Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 375 ｜ Max Lucado, Carl Lentz & Ravi Zacharias： When Christian Leaders Disappoint

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:00:10.560 Happy Wednesday.

00:00:11.860 We are halfway through the week.

00:00:13.100 I hope everyone has had a great week so far.

00:00:16.300 Today we are going to talk about a subject that you guys have been asking me to talk

00:00:19.920 about for a while, and that's going to be the subject of Christian leaders kind of letting

00:00:25.360 us down or letting their congregants down, letting their followers down, the people who

00:00:31.120 have learned from them, who have benefited from their teaching, who feel that their affections

00:00:36.980 for the Lord have been stirred by the teachings and the studies that these pastors and these

00:00:46.060 leaders have published over the years.

00:00:48.700 And these leaders are Carl Lentz of Hillsong, Ravi Zacharias, the very esteemed apologist,

00:00:56.360 and then Max Lucado, who is an author and a pastor.

00:01:00.900 There are three very different, well, two of them are similar, but three very different

00:01:05.960 scenarios in which I think believers are looking to these leaders and wondering, okay, am I

00:01:11.500 able to trust this person's teachings?

00:01:14.420 How should I feel about all of this?

00:01:16.100 And how do I feel if this teacher, if I feel like that teacher laid a foundation for my

00:01:22.500 faith, and now I feel like that foundation is crumbling, what do I do?

00:01:27.580 So first, let's talk about what happened, and then we're going to get a biblical perspective

00:01:32.440 of how we are to look at Christian teachers in general, but especially after it has been

00:01:38.820 revealed that their character is not the character of Christ, that is not congruent with the Christian

00:01:45.340 life.

00:01:45.780 So first, let's talk about Carl Lentz.

00:01:47.760 I've been avoiding talking about this, I think, because I didn't want it to seem in any way

00:01:55.260 that I was saying, I told you so, or rubbing this in people's faces.

00:02:02.400 And the reason why I was sensitive about that and slow to talk about this is because I have

00:02:06.880 serious theological disagreements with Hillsong, and in particular, Carl Lentz.

00:02:12.340 And I have serious political disagreements with Carl Lentz, and I've talked about his

00:02:18.060 stances negatively on this podcast before, his social justice activism, how wrong I think

00:02:24.040 he is on issues of race and so-called racial justice and social justice, how unbiblical some

00:02:30.540 of his Instagram posts have been when it comes to, for example, Black Lives Matter and what

00:02:35.500 justice actually looks like.

00:02:37.400 It doesn't seem that his views on that are actually rooted in scripture, but are actually

00:02:42.380 rooted in popular social movements.

00:02:45.120 And so because I've been critical of him in other ways, I was slow to talk about this

00:02:49.920 scenario because I didn't want it to seem like I was gleeful about it or like I was gloating

00:02:55.640 in any way.

00:02:56.300 And I didn't want it to come across as gossip because the fact of the matter is, is that,

00:03:00.660 yes, I do disagree with Carl Lentz on lots of things.

00:03:05.860 We probably agree on lots of things, too, but I do disagree with him on lots of things.

00:03:10.140 I have been very skeptical of his leadership and his pastoral abilities for a long time,

00:03:15.620 but I am not happy about this story.

00:03:19.060 I'm not happy to talk about this scandal.

00:03:21.640 I am not gleeful.

00:03:22.700 I'm not gloating in any way when someone who professes to be a Christian and who has 0.96

00:03:28.420 a lot of believers following them falls and shows themselves to be a hypocrite, shows themselves

00:03:36.680 to be leading two lives, to have one character that they show on stage on Sunday and then

00:03:43.320 another part of their character that reveals who they really are.

00:03:49.080 It's sad.

00:03:50.180 And so I'm sad about this.

00:03:51.640 I want you to know that before I explain what happened, that I'm sad about this.

00:03:55.320 I'm not in any way trying to say, look, I told you so.

00:04:00.080 And, you know, this is just a product of Hillsong.

00:04:02.860 I'm not trying to make that argument at all.

00:04:05.500 But let me tell you what happened.

00:04:08.140 It was revealed recently.

00:04:09.520 I think it was last November.

00:04:13.100 So it was several months ago now that it was revealed that he had been in an affair or

00:04:19.420 engaging in a month's long affair with a woman named Reneen Kareem.

00:04:24.220 She is a designer.

00:04:25.480 They met somewhere in New York, I think at like a park in New York, and they ended up

00:04:30.600 talking.

00:04:31.100 They exchanged numbers and then they started getting together.

00:04:34.200 It seems like it was just for kind of emotional support at first.

00:04:38.760 And then, of course, it turned physical into a full-fledged affair.

00:04:44.200 They were talking, apparently, according to her.

00:04:46.460 She did a few interviews.

00:04:47.960 They were talking constantly and they were really each other's person.

00:04:52.180 Like they they seem to have fallen in love with each other, at least from her testimony.

00:04:56.340 And then, according to her story, Carl Lentz's wife found text messages on his phone.

00:05:04.160 And that's when the whole thing kind of blew up.

00:05:07.300 And that's when the whole thing ended.

00:05:08.760 And eventually he had to talk about it publicly and he had to admit what happened.

00:05:13.740 And as far as I know, and of course, there's so little that we know that we only see the

00:05:19.000 surface level.

00:05:19.800 There's always so much going on behind the scenes.

00:05:22.200 As far as I can tell from what we can see publicly, Carl Lentz and his wife are are working

00:05:29.040 through this.

00:05:29.700 They are still married.

00:05:31.320 Carl Lentz stepped down from his position as pastor of Hillsong NYC.

00:05:37.960 Brian Houston is the head of Hillsong, and there was leaked audio that went more into

00:05:45.240 depth on what was happening behind the scenes that caused or that precipitated the resignation

00:05:51.660 of Carl Lentz.

00:05:53.000 Apparently, it was more than just this affair.

00:05:56.980 But here is part of what the audio says.

00:05:58.920 A staff member found a very compromising chain of text messages on Carl's laptop.

00:06:03.280 We drove right across town to talk to Carl and confront him, and that was the beginning

00:06:08.080 of the process we are at now.

00:06:10.120 So that's a little bit different than the story that we originally heard from the woman

00:06:14.140 that Carl Lentz was having an affair with.

00:06:16.140 When we talk about an affair, these issues were more than one affair.

00:06:19.880 They were significant.

00:06:20.900 And at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically, but not necessarily those

00:06:26.000 affairs, Houston said in the recording obtained by page six.

00:06:29.920 If it was just about a moral failure, perhaps it would have been possible to work our way

00:06:34.480 through it and have a period of restoration.

00:06:36.040 But the nature of where my relationship was with Carl already, and then to add the significant

00:06:41.220 nature of the moral issues, meant that I believed, and our global board believed, the only option

00:06:46.320 was to terminate Carl.

