Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 342 ｜ Leaving Progressivism for Biblical Christianity

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. So excited

00:00:15.340 about today's conversation with Elisa Childers. You guys probably know who she is. She hosts

00:00:22.140 a podcast. She's got a YouTube channel. She just wrote a book called Another Gospel. That's

00:00:27.260 what we're going to talk about today. She talks about from going from this deconstructionism,

00:00:32.420 progressive Christianity, to where she is today and understanding apologetics,

00:00:37.260 why biblical Christians believe what they believe. And so we're going to get into all of that,

00:00:42.740 the difference between progressive theology and what is considered conservative theology.

00:00:47.220 When I say conservative theology, I'm not talking about politically conservative. I'm talking about

00:00:51.460 believing, for example, that the Word of God is inerrant, believing in the historical creeds when

00:00:57.900 it comes to the gospel, who the triune God is. And so we're going to talk about the differences and

00:01:03.900 her own journey. It really is just an amazing conversation. She's an amazing person. And I

00:01:09.160 know that you are going to be so edified and encouraged after listening to her speak about

00:01:17.660 this subject. Before we get into that conversation, I got to take a quick ad break.

00:01:32.740 Elisa, thank you so much for joining me.

00:01:35.780 Oh, it's so great to be with you, Allie. Thanks for having me.

00:01:38.600 For those who don't know, and there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast who do know,

00:01:42.600 can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:01:46.960 Well, I am a blogger and an author, and I have a YouTube channel. Basically, I'm an apologist,

00:01:54.100 which is an unusual career choice for me because I used to be in the contemporary Christian music

00:01:58.820 business, and now I'm an apologist. So it's pretty kind of sweet the way that God has written that

00:02:04.180 story for me. But yeah, I just had a book come out, so it's pretty exciting.

00:02:09.140 Yes. And your book is called Another Gospel, correct? And we'll get more into it, but can you

00:02:15.680 give right at the top just kind of a brief summary of what it's about and why you wrote it?

00:02:21.140 Yeah, it's basically my story of walking through a church that went from evangelical to progressive.

00:02:28.760 And along the way, my faith that I grew up with was really deeply challenged, and it caused a dark

00:02:34.660 night of the soul for me, just a crisis of faith. And so the book walks the reader through that

00:02:38.840 journey along the way, kind of discovering what progressive Christians believe, how that differs

00:02:43.580 from historic Christianity. But hopefully people will learn from my story how to spot those types

00:02:49.860 of ideas in their churches and small groups and even in the social media that they're consuming online.

00:02:54.980 I'm so excited to talk more about that and to hear you differentiate between progressive

00:03:01.120 Christianity and what you know is biblical Christianity. First, can you back us up and

00:03:07.440 tell us your story? Tell us your testimony, how you came to know the Lord, and then how you came to

00:03:13.500 where you are right now?

00:03:15.260 I grew up in a Christian home with wonderful Christian parents who really gave me the real

00:03:20.640 gospel. They regularly read their Bibles with us and in front of us, repented to us and in front of us.

00:03:27.360 Family prayer was a very important part of our life. And also, one thing that I think really

00:03:34.200 showed me the gospel in action was that my mom always had us out working the soup lines at the

00:03:39.620 Fred Jordan Mission in Los Angeles where I grew up. And I got to watch the gospel really change

00:03:44.960 people's lives. And so I honestly can't remember a time before I knew Jesus, before I was aware of His

00:03:52.260 presence, before I knew that the Bible was the Word of God. I've lived my life as best that I could

00:03:58.000 to live by the Word of God my whole life. And so I think because of that, I didn't really ever go

00:04:02.620 through a significant time of doubt about what I believed. I didn't really have a reason to doubt it.

00:04:08.280 I loved Jesus. I loved people, and I loved His Word. Then I went into Christian music for a while.

00:04:14.240 I was in a group, Zoe Girl. Some of your listeners may remember Zoe Girl. And I did that for about

00:04:19.520 seven or eight years, just loved getting to share the gospel with young girls and encourage them to

00:04:25.620 stand strong for Christ on their public school campuses and in their youth groups. And so it

00:04:31.100 actually wasn't until all of that came to a close that I went through a really significant time of

00:04:38.560 doubt and even deconstruction as we're hearing that word in our social media so much now. So essentially

00:04:44.300 what happened was when Zoe Girl came off the road, I had a new baby, and my husband and I began attending

00:04:50.260 a local church here in Tennessee. And it was wonderful. We loved it. We loved the pastor. We

00:04:56.760 loved the people. And about eight months in, the pastor invited me to be a part of a smaller group,

00:05:03.360 and he compared it to seminary. He said, we're going to go through books. We're going to have

00:05:07.080 discussions. And at the end of four years, you're going to come out with an education that's on par with

00:05:12.060 somebody from seminary. And so I was really excited. And I went to the first class only to be

00:05:18.400 really surprised when the pastor announced that he was actually an agnostic. He called himself a

00:05:24.520 hopeful agnostic. And of course, this wasn't something he was saying on Sunday mornings. And so

00:05:29.680 over the course of about the four months that I lasted in this class, everything that I'd ever

00:05:35.540 believed about Jesus and the Bible and the gospel was explained away. It was picked apart. It was

00:05:41.740 deconstructed. And while I was in the class, I would try to argue with him. I would try to refute

00:05:47.640 him. I wasn't very good at it because I didn't have any intellectual backing to what I believed.

00:05:52.960 But it wasn't until we left the church that all of those doubts that he had planted began to take

00:05:58.280 root in my own heart and grow. And so it threw me into a pretty serious dark night of the soul where I

00:06:03.660 was intellectually questioning everything I'd ever believed. And I just cried out to God one night.

00:06:09.880 It was just said, God, if you are real, if all of this that I have believed my whole life is real,

00:06:15.300 please send somebody to talk to me. And so shortly after that, I discovered apologetics and just the

00:06:22.680 robust, rich answers that we have to all of these questions that had come up in this class. And so

00:06:28.820 through apologetics and studying systematic theology and church history, the Lord really rebuilt my faith.

00:06:36.400 And so I'm so thrilled to get to have a small part in maybe helping others to walk through their own

00:06:42.360 doubts and faith crises. And often those are perpetuated not just by atheists, but by people

00:06:47.840 who call themselves Christians.

00:06:49.900 Can you talk about some of those specific beliefs of yours that were challenged that you thought that

00:06:55.020 you were confident in, but then someone came along and kind of pressed against them? You didn't feel

00:07:00.340 like you had defenses to defend the things that you thought that you were confident in. And so you

00:07:05.900 just kind of moved away from them or you allowed them to deconstruct or fall away. What were some of

00:07:12.480 those beliefs? What were some of the arguments that he gave that made you start doubting them?

