Ep 375 ｜ Max Lucado, Carl Lentz & Ravi Zacharias： When Christian Leaders Disappoint
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the scandal surrounding Carl Lentz, Ravi Zacharias, and Max Lucado, and how Christian leaders have let their congregants down. I also discuss the biblical perspective on how we should look at Christian leaders who have let us down.
Transcript
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Today we are going to talk about a subject that you guys have been asking me to talk
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about for a while, and that's going to be the subject of Christian leaders kind of letting
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us down or letting their congregants down, letting their followers down, the people who
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have learned from them, who have benefited from their teaching, who feel that their affections
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for the Lord have been stirred by the teachings and the studies that these pastors and these
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And these leaders are Carl Lentz of Hillsong, Ravi Zacharias, the very esteemed apologist,
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and then Max Lucado, who is an author and a pastor.
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There are three very different, well, two of them are similar, but three very different
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scenarios in which I think believers are looking to these leaders and wondering, okay, am I
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And how do I feel if this teacher, if I feel like that teacher laid a foundation for my
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faith, and now I feel like that foundation is crumbling, what do I do?
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So first, let's talk about what happened, and then we're going to get a biblical perspective
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of how we are to look at Christian teachers in general, but especially after it has been
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revealed that their character is not the character of Christ, that is not congruent with the Christian
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I've been avoiding talking about this, I think, because I didn't want it to seem in any way
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that I was saying, I told you so, or rubbing this in people's faces.
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And the reason why I was sensitive about that and slow to talk about this is because I have
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serious theological disagreements with Hillsong, and in particular, Carl Lentz.
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And I have serious political disagreements with Carl Lentz, and I've talked about his
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stances negatively on this podcast before, his social justice activism, how wrong I think
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he is on issues of race and so-called racial justice and social justice, how unbiblical some
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of his Instagram posts have been when it comes to, for example, Black Lives Matter and what
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It doesn't seem that his views on that are actually rooted in scripture, but are actually
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And so because I've been critical of him in other ways, I was slow to talk about this
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scenario because I didn't want it to seem like I was gleeful about it or like I was gloating
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And I didn't want it to come across as gossip because the fact of the matter is, is that,
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yes, I do disagree with Carl Lentz on lots of things.
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We probably agree on lots of things, too, but I do disagree with him on lots of things.
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I have been very skeptical of his leadership and his pastoral abilities for a long time,
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I'm not gloating in any way when someone who professes to be a Christian and who has
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a lot of believers following them falls and shows themselves to be a hypocrite, shows themselves
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to be leading two lives, to have one character that they show on stage on Sunday and then
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another part of their character that reveals who they really are.
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I want you to know that before I explain what happened, that I'm sad about this.
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I'm not in any way trying to say, look, I told you so.
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And, you know, this is just a product of Hillsong.
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So it was several months ago now that it was revealed that he had been in an affair or
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engaging in a month's long affair with a woman named Reneen Kareem.
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They met somewhere in New York, I think at like a park in New York, and they ended up
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They exchanged numbers and then they started getting together.
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It seems like it was just for kind of emotional support at first.
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And then, of course, it turned physical into a full-fledged affair.
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They were talking, apparently, according to her.
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They were talking constantly and they were really each other's person.
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Like they they seem to have fallen in love with each other, at least from her testimony.
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And then, according to her story, Carl Lentz's wife found text messages on his phone.
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And that's when the whole thing kind of blew up.
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And eventually he had to talk about it publicly and he had to admit what happened.
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And as far as I know, and of course, there's so little that we know that we only see the
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There's always so much going on behind the scenes.
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As far as I can tell from what we can see publicly, Carl Lentz and his wife are are working
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Carl Lentz stepped down from his position as pastor of Hillsong NYC.
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Brian Houston is the head of Hillsong, and there was leaked audio that went more into
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depth on what was happening behind the scenes that caused or that precipitated the resignation
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A staff member found a very compromising chain of text messages on Carl's laptop.
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We drove right across town to talk to Carl and confront him, and that was the beginning
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So that's a little bit different than the story that we originally heard from the woman
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When we talk about an affair, these issues were more than one affair.
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And at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically, but not necessarily those
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affairs, Houston said in the recording obtained by page six.
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If it was just about a moral failure, perhaps it would have been possible to work our way
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But the nature of where my relationship was with Carl already, and then to add the significant
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nature of the moral issues, meant that I believed, and our global board believed, the only option
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Then Houston said that there had been problems with Lentz ahead of the affair revelations.
