Ep 316 ｜ Resisting Woke-ism in the Church ｜ Guest： John Cooper
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Summary
In this episode of Relatable, I interview John Cooper, lead singer of the Christian rock band Skillet, and host of the podcast "Cooper Stuff" about theology and cultural commentary from a Christian perspective. We talk about how he became a Christian, why he started his podcast, and what it means to be a Christian in today's world.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far.
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So today is a little bit different. Typically we do something related to the news on Wednesday,
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but today we're actually doing an interview and we are doing an interview with the singer
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for Skillet, John Cooper. He is an awesome Christian, has so much wonderful theological,
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cultural commentary, and I'm really excited for you to listen to or watch this conversation if you
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are watching on YouTube. John, thank you so much for joining me. It's so cool to be here. I'm excited.
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Yes. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Okay, who I am. My name is John Cooper.
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I sing in a band called Skillet. We're a hard rock band. We are a Christian band. And that's my day
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job back when the world had day jobs, when the world still was normal. So that's what I do.
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Right. But you also, you host a podcast, you post videos, several places. I know I have a lot of
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followers and listeners that send me your stuff. You give a lot of Christian commentary, a lot of
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cultural commentary from a Christian perspective. Can you talk about kind of when you started also
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being a public voice that has given so much light and guidance in this crazy, chaotic world that we
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live in? Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, this is how I know that your listeners are good people
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because they're sending you my stuff. My podcast is called Cooper Stuff. And it originally started
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for me, to be honest, probably about 2011, 2012, when I just was like, okay, I've been a Christian
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since I was a kid. I'd been in Christian music at that point for 13 or 14 years or 12 years. And then
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I was just like wondering what in the world is happening. Everything just seemed to fall apart.
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And it wasn't just that the world was confused, which the world was desperately getting more confused,
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but it was Christians that were getting confused. It was friends that I had that had been saved for
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a decade, two decades, that were all of a sudden walking away from God. Or we would talk about the
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faith. And as I would talk to them, I would say, hey, I don't think what you're saying actually
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sounds like Christianity. I think that sounds like universalism. Are you sure that you're a Christian?
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And all of a sudden, we went through some really hard times. People in my church that fell away,
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public figures fell away, as everybody knows. And I just was like, okay, I need to do a real deep
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dive into culture to understand what is really happening. And I'm not a very smart person. It took
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me about three years to finally get to it, but I just began to really dig deep. What can I do to help
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Christian people hold on to the simplicity of the gospel? It's not supposed to be utterly confusing.
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I mean, the disciples were not the smartest people in the whole planet. They weren't the
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academics of the time. Certainly the words of Jesus can save simpletons like me. And I saw people
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falling away. I wanted to do something because in the Christian celebrity world, there weren't really
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any voices doing that, and not many. And if there are voices in the Christian celebrity world, to be
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honest, they tend to be on the other side. They tend to be on more of what we call the woke side,
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you know, the side that is like, hey, it's okay to have a liberal view of the Bible because God loves
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everybody. And I was just like, you know what? We are leading people straight into destruction
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whenever you change the truth of Christ in order to make it more palatable to people. And that's why
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I started Cooper stuff. Right. And can you talk specifically about some of those points of
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confusion that you saw and that kind of spurred you to start talking about different cultural and
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theological issues? What have you seen? Maybe what kinds of thinking, what cultural forces have you
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seen push people into that point of view that kind of just says, you know what? The most important
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thing is just that God loves everyone. And beyond that, I don't need to talk about the hard stuff.
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Yeah, that's really dangerous stuff, isn't it? I should say this, and I saved it. I'm a big fan
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of your show, and my wife is a fan. And so she bought your book for our daughter. My daughter is
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going to be 18 next week. And my wife was reading it. She's like, dude, she calls me dude. Dude,
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this book is so much like the book that I've just written a book. And she's like, it's so much like
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it. You guys are seeing the same thing. So it's very similar. So I wanted you to know that. Great.
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Great stuff there. And I began to look at it. I'm like, yeah, me and Allie, we're reading from the
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same notes. Well, this might sound silly. But when I was in college, I studied, I love philosophy,
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and I love political philosophy. I'm not that smart, but I studied postmodernism.