00:07:17.660 I think the biggest one had to do with the Bible. So I had lived my whole life just knowing that the

00:07:24.620 Bible was the word of God, that it was reliable, that we had an accurate copy. And anytime I met

00:07:31.080 somebody who disagreed with the Christian worldview or with the gospel, I could just blow it off because

00:07:36.600 I would say, well, they just don't believe the Bible. And so in the class, when the pastor was

00:07:42.140 able to essentially intellectually persuade me that the Bible had been corrupted, that we don't have an

00:07:49.420 accurate copy, that the people we thought wrote the books of the New Testament probably didn't. In fact,

00:07:55.200 a lot of the people we read about in the Bible probably never existed. And he would bring all of

00:08:00.840 these intellectual arguments. And of course, I had no ammunition to fight back with. And so in my heart,

00:08:06.740 I knew it wasn't true. But in it, I mean, in my head, though, I was sort of persuaded. And so

00:08:12.120 that affected all the other beliefs that would come up. So when he would talk about the atonement,

00:08:17.340 which was such a big one for me, because I knew that I was a sinner and that I needed a Savior,

00:08:22.880 he started referring to the atonement as cosmic child abuse or something that is implicating the

00:08:29.580 moral character of God. I knew the buck stopped there. I thought there's no way that I'm going to

00:08:37.440 go on believing in God even if I have no solution for my sin problem. And so going into the Bible and

00:08:45.300 the reliability of the Bible to even get accurate information about what God has revealed to us

00:08:50.560 was a huge part of my journey. So as that was happening, would you say that your worldview in

00:08:59.540 general was changing what you thought about things like social justice, what you thought about things

00:09:03.900 like morality, right and wrong? Were those all being constructed at the same time that your beliefs

00:09:09.400 about, for example, the inerrancy of Scripture was being deconstructed?

00:09:14.860 Yeah, that's a good question. One thing I did notice in this church was a really strong social

00:09:21.060 justice emphasis, which didn't bother me so much at first, because again, I had grown up doing a lot

00:09:27.200 of homeless ministry, watching my mom minister to prostitutes and doing street evangelism with my dad.

00:09:32.800 And so I thought, well, that's all a good thing. But when I saw that begin to replace what my

00:09:39.020 understanding of the gospel was, basically a holy God reconciling sinful man to himself through the

00:09:45.040 death and resurrection of Jesus, all of the social justice stuff started to take on less of a meaning

00:09:53.200 to me because it's like, well, we can give people comfortable beds and we can clothe them. But if we're

00:09:57.400 not giving them Jesus, if we're not giving them the gospel, then we're just making their life more

00:10:02.400 comfortable here. And that has no eternal significance. And then I began to see some of

00:10:07.740 the social justice things that I would agree with morph into more of an agreement with what culture

00:10:12.940 would say were the causes that we should advocate for. Like, for example, same-sex marriage and LGBT

00:10:19.200 inclusion in the church was a huge conversation going on based on the idea that culture is saying

00:10:25.540 that it's oppressive to have any other view than 100 percent in total inclusion. And so there

00:10:32.240 was a lot of confusion for me. I think that if I look back, my position on what the gospel was and

00:10:40.940 what the truth was, my worldview never essentially changed. But I was living in a bit of cognitive

00:10:47.620 dissonance because I had been persuaded almost in a philosophical or logical type of place that my

00:10:54.840 beliefs were kind of ridiculous or they're kind of stupid or unjustified or indefensible in some kind

00:11:01.620 of a way. And so that's what led to this serious time of doubt because I just thought, man, if the

00:11:08.940 gospel isn't true, then I'm doomed. And so that's why it was so important to me to get to the bottom of

00:11:15.740 the Bible and what good theology is and what the gospel actually is, because often progressive

00:11:20.580 Christians will use that term, the gospel, but they mean something really different than Christians have

00:11:26.540 historically meant by that. Yeah. And let's talk about kind of what that does mean. The biggest

00:11:33.900 differences between progressive Christianity and the different kinds of Christianity, what we would

00:11:39.980 refer to as biblical Christianity. And I know if there are people who profess to be progressive

00:11:44.780 Christians out there, they don't like that contrast that I made or even those terms. I understand that,

00:11:50.920 but I'm honestly not really sure how else to describe it. Can you, in your experience and from what you

00:11:57.760 know, talk about the biggest differences, the core differences in the understanding of the gospel, of

00:12:05.800 atonement, of the sufficiency of scripture between progressive Christianity and the faith that you now hold?

00:12:15.240 Yeah. A lot of people think when they hear the phrase progressive Christianity, they think, oh, it's just a

00:12:20.100 group of Christians that might be changing their minds on some political issues or might be kind of

00:12:25.340 loosening up on some social issues and things like that. But what people need to understand, what

00:12:30.360 Christians need to understand is that progressive Christianity is teaching an entirely different

00:12:35.900 gospel. And this gospel is going to give you a different God. It's going to give you a different

00:12:39.460 Jesus. It's going to give you a different view of humankind. And so one of the reasons I, this was so

00:12:45.980 important for me to discover is because I was watching a lot of my friends go into progressive

00:12:51.100 Christianity because they were essentially rejecting whatever type of evangelicalism they grew up in.

00:12:57.940 So maybe they grew up in a really hyper-legalistic setting or they had been through some kind of

00:13:02.940 spiritual abuse. But they were throwing out the gospel along with some of the things we would all

00:13:10.720 disagree with about maybe some of the ways modern church culture has become. And so I wanted to get

00:13:17.360 to the bottom of what real Christianity is. What does Christianity mean? What makes it unique in the

00:13:23.220 world? What has made it unique in the world for 2,000 years? And so I went back to the earliest sources.

00:13:29.060 I'm talking about pre-New Testament creedal material, creeds that Christians affirmed and agreed upon

00:13:35.740 even before the New Testament was written, going back to Jesus and the apostles himself, the New Testament

00:13:41.040 documents, the early church fathers. What did they all agree on? What did they say Christianity was?

00:13:47.000 And what I discovered is it's very much how we would describe the gospel today, that Jesus died for our sins,

00:13:53.600 that there was a divine purpose for his death to solve the sin problem, that his death was compared

00:13:59.720 with the Old Testament sacrificial system. So Jesus' death was a sacrifice that paid the price for our

00:14:06.020 sin, that he was punished in our place. And these are all terms in progressive Christianity that are

00:14:11.320 rejected, and they'll call that cosmic child abuse. And so if we know that we're sinners, which is also

00:14:18.260 something that's kind of rejected in progressive Christianity, they'll agree that we make mistakes

00:14:23.500 and we do wrong things, and they might even use the word sin. But in progressive Christianity, sin isn't

00:14:28.480 what separates you from God. It's your own shame. And so essentially, you're not really separated from

00:14:34.220 God. You just have to realize how beloved you are. You have to realize that he hasn't separated

00:14:39.300 himself from you. And so right then and there, which is those two points, you see such a stark contrast

00:14:45.020 with the historic gospel, because even the earliest Christians and Jesus himself affirmed that his

00:14:50.360 death was sacrificial. And so they're rejecting that. They're disagreeing with Jesus. They're

00:14:55.500 disagreeing with the early Christians. Well, that's going to affect the way that they view the whole rest

00:15:00.840 of the foundational structure of what the gospel is. And so that's why I think it becomes so social

00:15:06.080 justice-oriented, because that's kind of all they've got left.