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He was a difficult man to have any kind of direct conversation with because he was always
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defensive, it would always be put back on the other person as though they were the ones
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with the problem, which is, you know, a typical gaslighting tactic of people with, you know,
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kind of narcissistic personalities, if I can say that.
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And I already, and I was already at the point at the end of the summer that I felt like Carl
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and Laura's time in New York was coming to an end.
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This is what Brian Houston, the head of Hillsong was saying, not just general narcissistic behavior.
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So he uses the word narcissistic too, manipulating, mistreating people.
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I think sometimes other hurtful things, the breaches of trust connected to lying, constantly
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He said the church had hired a New York law firm as an independent investigator to probe
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So again, we don't know everything that's going on behind the scenes.
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We don't know what leadership decisions were made.
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It sounds like Brian Houston knew that Carl Lentz needed to be let go and needed to be fired.
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And I do think it's good to have, to hire an independent investigator just to make sure
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that there wasn't a pattern of behavior that actually victimized people within the church.
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If that is the case, then that needs to be found out and that needs to be dealt with.
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And if there was actual abuse, then obviously that has to be dealt with in the civic realm.
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Like that has to be dealt with on a legal level, not just a church discipline level as well.
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Lentz was a personal spiritual advisor to Justin Bieber at one point.
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Justin and Haley Bieber apparently ended their relationship with him months before the scandal
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I will say it is interesting why while Carl Lentz was posting all of this social justice stuff,
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while he was gaining followers and he was gaining a reputation among social justice activists,
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some of them professing Christians, some of them not, this was going on behind the scenes.
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It does seem like so often performative activism, whether that's in the form of, you know, social
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media posts or using the right woke language or holding a woke sign, whatever it is that
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people see that as a way to insulate themselves from criticism in other areas of their life.
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They feel like if they have enough social justice points, if they say the right things about
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systemic racism or they say the right things about police brutality or they post the right
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things, the black square, the right rhetoric and language, they talk to the right people,
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they listen and learn, they read the right books.
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Some, it seems like, use that as an insulation from people peering into other parts of their
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life that actually reveal their truer character than their performative activism does on social
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And so I don't know that that's the case with Carl Lentz, but it's interesting how
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often he invoked the name of God and invoked the Bible to, I think, erroneously defend
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All the while, obviously his heart, at least in this period, was far from God.
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The name of God might have been on his lips, but at this time, at this period, his heart
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If we persist in a sin, sin separates us from God.
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It's tragic for the people that go to Hillsong.
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And I wish I could say that, oh, well, this only happens when you have someone like Carl
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Lentz, who obviously only had a superficial understanding of theology.
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That's the assessment that I would have given, that he is kind of a feel-good preacher that
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makes people want to come to his church simply because they know that he's not really going
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And he's really more about how he sounds and what he looks like than preaching the gospel
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That is the assessment that I would give of Carl Lentz.
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And I wish I could say, look, this is just what happens when you don't have depth.
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This is just what happens when you don't have substance.
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This is just what happens when you have bad theology.
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But then that kind of assertion gets very muddled when you look at someone like Ravi Zacharias,
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who is just about as theologically solid as anyone.
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That doesn't mean I agree with him on everything, but I don't think anyone would have said, well,
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And so I can't just say, well, you know, this is just a product of Hillsong and superficial
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theology and celebrity pastors that wear skinny jeans and have tattoos and care more about
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Because while Ravi Zacharias is a celebrity pastor, he doesn't fit the same characterization
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The through line that we're going to see in this is sin.
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And so I'm going to explain now the Ravi Zacharias scandal, and then we're going to tie this all
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together with a biblical perspective of how we should react to it.
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Now, I'm going to put in the description of this podcast the past episode that I did on
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When this first came out after he died, he died about, was it a year ago now?
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It might have been over the summer that he died.
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And it came out that he had unfortunately been treating employees of the spa that he had part
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I think a lot of people did not want to believe it because Ravi Zacharias and his apologetics
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tools, his books, his speeches have really helped a lot of people understand the Christian
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faith and be able to defend the Christian faith.
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And in that way has stirred their affections for the Lord and has propelled them towards
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understanding God's word and better grasping the gospel.
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Now, on that, I want to read a passage that applies to this situation and just the idea
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that you can no longer trust your faith or you can no longer trust your growth because
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the person that helped you grow or whose materials helped you grow no longer can be trusted because
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they have revealed a character or part of themselves that you that you are realizing
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that you are realizing is incongruent with the faith that they professed to have.
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So let me read you 1 Corinthians 3, 4 through 7.
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For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos.
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So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth.
