kid goes

00:54:55.000 around and starts harassing and bullying another kid, should the teacher say, don't do that?

00:54:59.080 But what about those two commandments? No, hold on. I'm going to get there. The teacher,

00:55:02.360 of course, should come and say, stop it. Don't do that. Cause the teacher's appealing to a moral

00:55:07.640 order. We think that moral order should be in every classroom, the 10 commandments.

00:55:12.600 So good. So good. Um, he also would speak out against like left wing Christianity in a lot of ways.

00:55:23.120 And that was probably what he and I talked about the most, both in his podcast and whenever I would

00:55:28.280 do something about like, um, a ministry or something that has gone woke, I would always

00:55:32.680 get a text from Charlie saying, Oh, this is an awesome podcast. Like come on my show and let's

00:55:37.780 talk about it. And that was certainly true when we were both going against the, he gets us campaign.

00:55:42.660 Here's side.

00:55:45.520 These ridiculous television advertisements that I keep on saying, he gets us.

00:55:48.740 That is the most narcissistic Christian ad ever. No, I'm sorry. Let's be very clear. He doesn't

00:55:56.020 like get you when you're watching pornography. He doesn't get you when you're going out drinking

00:56:00.420 till 2am and not taking care of your kids. He doesn't get you when you're in the abortion clinic

00:56:05.340 and you're driving the girl that you had premarital sex with. No, instead he saves you from your sin

00:56:11.680 and you must bring yourself to repentance in front of the Lord of the heavens and the earth. And again,

00:56:16.620 this ridiculous advertisement, he gets us. That's everything wrong with American Christianity.

00:56:23.640 So good. So very different than third way ism, but this is why, this is why he had the approach

00:56:29.480 that he did. Here's top nine. Spiritual problems manifest themselves into cultural problems that

00:56:35.160 then become political problems. So it's kind of a three-pronged issue, but of course at the core,

00:56:39.340 it's spiritual. And so my critics say, Oh, Charlie, you know, politics, waste of time. You should only

00:56:44.580 talk about the gospel. The gospel is the most important thing, but you know how many people

00:56:48.480 we have led to Christ by first talking politics because the law is a school teacher to Christ.

00:56:53.180 As it says in Galatians three, the law can show you towards Christ. It's a guardian of Christ's

00:56:57.400 message. And I see this happen every day on campuses. And so there's something very profound

00:57:01.700 happening. It's actually accelerating. It's not slowing down. Young men are becoming more and more

00:57:05.840 conservative. They're more and more hungry and thirsty to get involved in the local church.

00:57:09.520 Okay. So whether or not you agree with everything that Charlie said, I think that we can sufficiently

00:57:20.140 say that Charlie's approach to things did not turn people away from Christ, has not created this

00:57:28.220 crisis of people wanting to like walk away from church, but that actually his approach was very

00:57:35.880 appealing to a lot of people. And that this idea that if you're a conservative and you support Donald

00:57:44.600 Trump, that you are inherently repugnant to a non-believer, it is not true. And by the way,

00:57:51.440 a non-believer probably is going to be a little offended by things you say as a Christian. This idea that

00:57:57.840 we have to be completely palatable to the world in order to kind of like invite them in. It's like saying,

00:58:04.560 oh, if I give my kid cookies first, then maybe he'll want the vegetables later. I just don't think

00:58:10.460 that that tactic is as effective as people think it is. And it just ends up, you end up being the

00:58:16.040 parent that only gives cookies. And you never actually give the nourishing, life-changing

00:58:22.160 stuff that is good for someone. And I think that answers the question of why the third way-ism and

00:58:29.240 the overemphasis on winsomeness and tone policing ends up leading people to compromise because you are

00:58:36.560 so concerned with how the world hears you and how the world perceives you, not remembering that the

00:58:42.780 aroma of Christ, that Christ himself in the gospel is an aroma to those of us who know him and love him

00:58:50.080 and is a stench of death to people who are dying. And it's only through regeneration of the Holy Spirit

00:58:55.540 that someone can be convicted and wake up and say, hang on, that actually smells good. Hang on,

00:59:00.420 I actually do want the vegetables that are good for me. And that's what the Holy Spirit does.