00:15:09.700 Right. And if the point of Jesus' death and resurrection was not to take care of the sin

00:15:17.320 problem and to reconcile us, an unholy people, to a holy God, by giving us a new name, a new identity,

00:15:25.860 by forgiving us of our sins and wiping our slate clean, well, then you have a very feeble, or I should

00:15:35.680 say a very soft foundation on which to lay your feet and build the rest of your faith and the rest

00:15:47.300 of your beliefs. Because then you are no longer essentially separated from what a lot of non-Christians

00:15:54.880 believe, that it's bad to feel bad about yourself, that God is just kind of this person who loves you

00:16:01.560 and wants you to feel good about yourself too, and is kind of coming along for the ride of your life.

00:16:06.620 Well, there's a lot of agnostics that believe that. There are a lot of universalists that believe that.

00:16:12.240 There are a lot of people who don't call themselves anything except for spiritual who believe that too.

00:16:18.180 And yet, I would say a lot of the people, a lot of the progressive Christians that halted that

00:16:22.540 belief, that there was no penal substitution, that there was no real atonement or reconciliation

00:16:28.480 that needed to happen through Christ, they would still call themselves Christians. And they would

00:16:33.900 still say, well, I believe in the gospel, but how are they defining those terms? If they don't believe

00:16:40.440 what our church fathers and Jesus himself said was the core tenet of Christianity, what actually

00:16:45.900 defined Christianity, the gospel that rests on Jesus Christ's substitutionary death and his

00:16:54.140 resurrection, how are they defining those things then? Well, that's a great question, and it's going

00:17:00.920 to have a lot to do with how they view the Bible. And so I think we can get a better understanding for

00:17:06.440 how they're going to define things like the gospel and even who Jesus is when we understand that,

00:17:12.260 you know, if we look at historically Christians, of course, we've argued about interpretations. We have

00:17:16.760 so many different denominations that disagree on different interpretations and what we might call

00:17:21.560 secondary issues. But in progressive Christianity, they're not viewing the Bible as the Word of God.

00:17:27.480 It's not the authoritative standard for truth. Now, they'll say, I have a high view of Scripture. I

00:17:32.620 really respect the Scriptures. But they're viewing the Scriptures more like an ancient spiritual travel

00:17:39.160 journal than the authoritative Word of God. So they'll look back at what someone wrote in the Old

00:17:44.800 Testament, and they'll say, well, they're not really speaking God's Word. They were just doing their best

00:17:50.780 to understand God in the times and places in which they lived. So ancient Israel, they did all these

00:17:56.640 sacrifices, but they didn't have to, according to progressive Christianity. That's just, they looked

00:18:01.280 around to the pagan cultures around them. They saw them doing animal sacrifices, and they thought, well,

00:18:06.300 we need to do that to appease Yahweh. And so the progressive Christian, they're removing any sort of

00:18:13.640 meaningful foundation upon which to build any kind of a historically Christian theology because they're

00:18:20.900 essentially removing the Bible as an authoritative source from the picture. And that goes for the New

00:18:25.980 Testament, too. Progressives tend to not be in agreement with Paul very much. They'll like Jesus.

00:18:31.780 They don't really like Paul. And so how they're going to define things like the Bible, again, like more like

00:18:38.860 an ancient spiritual travel journal than the Word of God. The Gospel becomes essentially, it's activism

00:18:46.440 for whatever social justice cause culture is saying is really important right now. And so I think that's

00:18:52.480 why in progressive Christianity, we saw that move from what began with the emergent church, what seemed

00:18:59.420 like it was built on theology, theology I would disagree with and you would disagree with, but it still was

00:19:04.860 based on a theological foundation, like we're going to act out of what we believe about God, where that's

00:19:10.560 almost entirely jettisoned now. And they've embraced critical theory, critical race theory, they're

00:19:16.180 fighting for LGBT inclusion, that becomes the gospel. In fact, there was a book written by Brian

00:19:22.200 McLaren called A New Kind of Christianity that has sort of informed the theology of modern progressive

00:19:27.820 Christians. And he says, the way we, you and I, Ali, would describe the gospel, where you have creation

00:19:34.160 and the fall, and then the atonement, reconciliation, redemption, final judgment. He says, that's pagan.

00:19:39.800 That's influenced by Plato and Aristotle and Greek philosophy got in there, but that's not the real

00:19:45.780 gospel. He said, the real gospel is what Jesus preached, and that's gospel through a Jewish lens.

00:19:51.240 The problem, though, is that when Brian McLaren begins to describe what that Jewish lens is,

00:19:56.660 it sounds a whole lot like what you see on the news in 2020 about environmentalism,

00:20:02.280 socioeconomic reform, green energy, LGBT inclusion. And so according to McLaren, that was Jesus' Jewish

00:20:09.180 gospel, which is, you know, anyone who understands Jewish culture in the first century, that's just

00:20:13.700 laughable. And so it's, that's why I say it's an entirely different religion, because you can just

00:20:18.940 see this, this is not Christianity. And if it's not Christianity, it's not going to be the real Jesus.

00:20:24.260 Right. And I think what you see is another fundamental misunderstanding, or at least in the most

00:20:29.560 generous terms of disagreement on the nature of God and the Trinity, because you see a lot of

00:20:34.880 separation. While Jesus never talked about that. Jesus never said that, you know, they'll say Jesus

00:20:39.960 never talked about abortion. Jesus never talked about gender or marriage, which I always bring up.

00:20:44.700 Actually, he does in Matthew 19. He, he speaks to, you know, Genesis one, and he says, God made the male

00:20:50.180 and female. And he describes what marriage is when he is speaking about divorce to the Pharisees.

00:20:57.840 But they'll say, you know, he doesn't talk about all of these social issues, but he does talking about

00:21:02.200 talking about loving your neighbor. He does talk about not judging people. He does talk about

00:21:06.560 helping the poor. And so they will say, even as they say that the Bible as a whole, isn't necessarily

00:21:12.080 authoritative, they will take particular passages, take them out of context and say, well, these are

00:21:17.040 authoritative and they actually are supporting, you know, the government program that I want to support

00:21:22.960 or the particular cultural issue that, that I want to support. And there seems to be, there seems to

00:21:32.900 be, I guess, a rejection of, of the, the reality that Jesus is God, that everything that God said in

00:21:40.360 the Old Testament that Jesus agrees with. Yes, there is a new covenant there, of course. And so

00:21:47.020 there is some, uh, there is newness that comes with Jesus's ministry, but Jesus is God. Jesus

00:21:53.280 doesn't disagree with God. He doesn't disagree with something that God did or said in the Old

00:21:57.700 Testament. And it's almost like they see Jesus as an entirely new entity. Would you say that that's

00:22:04.480 a correct description? Yeah, that's very accurate. In fact, when people ask me about the Jesus of

00:22:11.180 progressive Christianity, what you often find in progressive Christianity is that the title or

00:22:17.000 the name Jesus gets slapped on whatever cause they, they as a person think is worthy or whatever

00:22:23.960 they would do, they'll say, that's what Jesus would do. And so the Jesus that gets constructed

00:22:28.900 in progressive Christianity often just looks a lot like the person looking back at you in the mirror.