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Postmodernism, I never knew anybody would believe postmodernism. So it took me about
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three years, 2012 to 2015. And I remember telling my wife, 2015, I was like, I finally made up my
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mind about what's wrong with society. I didn't know that we don't believe in truth. I thought
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we were arguing about which truth was real. Maybe it's Jesus, maybe it's the Big Bang, or maybe it's
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Darwin's evolution. I thought we were arguing about absolute truth as opposed to that absolute
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truth even exists. And once you begin to believe in relativism and your truth and my truth is kind
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of different, and maybe, in fact, you can't even know my truth because the color of your skin or your
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gender or your economic status, what have you, at that point, then we can't agree on anything. So
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nothing is good. Nothing is bad. There is no way to reach any sort of conclusion
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about morality, even the way we should treat each other. And what I began to notice was the amount
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of Christians that were resolute that Jesus is the truth, but also not believe that there is such
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thing as truth. And I was just like, what's going on with you guys? And so I think that the
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influx of postmodernism and relativism in the world has become so ubiquitous, and it's taken over
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language, you know, it's changed our words. And all of a sudden, Christians are repeating a lot of the,
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what I would call postmodern phrases that really don't mean anything anymore, and now they are
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applying them to Christianity. So now we have a Christianity that Jesus is real, but He's not,
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He doesn't have to be the same for me as the same for you, which actually goes against Scripture.
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So no wonder people are utterly confused. And that is one of the biggest things that I just feel
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really passionate about. We have to strip that away in order to then begin these discussions about
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who Jesus is. Is He actually the same yesterday, today, and forever? Is He actually the sinless
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Savior of the world, or is He not? And other than that, there's no way to have peace without it. So
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that's something I feel pretty passionate about.
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And in your study, how have you found that postmodernism seeped into the church and has now
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taken such a strong hold on what seems like a large chunk of people who identify as Christians?
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Yeah, it's really scary, isn't it? If I probably had to, if I probably had to take it down,
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boil it down to one simple thing that I know is going to be oversimplified, but it's what I believe.
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I believe it's an issue of authority of Scripture and sufficiency of Scripture. If you think about it,
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it's really about both of those things, because what Christians tried to do,
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they wanted to become so relevant to the world that they began to say, well, part of being relevant
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is not drawing lines in the sand, because then you kind of got to view psychology as a little bit on
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par with Scripture in that sense, right? It's about loving people. And you write in your book about
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self-love, which is something that I only heard of like three years ago, and I heard a Christian say,
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well, there's no way you can actually love the world unless you love yourself. And I was like,
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And so once you have all these things on the same level of Scripture, I believe there's a lot of
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good-hearted, wonderful Christian people that had good intentions that thought, I don't want to offend
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people, so I'm going to say, hey, if that's true for you, I understand. I'm not going to draw a line
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in the sand. And because of that, we can agree to disagree. But before you know it, you're agreeing
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to disagree on actual essential issues, things that actually make the, okay, that's not a religion.
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That's not, excuse me, that's a new religion. That's not Christianity. And you have to define
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the terms and you have to be, you have to be strong about it or else you will end up with a
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generation of people. As we've seen now, I look, you quoted this statistic on your show recently.
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What is it? Three percent of all millennials who claim to be Christians even believe in absolute
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truth, don't believe in authority of Scripture. That is a product of weak, can I just say the truth
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here? It is a product of weak pastors that wanted to be so relevant to the world that they forgot to
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be relevant for the gospel. Hello, I'll start preaching, Allie. I don't even care.
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Oh, I love it. I love it. I know my audience will love it too. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
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Can you talk about how you see a connection between the postmodernism that you kind of
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discovered, you know, five to eight years ago and the wokeism that you mentioned at the beginning
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of our conversation, you know, critical race theory, intersectionality, social justice that
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has definitely seeped into the church. Do you see a connection or maybe postmodernism led to wokeism
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or do you see those things depending on each other within the church?
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I think that that's really interesting. I would say yes, because I kind of see postmodernism as a bit
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of a foundational work for an extreme version of humanism. I mean, I hate to just start throwing
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around terms all the time, but because of postmodernism, the goal of this, what I would consider to be this
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woke utopia would be that it's all to do with like, I call it works-based, you know what I mean?