00:06:47.760 Then Houston said that there had been problems with Lentz ahead of the affair revelations.

00:06:52.840 He was a difficult man to have any kind of direct conversation with because he was always

00:06:56.580 defensive, it would always be put back on the other person as though they were the ones

00:07:01.780 with the problem, which is, you know, a typical gaslighting tactic of people with, you know,

00:07:08.320 kind of narcissistic personalities, if I can say that.

00:07:11.800 They were not easy meetings.

00:07:12.920 And I already, and I was already at the point at the end of the summer that I felt like Carl

00:07:16.940 and Laura's time in New York was coming to an end.

00:07:18.980 This is what Brian Houston, the head of Hillsong was saying, not just general narcissistic behavior.

00:07:23.500 So he uses the word narcissistic too, manipulating, mistreating people.

00:07:27.640 I think sometimes other hurtful things, the breaches of trust connected to lying, constantly

00:07:31.340 lying, basically broken trust.

00:07:34.600 He said the church had hired a New York law firm as an independent investigator to probe

00:07:39.660 Lentz's leadership.

00:07:41.600 So again, we don't know everything that's going on behind the scenes.

00:07:44.900 We don't know what leadership decisions were made.

00:07:46.800 It sounds like Brian Houston knew that Carl Lentz needed to be let go and needed to be fired.

00:07:53.320 And I do think it's good to have, to hire an independent investigator just to make sure

00:07:58.240 that there wasn't a pattern of behavior that actually victimized people within the church.

00:08:02.700 If that is the case, then that needs to be found out and that needs to be dealt with.

00:08:07.920 And if there was actual abuse, then obviously that has to be dealt with in the civic realm.

00:08:11.680 Like that has to be dealt with on a legal level, not just a church discipline level as well.

00:08:17.360 Lentz was a personal spiritual advisor to Justin Bieber at one point.

00:08:21.120 I don't know if that's still happening.

00:08:23.840 He baptized Justin Bieber in a bathtub.

00:08:26.820 Justin and Haley Bieber apparently ended their relationship with him months before the scandal

00:08:32.720 broke.

00:08:33.220 I don't have any more details on that.

00:08:36.140 And so it is interesting.

00:08:38.440 I will say it is interesting why while Carl Lentz was posting all of this social justice stuff,

00:08:43.960 while he was gaining followers and he was gaining a reputation among social justice activists,

00:08:51.480 some of them professing Christians, some of them not, this was going on behind the scenes.

00:08:57.060 It does seem like so often performative activism, whether that's in the form of, you know, social

00:09:04.080 media posts or using the right woke language or holding a woke sign, whatever it is that

00:09:12.120 people see that as a way to insulate themselves from criticism in other areas of their life.

00:09:17.720 They feel like if they have enough social justice points, if they say the right things about

00:09:22.560 systemic racism or they say the right things about police brutality or they post the right

00:09:27.180 things, the black square, the right rhetoric and language, they talk to the right people,

00:09:33.280 they listen and learn, they read the right books.

00:09:35.860 Some, it seems like, use that as an insulation from people peering into other parts of their

00:09:43.760 life that actually reveal their truer character than their performative activism does on social

00:09:50.580 media.

00:09:51.780 And so I don't know that that's the case with Carl Lentz, but it's interesting how

00:09:57.180 often he invoked the name of God and invoked the Bible to, I think, erroneously defend

00:10:04.080 his left wing social justice views.

00:10:08.560 All the while, obviously his heart, at least in this period, was far from God.

00:10:14.160 The name of God might have been on his lips, but at this time, at this period, his heart

00:10:19.360 seemed to have been far from God.

00:10:20.700 And that's true of all of us.

00:10:21.860 If we persist in a sin, sin separates us from God.

00:10:28.560 And so I think this is tragic for his family.

00:10:30.640 It's tragic for Carl Lentz.

00:10:32.200 It's tragic for the people that go to Hillsong.

00:10:36.020 And I wish I could say that, oh, well, this only happens when you have someone like Carl

00:10:41.220 Lentz, who obviously only had a superficial understanding of theology.

00:10:44.500 That's the assessment that I would have given, that he is kind of a feel-good preacher that

00:10:49.840 makes people want to come to his church simply because they know that he's not really going

00:10:54.920 to talk about the hard stuff.

00:10:56.420 And he's really more about how he sounds and what he looks like than preaching the gospel

00:11:02.540 and preaching sin and salvation.

00:11:04.100 That is the assessment that I would give of Carl Lentz.

00:11:07.100 And I wish I could say, look, this is just what happens when you don't have depth.

00:11:10.960 This is just what happens when you don't have substance.

00:11:12.940 This is just what happens when you have bad theology.

00:11:15.700 But then that kind of assertion gets very muddled when you look at someone like Ravi Zacharias,

00:11:20.960 who is just about as theologically solid as anyone.

00:11:25.700 That doesn't mean I agree with him on everything, but I don't think anyone would have said, well,

00:11:29.680 Ravi Zacharias doesn't really know scripture.

00:11:31.940 He doesn't really preach the full gospel.

00:11:34.020 And so I can't just say, well, you know, this is just a product of Hillsong and superficial

00:11:39.900 theology and celebrity pastors that wear skinny jeans and have tattoos and care more about

00:11:46.360 what they look like.

00:11:47.540 Because while Ravi Zacharias is a celebrity pastor, he doesn't fit the same characterization

00:11:53.040 as Carl Lentz does.

00:11:54.660 The through line that we're going to see in this is sin.

00:11:58.160 That can unfortunately happen to anyone.

00:12:02.140 And so I'm going to explain now the Ravi Zacharias scandal, and then we're going to tie this all

00:12:07.220 together with a biblical perspective of how we should react to it.

00:12:15.360 Okay, let's talk about Ravi Zacharias.

00:12:17.960 Now, I'm going to put in the description of this podcast the past episode that I did on

00:12:24.040 Ravi Zacharias.

00:12:25.980 Because we have talked about this.

00:12:27.440 When this first came out after he died, he died about, was it a year ago now?

00:12:33.180 I'm not sure.

00:12:33.840 It was several months ago.

00:12:35.700 It might have been over the summer that he died.

00:12:38.200 And it came out that he had unfortunately been treating employees of the spa that he had part

00:12:45.540 ownership of.

00:12:47.900 He had been sexually harassing them.

00:12:51.120 And even forms of sexual abuse were found out.

00:12:55.080 I think a lot of people did not want to believe it because Ravi Zacharias and his apologetics

00:13:01.420 tools, his books, his speeches have really helped a lot of people understand the Christian

00:13:07.780 faith and be able to defend the Christian faith.

00:13:10.660 And in that way has stirred their affections for the Lord and has propelled them towards

00:13:17.660 understanding God's word and better grasping the gospel.