00:22:35.100 In fact, there are progressive books written where, uh, progressive authors will chronicle where they

00:22:39.860 think Jesus disagreed with the scriptures or where he opposed them or ignored them or denied them, uh,

00:22:47.120 where they'll, they'll find scriptures where they believe in, in their kind of twist of it, that Jesus

00:22:52.300 was disagreeing with an Old Testament prophet and setting the record straight, so to speak. And so in

00:22:57.720 progressive Christianity, sometimes you'll find that the gospels will hold a higher authority. In fact,

00:23:03.140 there was one progressive book that tells the story of a woman who was a lesbian who grew up in the church

00:23:10.200 and in this cathartic sort of healing, so to speak, moment, she ripped out all the pages from the Bible

00:23:17.060 that mentioned, uh, homosexuality and threw them in the fire. Then she ripped out the four gospels, threw the

00:23:23.140 rest of the Bible into the fire and clutched the four gospels to her heart. And this was what this one writer

00:23:28.480 was using as an example to show that this, what she called canon within the canon has higher authority.

00:23:34.960 So the stories about Jesus have higher authority. But the problem with that is even if you do that,

00:23:40.160 even if we grant that premise, progressive Christians disagree with Jesus on almost every

00:23:45.520 point. They disagree with this about what the Bible is, about what the gospel is. They disagree with

00:23:50.680 Jesus about what the atonement was. And so it really, really becomes this self-styled, uh,

00:23:57.540 religion that is basically, in fact, you'll hear progressive Christians say that I couldn't believe

00:24:01.960 in a God who, and then fill in the blank. So essentially whatever I wouldn't do, I couldn't

00:24:07.800 serve a God that would do that. So God, I'm more moral than God and God hasn't come up to my standard,

00:24:15.000 at least the God that they read about in scripture, according to their own moral standard. But personal

00:24:20.280 conscience and feelings are very emphasized in the progressive Christian movement as the authority. So

00:24:25.520 even in some belief statements on progressive churches, they'll take off the Nicene Creed and

00:24:30.480 put in things like, we respect the right of personal conscience. So you can lead yourself

00:24:35.580 to what you think is morally good and right.

00:24:39.260 And where does this come from when it comes to their understanding of human nature? Like,

00:24:44.920 what are some of the fundamental things that progressive Christianity asserts about who we are as human

00:24:51.480 beings that leads them to make these kinds of conclusions that we have the authority to,

00:24:57.060 um, you know, tear apart the Bible or to kind of twist what scripture says to our own liking?

00:25:04.580 Well, uh, ultimately progressive Christians deny the doctrine of original sin. And so even though

00:25:10.940 they'll say Christians, you know, we, we make mistakes, we do things that are wrongheaded. Sometimes,

00:25:16.060 uh, the idea that we have this sin nature that was passed down to us is, is rejected in the progressive

00:25:22.080 church. And this is where Ali, your book is so relevant because what you write about in your book

00:25:27.420 is exactly what the answer needs to be to progressive Christians who would say, look, you as a person,

00:25:34.020 you're perfect just as you are. In fact, a prominent progressive leader put that on Twitter just

00:25:40.180 recently. You are perfect just as you are. You are enough. You, uh, you are beautiful. You should

00:25:47.420 follow your heart. You should follow your dreams because God, and this is where they'll, they'll

00:25:51.860 replace original sin with what they might call original blessing or original goodness. They'll say,

00:25:56.820 look, God created you and said that it was good. You need to own that. You need to claim that.

00:26:01.560 And, uh, there's, there's a, uh, Richard Rohr who is incredibly influential in the progressive

00:26:07.740 church. He says, you just need to describe, discover your true self. You need to put to

00:26:11.960 death, your false self, and you need to discover your true self. So his gospel is all about yourself

00:26:17.880 going inward, getting contemplative and doing the right kind of contemplative prayer to discover

00:26:22.880 your true self. And essentially that's where they're drawing salvation.

00:26:27.520 Right. And that is obviously a difference between what the Bible says and, and putting down your old

00:26:32.600 self and your new self. And when the Bible is talking about that, it's talking about the old

00:26:36.320 self that is dead in sin, that is rotten and is decaying because of our depravity, because of our

00:26:42.240 original sin and to put on the new self, um, in, in righteousness and holiness, a new self that is

00:26:48.600 given to us by Christ that is, uh, not characterized by doing everything we want to do or living our truth,

00:26:55.820 but in following Christ and denying ourself, picking up our cross and following him. So you do see how it is,

00:27:02.500 it uses, um, it uses kind of the branding and the rhetoric of the gospel, uh, of the gospel, excuse

00:27:08.540 me, to, uh, give another gospel, uh, which is the name of your book. And you're, you're right. There

00:27:14.320 is such, um, such a similarity between kind of what we're seeing in these new age, self-help, self-love

00:27:22.900 books and podcasts that basically just say, you know, inside you is this perfect, flawless inner

00:27:29.520 goddess and your journey in life is to get to her. And the things that are holding her back or society

00:27:36.380 standards are even Christian fundamentalism and unfair and unfair expectations that have been

00:27:42.480 placed on you by the church or by society or by the patriarchy or the system, whatever it is.

00:27:48.380 And as soon as you can throw those things off, um, the systems that so easily entangle,

00:27:54.660 maybe progressive Christianity would say, then you'll find your true self. And then you'll be

00:27:58.300 manifesting not just who you really are, but everything that you really want in life. And so

00:28:05.120 if you think about, uh, that perspective of human nature, everything kind of starts to make sense that

00:28:12.160 of course you wouldn't be talking about, um, repenting from true sin. Of course you wouldn't

00:28:17.560 be talking about the holiness of God and our obligation to submit to God in every part of our

00:28:23.640 lives because it's really more of a God of self and the God of the Bible or whatever God is kind of,

00:28:30.140 we've constructed is coming along for the ride in our journey to manifest our true selves. Um,

00:28:37.540 which is exactly why they can't deny something like the, the inherent goodness of LGBTQ identity,

00:28:44.740 because that's part of the true self. And if your journey is to find your true self and not to follow

00:28:50.080 Christ, of course, you're not going to deny yourself anything you really want. Um, but one

00:28:55.580 thing, one thing I, that you said that I thought was interesting is that, uh, the progressivism or

00:29:01.800 progressive Christianity basically says, you know, we don't inherit original, original sin,

00:29:08.360 but you also said that they are kind of accepting this critical theory, critical race theory, which we've

00:29:14.160 talked a lot about on our podcast and critical race theory does assert that some people that white

00:29:20.980 people in particular are born into racism and that we are, uh, we're inevitably part of that system.