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It's all social justice driven. It's all that I know what is good and I know what is good because
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of my own heart. So then when you apply that critical race theory model to it in postmodernism,
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postmodernism believes that there is no absolute reality. So a good person, if you're not watching,
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I'm putting good in scare quotes, a good virtuous person, according to the world standards, then
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would seek to elevate the reality. It's not true reality, it's perceived reality, right? We need to
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elevate the perceived reality of people who suffer injustice. And so all of that is to do with
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postmodernism. So I look at wokeism in church life, excuse me, I absolutely look at that as a form
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of relativism because wokeism is built in Christianity, I'm talking about, sorry, wokeism in the church is
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built on the idea that what matters most in the world is being a good person because Jesus loved
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people. And that all of a sudden becomes the reigning attribute of God. So as opposed to traditional
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orthodoxy, which teaches us that God is always going to be everything that God is, right? He's never
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going to stop being loving in order to be a God of righteousness or that that's not how it works.
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When God punishes the wicked doer, he is still being all loving because it is the infinitude of
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his love that causes that also is matched with his hatred of unrighteousness. So once you go,
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no, it's all about God's love. God loves people. God, God is love. And so therefore love must also be
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God. That is the way it works. So now wokeism becomes something that says we need to do whatever
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we can do to just make love. I believe the idol love is like an idol. Now that we worship, we don't
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worship Christ. We've created a God and he's 90 feet tall, nine feet wide. And we're like, it's,
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it's love. And that must be what Jesus is like. And so I do think that wokeism is, I believe is causing a
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civil war in the church and they are making it seem like it's all about race, but it's not really
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about race. It's actually about this other thing, which I believe stems from, from relativism. And
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the reason it's justified is because people think they're doing a good thing. Yeah. So they think
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they're getting to a good place, even though they're doing something bad. It's kind of like trying to get
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clean by doing something dirty and it's just not going to work. And so I think that that is part of
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wokeism. Yes. I always say that critical thinking is the enemy of critical theory. And one part of
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critical thinking is you define your terms. And that's why people always ask me, you know, how do
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I talk to my friend who is kind of inundated in this social justice world? She's a Christian, but she
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seems to be confused, taking on wokeism. And I think the best thing to do in those conversations is to
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simply ask clarifying questions because so often the people who have maybe unknowingly kind of donned
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this wokeism as their new lens of the world. And even the Bible haven't actually thought about,
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okay, I'm talking about justice, but what does God say that justice is? I'm talking about love,
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but what does God say that love is? I'm talking about, you know, reaching the least of these or
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reconciliation or unity, but am I using the biblical definitions of these terms or am I using worldly
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definitions of these terms? And so I often think the best thing to do is to ask people who are
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positing these ideas and using these terms, well, what do you mean by X? What does the Bible say that
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love is? Who does the Bible say that Jesus is? How does the Bible define justice? Because so often it
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seems like these people using these terms have actually been evangelized to by the world rather
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than the other way around. And so we are echoing words and definitions that we have allowed the
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secular world to define when Christians should be defining them and championing them. And so I think
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critical thinking and clarification in defining our terms and saying, okay, yes, God is love. You're
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absolutely right. But what does God say that love is? The Bible says that God is love, not that love is
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God. And so we don't, we don't get to, we don't get to redefine that. But so often I think we're afraid
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to ask those questions and we're afraid to push back because, you know, we don't want to seem like
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bigots. We don't want to seem like, it's almost like the two options are like you're either a racist
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bigot or you're a critical race theorist. What is your encouragement for people?
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I 100% agree with that on every single front. And in my book that I told you about, the book is called
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Awake and Alive to Truth. And the subtitle is Finding Truth in the Chaos of a Relativistic World. And there's a
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chapter in there that deals with this sort of thing. You're absolutely right. I think that maybe
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this is a bit of a way I would say it. I think you nailed it when you say the world is defining
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the terms. See, when I was growing up, I grew up in the 80s. We believed in my generation in just
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hedonism, right? It was a hedonistic world. And that just means you live for pleasure. Whatever you
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can find that's going to satisfy your flesh is the best thing to live for. And that's why the 80s was
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so materialistic, obviously drug rampant, sex rampant, all of that, right? 80s and 90s.
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Live for hedonism. Well, living for Jesus in that culture, I would say is actually quite—I don't
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mean that it's easy, but it's easily defined, wouldn't you say? Because that just means that
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all you have to do to make a stand for Jesus is to not have sex outside of marriage and not do drugs
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and not whatever. All those pleasures, you just say, no, I don't do that. And you automatically
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make a stand for Christ. And you might get made fun of for your faith. We call it persecuted,
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if you want to call it that. You might get made fun of for that, but the lines were clear.