00:13:22.260 Now, on that, I want to read a passage that applies to this situation and just the idea

00:13:30.400 that you can no longer trust your faith or you can no longer trust your growth because

00:13:36.100 the person that helped you grow or whose materials helped you grow no longer can be trusted because

00:13:46.100 they have revealed a character or part of themselves that you that you are realizing

00:13:52.660 that you are realizing is incongruent with the faith that they professed to have.

00:13:58.640 So let me read you 1 Corinthians 3, 4 through 7.

00:14:04.260 For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos.

00:14:07.660 Are you not being merely human?

00:14:09.660 What then is Apollos?

00:14:10.760 What is Paul?

00:14:11.460 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth.

00:14:24.480 So if your faith was cultivated by reading Ravi Zacharias or hey, maybe even listening

00:14:29.780 to a Carl Lentz sermon and it caused you to go deeper into the gospel and to understand

00:14:35.440 and desire God's word more, if it made you more excited to understand who God is and to

00:14:44.760 seek after Christ, that faith does not become counterfeit just because a teacher has revealed

00:14:52.100 himself to be counterfeit or just because a teacher has revealed himself to lead a double

00:14:57.300 life.

00:14:57.780 If they're preaching the word of God, that's still the word of God.

00:15:01.360 Remember, Paul also says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.

00:15:06.580 And he's talking about in Philippians 1, how there were people that were preaching the

00:15:10.620 gospel for selfish ambition and for selfish gain, maybe in some way to try to hurt Paul.

00:15:17.100 And Paul is saying, okay, so what do I make of all of that?

00:15:20.080 If there are people who have bad hearts, who have bad motivations that are preaching the gospel,

00:15:25.240 how am I supposed to deal with that?

00:15:26.660 And Paul says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.

00:15:30.600 And so if you were someone that understood the gospel because you heard it from Ravi Zacharias,

00:15:35.260 or you heard it from another teacher who later left the faith or revealed that they were leading

00:15:39.560 a double life, that does not make the gospel counterfeit.

00:15:42.320 And that certainly does not make your faith counterfeit because Jesus is the author and

00:15:46.580 perfecter of your faith, as Hebrew says.

00:15:49.000 And 1 Corinthians 3 says that it is God who gives growth.

00:15:52.660 Philippians 1 says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.

00:15:56.980 Philippians also talks about that it is God who works in you, both to will and to work

00:16:01.880 for his good purpose.

00:16:03.280 So your faith is genuine because God is genuine.

00:16:06.160 Your faith is real because God is real.

00:16:09.520 Your faith is not dependent on the trustworthiness of Carl Lentz or the trustworthiness of Ravi

00:16:14.460 Zacharias. 0.74

00:16:15.400 Your faith is based on the trustworthiness of God who does not change, as Hebrews 13, 8 says.

00:16:20.680 He is reliable.

00:16:22.080 He is the author of your faith.

00:16:23.760 He is the one who gives growth.

00:16:25.600 Now, let me talk a little bit more about Ravi Zacharias and what exactly happened in all

00:16:35.700 of this, because I think the reason why he went that direction is because I think most

00:16:39.200 of you already know the details of it.

00:16:41.260 We've talked about the details of it, but there is a little bit more here.

00:16:46.780 So Ruth Malhotra, I actually met her several years ago.

00:16:51.240 She's a very, very sweet person.

00:16:53.960 And from what I can tell, a very trustworthy person.

00:16:56.060 She's the PR manager and spokesperson for RZIM.

00:16:59.240 She wrote a 26-page letter to the RZIM board on February 6th.

00:17:04.200 She detailed the various ways in which she was misled and how she was put into compromising

00:17:08.720 positions given how questions were being raised as evidence of the late apologist misconduct

00:17:13.840 continued to emerge.

00:17:16.840 Ravi first started being exposed in 2017 for inflating his academic credentials and grooming

00:17:22.540 a Canadian woman, Laurie Ann Thompson, online.

00:17:27.180 Ruth says that after Ravi sued Thompson for racketeering, claiming they were attempting to extort

00:17:31.760 money from him, she was left to, quote, field questions about the apologist and the integrity

00:17:36.120 of the ministry, for which she had no good answers.

00:17:38.920 But when she pressed her colleagues for more information, she said she encountered internal

00:17:42.540 resistance.

00:17:43.680 In her letter to the board, she wrote that within the organization, she felt systemically

00:17:48.060 marginalized, maligned, and misrepresented to others by key members of senior leadership.

00:17:53.800 The RZIM senior leadership met with Nancy Gifford, the global media director, and Ruth in an off-site

00:18:00.160 conference room for a three-day conciliation meeting, which then turned out to be a tense session

00:18:05.200 where senior leaders vented to Malhotra and the outside conciliator.

00:18:11.120 They had hired Judy Dabler, allegedly told her that she was one step away from complete

00:18:16.660 and total insanity.

00:18:18.760 And so apparently Ruth was just gaslighted and maligned when she tried to bring up these

00:18:24.960 concerns several years ago.

00:18:26.920 Zacharias' daughter, Sarah Davis, subsequently asked Malhotra to go to Dabler Center by herself

00:18:31.820 for a week of intensive session.

00:18:33.880 So she was made to feel like she was crazy for bringing up these concerns.

00:18:37.540 I know I've said gaslighting a few times, but that's what gaslighting is.

00:18:41.360 And it is the language of and it is the tactic of an abuser.

00:18:47.860 They said, I don't want to force my hand on this, but I'm prepared to do so, Davis reportedly

00:18:53.980 told Malhotra.

00:18:55.200 So Ruth, in her letter to the board, said this, I believe that the leadership's treatment

00:18:59.640 of me in 2017 and 2018 was unacceptable and revealing of the toxic environment at an RZIM 0.96

00:19:05.520 that has existed for far too long.

00:19:07.960 In summary, what senior leadership subjected me to was personally traumatizing, publicly

00:19:12.940 shaming, and potentially spiritually abusive.

00:19:15.560 I have reasons to believe that I am not the only RZIM staff member who has suffered due to

00:19:21.320 the approach and actions of senior leadership, and I pray that when possible, my colleagues'

00:19:25.460 voices will be heard and acknowledged as well.

00:19:27.780 So underneath the affairs that were apparently going on and the abuse that was going on between

00:19:34.920 Ravi Zacharias and the women who worked at the spa that he partly owned, apparently he,

00:19:41.320 you know, like revealed himself to them and asked them to do sexual things with him that

00:19:47.980 they were not comfortable with, but they felt coerced into because, of course, he's in a

00:19:51.880 position of power and leadership, and he's this great man of God who has helped these women

00:19:56.560 find a job.

00:19:57.480 Some of these women were in very vulnerable and desperate situations, and they were able 0.96

00:20:01.160 to find employment through him and through his spa.

00:20:05.460 So not only was all of that happening, but underneath there was a toxic environment at the ministry,

00:20:10.300 which very often happens.