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So if your faith was cultivated by reading Ravi Zacharias or hey, maybe even listening
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to a Carl Lentz sermon and it caused you to go deeper into the gospel and to understand
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and desire God's word more, if it made you more excited to understand who God is and to
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seek after Christ, that faith does not become counterfeit just because a teacher has revealed
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himself to be counterfeit or just because a teacher has revealed himself to lead a double
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If they're preaching the word of God, that's still the word of God.
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Remember, Paul also says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.
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And he's talking about in Philippians 1, how there were people that were preaching the
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gospel for selfish ambition and for selfish gain, maybe in some way to try to hurt Paul.
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And Paul is saying, okay, so what do I make of all of that?
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If there are people who have bad hearts, who have bad motivations that are preaching the gospel,
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And Paul says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.
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And so if you were someone that understood the gospel because you heard it from Ravi Zacharias,
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or you heard it from another teacher who later left the faith or revealed that they were leading
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a double life, that does not make the gospel counterfeit.
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And that certainly does not make your faith counterfeit because Jesus is the author and
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And 1 Corinthians 3 says that it is God who gives growth.
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Philippians 1 says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed.
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Philippians also talks about that it is God who works in you, both to will and to work
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So your faith is genuine because God is genuine.
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Your faith is not dependent on the trustworthiness of Carl Lentz or the trustworthiness of Ravi
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Your faith is based on the trustworthiness of God who does not change, as Hebrews 13, 8 says.
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Now, let me talk a little bit more about Ravi Zacharias and what exactly happened in all
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of this, because I think the reason why he went that direction is because I think most
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We've talked about the details of it, but there is a little bit more here.
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So Ruth Malhotra, I actually met her several years ago.
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And from what I can tell, a very trustworthy person.
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She's the PR manager and spokesperson for RZIM.
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She wrote a 26-page letter to the RZIM board on February 6th.
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She detailed the various ways in which she was misled and how she was put into compromising
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positions given how questions were being raised as evidence of the late apologist misconduct
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Ravi first started being exposed in 2017 for inflating his academic credentials and grooming
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Ruth says that after Ravi sued Thompson for racketeering, claiming they were attempting to extort
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money from him, she was left to, quote, field questions about the apologist and the integrity
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of the ministry, for which she had no good answers.
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But when she pressed her colleagues for more information, she said she encountered internal
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In her letter to the board, she wrote that within the organization, she felt systemically
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marginalized, maligned, and misrepresented to others by key members of senior leadership.
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The RZIM senior leadership met with Nancy Gifford, the global media director, and Ruth in an off-site
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conference room for a three-day conciliation meeting, which then turned out to be a tense session
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where senior leaders vented to Malhotra and the outside conciliator.
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They had hired Judy Dabler, allegedly told her that she was one step away from complete
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And so apparently Ruth was just gaslighted and maligned when she tried to bring up these
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Zacharias' daughter, Sarah Davis, subsequently asked Malhotra to go to Dabler Center by herself
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So she was made to feel like she was crazy for bringing up these concerns.
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I know I've said gaslighting a few times, but that's what gaslighting is.
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And it is the language of and it is the tactic of an abuser.
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They said, I don't want to force my hand on this, but I'm prepared to do so, Davis reportedly
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So Ruth, in her letter to the board, said this, I believe that the leadership's treatment
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of me in 2017 and 2018 was unacceptable and revealing of the toxic environment at an RZIM
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In summary, what senior leadership subjected me to was personally traumatizing, publicly
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I have reasons to believe that I am not the only RZIM staff member who has suffered due to
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the approach and actions of senior leadership, and I pray that when possible, my colleagues'
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So underneath the affairs that were apparently going on and the abuse that was going on between
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Ravi Zacharias and the women who worked at the spa that he partly owned, apparently he,
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you know, like revealed himself to them and asked them to do sexual things with him that
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they were not comfortable with, but they felt coerced into because, of course, he's in a
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position of power and leadership, and he's this great man of God who has helped these women
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Some of these women were in very vulnerable and desperate situations, and they were able
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to find employment through him and through his spa.
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So not only was all of that happening, but underneath there was a toxic environment at the ministry,
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It's kind of what we saw with Carl Lentz, that there were underneath leadership issues
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going on there, that these things don't happen in a vacuum.
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There are people typically who speak up, and they might not know everything that's going
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on in the same way that everyone didn't know what was going on with Carl Lentz.
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Not everyone knew that, you know, he was having an affair.
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They knew that there were some integrity issues there.
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They knew that there was some narcissism there.