00:29:30.060 And we actually have to repent and be sanctified by doing the things that critical race theory calls

00:29:36.080 us to do in order to be truly anti-racist. So how is, I don't know if you know the answer to this

00:29:41.320 question, but how is progressive Christianity? He says, we don't have original sin wedding itself

00:29:47.220 with something like CRT, which says, well, yeah, some people do have original sin and you do have

00:29:52.040 to repent from it. Yeah. Well, that's, that's a really glaring inconsistency, isn't it? And there

00:29:58.040 are a lot of those in the progressive church. For example, they will market themselves as being

00:30:02.900 the most tolerant of all people. They will, uh, promote themselves as being affirming of everyone,

00:30:09.360 of every creed, whatever you want to believe is fine. But as you and I both know, as public people

00:30:14.840 on YouTube and on social media, that is not the case. Progressive Christians are some of the most

00:30:21.360 bitter foes. If you disagree with their ideologies, that they're marketing as tolerant, but they're

00:30:26.740 really not tolerant of someone that has more of a conservative view or somebody that has more of

00:30:31.780 a historic view. And I think that the reason that things like critical theory and critical race

00:30:37.560 theory have become so wildly popular in the progressive church, frankly, is because that's

00:30:42.640 the train that culture is on. And so they're going to look out into culture. They're always

00:30:47.540 going to line up. That's why just before the critical race theory came in, it was more critical

00:30:52.140 theory as it would apply to sexual issues and homosexuality and gay inclusion. And then it's

00:30:57.700 like, oh, culture has shifted here. Now we're going to go over here. And so it's, it's sort of

00:31:02.660 like, if we look back through history, there have always been movements of Christianity or

00:31:07.780 people, I should say that, that are marketing themselves as Christians, but they're just

00:31:12.080 going in step with wherever culture is going. And as we can see from going back all the way

00:31:17.600 to the first century, Christians have always been called to, to be counter-cultural if culture

00:31:23.200 is disagreeing with something in the Bible or something about the way that Christians are called

00:31:28.560 to live in Christ. And so this idea of a critical race theory is, is incredibly popular because they

00:31:35.240 don't also, they're, they're not going to want to be canceled by, by the world. And so it's, it's

00:31:40.380 just always going to be in lockstep with what culture is doing, at least in my observation

00:31:44.340 throughout history and then culminating in this progressive Christian movement today.

00:31:49.140 And I think some pushback would be, well, you know, Christians at one point, they said, you know,

00:31:54.620 there were Christians who owned slaves. There were Christians who supported slavery,

00:31:57.520 who tried to use the Bible to support slavery. And so I think if you don't take a second,

00:32:02.420 look at that kind of perspective that a progressive Christian might say, well, all of you people who

00:32:07.960 are still trying to defend what we say is harmful, like, you know, traditional marriage and things

00:32:13.260 like that, you are exactly like the Christians who defended segregation or defended slavery and who

00:32:18.900 stood against progress. But I think it's really important for us to be able to discern the difference

00:32:25.320 between the dehumanization of slavery, which Christians actually gospel-believing, Jesus-loving

00:32:32.680 Christians like William Wilberforce fought against. And some of the issues that we are,

00:32:39.560 that we are facing today, we can't just look at this kind of broad perspective of history and say,

00:32:46.220 okay, this is the right side of history. This is the wrong side of history. These people have always

00:32:49.820 been on the wrong side of history because I disagree with their ideology. These people have always been

00:32:54.120 on the right side of history. The fact of the matter is, is that these issues are different.

00:32:57.860 And when we try to conflate these issues, we actually end up lessening, for example,

00:33:04.520 the severity of something as sinful and awful and depraved as slavery in the United States,

00:33:10.120 when we conflate them with all of, you know, our pet political issues of today, like climate change

00:33:16.240 activism or something like that. Would you agree?

00:33:18.320 I do. And I think that that does often get conflated because I think in progressive Christianity,

00:33:24.720 there are no gospel essentials. Everything is sort of put on the same level. And so they can look at

00:33:30.520 something like, well, somebody says, hey, there were Christians who used the Bible to justify

00:33:35.020 slavery. Of course, that's true. There were. But if you look at what the Bible actually says,

00:33:40.420 and you look at every scripture in light of other scriptures and scripture as a whole,

00:33:44.560 what you see is that the type of slavery that we had in the United States of America was actually

00:33:50.180 punishable by death in the Old Testament. You weren't allowed to just go kidnap people and take

00:33:55.580 them as slaves. That was punishable by death in the Old Testament. So if you look at the trajectory

00:33:59.760 on slavery in the Bible, the word that is translated as slavery in English really was more of an indebted

00:34:06.800 servitude. It was voluntary. They were to be released after seven years with lots of flocks and wine and

00:34:13.260 grain. They were to be treated well. And it was a way for poor people to be able to work their way

00:34:18.020 up and out of poverty. That's a stark contrast to the type of slavery Christians may or may not have

00:34:24.200 been using to justify. But as you point out, people like William Wilberforce, when you read the Bible

00:34:28.800 correctly as a whole, they're saying, wait, no, this is not biblical. However, when you go to the LGBT

00:34:34.360 issue, which is an entirely different issue, there's not one positive scripture about that to even compare

00:34:41.340 the problematic ones to. And of course, rooting all of that in our understanding of Genesis and what kind

00:34:47.320 of a thing we are as people. We see all throughout scripture that even affirmed by Jesus, as you pointed

00:34:53.660 out, that there are two genders, that marriage was created by God for a very specific purpose. And so they're

00:35:00.100 not even comparable when you really understand what the Bible is saying. But see, so often in progressive

00:35:05.820 Christianity. Now, I'm not talking about the thought leaders, because many of the thought leaders are

00:35:11.580 biblically literate. But I think much like maybe evangelical culture, a lot of people in the pews are not

00:35:17.380 biblically literate. So they're just listening to what their leaders are saying. And they're thinking, well, that

00:35:21.640 makes sense to me, but they're not searching the scriptures for themselves, which is a good reminder for all of us

00:35:26.200 to be doing that.

00:35:27.520 Yeah, exactly. And you and I both agree that progressive Christianity is not the only, you know, that's not the

00:35:36.440 only kind of false teaching. There are people who would call themselves conservative evangelicals who might hold to

00:35:41.980 something like the prosperity gospel, or a very decontextualized, superficial understanding of the scripture that

00:35:48.160 says, you know, in a different sense, maybe not hipster Jesus, but you know, my buddy Jesus is still coming

00:35:56.020 along for the ride to make sure that I get this promotion, that I make sure that I am happy in my life, and he's

00:36:03.100 going to grant me everything that I need. But it still kind of comes from the same place, even though those two

00:36:08.180 sides might not agree on politics. You're still fashioning God in your own likeness. You're still making him into

00:36:13.700 something that he's not. You're still not understanding the authority of God, as scripture tells us. I heard it said

00:36:19.700 once that the most controversial, without us even realizing it, the most controversial verse in the Bible is

00:36:24.620 Genesis 1-1, that God created the heavens and the earth. That right there has huge implications for the rest

00:36:31.580 of our theology. If he says what is and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's

00:36:36.080 bad, what's male and what's female, what's holy, what's unholy, then that defines, that should define

00:36:42.360 everything we think about ourselves, about who Jesus is, about what sin is, about what he did on the cross.