00:20:11.600 It's kind of what we saw with Carl Lentz, that there were underneath leadership issues

00:20:16.280 going on there, that these things don't happen in a vacuum.

00:20:19.360 There are people typically who speak up, and they might not know everything that's going

00:20:23.820 on in the same way that everyone didn't know what was going on with Carl Lentz.

00:20:28.080 Not everyone knew that, you know, he was having an affair.

00:20:32.440 They knew that there were some integrity issues there.

00:20:34.720 They knew that there was some narcissism there.

00:20:38.020 There was some selfishness there.

00:20:39.260 There were some character issues there.

00:20:40.740 It seems like the same thing was going on with Ravi Zacharias, not just with him personally,

00:20:45.220 but also with his team, that there was this kind of environment of you don't get to ask

00:20:50.500 those kinds of questions.

00:20:51.920 You don't get to make any accusations. 0.99

00:20:54.480 You don't get to point out any of your concerns without being told that you're a crazy person 0.97

00:20:58.960 and you're going to be pushed to the margins.

00:21:01.920 That's what seems to have happened, according to Ruth Malhotra at RZIM.

00:21:07.640 And so we see that there's always something going on beneath the surface.

00:21:13.000 Typically, the scandal that comes out is just the tip of the iceberg.

00:21:16.420 And I think that's a good practical lesson for us to see and for us to learn that when

00:21:21.880 people raise those kinds of concerns about a business or about an organization, of course,

00:21:27.040 they need to be looked into and made sure that this is not just a person who has a grievance

00:21:31.840 or this is not just, you know, a person who is making a mountain out of a molehill.

00:21:36.320 Of course, you have to look at the facts and you have to look at the reliability of someone's

00:21:40.300 testimony and someone's complaint.

00:21:41.980 That is absolutely true.

00:21:44.340 But if it is consistent and especially if it's representative, if it's a concern represented

00:21:49.560 by more than one person and it speaks to some kind of pattern of behavior of a particular

00:21:54.040 leader or leadership or environment, then it needs to be looked into.

00:21:58.120 People cannot be gaslit for making complaints and for raising concerns that end up being

00:22:05.800 legitimate and end up throwing a ministry or an organization and a church into a scandal

00:22:11.480 that maybe it couldn't have been avoided, but it certainly could have been dealt with

00:22:15.360 better.

00:22:15.900 And now you're talking about not just physical abuse that came from Ravi Zacharias, but potentially

00:22:20.980 spiritual abuse as well.

00:22:22.480 I mean, that is going to have an effect on someone's emotional health and potentially

00:22:26.700 their psyche for the rest of their lives.

00:22:30.040 I mean, we can't treat image bearers.

00:22:31.800 We can't treat people this lightly to where we are so desperate to insulate a particular

00:22:36.500 leader or particular church or entity or ministry from scandal and disrepute and bad PR

00:22:42.400 that we are unwilling to hold people accountable that God says because they're in sin, we have

00:22:47.860 to hold accountable.

00:22:48.560 Remember, teachers are held to a higher standard.

00:22:51.520 Pastors are held to a higher standard than just anyone.

00:22:55.300 The Bible says not all of you should be teachers, that there is a particular responsibility and

00:23:03.700 there is a particular level of integrity that is expected, especially from people who are leading

00:23:16.220 others in doctrine, who are shepherding people and shepherding churches and shepherding ministries.

00:23:22.940 And so this is a particularly sad case because, like I said, people have relied on Ravi Zacharias

00:23:29.220 for a better understanding of apologetics.

00:23:32.180 He's not he wasn't necessarily in my Rolodex growing up of people that I listened to.

00:23:38.140 But hey, there are people that I listened to growing up and sermons that I listened to

00:23:43.520 by people who I would not listen to today, not necessarily because they've been caught

00:23:48.000 in scandal, but because I realized that they're not theologically sound.

00:23:52.640 So if you are someone who relied on Ravi Zacharias' work, then you shouldn't judge yourself or criticize

00:24:00.020 yourself for that.

00:24:01.200 Of course, you didn't know.

00:24:02.460 And so much of what he did and what his ministry did was sound.

00:24:06.340 And there's no changing that.

00:24:08.020 There's no changing that.

00:24:09.020 The fact of the matter is, is that Ravi Zacharias, just like you and me, are people who are dead

00:24:15.640 in sin apart from Christ and who Satan desperately wants to tempt and desperately wants to trip

00:24:23.360 and desperately wants to make fall.

00:24:26.580 So Ravi Zacharias was someone who was caught in sin.

00:24:32.600 He was someone who gave into temptation and he victimized people along the way.

00:24:38.160 I don't know what the end of his life looked like if he repented from those things, but

00:24:41.800 if he was in that sin unrepentantly and consistently, then that speaks to the question of his salvation,

00:24:51.020 not just whether or not, OK, was he an OK person?

00:24:54.460 Was he an OK leader?

00:24:56.160 But was he actually saved?

00:24:58.440 And that's a really hard question, I think, for us to ask about leaders who have been so

00:25:03.040 esteemed for so long.

00:25:04.380 When we talk about false teachers, typically we're talking about false teachings.

00:25:08.620 We're talking about people like Rob Bell, who don't believe in hell, who are basically

00:25:14.120 universalists or people who don't believe in the Trinity, don't believe that Jesus was God.

00:25:18.520 Like we're typically talking about some kind of heresy when we're talking about false teachers.

00:25:25.160 But I think something that we need to learn is that false teachers, they can be false even

00:25:32.860 if they are saying things that are true because their lives and their hearts aren't actually

00:25:39.320 regenerated by the gospel.

00:25:40.940 So you've probably heard that phrase before, that people miss heaven by 18 inches.

00:25:47.440 18 inches is the length between the head and the heart.

00:25:51.840 And so someone can have all of the intellectual knowledge in the world about Christianity.

00:25:56.900 They can be very theologically sound because they understand what logically makes sense with

00:26:02.160 the Bible, or they can just repeat what they've heard before.

00:26:05.280 Or, hey, if you're someone like Ravi Zacharias, you've made a career out of the kind of theology

00:26:10.200 and the kind of apologetics that he espoused, that could have been, I don't know for sure,

00:26:15.400 but that could have been all intellectual knowledge.

00:26:18.100 And he could have not had a regenerate heart.

00:26:20.680 That could absolutely be the case.

00:26:22.660 Like I said, I don't know about his repentance.

00:26:27.480 I don't know what his last days were like.

00:26:29.860 I don't know what that looked like.

00:26:32.440 But I do know it seems like he was consistently leading a life that was not congruent with someone

00:26:39.020 whose heart has been regenerated.

00:26:40.940 Am I saying that Christians don't sin or can't be caught in sin or can't go through a season 0.86

00:26:47.480 of struggling and a season of really trying and sometimes failing to resist temptation?

00:26:52.420 No, I'm not saying that at all.

00:26:54.040 I don't think that we can reach perfection on this side of eternity.