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The difference between hedonism and 2020, which is humanism, is that what the world does,
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as you said, is borrowing our sense of righteousness, our sense of doing the right thing
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and pleasing God and loving one another, which is actually not a natural thing to do, right? Our
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selfish nature does not look to, how can I go around helping people? So in our theology,
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original sin means that you don't naturally look for those things. It is the Spirit of God
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that changes you in the inside and gives you a love for people that you begin to have the fruits
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of the Holy Spirit. Well, the world is kind of like taking that on. And so now what you have is a
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world who believes that they are more virtuous than Jesus Christ himself. And that is, that's really
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weird. And so now you have Christians confused because they are being now called bigots by a world
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who thinks that they are more loving than Jesus. Whereas in hedonism, my generation, nobody ever looked
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a Christian was like, I'm a better person than you. They look, they didn't like Christians because
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they thought Christians were like no fun or they were do-gooders. They were, they were goody goodies
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and we ruined the party. Now it's like, oh, you're actually a bad person because I have more virtue than
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you. So now we live in a time, this is how I would encourage Christians. The Bible is still the same.
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You should count it joy when you are persecuted for your faith. You just have to get used to the idea
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that you're going to be persecuted with lies as opposed to because you stood up against hedonism.
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You're going to be called a bigot. You're going to be called somebody who you don't care about the poor.
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Even though by all statistics, everybody knows that religious people give way more charity than
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non-religious people. Conservative people give more charity than non-conservative people. We all know those
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things, but you're still going to unjustly get called something. And my encouragement to Christians is,
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does that still not equal joy? Because you're being persecuted for what you believe, even though
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it's unpopular. So I think if we understand the worldview and we define the terms, then we just
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have to say, Hey, I'm counting it all joy. I'm getting a chance to stand for my faith in Christ.
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And by being honest with people, I am actually speaking the truth, which is what my responsibility
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Yeah. You make such good points that it's a, it's a different kind of line in the sand today
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because secular people and people who identify as Christians, but really are universalists,
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like you mentioned earlier, they have co-opted Christian terms. Whereas that, you know,
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that didn't used to be the case. We weren't even using the same language as the world,
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but now you have people who don't know God at all using terms like justice, using terms like
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compassion and love, and even citing Jesus, even though they don't believe Jesus is the way,
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the truth and the life. And so I think that's part of also why Christians are confused because
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you hear people in the secular world using Christian terminology and you're thinking, Oh shoot. Okay.
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Well, that, that sounds right. That sounds godly and good and righteous. So maybe, maybe that is
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how, how I am supposed to be. But again, not going to the word of God to define those things, but
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allowing people who hate God to define those things, who don't believe people are made in the image of
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God to tell you what human dignity actually is. It's kind of like when I say, okay, you know,
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you hear pro-choice people saying, Oh, to be actually pro-life, you have to agree with all of my
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different social programs and social issues and whatever. And I say, hang on pro-lifers,
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actual pro-lifers, people who believe in the legalization of dismembering babies in the womb
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do not have the moral authority to define what is pro-life and what is pro, what is not pro-life.
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And I say the same thing to Christians, Christians, people who hate God, who according to the Bible are
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enemies of God, who are under the influence as Ephesians two says of the prince of the power of the air
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do not have the authority to define justice or injustice. They don't have the authority to
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define human dignity. They don't have the authority to, to define right and wrong. God has that
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authority. And so I think we have to be careful. Whose authority are we under? Who are we allowing to
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define our terms? And we have to resist the redefinition of terms. There was a, sorry, I know
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I'm ranting, but there was a post the other day. That's not ranting, Allie. That's called preaching.