00:59:05.420 Now, that to say, and this is what we're about to get into in this last segment, not everyone is

00:59:11.720 called to the same thing. Not everyone is called to the same method, to the same tone, to the same kind

00:59:18.360 of delivery, to the same platform, to the same region, to the same kind of people. And there may be

00:59:23.960 different methods and different tactics that are more effective for one group of people at one

00:59:30.660 certain time and more effective for another group of people at another time. At the same time,

00:59:36.780 I don't think it's relative. I think we can declare a winner at this time in this stage. So we'll get

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01:00:59.680 a paid endorsement. Okay. So here's what I think about all of this. And I probably have made it

01:01:10.960 pretty clear. And those of you who are familiar with me know that I'm in the Charlie Kirk camp,

01:01:15.300 that I wasn't exactly like Charlie Kirk. I would say that because I'm a woman, because I have a female

01:01:21.020 audience, because of my genuine personality, he would have a more brash way of saying things.

01:01:25.480 I was never offended by it. I love it. Like I love listening to that kind of stuff.

01:01:29.520 Never hedges, never caveats, never compromises. I love that kind of thing. Now I would say I'm a

01:01:35.980 little softer and I probably do add some caveats, maybe sometimes necessarily, maybe sometimes

01:01:41.160 unnecessarily more than he did. But I have a different calling. I have a different platform.

01:01:48.980 All of us are called to take risks for the gospel. All of us are called to be bold for our faith.

01:01:53.100 All of us are called to be apologists and evangelists and have a reason for the hope that

01:01:58.700 we have. All of us are called to put everything in our lives, our entire worldview under the

01:02:04.700 submission of Christ. But not all of us are called to minister to the same people. Not all of us have

01:02:10.540 the same platform. And so how you are bold for the gospel, the risks that God asks you to take for

01:02:16.820 the gospel may not be touring the country, speaking as clearly and incisively as possible to hundreds

01:02:28.360 of thousands of college students and then getting killed for saying things that are biblically true.

01:02:34.420 That might not be your calling. That might not be your fate. You may be a stay-at-home mom and God has

01:02:41.120 called you to spend every hour of every day loving your literal neighbors around you and serving and

01:02:47.620 homeschooling your kids, whatever that looks like. You are called to do that with boldness and joy.

01:02:52.980 That means you might not always have the same tone as Charlie Kirk. You might not always say the

01:02:57.760 same things. You evangelizing directly to your Indian Hindu neighbor is not probably going to be you

01:03:06.560 setting up like a table in their front yard saying, change my mind. Hindu is pagan. Like it's probably

01:03:13.100 not going to look like that. And so my point is that it is okay for people to have a different tone

01:03:19.380 and a different way of evangelizing to different kinds of people at different times. So when you have

01:03:26.960 Tim Keller, who is an erudite intellectual, who is called to, was called to the heart of Manhattan that

01:03:38.600 is largely hostile to Christianity, that is very ethnically diverse, very politically progressive,

01:03:45.960 and he is called to bring clarity from the gospel into that world. How he does things, how he writes,

01:03:53.000 how he talks, the tone and posture and disposition that he uses is going to be different than Charlie

01:03:59.080 Kirk. And in principle, I would say that that's okay. In principle, I would say that that is fine.

01:04:06.720 That a pastor who is called to be a pastor in, I don't know, the heart of Oklahoma or rural Kansas or,

01:04:17.080 you know, the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, it's going to look different than the pastor who is called

01:04:24.360 in Portland or in Sacramento or the heart of San Francisco. Posturally, but not positionally.

01:04:32.260 So the posture may be different, but the positions should not be different. And here's where I have a

01:04:38.120 problem with third wayism. It's not how Tim Keller talked. It's not that he wasn't persuasive in his own

01:04:44.840 way or that he didn't add value. I think he did. But for whatever reason, the posture that he

01:04:51.360 emphasized of being so focused on winning over a dying culture and talking like them and trying to

01:04:58.780 understand every single position that they have before presenting them with the truth leads to a

01:05:03.720 positional difference. It seems not in every case, maybe not even with Tim Keller in every case.