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It seems like the same thing was going on with Ravi Zacharias, not just with him personally,
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but also with his team, that there was this kind of environment of you don't get to ask
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You don't get to point out any of your concerns without being told that you're a crazy person
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That's what seems to have happened, according to Ruth Malhotra at RZIM.
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And so we see that there's always something going on beneath the surface.
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Typically, the scandal that comes out is just the tip of the iceberg.
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And I think that's a good practical lesson for us to see and for us to learn that when
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people raise those kinds of concerns about a business or about an organization, of course,
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they need to be looked into and made sure that this is not just a person who has a grievance
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or this is not just, you know, a person who is making a mountain out of a molehill.
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Of course, you have to look at the facts and you have to look at the reliability of someone's
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But if it is consistent and especially if it's representative, if it's a concern represented
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by more than one person and it speaks to some kind of pattern of behavior of a particular
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leader or leadership or environment, then it needs to be looked into.
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People cannot be gaslit for making complaints and for raising concerns that end up being
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legitimate and end up throwing a ministry or an organization and a church into a scandal
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that maybe it couldn't have been avoided, but it certainly could have been dealt with
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And now you're talking about not just physical abuse that came from Ravi Zacharias, but potentially
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I mean, that is going to have an effect on someone's emotional health and potentially
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We can't treat people this lightly to where we are so desperate to insulate a particular
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leader or particular church or entity or ministry from scandal and disrepute and bad PR
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that we are unwilling to hold people accountable that God says because they're in sin, we have
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Remember, teachers are held to a higher standard.
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Pastors are held to a higher standard than just anyone.
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The Bible says not all of you should be teachers, that there is a particular responsibility and
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there is a particular level of integrity that is expected, especially from people who are leading
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others in doctrine, who are shepherding people and shepherding churches and shepherding ministries.
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And so this is a particularly sad case because, like I said, people have relied on Ravi Zacharias
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He's not he wasn't necessarily in my Rolodex growing up of people that I listened to.
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But hey, there are people that I listened to growing up and sermons that I listened to
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by people who I would not listen to today, not necessarily because they've been caught
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in scandal, but because I realized that they're not theologically sound.
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So if you are someone who relied on Ravi Zacharias' work, then you shouldn't judge yourself or criticize
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And so much of what he did and what his ministry did was sound.
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The fact of the matter is, is that Ravi Zacharias, just like you and me, are people who are dead
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in sin apart from Christ and who Satan desperately wants to tempt and desperately wants to trip
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So Ravi Zacharias was someone who was caught in sin.
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He was someone who gave into temptation and he victimized people along the way.
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I don't know what the end of his life looked like if he repented from those things, but
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if he was in that sin unrepentantly and consistently, then that speaks to the question of his salvation,
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not just whether or not, OK, was he an OK person?
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And that's a really hard question, I think, for us to ask about leaders who have been so
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When we talk about false teachers, typically we're talking about false teachings.
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We're talking about people like Rob Bell, who don't believe in hell, who are basically
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universalists or people who don't believe in the Trinity, don't believe that Jesus was God.
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Like we're typically talking about some kind of heresy when we're talking about false teachers.
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But I think something that we need to learn is that false teachers, they can be false even
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if they are saying things that are true because their lives and their hearts aren't actually
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So you've probably heard that phrase before, that people miss heaven by 18 inches.
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18 inches is the length between the head and the heart.
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And so someone can have all of the intellectual knowledge in the world about Christianity.
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They can be very theologically sound because they understand what logically makes sense with
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the Bible, or they can just repeat what they've heard before.
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Or, hey, if you're someone like Ravi Zacharias, you've made a career out of the kind of theology
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and the kind of apologetics that he espoused, that could have been, I don't know for sure,
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but that could have been all intellectual knowledge.
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Like I said, I don't know about his repentance.
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But I do know it seems like he was consistently leading a life that was not congruent with someone
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Am I saying that Christians don't sin or can't be caught in sin or can't go through a season
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of struggling and a season of really trying and sometimes failing to resist temptation?
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I don't think that we can reach perfection on this side of eternity.
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And that's not what I'm saying, that Ravi Zacharias had to prove himself to be perfect.
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But to continue in this kind of abuse and this kind of sexual immorality does speak to a
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heart that has still been hardened by sin, who is still callous, who is still dead in
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And I think that the Bible is extremely clear on that.
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And it's actually comforting that we can look to the objective standard of Scripture.
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We don't have to kind of pick and choose who we want to be genuine and who we want not
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to be genuine based on our, you know, on our liking of them or our liking of the apologetic
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And so I understand that this is very sad for a lot of people.