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Oh my goodness. Well, I feel like I'm ranting, but I would love to hear what you think about,
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think about this. Cause I got into a conversation with someone about it on Instagram. There was a
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post that said, you know, um, supposed to be from a Christian perspective saying that only white people
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can be racist because racism is prejudice plus power. And I posted, you know, this is wrong. This is
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a redefinition of terms. God doesn't distinguish between the kinds of hate that he prohibits in the
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Bible. And I had a Christian, you know, message me and say, you know, I've got my MDiv from Fuller
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Seminary and you're wrong about this. Um, and I think a lot of Christians are allowing the world to
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redefine those terms. What is your, what is your advice to people to resist that who fear being called
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a bigot, who fear being called racist, but know that they have to stand strong and outwardly speak
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out about what is actually true and what these terms actually mean? I think, yeah. Uh, so, so many
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good, good things. Okay. Um, I like what you said. I'm going to rewind only a little bit and then I'm
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going to hit that because you're absolutely right. One of the things I wanted to share,
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where should I start on this? There's so much, you know, what's really annoying. I was going to say
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what's really annoying to me. And it goes directly at what you just ended with is that I expect the
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world to be deceitful. That just makes sense because our flesh is deceitful. And if you don't
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know Christ, there you go. What's really annoying to me is that the world then has, has kind of co-opted
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Christian terms. They have twisted those terms to mean something different. Then what happens next
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is that our, as you said, MDiv class, our pastor class, our preacher class, then co-ops the new
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definitions of the terms and defends them. And I don't, I do not understand how that's what really
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makes me mad. I expect the world to do nasty stuff when preachers begin to do it because they're,
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I don't know, maybe they have good intentions. Maybe they're trying to bridge the gap.
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Maybe, I don't know what their intentions are, but it's, it's wrong and they need to be called
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out for it. And they're, they're trying to say, Hey, I kind of know what the world's saying. And
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we're kind of on their side. If you think about it. And one of the things that's really scary about
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that, you're right, is that they're redefining all of the terms and on a foundation of something that
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we just do not believe. And it is causing utter confusion. Maybe I'll give you an example because
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a story kind of speaks to it more than me yakking about a philosophy. A good friend of mine who I
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love, who's, who's black. When George Floyd died, he had a bit of a breakdown. We don't live in the
00:24:15.420
same city. He had a bit of a breakdown. And on Instagram, I would say on Instagram stories,
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probably 20 times a day, he was reposting black lives matter stuff. He's a Christian black lives
00:24:27.920
matter. Ibram Kendi quotes about, as you said, prejudice and power being anti-racist means,
00:24:34.160
you know, showing up for, for a protest and reparations. And if you don't show up for protests,
00:24:40.720
then you're actually a racist. He was posting all this stuff. So after about a week, I gave him a call
00:24:45.940
because I just wanted him to vent, go ahead and vent. I don't mind. We're friends. I called him and I said,
00:24:50.320
hey, how are you doing with things? And we talked, we had a great conversation.
00:24:54.300
And he said to me, he goes, you know, what's weird, John? He said, what's weird is that I have
00:24:58.720
some of my, my great white Christian brothers calling me, repenting for their white supremacy.
00:25:05.480
And he said, John, I got, I just tell him, why are you calling me? I don't think you're a racist.
00:25:09.220
Why are you doing this? And I had to explain to him, he doesn't understand what he's posting
00:25:15.380
means that all of his white friends are actually racist, according to the definitions. And he's
00:25:22.140
like, what are you talking about? And I try to explain that. Look, I'm not offended. I love you.
00:25:26.380
I know you're hurting and I feel you. And I'm mad about what happened to George Floyd as well. I'm
00:25:31.620
really mad about it. Um, but you have to understand the philosophy, what you're saying means that your
00:25:38.680
white friends are actually prejudiced against you. And so what this means now, I don't know if you've
00:25:44.480
seen this alley, but I'm sure people watching have seen this. Have you seen things online where you
00:25:49.920
have some, a spouse married to someone else that's a different color skin, repenting to their spouses
00:25:56.680
or their biracial kids? They didn't know they had white supremacy and all. I'm like, oh my gosh,
00:26:03.200
you've been married for 20 years. This is not what love looks. That is a twisted version of love.
00:26:09.020
Yeah. When in the Christian worldview, we have already been reconciled in covenant to one another
00:26:15.740
because we are reconciled to Christ. It is the best news that there is. It's the great news of
00:26:22.700
Jesus Christ. So I agree with you. I think that's like maybe a story to put it in perspective of how
00:26:27.320
critical race theory will destroy the world. And for all those preachers that are going,
00:26:32.340
I don't believe in critical race theory. I'm just want to use some of the terms in order to reach the
00:26:37.280
world. What you end up with is this confusion about saying that, I read just this past week again,
00:26:44.980
that Jesus had privilege. Jesus laid aside his privilege in order to identify with the oppressed.