00:36:49.060 But because I think a lot of times we put aside Genesis 1-1, that is the first step to kind of

00:36:56.620 picking and choosing, okay, yeah, this kind of fits into my preconceived notions of what I want my

00:37:02.080 worldview to look like or what I want the world to look like. This doesn't. Okay, now I've kind of

00:37:07.160 deconstructed, as you have said, and then constructed something that I like and something

00:37:14.340 that makes me feel comfortable. Do you think that's why people who go through this deconstruction

00:37:20.680 very rarely can reconstruct something that is anything like biblical Christianity?

00:37:30.400 Yeah, what a great observation. So when I'm thinking of Genesis 1-1, that's going to tie in

00:37:36.020 with the fear of God, right? If you know that he spoke all creation into existence,

00:37:42.880 then whatever he speaks, we should fear that in a holy way. We should fear God. In fact,

00:37:49.240 we know from Scripture that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but this is something

00:37:54.680 that progressives will say, no, you shouldn't fear God. Fearing is bad. We shouldn't fear God. In fact,

00:38:02.040 I have a friend who was deeply in the progressive Christian movement who has come back to the real

00:38:08.420 gospel now, but he tells the story of he had a tattoo on his arm that said, fear God when he was

00:38:13.980 a younger Christian. But when he went into the progressive movement, he covered that tattoo up

00:38:19.040 because he was at a Rob Bell event. And Rob Bell, he met Rob Bell and he said, look,

00:38:23.460 you shouldn't, why do you want to worship a God that you have to fear?

00:38:27.060 And so, so much of this is just based on the self. And I think that's, that's where this all

00:38:32.600 leads to. Genesis 1-1 starts with God, this holy God creator who, what he says goes. He is good. He

00:38:40.360 is loving. He is just, he has all these attributes and we are not. But in progressive Christianity,

00:38:46.620 that gets flipped. I am good. I am, you know, all powerful to make my dreams come true and all of

00:38:52.240 these things. And like you mentioned, God's along for the right. He just wants me to be happy.

00:38:56.560 He, he's sort of involved in my life when I want him to be, but not, you know, he doesn't really

00:39:01.060 care who I sleep with. He doesn't really care how I live my life, but he wants me to be good and do

00:39:05.840 good to other people. But, you know, just kind of a big, whatever, but it's really based on me and

00:39:11.420 my happiness and my fulfillment and what makes me feel good in the moment. And so I think that,

00:39:16.360 that people are deconstructing because they're putting the self first. I see it. If you listen to

00:39:21.700 deconstruction stories, you will always see that there is a foundation that they start from

00:39:27.140 that, that starts with themselves, whether they realize it or not, I think.

00:39:31.440 Yeah. And I've noticed that, you know, there are a lot of resources about, um, deconstruction and why

00:39:37.380 it is so important. And one of the things that I have seen people who have deconstructed,

00:39:43.920 they immediately label, um, anything, something you or I would say with some kind of very nefarious

00:39:51.260 sounding term. And so they'll call it spiritual bypassing, or they'll call it, um, you know,

00:39:59.000 they'll say that believe saying the word biblical Christianity is it's gaslighting, or they will

00:40:05.780 call us fundamentalist, or they will immediately try to characterize what they were or what they grew

00:40:13.660 up with, or what they view as the wrong form of Christianity is something very evil and wicked,

00:40:19.920 all the while claiming that conservative Christians who, you know, I'm not talking politically have a

00:40:25.980 conservative theology. They're the ones who are judgmental. They're the ones who are condemning.

00:40:30.860 They're the reason why people are really leaving the church while painting those people as this very

00:40:36.840 scary monster and, and boogeyman. It's very interesting, but it does seem to be coming from a

00:40:43.420 place of, um, of personal anger and resentment and fear and, and maybe a very sincere place. Like

00:40:52.460 maybe they really did, uh, go through some kind of abuse in their church. Maybe they saw the youth

00:40:58.280 pastor that they loved growing up turn into a complete hypocrite. Maybe they did see a lot of

00:41:03.740 bad things in the church. And so there, they feel like the only way to salvage their faith

00:41:09.420 is to deconstruct it and to come up with something else. They see that as a protection and even

00:41:15.440 redemption from maybe the real abuse and the real hypocrisy that they saw growing up. The problem is

00:41:22.980 what they're left with, what they have constructed, does it have the saving power or the solace that

00:41:29.440 they're looking for? You're still just left with the self, which isn't salvific. Is that a correct

00:41:35.700 assessment? Yeah. And I think one thing we have to understand about deconstruction, which by the

00:41:41.780 way, is a rite of passage in the progressive movement. If there's a, if there's one sacrament

00:41:46.920 in progressive Christianity, it's deconstruction. You go through your deconstruction and that's part

00:41:52.260 of being a progressive Christian. But what we have to understand is deconstruction is a little bit

00:41:55.880 different than doubt because the whole concept of deconstruction is rooted in postmodern relativism.

00:42:02.000 So it's based on the idea that truth can't really be known. If objective truth exists,

00:42:08.580 none of us have access to it. And so basically what we think is true are just constructs that have

00:42:14.960 been built up for us. So people who grew up in the evangelical church, that's just the construct

00:42:20.340 of truth you were given. So it's actually your job and your duty and responsibility to deconstruct that.

00:42:26.460 But what we have to understand is that deconstruction happens on the level of even changing what words

00:42:32.900 means. So it's a, it's a process of picking apart and explaining away and discarding all of the beliefs

00:42:39.220 that you grew up with because you're, you're, you're tearing down that construct that was built for

00:42:43.640 you. The problem though, is that when you base that on postmodern relativism, this idea that truth

00:42:49.940 doesn't exist, then you have no way to build back any kind of a construct of truth. So you're left

00:42:55.840 in this sea of agnosticism, which is actually praised in the progressive Christian movement. So

00:43:00.960 it's essentially a culture of doubt. If you, if you say in a progressive environment, well, hey,

00:43:07.480 here's my position. I've really landed on this. I'm pretty certain about this particular theological

00:43:11.820 tenet. You're viewed as less enlightened. You're not as mature. Maybe one day you'll get to that

00:43:18.080 place of spiritual maturity where you can cast off all of these little boxes you've tried to put God

00:43:23.140 in and, and you can just come into this kind of sea of uncertainty. And that is where the value is.

00:43:30.220 And so I think that, that when Christians hear those phrases like deconstruction, we need to

00:43:33.800 understand that because that's a whole different animal than maybe taking a look at what you believe

00:43:38.560 in. Is this true? I need to look at some evidence and see if what I believe is justifiable.