00:26:59.560 And that's not what I'm saying, that Ravi Zacharias had to prove himself to be perfect.

00:27:05.260 But to continue in this kind of abuse and this kind of sexual immorality does speak to a

00:27:13.740 heart that has still been hardened by sin, who is still callous, who is still dead in

00:27:20.060 his sin.

00:27:20.520 And I think that the Bible is extremely clear on that.

00:27:24.660 And it's actually comforting that we can look to the objective standard of Scripture.

00:27:29.300 We can look to the standards of the gospel.

00:27:31.240 We don't have to kind of pick and choose who we want to be genuine and who we want not

00:27:36.720 to be genuine based on our, you know, on our liking of them or our liking of the apologetic

00:27:45.220 work that they published.

00:27:47.920 And so I understand that this is very sad for a lot of people.

00:27:53.100 And unfortunately, I've seen some people kind of like write it off and push it to the side

00:27:58.020 because they think that this is just he's just being another, you know, victim of secularists

00:28:04.620 and the Me Too movement.

00:28:06.820 I don't think that that is the case.

00:28:10.360 I don't think that's the case.

00:28:11.480 I do not think that if there were a sliver of doubt that he was guilty of these crimes,

00:28:17.840 that his ministry, RZIM, would be coming out and revealing the results of the investigation,

00:28:23.580 which has, I think, multiple times now revealed that he actually is guilty of the abuse that

00:28:29.340 he has been accused of by various women.

00:28:33.680 And so I think that we just need to, as far as we can, trust the results of the investigation.

00:28:40.620 I mean, we'll never know the whole story.

00:28:42.640 We'll never know for sure.

00:28:43.940 We'll never know, you know, what his side of the story is.

00:28:47.300 But I think we have is reliable of testimony and reliable of results from an investigation

00:28:54.540 that we can possibly have.

00:28:56.160 And we just have to kind of live in this uncomfortable reality that people can talk the talk really

00:29:02.300 well and they may not be walking the walk.

00:29:07.440 And a false teacher can be a false teacher, even if they're preaching the right things,

00:29:12.380 because their lives and their hearts are not actually in line with the truth and regenerated

00:29:18.840 by the truth.

00:29:19.600 Again, that passage that says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.

00:29:25.200 The people that were preaching the gospel, as Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians,

00:29:33.520 were doing so by pretense, sorry, not 1 Corinthians, Philippians, were doing so under a false

00:29:40.480 pretense.

00:29:41.100 They were doing so from selfish ambition, but they were still preaching that which is

00:29:44.820 true.

00:29:45.780 Now, he said that the gospel is still effective, but he did not say that those teachers were

00:29:51.280 going to avoid wrath, that those teachers were regenerate, that those teachers were actually

00:29:55.560 saved.

00:29:56.080 He just said, look, God used these people who had selfish ambition to still preach his truth.

00:30:01.200 And so we can still praise God for that, because remember, 1 Corinthians 3 says it is God

00:30:06.620 who gives growth.

00:30:07.860 And so we can still say, thank you for using these very imperfect, sinful vessels to reach

00:30:14.260 anyone for Christ.

00:30:16.560 Please, Lord, keep those people who are now questioning their faith and strengthen them

00:30:22.240 and make them realize that it is God who authors our faith and grows our faith and not imperfect

00:30:28.140 teachers.

00:30:28.760 So I think that's how we need to look at that.

00:30:31.360 There was a really interesting article in Religion News by a woman who, she was promoting her book,

00:30:36.100 and she was talking about the dangers of purity culture and how, and I've talked about the

00:30:41.320 dangers of purity culture too.

00:30:42.900 People think they mischaracterize me and my views as someone who like loves legalistic sex

00:30:51.340 policy within the church.

00:30:53.560 And that would not be an accurate depiction of my views.

00:30:57.020 I think that there are problems with purity culture because it is emphasizing the wrong

00:31:04.060 things.

00:31:04.540 It emphasizes the dirtiness and the lack of forgiveness for someone who has sinned sexually

00:31:10.160 and does not emphasize why we care about purity and why we care about sexual immorality and

00:31:17.600 the joy of following Christ with not just our hearts and our souls, but our minds and our

00:31:22.560 bodies as well.

00:31:25.040 So I think it just kind of purity culture, especially just in the Bible evangelical church in like

00:31:30.460 the 90s, 80s, early 2000s was very legalistic, very much emphasized that if you do this, you'll

00:31:39.100 be like this, you know, tattered blanket.

00:31:42.040 You'll be like this used car.

00:31:43.560 I remember reading a book that said that the farther you go, you know, with your boyfriend,

00:31:49.020 the more of a used car you'll be and no one's going to want to take you off the lot after

00:31:55.380 that because your value is so depreciated.

00:31:57.460 How freaking un-Christ-like and void of the gospel is that kind of message.

00:32:07.460 And so this particular, that just makes me so, so angry, so angry that some people have

00:32:14.660 been manipulated by that kind of false, that kind of false message.

00:32:18.240 But this particular author of this article was talking about how maybe that kind of messaging

00:32:26.260 has possibly led to men in power being able to, being able to go on stage and gain the respect

00:32:36.480 of thousands, if not millions of people.

00:32:38.680 And behind the scenes, they still kind of have this, um, they have this, you know, sexual

00:32:45.100 sin or this sexual abuse in some cases, uh, that is going on because men weren't held to

00:32:52.320 the same standard as women in purity culture. 0.71

00:32:55.160 And it was also regarded in several kind of evangelical books growing up that men just

00:33:00.340 have this like carnal desire and this lust that has to be satiated.

00:33:05.360 And if it's not satiated, uh, completely and totally inconsistently by their wives, then

00:33:11.560 they're going to go out and they're going to have affairs.

00:33:13.880 And so the responsibility was almost placed on women and wives sometimes if their husband

00:33:19.220 was unfaithful or doing things like Carl Lentz and Ravi Zacharias were.

00:33:23.300 And so this person was pondering whether or not that part of purity culture had anything

00:33:27.020 to do, uh, you know, with these scandals between Carl Lentz and Ravi Zacharias.

00:33:32.440 I don't know.

00:33:33.200 I think it's really easy to take, you know, to have to start with our theory and then to

00:33:38.960 find evidence to back up our theory.

00:33:41.800 I think that's possible.

00:33:42.700 Like I said, I think that there are problems, uh, with purity culture.

00:33:47.260 I do think that we need to emphasize, not de-emphasize purity and not de-emphasize the sin of sexual

00:33:53.700 immorality, but talk much more about the forgiveness and the grace and the regeneration.

00:33:59.260 I guess regeneration is like my favorite word for this episode today, um, of the gospel

00:34:05.020 and how that means that our body is that our entire selves become living sacrifices for

00:34:10.840 Christ, which naturally and necessarily encompasses purity, but not because it messes us up or makes

00:34:18.520 us less valuable when we sexually sin, but because God loves us so much and he wants what's best for

00:34:25.800 our bodies.