00:26:52.500
As soon as you get into that language, what you are saying is that Jesus died for minority groups.
00:26:59.280
And the only way for majority groups to come to Christ
00:27:02.500
Christ is through identifying with a minority group. And now the minority group becomes the
00:27:07.720
mediator. And that is not the gospel. We celebrate one mediator in Christ. So I would encourage people,
00:27:13.900
you know what? You probably are going to get called names. It is going to be unpopular,
00:27:18.780
but in doing so you'll be rewarded. It's so much better to be rewarded by King Jesus. That's what I would say.
00:27:24.960
Yes. Amen. I say, blessed are those who are canceled for Christ. If Jesus said, blessed are
00:27:30.440
the persecuted, blessed are those who are canceled for Christ. I have a few things to say about what
00:27:36.360
you just said. You're absolutely right there. Pastors say, no, I don't believe in critical race theory,
00:27:41.420
but I do feel like I need to renounce my white privilege. I do feel like I need to preach a different
00:27:47.680
gospel to my white congregants than I do to my black congregants. And I think that is an eternal
00:27:53.180
disservice in particular to your black congregants. If you love, which I know these pastors do,
00:27:59.940
if you love the black and brown people that are in your congregation, and if you love God, then you
00:28:06.200
know that their deepest problem, their deepest problem is everyone else's deepest problem, that they
00:28:12.340
are a sinner that will stand before God one day and that they need to be reconciled to a holy God by
00:28:18.780
the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the same biggest problem that your white congregants
00:28:23.080
have. And so when we only preach repentance to white people, but we preach, I'm sorry, only
00:28:29.440
to black people, then we're not preaching the gospel to the very people that we are saying
00:28:35.320
have, have, have, have bared the brunt of prejudice. That is another form of prejudice. And it has
00:28:42.680
eternal implications when you are too scared to preach repentance and preach the good news of Jesus
00:28:48.660
Christ to your black congregants, but because you think the only thing they need to hear about is
00:28:53.880
white privilege. That is actually a form of racism. And that is where critical theory brings us to new
00:29:00.020
forms of racism, to coddling one group and to castigating another group, not based on actual
00:29:07.060
responsibility, not based on actual actions or attitudes, but based on immutable characteristics that
00:29:13.120
the world has told us categorizes people as the oppressed versus the oppressor. Another thing that
00:29:19.320
I wanted to know is that you said, you know, people are saying Jesus put aside his, his privilege to care
00:29:25.060
for the oppressed. What people seem to conveniently forget is that yes, Jesus certainly did spend time
00:29:32.720
with the marginalized in society. He certainly did spend time with the societally oppressed. He also paid
00:29:38.800
attention to what critical theorists today would call the societal, societal oppressors. He paid
00:29:44.740
attention to the Roman centurion. He certainly befriended the tax collectors. He even shared the
00:29:49.760
gospel with the Pharisees. What about Nicodemus? What about the greatest oppressor that we see in the
00:29:54.240
New Testament, which is Saul? I mean, he paid special attention, Saul who became Paul, uh, the, he paid
00:30:01.900
special attention to these people who were considered societal oppressors because the commonality between the
00:30:07.840
societally oppressed and the societal oppressors is that we are all oppressed by sin. And that is what
00:30:13.520
Jesus came to liberate us from. And when we forget that we're no longer preaching the gospel. We are
00:30:18.920
preaching the gospel of critical race theory, which ultimately deconstructs and divides, but within its
00:30:24.660
nature does not have the ability to reconcile, does not have the ability to build up the church. It only
00:30:31.600
divides, it only creates resentment. It only creates more prejudice. And I, I think that you're absolutely
00:30:37.780
right. It leads to a deconstruction and destruction that, um, that is going to be scary to watch if we
00:30:45.560
don't reverse course. Do you agree with that? I absolutely agree with that. I think we're in the
00:30:50.640
middle of a, a semi church split in America over, uh, again, I don't really think it's over race. I think
00:31:00.160
it's over this issue, which is what you're saying. And, and, and maybe I could give a little bit of a word
00:31:05.500
of encouragement of something. Me and my brother, uh, were talking about this. This isn't like,
00:31:12.060
you know, this isn't a prophetic word. This is just what I see. This is what I think is happening.