00:43:42.920 Yes. There's, I have so many thoughts about what you just said, but I thought your point about

00:43:48.840 when you deconstruct and you don't have any foundation on which to, to build any kind of

00:43:55.100 faith except for moral relativism, you end up in this sea of agnosticism. And I've noticed that

00:44:01.740 people who are in that sea really want other people to get in with them. They don't like people

00:44:06.900 who are on the solid ground. It makes them really uncomfortable. Like, don't you want to be

00:44:10.720 treading water with me? Like, don't you want to be like floating on, floating on the waves? Isn't

00:44:15.320 this great? You don't have to worry about walking around. Like you don't have to worry about the

00:44:18.900 hardship of being on solid ground. And they really want everyone to get in the waves with them.

00:44:25.500 And they call people who are, you know, standing on the solid ground of scripture. It makes them

00:44:30.340 uncomfortable to the point to where they will call you prideful. They will say, this is another term

00:44:35.200 that I see overused a lot. You're lacking nuance. You don't have any nuance. You don't,

00:44:41.040 you know, you're, I've gotten this, you know, you're, you're young. You shouldn't be so sure

00:44:46.120 of these beliefs. You'll realize that the world is messy, that it's gray, that you really just have

00:44:53.300 to kind of realize that, you know, morality is relative in whatever terms that they use,

00:44:59.280 but they want to castigate people who are on solid ground. That doesn't mean that we know

00:45:04.300 everything or that we think that we know everything or that we have the perfect understanding of

00:45:07.840 everything, but that we are seeking to base our worldview on the word of God and that we

00:45:13.220 are trying to get closer and closer to the truth of scripture every day of our lives. That that is

00:45:18.160 what we are trying to build our worldview upon. They will call you, they will call you prideful.

00:45:24.420 And they, they fancy themselves humble when really a lot of times they're just confused and

00:45:30.360 they want people to be confused along with them, I think.

00:45:34.300 I think you're right. In fact, this is what's such an interesting distinctive of progressive

00:45:38.480 Christianity is that they will sort of castigate people who want to evangelize with the historic

00:45:46.540 gospel. So for me, for me, or for you to tell somebody about the good news, this message of

00:45:51.880 salvation that basically starts with some bad news, right? We, people need to understand that

00:45:56.660 they're a sinner, that they need a savior, that Jesus is that savior, that his sacrificial death on the

00:46:02.000 cross can accomplish that salvation for them. If they put a, you know, active trust in, in him and

00:46:08.200 what he's done, but that's viewed as hateful or small-minded or judgmental, but yet they want

00:46:16.340 their agnosticism. They're equally as evangelistic for their agnosticism. And I think we see this play

00:46:23.860 out all the time. Every time a Christian celebrity goes through a deconstruction story, they not only

00:46:30.200 have to post about it, but then they begin to use that as their platform. And they begin to try to

00:46:35.040 persuade, as you mentioned, other people to come into this sort of agnosticism with them because they

00:46:40.900 really are as sure about their agnosticism as historic Christians are about the authoritative truth

00:46:48.240 of God's word. And so they're sort of trading one view of objective truth for another. They're

00:46:54.420 just calling it something else. And that's why whenever I read a progressive book that is advocating

00:46:59.320 for relativism, they always, always, always bottom right back out in objective truth, but they're just

00:47:05.820 that it's a different objective truth. And, you know, if you view agnosticism as the highest good

00:47:11.840 and the highest truth, you're still, you're still someone who believes in objective truth because you

00:47:16.340 think relativism is true. Exactly. Which is obviously self-contradictory. And I think some

00:47:21.960 of them don't realize the conundrum that they're in. And you'll also notice that, like, if you make,

00:47:28.480 if you get into a discussion with someone with sometimes, I'm not, you know, generalizing, but

00:47:33.980 sometimes you'll notice that they do use when they disagree with someone or when they get dogmatic

00:47:39.020 about something that someone they theologically disagree with says, they will use terms like, well,

00:47:45.840 you're not, you know, God doesn't, I've heard, you know, God doesn't love you. You don't know

00:47:49.840 Jesus. You're not a real Christian. You're not going to heaven. And so I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:47:54.960 I thought I was the, I thought I was the judgmental one because I haven't actually said any of these

00:47:59.200 things about you, but here you are telling me that because I hold different tenets of the faith than

00:48:04.600 you, that I am going to hell. And you're the very same person who tells me that I'm a fundamentalist

00:48:10.640 exclusive. So what is it? Does truth really exist? Does salvation really exist? Does heaven

00:48:16.860 and hell really exist? Are those just places that you place people depending on whether or not they

00:48:21.620 agree with you? Yeah, it's sort of a selective belief in heaven and hell because largely speaking,

00:48:28.180 progressive Christians are universalists. They don't believe that God would actually send anyone

00:48:32.760 to hell. But then when you interact with a lot of progressive Christians online and social media and

00:48:37.800 in your blog posts and stuff, then you begin to think, well, I think they actually do believe in

00:48:41.160 hell, but it's just for a very small number of evangelicals to go because there's so much

00:48:46.540 vitriol. And, you know, in apologetics ministry, not to just dunk on progressive Christians, there are

00:48:51.860 some that try to be church and you can interact with, of course. But in my interactions, generally

00:48:57.360 speaking with atheists and in my interactions with progressive Christians, it's much harder to interact

00:49:02.880 with progressive Christians because they will go so quickly to the mocking and making fun and just

00:49:08.880 sort of brutal, just meanness. Mean. So mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if they see it. I don't

00:49:17.000 know if they see it. Well, you know, I saw a really interesting article. I think it was in Quillette,

00:49:22.700 I think, the other day. And I don't have it pulled up, but it was about a guy who was raised,

00:49:29.340 he was raised an evangelical Christian, it sounds like. And then he actually saw his youth pastor

00:49:35.620 that he admired had been his spiritual mentor. He ended up getting arrested, I think it was for

00:49:39.780 child pornography or child abuse or something like that. And that is when he started to walk away.

00:49:45.680 And he started to, you know, he didn't actually become a progressive Christian, but he decided that

00:49:52.320 he wasn't going to become or he wasn't going to be a Christian because it had to just be this fake

00:49:57.160 faith if the person that he admired so much ended up going that direction. And so he describes how he

00:50:04.320 became very social justice oriented. He became very progressive in all of his thought processes

00:50:11.620 in the political issues that he agreed with. I mean, you know, the climate change, the trans

00:50:17.380 indigenous movement, whatever it was, he was extremely passionate about it when he left his faith

00:50:24.140 and what he realized, because now he's kind of come to the other side. He still doesn't call

00:50:28.300 himself a Christian, but he looks back and realizes, okay, I was in a faith then. Even when I was saying

00:50:33.920 I was a progressive atheist, I was in a faith. And he talks about, he said, I was mean. Like,

00:50:39.020 I was just mean about people. I was so rude about Christians. I was so rude about people who didn't

00:50:44.940 agree with me. I was that, you know, that troll, that bully that I said that I hated in Christianity.