01:05:09.080 But when we look at people like Francis Collins, when we look at Curtis Chang,

01:05:12.840 And when we look at David French and we look at Russell Moore, it's not just that their posture

01:05:17.380 on politics and evangelism has changed. Their positions have changed on things like gender

01:05:23.360 and race. And certainly when it comes to the role of the government and the vaccine and all of that,

01:05:28.060 I mean, you've got like a constitutional lawyer in David French. I mean, yes, their positions have

01:05:32.740 changed. And so when a posture continually leads to compromise, when a tactic continually leads

01:05:38.740 to softening of the positions of the Bible that are so clear in Scripture that there's really no

01:05:44.720 nuance on, then that's when things become a problem. I think the question is, is that approach,

01:05:50.600 is that posture appropriate for this time? Appropriate for the moment we're in? Maybe it was

01:05:56.420 exactly what was right in certain parts of the country at a certain time. But when it comes to the

01:06:01.840 global Christian church in the moment that we're in, in general, I don't think third-wayism is the thing

01:06:07.920 that's effective. Because again, we cannot deny, whether you like Charlie or not, the incredible

01:06:14.340 impact that his words and his boldness for the gospel, his clarity in his speech has had over the

01:06:21.840 past two weeks on millions and millions of people. And look, sometimes people are going to be turned

01:06:28.760 off. People are going to be turned off by your politics. People are going to be turned off by your

01:06:34.600 stance on gender. That doesn't make you wrong. Do not measure your obedience. Do not measure your

01:06:40.760 effectiveness by the world's reaction to you. Measure your obedience. Measure your effectiveness

01:06:47.380 by God's approval of you. And God's approval of you is found one in Christ who becomes our

01:06:55.660 righteousness. So when he looks at us, he doesn't look at our ineptitude. He looks at Christ's

01:07:00.620 perfection, but also our obedience to his commands, our alignment with his word. You know, we've talked

01:07:07.340 about so many times, last thing that Charlie and I talked about face-to-face was this idea

01:07:11.300 that so many people have that they're actually nicer than God, that they are more compassionate

01:07:16.940 than God. And if they kind of ignore or apologize or caveat what God's word truly says about marriage

01:07:23.800 and gender and life inside the womb, then maybe more people will come to the gospel. But as Rosaria

01:07:31.160 Butterfield says, you are not going to win people to the cross by condoning or compromising on the things

01:07:38.940 that Christ died for or died to save them from. And so, again, not everyone has the same platform,

01:07:47.900 but if I were to declare a winner in this moment, I would say absolute clarity and boldness,

01:07:54.900 completely unashamed, is the way to go in this moment. That does not mean we forsake love. That

01:08:03.000 doesn't mean we forsake gentleness. That doesn't mean we should be a jerk. That doesn't mean we should

01:08:07.960 be brash. There is a way to be persuasive, to be gentle without compromising at all. So let me go

01:08:14.920 through a few of the questions that we asked earlier and tell you my thoughts on them. Is there

01:08:20.880 a biblical and unbiblical way to discuss politics as a Christian? I say that our politics should be a

01:08:26.860 product of, not a prerequisite for, our salvation. Where I think things get idolatrous is when you won't

01:08:32.820 criticize your side, when you won't criticize your guy, when you won't ever say that they're doing

01:08:38.260 something unbiblical or wrong because you are so tied to that political affiliation. That's when things

01:08:43.880 become idolatrous. You're trusting in princes and horses and not in the Lord. But people say,

01:08:49.620 yeah, well, you should be able to criticize conservatives and criticize Democrats. And

01:08:54.700 that approach, which was Keller's approach, that we should be adopting left and right positions is

01:08:59.540 just not true. If you are abiding by scripture, you are going to be far too conservative for both

01:09:05.040 sides. You're not going to adopt anything on the left. You're just not. There's nothing that the left

01:09:09.260 gets right. There's nothing that the modern democratic party purports or proposes that we

01:09:16.520 as Christians should be like, yeah, you know what? I think that's right. Not how they treat the poor,

01:09:20.920 not how they address racism, not how they address immigration. It's not more compassionate. It's not

01:09:26.680 more loving. It's not kinder. No, it actually all leads to destruction for the very people that they're

01:09:32.580 trying to help and all of us over there, over on the other side of it. So no, I would say we are far

01:09:37.880 more conservative than both the left and the right. So I think that's where our critique should come

01:09:42.180 from as a Christian, and we should be willing to critique all the time. Should we at any point

01:09:47.120 forego or minimize our political views in order to evangelize? On a micro level, yes. On a macro

01:09:52.420 level, no. On a micro level, in our conversations, we have to know when to call it a quiz. We have to

01:09:57.380 know when there is a time and a place for debate and when there is a time for reconciliation. I had many

01:10:02.520 moments like that in 2020 where I really disagreed with what my friend was posting about Black Lives

01:10:07.240 Matter. And we discussed it, and then we let things lie. And we're still friends, and we still talk,

01:10:13.440 and we still share the same values. I don't know if we agree on all of those things, and I'm not afraid

01:10:18.400 to push back again if things come up or just to say what is true. But it was important for me to

01:10:23.660 maintain those friendships, and it still is, as far as it depends on you make peace with everyone.