00:31:17.420
Remember how you said a second ago, there's the guy with the MDiv. And the reason I'm saying this
00:31:23.080
is I have a good friend called James White. I know, you know, James White is right. Um, when I first began
00:31:29.280
being friends with James White, I remember saying to him, Hey, I want to speak out on an issue. And it was to
00:31:35.140
do with critical race. I said, the problem is, is if I speak out against this, that means that I am
00:31:40.580
going against people that are way, way, way smarter than I could ever be. Okay. I could never hold a
00:31:48.980
candle to the intellect of some of the people that I'm disagreeing with. There's no, it's not possible.
00:31:54.960
And what, you know, what I, the conclusion I came to, and this is what I want to encourage your
00:31:59.060
listeners in is that I believe that there is a bit of a rebellion happening, not with the MDiv class,
00:32:07.200
not with the preacher class, but with the lay people. We are the lay people. We're not the smart
00:32:12.520
people, but there is a, a bit of a revolution happening because all of us normal people are
00:32:17.840
going, wait a minute, you guys are saying things that you didn't say five years ago that you didn't
00:32:22.900
say 10 years ago. You're confusing me. And now they've been looking into it enough. And there's
00:32:28.440
more and more people saying it on the internet, like yourself and, and whoever Votie Balcom who
00:32:33.320
you had on, who I love. And there are more and more people saying it and more of the normal people
00:32:38.860
are going, this doesn't sound right. And I believe we're going to see a lot of these preachers held to
00:32:46.220
account because it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you, if you have a philosophy that you stand up
00:32:54.780
against the word of God, it is going to fall because the word of God is supreme and the word
00:32:59.960
of God, the word of God is the word of God, whether a simpleton says it or whether an intellectual
00:33:05.360
brilliant person says it. And I think that we just need to have that courage. I had to have that
00:33:10.780
courage, frankly, because I thought, man, am I, I'm going to say something against Tim Keller, who's a
00:33:16.320
genius and is very much spoken to me and changed aspects of my life have been changed from this
00:33:22.880
person. But I disagree with this. And what it comes down to is that we don't speak because of our own
00:33:28.960
intellect. We speak the word of God, which is wisdom, right? So it is wisdom that changes. It's
00:33:35.520
not about intellect. And so I want to encourage people, if you think, well, I'm not really a smart
00:33:39.920
person, join the club. I'm not either. I'm, I'm an average student at best, but God will increase,
00:33:46.740
increase your knowledge of the scriptures. That's what the Holy Spirit does, right? He leads you into
00:33:50.780
all truth of the scriptures and you get more and more understanding. Jesus becomes so much more
00:33:56.420
delightful to you, the more you get to know him. And then you begin to recognize truth. And when we
00:34:01.960
don't recognize it, we have to stand up against it. But what I see happening is more and more people
00:34:06.800
saying, this isn't right. I'm not going to put up with this any longer. And I just encourage people
00:34:11.840
to stand strong. Hold the line. That's the word. Amen. Amen. And we'll end on this question. You
00:34:17.860
recently talked about on your podcast, the importance of unity, but only unity under truth,
00:34:24.720
not necessarily unity at all costs. Can you talk about how, what we should be pursuing is biblical
00:34:31.200
unity, not just agree to disagree when it comes to these core truth, theological issues?
00:34:39.680
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the idea of having unity at the expense of essential truth
00:34:48.160
is, I mean, clearly that that's no unity at all. It's like, it's like right now in America in 2020,
00:34:56.500
I don't think we're going to have unity if all of us actually want a completely different country.
00:35:01.660
There's no way to have unity if there is no actual commonality. And so if the scriptures are not the
00:35:08.680
foundation of the truth, then we will never reach unity in Christ. That doesn't make any sense at all.
00:35:14.420
So I think, I do believe, I heard Votie Balcoms said, I know you had Votie on your show. I'm a huge fan
00:35:20.040
of Votie. I think he said it best. He was saying, the sad thing is, is that a lot of people are
00:35:26.180
causing a lot of this damage because of their love for their brothers. And I think being a
00:35:31.900
gracious person, that is a good way to look at it. That, that, that the people that are just are
00:35:37.060
bringing all this division in and saying things that aren't true, according to the word, best case
00:35:42.080
scenario, they are doing it because they love people and they want to see people be brought together.