00:34:26.380 He wants what's best for our hearts.

00:34:27.860 He wants what's best for our minds and people who love him, trust him and they trust his rules.

00:34:33.800 They trust his boundaries.

00:34:35.320 They trust his goodness.

00:34:36.600 They trust that he knows best, what love looks like, what passion looks like, what pleasure

00:34:41.600 looks like.

00:34:42.220 And we fully rely on him to define these things.

00:34:45.220 And we follow him in all of those areas.

00:34:47.560 I think purity culture in the evangelical church de-emphasized the heart behind purity and put

00:34:54.940 it all, um, on the external, on the legalistic, held men in some cases to a different standard,

00:35:02.160 women to completely unfair standards. 1.00

00:35:04.140 And it has left a lot of people, unfortunately, sexually broken in some cases, I think possibly,

00:35:10.440 I don't know if there's a causal relationship, but sexually abused and spiritually traumatized

00:35:16.520 and a lot of people bitter, um, because they, they weren't taught about sex and sexuality and

00:35:22.960 faithfulness and marriage properly within the church, but were fed a strong diet of legalism

00:35:28.380 and they just rejected it.

00:35:29.560 So it's really not hard for us to always go back to the gospel, to always go back to

00:35:35.380 that, which we know, um, we know is underneath all obedience to the Lord.

00:35:41.900 And that is a love for Christ and his undying love for us.

00:35:47.120 Um, okay.

00:35:47.800 I want to quickly talk about a little bit of a different scandal and that, um, has to do

00:35:53.080 with Max Lucado.

00:35:54.540 And so I will, uh, explain what went down with him in the past couple of weeks.

00:36:04.820 All right.

00:36:05.480 Now I want to quickly talk about Max Lucado.

00:36:07.980 A lot of people really like Max Lucado.

00:36:09.740 Now, some people feel like he has kind of revealed himself to be, uh, on the left side of the aisle.

00:36:15.640 I would say that that's probably true on some issues.

00:36:18.520 I'm not saying that he has gone like full woke or full leftist or anything like that,

00:36:23.080 but certainly there were some things said during the election.

00:36:25.460 There are some different teachers that he elevates that don't seem to be in line with,

00:36:31.200 you know, theological conservatism.

00:36:34.320 And so people have kind of been questioning Max Lucado, at least theological conservatives

00:36:38.680 have been questioning Max Lucado for a little bit.

00:36:41.300 Um, and they were very perturbed by this exchange that happened between him and the

00:36:45.840 Washington National Cathedral.

00:36:47.340 So Max Lucado was invited to preach at Washington National Cathedral in DC, um, on February 7th.

00:36:54.500 Uh, when this is according to the Federalist, when the Washington National Cathedral announced

00:36:59.540 on their Facebook page, Lucado would be preaching their Sunday service calls for him to be disinvited,

00:37:05.500 flooded in.

00:37:06.420 And that is because apparently of a sermon that he gave in 2004.

00:37:09.460 And I can't imagine it's the last sermon that he talked about this subject in, but he said

00:37:15.260 that homosexuality is a sin and that God instituted marriage between a man and a woman and only 1.00

00:37:21.680 condones married sexuality.

00:37:23.360 Now I will say I have not listened to this sermon, so I can't tell you exactly, uh, what

00:37:28.940 it said, uh, but, uh, the congregants, the people who were attending, who were going to attend

00:37:35.580 this church service, were very, um, upset about this and did not want him to be invited because

00:37:41.340 of this sermon.

00:37:43.040 Lucado did end up preaching, but quote, only after retired Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal

00:37:48.740 Church's first ordained openly gay bishop, was recruited to preside over the Sunday morning

00:37:53.640 service as a calming device.

00:37:55.720 Robinson provided a meticulously worded eight minute long explanation for why Lucado's invitation

00:38:00.560 was not revoked.

00:38:01.380 To his credit, Robinson's speech was a thoughtful and classical liberal explanation for why inclusion

00:38:07.540 quote, sometimes includes people we don't agree with much at all.

00:38:10.960 But he put his explanation to, but he put his explanation to the congregation in the simple

00:38:15.860 and binary context of good over bad, right over wrong, us against them.

00:38:20.460 So he said this in his sermon, uh, Bishop Robinson to this angry congregation who was about to

00:38:28.060 listen to Max Lucado.

00:38:29.700 Let me just say this carefully to those of us who are LGBTQ.

00:38:32.960 We've won.

00:38:33.780 We've won.

00:38:34.400 We know how this is going to end.

00:38:36.060 This is going to end with the full inclusion of gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer

00:38:40.200 people, non-binary people, all kinds of people.

00:38:43.240 We know how it ends.

00:38:45.320 Um, he concluded his side, the zero sum victors, good over evil, that pulpit is their pulpit

00:38:51.600 and they will manage it according to their ascendant beliefs.

00:38:54.000 And Reverend Randy Hollerith, Dean of Washington National Cathedral, was also compelled to

00:38:59.360 distance himself from his gentle guest during the Sunday service and did so in his, uh, carefully

00:39:06.460 threaded introduction to Lucado's sermon.

00:39:09.640 He, you know, caveated basically Lucado's presence and his sermon by saying before, before

00:39:17.200 it that, you know, he has said some things in the past that have made the LGBTQ community

00:39:22.220 hurt, um, let me be clear.

00:39:25.000 I don't agree with his statements.

00:39:26.820 The cathedral does not agree with his statements, but here's Max Lucado.

00:39:30.440 So that was his introduction.

00:39:33.560 And Max Lucado then felt that he had to write a letter to the cathedral after he gave his sermon

00:39:41.160 to kind of apologize for what he said.

00:39:43.560 And so the sermon or the, the letter is available online.

00:39:47.380 I'll read you part of it.

00:39:48.420 He says faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality, but

00:39:53.820 we agree that God's Holy word must never be used as a weapon to wound others.

00:39:59.480 Uh, he also said that he believes in a God of unbounded grace and love and the LGBTQ individuals

00:40:05.260 and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love because they are made in the image

00:40:10.980 and likeness of God.

00:40:12.380 Now, um, let me, let me clarify some things that I think that he is correct on and some

00:40:21.180 things that I think that he is incorrect on in this particular letter.

00:40:24.880 First of all, I don't believe that he should have written the letter in the first place.

00:40:29.200 If he, he goes, he does say in the letter, look, I affirm traditional marriage between a

00:40:33.980 man and a woman, but obviously he apologizes for the sermon that he gave and he apologizes for

00:40:39.220 the apparent pain that he caused.

00:40:41.240 And he does say, um, that, look, we can faithful people can disagree on homosexuality, but what

00:40:46.780 we know for sure is that the Bible is not supposed to be weaponized.