01:10:30.640 But we should never lie, and we should never minimize sin, and we should never condone or ignore

01:10:35.800 objective evil. So even if on the micro level we are putting politics aside for Thanksgiving or for

01:10:42.340 the conversation or for the friendship, that's fine. But your life should never contradict what

01:10:48.740 your biblical worldview is. Okay, does tone matter? Yes and no. Banana pudding versus banana soup. Which

01:10:57.100 one do you want? Banana pudding sounds awesome. I could eat a whole bowl of banana pudding right now.

01:11:02.140 Banana soup sounds terrible. It makes me want to throw up. So texture matters. It might be the exact

01:11:08.720 same ingredients. You just add a little more water, and it becomes banana soup. Nobody wants that. But

01:11:15.320 they're the same essential components, but how it goes down, how you taste it actually matters, right?

01:11:23.100 The same is true of tone. What you're saying might be true, but your tone could actually affect how

01:11:29.960 someone hears you. At the same time, you can't have an overemphasis on this. Because what sounds

01:11:37.480 super gentle and super sweet to some people might sound really abrasive to someone else. And what they

01:11:43.700 actually probably are rejecting is not your tone of voice, but what you're actually saying. So yes and

01:11:49.460 no. Yes, we should care about tone. No, we shouldn't be tone policing people. And we shouldn't be like,

01:11:56.220 well, I don't care about what you said. It's how you said it. Well, just think for a second. Maybe

01:12:00.840 you're just convicted. And maybe you should just think about what they're saying. I certainly don't

01:12:04.860 have perfect tone at all. There are definitely times where I've been sarcastic, and I shouldn't

01:12:09.080 have been. But it's funny how I will say something, and then I'll get five comments being like, wow,

01:12:14.560 you said that with so much gentleness and kindness and patience. And then five other people being like,

01:12:19.080 that was the rudest thing that I've ever heard in my life. So don't have an overemphasis on that.

01:12:27.300 Okay, okay, last question before we close out. Why does Charlie's approach typically lead people to

01:12:31.640 the right? Why does Tim Keller's tactic typically lead people to the left? Overemphasis on winsomeness

01:12:36.760 leads to compromise. Overemphasis on truth-telling could lead to legalism, right? We like order,

01:12:41.960 we like structure. Left prices individualism and libertinism and outsourcing their compassion to

01:12:47.220 the government. I'm personally more concerned about compromise in our day and age than legalism.

01:12:52.960 But remember, legalism to compromise is not a spectrum. It's a circle. So legalism and compromise

01:12:59.340 are really, really close. The Pharisees were guilty of both. Because they were so legalistic,

01:13:04.060 and they only looked at the surface of things and not the heart of God underneath them, they ended up

01:13:08.360 compromising on God's principles. In John 8, when the woman is caught in adultery, all these people

01:13:13.400 want to stone her, people think that that's Jesus just giving mercy. It's not just Jesus giving

01:13:17.700 mercy. It's Jesus abiding by the law. Because those people weren't just legalistic. They weren't

01:13:22.340 following the law. The law says that she could only be condemned in the presence of two to three

01:13:26.980 eyewitnesses. Well, we didn't have that. The law also said that the man who was committing adultery

01:13:32.700 also had to be stoned. So Jesus was actually giving mercy while also saying, y'all aren't even

01:13:37.900 abiding by the law right now. So legalism, compromise, actually go hand in hand. And we

01:13:44.880 should avoid both. Yes, by walking the way of Christ, but that looks like love inextricably

01:13:49.720 intertwined with the truth. And we should live and represent that boldly in every sphere that God

01:13:55.060 has called us to. All right. That's all we got time for today. We will be back here on Friday.

01:14:07.900 We will be back here on Friday.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 01, 2025

Ep 1248 ｜ Kirkism vs. Kellerism： Why the 'Third Way' Fails

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