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And unfortunately, I've seen some people kind of like write it off and push it to the side
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because they think that this is just he's just being another, you know, victim of secularists
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I do not think that if there were a sliver of doubt that he was guilty of these crimes,
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that his ministry, RZIM, would be coming out and revealing the results of the investigation,
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which has, I think, multiple times now revealed that he actually is guilty of the abuse that
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And so I think that we just need to, as far as we can, trust the results of the investigation.
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
00:28:56.160
And we just have to kind of live in this uncomfortable reality that people can talk the talk really
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
00:29:19.600
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
00:29:41.100
They were doing so from selfish ambition, but they were still preaching that which is
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
00:29:56.080
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
00:30:07.860
And so we can still say, thank you for using these very imperfect, sinful vessels to reach
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
00:30:31.360
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
00:30:42.900
People think they mischaracterize me and my views as someone who like loves legalistic sex
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
00:31:04.540
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
00:31:25.040
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
00:31:43.560
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
00:31:57.460
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
00:32:38.680
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
00:32:55.160
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.
00:33:33.200
I think it's really easy to take, you know, to have to start with our theory and then to
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
00:34:27.860
He wants what's best for our minds and people who love him, trust him and they trust his rules.
00:34:36.600
They trust that he knows best, what love looks like, what passion looks like, what pleasure
00:34:42.220
And we fully rely on him to define these things.
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,
00:35:04.140
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
00:35:29.560
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.
00:35:47.800
I want to quickly talk about a little bit of a different scandal and that, um, has to do
00:35:54.540
And so I will, uh, explain what went down with him in the past couple of weeks.
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,
00:36:34.320
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
00:36:47.340
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,
00:37:06.420
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
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
00:37:43.040
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
00:37:55.720
Robinson provided a meticulously worded eight minute long explanation for why Lucado's invitation
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
00:38:29.700
Let me just say this carefully to those of us who are LGBTQ.
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.
00:38:45.320
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
00:39:09.640
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
00:39:26.820
The cathedral does not agree with his statements, but here's Max Lucado.
00:39:33.560
And Max Lucado then felt that he had to write a letter to the cathedral after he gave his sermon
00:39:43.560
And so the sermon or the, the letter is available online.
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
00:40:12.380
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
00:40:41.240
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.
00:41:00.740
This is not just been a historical teaching of the church that is based on the Bible, but
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
00:41:17.860
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
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
00:42:16.320
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,
00:42:33.960
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
00:42:53.880
He's talking about divorce, but he clearly reiterates the original designation of marriage
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.
00:43:24.520
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.
00:43:44.400
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.
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.
00:44:28.900
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
00:45:00.200
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
00:45:24.960
Remember, we talked about on the episode a few weeks or a couple weeks ago on Valentine's
00:45:30.740
If God is love, then that means that everything that God says is good and right and true is
00:45:37.980
That means that everything God defines, he defines in 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
00:45:57.360
And if God is love, we don't define love and then put that characterization, that human
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.
00:46:46.600
What God says is good and right and true as a way to, quote, wound someone.
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.
00:47:05.220
We know how that God defines sexuality and defines marriage.
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%.
00:47:32.560
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.
00:47:54.540
That does not exclude me from saying, here's what God says is right.
00:48:00.400
Here's what God says sanctification looks like.
00:48:04.340
Here's what God says sexuality should look like.
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.
00:48:30.540
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.
00:49:08.060
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
00:49:26.580
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.
00:49:40.000
And if you are agreeing with this God that you agree is God, uh, is the God of unbounded grace
00:49:46.120
And if you agree that people who identify as LGBTQ are made in the image of God, and therefore
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.
00:50:07.580
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
00:50:36.240
Um, certainly, certainly not, but we have to realize that we're all fallible people, that
00:50:43.020
And this is the wonderful thing I think about Protestantism in particular is that we don't
00:50:47.680
elevate our teachers, um, to the point of being insulated at all from criticism or at least
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
00:51:12.700
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
00:51:22.700
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
00:51:49.160
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.
00:51:58.440
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.
00:52:11.960
And of course, Satan wants nothing more than to try to present the church as this hypocritical,
00:52:16.760
uh, duplicitous body that has nothing to offer the world.
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
00:52:50.480
Tomorrow, uh, we are going to, I'm going to talk to Lila Rose, who is a wonderful pro-life
00:52:56.860
We're going to talk to, we're going to talk about the Equality Act and what it means, um,
00:53:02.740
And then we're also going to talk, I'm going to talk separately about more about the Equality
00:53:06.920
Once again, we've talked about it several times, but it is in Congress this week and probably
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