00:35:47.740
But you cannot have, you, you cannot have unity unless we believe in truth. So the way that I view
00:35:57.000
that is, hey, there's going to be things we disagree with on the Bible. I don't care if we agree with
00:36:01.400
eschatology or not. If you, somebody's post-millennial and somebody's pre-trip, that, that's not an
00:36:07.520
essential. Our essential is that Jesus Christ is the son of God, but he always was. He is the eternal
00:36:14.840
son of God. Jesus Christ came to earth in the flesh in order to pay a sacrifice, a sinless sacrifice for
00:36:24.760
the penalty of all of our sin. And if you don't believe, just one more thing, I'm amazed at how
00:36:30.740
many Christians don't know that they are sinful to start with. It's the weirdest thing. How Christians
00:36:36.000
don't believe in original sin is just amazing, but they don't. We are guilty of sin and we deserve for
00:36:42.220
the earth, as Jonathan Edwards said, for the earth to open up and swallow us into hell right now as we
00:36:47.820
speak, except that Jesus paid the price for that. And we know who God is from the Bible. And once you
00:36:54.300
take that away, there will be no unity. And now you've just bastardized the gospel because the gospel is
00:37:00.260
no longer anything unless we have a foundation on the word of Christ. So I think my encouragement is
00:37:06.200
I want unity really, really bad, but unity at the expense of the truth is, is, is just, that's not
00:37:14.920
the God, that's not the gospel. Jesus either is the way, the truth and the life, you know, he's not the
00:37:21.200
way, the unity, he's not unity over truth. That doesn't make any sense. So that's my encouragement
00:37:27.080
to Christians. I know it seems harsh. I know it sounds hard. Final thing, my final promotion for my
00:37:35.120
sweet new book coming out. I have a chapter in the book. It is called Jesus, the lion. And I wrote it
00:37:41.960
because all we ever hear about is how nice of a person Jesus was. And obviously I believe that Jesus
00:37:47.400
is nice, but Jesus said some hard stuff. And I share in my book about when I was growing up that I was
00:37:54.620
ashamed. I was doing my own Bible reading and I was ashamed to tell anybody that Jesus doesn't always
00:38:01.900
seem all that nice to me, but it's true. I'm like, they're like, he's so nice. And I'm reading this
00:38:07.900
like, man, I mean, if your eye causes you to sin, it'd be better to pluck it out. I mean, that doesn't
00:38:14.340
sound, that doesn't sound so tame to me. This sounds like a guy that believed in truth over being polite.
00:38:22.520
All right. This is a guy that was like, truth is what matters. And if it makes people mad,
00:38:29.160
that's the way it has to be. And I wrote in this chapter about Jesus, the lion. He has words of
00:38:35.740
life and words of love. And he's the same Jesus, of course, that says to, you know, the woman in sin,
00:38:43.920
the prostitute or whatever, however you view that particular scripture, he said, I don't judge you.
00:38:50.940
Go and sin no more. That is Jesus. He is welcoming, but he is also the Jesus that says,
00:38:57.480
you know what? Depart from me. I never knew you. I don't know you. Get out of my presence.
00:39:04.480
And we have to swallow everything that God is if we're to actually follow Christ. That's what it
00:39:11.300
means. Yes. And amen. Okay. Where can people pre-order that awesome sounding book? Where can they
00:39:17.980
follow you and listen to your podcast? Okay. Uh, you can pre-order the book please at
00:39:25.000
John L Cooper.com slash awake. So my website is called John L Cooper.com and you can see stuff on
00:39:34.340
there and whatnot. My podcast is called Cooper stuff podcast. You can get on iTunes, uh, you know,
00:39:40.280
Spotify, YouTube Cooper stuff podcast, and I'll have add some ads, I hope up for my book on their
00:39:46.020
Instagram, uh, John L Cooper. And, uh, yeah, follow me and we'll keep this thing going, baby.
00:39:54.280
Awesome. Well, we will make sure to include those links, uh, in the description for this podcast
00:39:59.300
episode. So people can easily navigate there. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I know
00:40:05.080
this is going to be so edifying to the people who are watching and listening. And, um, I, I pray that
00:40:12.080
God continues to bless your endeavors, whether that's music or teaching the world about culture
00:40:17.000
and theology and, uh, viewing the world through a biblical lens. And I just know that your book
00:40:23.080
is going to be a huge blessing for so many people and add so much wisdom and clarity. So thank you so
00:40:28.840
much for everything that you do. Well, thank you so much, Allie. So cool to talk to you.