00:50:49.980 I became that, but by another name. And, you know, now he's still, he doesn't consider himself a

00:50:56.020 believer, but he does kind of realize the hypocrisy there. It really is interesting. It is exactly like

00:51:01.500 you say in your book. It is an entirely different gospel and it's got different fruit. It comes with

00:51:07.140 different rules, with different dictates, and it's not actually more tolerant or inclusive or open.

00:51:12.560 It just is different. Can you end us with whatever you want to that's, you know, included in your book

00:51:21.020 that you feel like, you know, if I could just drive this one point home to people today, this is what I,

00:51:28.800 this is really what I want to say. What would that be? Well, I would say this, you know, many people I'm

00:51:36.200 sure that are listening to this and watching this are some of the things we've talked about. You've gone,

00:51:41.980 oh, the light just went on. I've heard some of these ideas from the pulpit at my church,

00:51:46.800 or I've heard some of these ideas discussed in the small group of, you know, my, my weekly small

00:51:52.620 group. And, um, one thing I just want to drive home is that, uh, it's everywhere and, but do not

00:51:59.820 fear. So here's the thing. If we go back through church history, all the way back to the first century,

00:52:04.640 you just start even starting with the, uh, apologists in the second century, Christians

00:52:08.980 have always, even from the time the Bible was being written itself, have had to deal with false

00:52:15.380 gospels, false teachers, and false ideas infiltrating the church. Our temptation in our particular cultural

00:52:23.240 moment and placement in history is we want to kind of plug our ears, stick our heads in the sand,

00:52:28.460 because anytime, as we've discussed, anytime you disagree with something or call something out,

00:52:33.680 you're considered a bully. You're considered rude and bigoted and hateful, and you will use every

00:52:38.980 name in the book. But if we really are going to consider ourselves biblical Christians, we have

00:52:44.060 to speak up about this stuff because progressive Christianity is a movement that is springing up

00:52:50.340 and out of the evangelical church. It has fully infiltrated. In fact, most of the messages I get

00:52:56.200 from people are saying, I can't hardly find a church where these ideas haven't begun to take

00:53:01.700 hold and have influence. So I want to encourage you. I know that sounds like really bad news and

00:53:06.160 that sounds scary, but here's the deal. God is still God. His bride is still his bride and his promises

00:53:12.600 are true. And so we can rest in that. We can speak the truth knowing that, gosh, in our culture, we might

00:53:19.340 get unfriended on Facebook or we might, somebody might say something mean to us online, but ultimately we're not

00:53:24.480 paying the price that many Christians throughout church history have had to pay. And so I would

00:53:29.280 just encourage us by knowing the same Holy Spirit that was with them is the same Holy Spirit that's

00:53:33.300 with us. The same Word of God they had is the same Word of God we have. And just want to encourage

00:53:38.340 people, you know, if you're seeing these ideas infiltrate your church, set up a meeting with your

00:53:42.480 pastor, share your concerns, be respectful, be loving, show them the scriptures where you think some of

00:53:46.940 these ideas are contradicting and leave the rest in the hands of God. But don't shrink back because

00:53:52.860 you're afraid of offending someone or being, you know, that fly in the ointment, so to speak.

00:53:59.000 Christians have always had to be the fly in the ointment. I mean, every single book of the New

00:54:02.700 Testament, if not directing false teaching and false teachers directly, every book of the New Testament

00:54:08.700 addresses at least using good discernment and comparing what happens in all of our churches and

00:54:14.640 our lives with what the Bible says about things. And so we are followers of Jesus. We want to agree with

00:54:20.700 Jesus on things. So just be encouraged to know that there's nothing new, that we are not the first

00:54:24.800 generation of Christians that have had to kind of do our job in this area, but we can do it. We're

00:54:29.400 stronger than we think.

00:54:30.940 Yes, God has given us all of the equipment that we need to do that. And like you were saying so well

00:54:35.740 earlier, that it's okay to doubt and to ask questions, to say, hang on, I believe that, but I'm

00:54:41.060 not really sure, you know, why I believe that. My encouragement, and I'm sure your encouragement as

00:54:46.160 well is when you have those questions, don't go out to the culture to ask them to answer those

00:54:50.820 questions for you. Go deeper into the Word of God and say, you know, God, I need your help. Like,

00:54:56.780 I really need wisdom in this. You know, that's kind of like the prayer that you prayed. Like, please

00:55:00.940 send me someone, send me resources to show me what is true. I think very often when we have those doubts,

00:55:08.740 instead of dealing with them and wrestling with them, because that's really uncomfortable,

00:55:11.820 it's really hard to do. There's some conviction there. There might even be some guilt there.

00:55:16.360 The Holy Spirit working in us and sanctifying us, we are never promised, is going to be easy or is

00:55:21.500 going to feel good. And so I think because we are a people who really doesn't, we really don't like

00:55:27.380 discomfort, we go to the culture to not help us answer our doubts, but to say, to just affirm them

00:55:33.580 and to say, yeah, you're actually right. And any doubt in you that you have about God is actually your

00:55:40.060 true self coming out. And remember, you need to follow your true self. Progressive Christianity

00:55:45.360 over and over again says, you know, the world has it right. The world has it right. And Christians

00:55:50.960 would do well, progressive Christianity asserts, to look more like the world, to sound more like the

00:55:56.320 world, to be more compassionate and loving like the world. Whereas the Bible tells us, Jesus tells us

00:56:02.240 over and over again, look, the world has it wrong. And not only do they have it wrong, they got nothing to

00:56:05.980 offer you. They got nothing to offer you. But in Jesus, we find everything that we're looking for,

00:56:11.040 the satisfaction, the sanctification, the solace, the dealing with our sin that we are looking for.

00:56:16.600 We find that in Christ. The gospel is good news. And the gospel, the so-called gospel that the world

00:56:23.060 gives you in the name of Christianity, it doesn't save and it doesn't offer us the things that our

00:56:30.320 the things that our souls are longing for. That's right. Christianity is going to give

00:56:35.820 you a Jesus. It's going to give you a God, but it's not a Jesus who can save you.

00:56:40.880 Progressive Christianity. Yes. Sorry. Progressive Christianity. Yeah. Thank you.

00:56:45.140 Yeah. You get a Jesus that can hold your hand and understand what you're going through,

00:56:48.460 but he can't save you. And that's not a Jesus or a God worth following, in my opinion.

00:56:53.900 Amen. Well, thank you so much. Can you tell everyone where they can get your book,

00:56:58.880 Another Gospel, and where they can follow you and all that good stuff?

00:57:03.200 Yeah, you can get the book wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the places.

00:57:08.420 You can find me. My website is alisachilders.com. And from there, you can find my blog. I have a

00:57:14.320 podcast. I just launched a YouTube channel. That's just Alisa Childers on YouTube. And Allie has been a

00:57:20.460 recent guest of mine. So you can check out our episode together. But yeah, just all Instagram,

00:57:26.060 Facebook and Twitter at Alisa Childers. Thank you so much, Alisa. Thanks, Allie.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 23, 2020

Ep 342 ｜ Leaving Progressivism for Biblical Christianity ｜ Guest： Alisa Childers

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