00:40:51.480 Um, the reason why I'm troubled by that is, uh, is, is, is manifold.

00:40:57.260 First of all, the Bible is very clear about homosexuality. 0.92

00:41:00.740 This is not just been a historical teaching of the church that is based on the Bible, but

00:41:04.540 it is very clear in scripture.

00:41:05.820 This is not one of those issues, like the issue of eschatology, the end times or the

00:41:10.780 issue of, I mean, I personally don't think the Bible is muddy on predestination, but faithful

00:41:15.940 people do disagree on predestination.

00:41:17.860 We do disagree on Calvinism versus Arminianism.

00:41:20.780 We do disagree on infant baptism versus credo baptism, believers baptism.

00:41:25.460 We do, um, you know, we disagree on things like whether or not believers are going to endure

00:41:30.840 the great tribulation, premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism.

00:41:35.960 So there are issues in which faithful, faithful, uh, faithful Christians can disagree, but homosexuality 0.98

00:41:45.240 being as clear as it is in the Bible is not something that people who believe that the Bible

00:41:51.600 is the inerrant word of God, uh, is infallible and is trustworthy can or do disagree on.

00:41:58.880 We've talked about that on this show very many times that homosexuality in the Bible is not

00:42:04.960 just this word, uh, that was thrown in there in the last century.

00:42:09.300 It's not just this concept that was placed in there by, you know, insecure, straight, patriarchal

00:42:15.980 men.

00:42:16.320 It wasn't just this concept that was popularized in the modern era.

00:42:20.840 It's not just something that was in Levitical law.

00:42:23.260 It's not just something that we throw out the concept, not just not of homosexuality,

00:42:27.820 but if we look at the Bible from the positive sense of not just what does God prohibit,

00:42:31.840 but what does he actually say is good?

00:42:33.960 We see the definition of marriage that is rooted in creation.

00:42:37.700 It's reiterated throughout scripture and both the old and the new Testament.

00:42:41.360 It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19, when he defines marriage as between a male

00:42:47.840 and a female, God made the male and female, and they come together in marriage and the

00:42:52.740 two become one flesh.

00:42:53.880 He's talking about divorce, but he clearly reiterates the original designation of marriage

00:42:59.840 and definition of marriage as male and female.

00:43:02.300 It is reflective of Christ in the church and is therefore representative of the gospel.

00:43:08.040 That's the alliteration that I came up with to talk about the Bible's emphasis of and

00:43:12.400 strict definition of what biblical marriage actually looks like.

00:43:17.380 So it's rooted in creation.

00:43:18.780 It's reiterated throughout scripture.

00:43:20.920 It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19.

00:43:24.520 It is representative of Christ in the church as we read in Ephesians 5.

00:43:29.620 And then it is also therefore representative of the gospel.

00:43:33.400 And so the union between a man and a woman is seen throughout scripture, and it doesn't

00:43:38.660 just have a physical significance, the Bible tells us.

00:43:41.460 It has an eternal gospel significance to it.

00:43:44.400 There's no way to read Ephesians 5 that tells us that the husband is to love his wife as Christ

00:43:51.720 loves the church, and the wife is supposed to submit to her husband as to the Lord. 0.67

00:43:56.260 This is a reflective of this eternal relationship between Christ and the church.

00:44:01.940 There's no way to read that outside of the heterosexual context.

00:44:08.220 And so anyone who says, oh, this is just a slight disagreement between Christians.

00:44:12.280 This is just something that we can kind of dance around different interpretations of.

00:44:16.640 I don't know that it's understood that there is a spiritual, eternal gospel significance to

00:44:22.940 God's definition of marriage that was started in the garden.

00:44:26.180 That's like a Genesis 1 issue.

00:44:28.900 And so for Max Lucado to kind of push this into the realm of the secondary or the tertiary,

00:44:35.180 just like eschatology or just like, you know, anything else, is not accurate, one.

00:44:43.980 And it's not representative of what I think he actually believes and knows to be true as

00:44:48.120 someone who knows, believes, and I think loves the Bible.

00:44:52.580 And he emphasizes the more important thing is that we agree that God's holy word must

00:44:57.160 never be used as a weapon to wound others.

00:45:00.200 And while I do think that that's true, the Bible is referred to as a double-edged sword.

00:45:06.120 The Holy Spirit does use God's word to convict us of our sin.

00:45:10.740 And we cannot equate wounding people with saying what the Bible says is true.

00:45:16.520 And with agreeing with God, we cannot equate wounding people with offending people by what

00:45:23.420 God actually says.

00:45:24.960 Remember, we talked about on the episode a few weeks or a couple weeks ago on Valentine's

00:45:28.940 Day, what is love?

00:45:30.740 If God is love, then that means that everything that God says is good and right and true is

00:45:35.780 love.

00:45:36.220 That means everything God does is love.

00:45:37.980 That means that everything God defines, he defines in love.

00:45:41.860 That means his boundaries is love.

00:45:44.100 His definition of sin is love.

00:45:47.180 His means of salvation and redemption and sanctification is love.

00:45:50.700 And we do not understand love if we do not know God, since God is the perfect embodiment of

00:45:56.820 love.

00:45:57.360 And if God is love, we don't define love and then put that characterization, that human

00:46:02.760 characterization of love on God.

00:46:04.520 That means we go to God to learn what love is.

00:46:07.780 And so if God says something is right or God says something is wrong, and we know that God

00:46:11.660 is love, then what he says is right and wrong is done out of love.

00:46:15.500 And so it is loving for us to agree with God on that.

00:46:19.200 So he almost seems to cede ground in this way to say that, oh, you know, using the Bible

00:46:25.620 to say what God says is sin and what God says isn't sin is a way to wound people.

00:46:31.880 Well, you're almost apologizing for what God says is good and right and true.

00:46:37.040 The God who is love, the source of wisdom, the source of truth and morality.

00:46:41.260 You're almost trying to let him off the hook by saying, oh, I'm sorry for using the Bible. 0.51

00:46:46.600 What God says is good and right and true as a way to, quote, wound someone.

00:46:51.720 And that also makes me sad.

00:46:54.160 I mean, I would say that that's a form of blasphemy.

00:46:57.000 He said that he believes in God, the God of unbounded grace and love.

00:47:00.680 Yes, so do I.

00:47:02.640 And we know how that God defines things.

00:47:05.220 We know how that God defines sexuality and defines marriage.

00:47:08.720 Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

00:47:10.700 If we know, if we're starting with the idea that God is unbounded grace and love,

00:47:16.420 again, everything that he commands is also unbounded grace and love.

00:47:22.000 He says that LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love 1000%.

00:47:27.940 Of course, they are made in the image of God.

00:47:30.900 Everyone is made in the image of God.

00:47:32.560 No matter how you sexually identify, no matter what you believe your gender identity to be,

00:47:38.020 like you are a valuable person because you are made in the image of God.

00:47:41.620 And I do believe that God loves you because he created you and he sent his son to die for you.

00:47:47.060 And there is all the compassion and grace and forgiveness for all of us in the world through Christ.

00:47:52.680 That is absolutely true.

00:47:54.540 That does not exclude me from saying, here's what God says is right.

00:47:58.640 Here's what God says is sin.

00:48:00.400 Here's what God says sanctification looks like.

00:48:03.200 Salvation looks like.

00:48:04.340 Here's what God says sexuality should look like.

00:48:06.660 Those two things.

00:48:07.620 If we have a right understanding of God being love and God being truth and God being mercy and God being holiness and righteousness,

00:48:15.200 those two things for the Christian come together very easily in our mind,

00:48:19.880 even if it's offensive to a world that does not understand that.

00:48:23.560 And I'm just afraid that Max Lucado ceded too much ground here.

00:48:27.780 I mean, I know that he did.

00:48:28.980 He acquiesced too much.

00:48:30.540 He apologized for something that he shouldn't have apologized for,

00:48:34.560 unless there was something said in his sermon that I just don't know that truly was,

00:48:37.980 you know, unbiblical and hurtful and hateful and unkind.

00:48:41.060 Um, but if it's just a defense of marriage, the more you apologize to that,

00:48:46.980 or the more you apologize for that, the more that you are apologizing for the God of the universe.

00:48:51.820 God doesn't need, he doesn't need to be let off the hook.

00:48:55.980 Uh, we, all we have to do is agree with him and we can trust that we are on the quote right side.

00:49:02.980 Um, and so I'm, I'm sad about this.

00:49:05.440 I'm not surprised by this with Max Lucado.

00:49:08.060 Like I said, a lot of people saw him leaning to the left on social and political issues.

00:49:12.540 And, uh, I have often said to the, to the disappointment and frustration of a lot of people,

00:49:18.440 typically when we see someone going to the left politically, um, their theology is going to

00:49:24.300 go that direction as well.

00:49:26.580 Not always, uh, but typically because those things are so intertwined.

00:49:31.720 Um, and so he does say that he still believes in the traditional definition of biblical marriage.

00:49:37.800 Um, and that's good if that's the case.

00:49:40.000 And if you are agreeing with this God that you agree is God, uh, is the God of unbounded grace

00:49:45.600 and love.

00:49:46.120 And if you agree that people who identify as LGBTQ are made in the image of God, and therefore 1.00

00:49:51.480 they are valuable and they are just as much in need of salvation through Christ as the rest

00:49:56.520 of us are, then there is no apology to be made for saying what scripture says about marriage

00:50:02.340 and sexuality and sin and salvation and sanctification and all of that.

00:50:06.000 There is no acquiescence.

00:50:07.580 There is no ground that needs to be seated on that.

00:50:11.800 Um, like I said, God doesn't need to be let off the hook.

00:50:16.160 And so I think once again, if you're someone who has learned from Max Lucado, if you have

00:50:20.620 appreciated his teachings, appreciated his books there, he has so many wonderful books.

00:50:24.640 Um, if you are someone who has appreciated him, I don't think that you have to now say, I

00:50:30.560 can't appreciate anything that he's ever written or anything that I've learned from

00:50:33.900 him is now, is now counterfeit.

00:50:36.240 Um, certainly, certainly not, but we have to realize that we're all fallible people, that

00:50:41.360 teachers are fallible people.

00:50:43.020 And this is the wonderful thing I think about Protestantism in particular is that we don't 0.97

00:50:47.680 elevate our teachers, um, to the point of being insulated at all from criticism or at least

00:50:54.080 officially we don't, uh, we shouldn't.

00:50:56.640 There are still, uh, I think systems and hierarchies in place that do that, unfortunately, but it's

00:51:01.820 a good reminder that part of Protestantism and part of the Protestant Reformation was to

00:51:07.160 say, look, we're not going to look to these leaders as infallible because we believe that

00:51:11.260 God alone is infallible.

00:51:12.700 And we believe that we can trust what he says in his word.

00:51:16.520 And that whenever our leaders fail us, we can go to the Bible to remind us what is good

00:51:21.980 and right and true.

00:51:22.700 And ultimately our leader is Christ and he is our only intercessor.

00:51:26.560 The Bible says he's the only intercessor between God and man.

00:51:30.120 And so when Max Lucado disappoints us, when Carl Lentz disappoints us, when Ravi Zacharias

00:51:34.620 disappoints us, all we have to say is, is I still trust Christ because he is reliable and

00:51:43.320 he is trustworthy and he will not fail me.

00:51:46.280 He will not betray me.

00:51:47.580 He is not leading a double life.

00:51:49.160 He is not pretending to be something that he's not.

00:51:52.040 He is not going to compromise on the truth of God's word.

00:51:55.340 He is truth.

00:51:56.140 He says, I am the way, the truth, the life.

00:51:58.440 No one can come to the father except through me.

00:52:00.380 That does not change based on what leaders do or don't say.

00:52:04.440 All leaders are going to disappoint us in small ways and big ways because we are fallible.

00:52:08.800 We are sinful people.

00:52:10.060 We are vulnerable to temptation. 0.98

00:52:11.960 And of course, Satan wants nothing more than to try to present the church as this hypocritical, 0.98

00:52:16.760 uh, duplicitous body that has nothing to offer the world. 0.98

00:52:21.520 And that, um, is, you know, has only caused harm.

00:52:26.200 That is certainly something that Satan wants to do.

00:52:28.580 But look, the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the church, no matter what

00:52:33.440 its purported leaders do or don't do, say, or doesn't say because the future of the church,

00:52:39.940 the perpetuation, the protection of believers is reliant on the God of the universe, on Christ

00:52:45.500 himself, who, like I said, does not fail us.

00:52:48.980 All right.

00:52:49.280 That's all I've got for today.

00:52:50.480 Tomorrow, uh, we are going to, I'm going to talk to Lila Rose, who is a wonderful pro-life

00:52:55.720 activist.

00:52:56.860 We're going to talk to, we're going to talk about the Equality Act and what it means, um,

00:53:01.940 in the way of abortion.

00:53:02.740 And then we're also going to talk, I'm going to talk separately about more about the Equality

00:53:06.560 Act.

00:53:06.920 Once again, we've talked about it several times, but it is in Congress this week and probably

00:53:11.180 will be passed.

00:53:12.780 Um, as I'm speaking, it probably will pass the house.

00:53:15.820 Don't know about this in it, but we'll talk about that tomorrow.

00:53:18.400 We'll also talk about, um, Xavier Becerra, a nominee by Biden and how rabidly pro-abortion

00:53:25.260 he is and what that means for pro-lifers.

00:53:27.840 Okay.

00:53:28.300 I will see you guys back here then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 24, 2021

Ep 375 ｜ Max Lucado, Carl Lentz & Ravi Zacharias： When Christian Leaders Disappoint

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