Ep 429 ｜ Speaking — & Living — the Truth in Love ｜ Guest： Dr. Albert Mohler
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Summary
Dr. Albert Moeller is the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of The Briefing, a podcast that analyzes news and events from a Christian worldview. In this episode, Dr. Moeller talks about what Christians do in light of the sexual moral revolution that seems to be going so quickly, how to discern the truth from the lie when it comes to reading media reporting, and how to stand firm in our beliefs.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today, it is an honor to again talk to Dr. Albert Moeller.
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He is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He hosts a daily podcast
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called The Briefing, where he analyzes news and events from a Christian worldview. Today,
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we're going to talk about some of those worldview issues, what Christians do in light of the sexual
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moral revolution that seems to be going so quickly. How do we handle things like discerning
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the truth from the lie when it comes to reading media reporting? How do we make sure that we are
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continuing in truth and in love in an uncompromising and gracious way when it comes to how we use our
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language? So for example, using people's quote, personal or preferred pronouns, we're going to
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talk about the issue of sexuality and marriage and how Christians can lovingly and kindly stand firm
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in these issues. And so you're going to get a lot out of this conversation. I'm very much looking
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forward to you listening to it. Without further ado, here is Dr. Albert Moeller.
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Dr. Moeller, thank you so much for joining me again. You are such a voice of encouragement for me as I
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listen to you on a daily basis and trying to make sense of really what can only be described as
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confusion and chaos. That's something that you describe it as often as well, whether it's coming
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to gender identity and the sexual and moral revolution that you talk about so much or just
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the intricacies of policy and court decisions. So first of all, thank you for that. Can you give
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a little bit of first brief encouragement to Christians who really just want to bury their
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head in the sand and to not look at what's going on culturally and politically and just pretend like
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none of it's happening because we don't know what to do about it. Do you think it's important
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for us to kind of keep abreast on what's going on and why?
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Well, it's great to be with you, Allie Beth. And yes, I do want to offer that word of encouragement
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to Christians not to stick our heads in the sand and try to ignore or be oblivious to what's going
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on because it's not just that we have to be faithful to Christ in the midst of our times and we have to
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understand what we're up against there. But it's even more importantly that we, out of love for
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Christ Church, for fellow believers, for our own children and grandchildren, need to be thinking
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through these issues even ahead of the culture in order to be faithful when the culture throws the
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next weapon at us. And frankly, they're coming fast and furiously. And just out of love for our own
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children and grandchildren and the determination that they grow up and be faithful to Christ, it requires
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that we be very aware of the things going on around us. And I understand it's daunting and
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painful and it's complicated, but the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ has all the resources we need
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to confront these issues with faith and without fear. That doesn't mean that we don't understand
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what we're up against, but we respond with faith and without fear. So that's a good word of
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encouragement. You know, knowing the truth is a good biblical principle and denying reality is never
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faithfulness. A lot of people find it hard to figure out what the truth is. There isn't necessarily
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one source, one newspaper that people can go to and get a holistic understanding of one issue or one
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story. People feel like they have to read several different outlets to try to understand all the
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different angles and wade through all the biases of just one story. What is your advice to people who are
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like, I don't have time to do all of that. I want to know the truth about something. How do they discern
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what's biased, what's not, and all of that when it comes to reading the news?
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Wow, that's a really good set of questions, Ali Beth. You know, I was a newspaper editor, and I am a theologian.
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That's my main calling, but I'm thankful for that experience in journalism and working with the media
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through the years. And I think we have to understand that to answer the first question, no, there's not
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a single source in terms of secular press that we can turn to. There just isn't. There are more and
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less trustworthy sources. But I think one of the things we have to understand is that there's a
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culture of the media, and that's been true basically for decades, but it's increasingly true now, that the
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culture of the media is an incredibly small, self-selected, very secular, very wealthy, very, very much tied to
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the modern academic culture, very self-policing or not culture. In other words, they see the world
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differently. Just today, for instance, I was listening to a report in which it referred to a
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pro-abortion politician to saying that this politician's been criticized for his defense of
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reproductive rights. And I mean, this was presented as if it's just a neutral news story, but you and
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I know it's anything but. Helping Christians to understand what we hear, helping Christians to
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understand why we do have to check sources, and we have to look for authoritative issues.
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One of the first rules of journalism I was taught is don't trust anything written by anyone who can't
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be fired for writing it. And that's just a good starting place. That's not enough. But if no one
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can be fired for getting this wrong, don't trust it. But then again, we know that this is where
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Christians really need to be involved in conversation. I appreciate so much what you do
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and your careful engagement. What I try to do on the briefing every weekday is to help Christians to
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think about not only what the media is talking about, but even how to judge what the media are
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doing. And you're raising a very important question. And it just points out the fact that
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we can't be listening to one secular voice and think we have anything close to a trustworthy flow
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of information. One thing I noticed when I'm listening to your podcast is how thoughtful and careful you are
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in your analysis of particular news stories, how you pick up on those words and phrases that most
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people don't necessarily notice have been swapped out for another phrase. And we just kind of get the
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general sense that this is a positive issue. And this person is being unfairly criticized.
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How have you kind of, I would say, honed that skill and that craft of being a careful reader and analyzer
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of what's going on in the news? Because I don't feel like I've perfectly honed it. There are many,
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many things you say on your podcast that I'm thinking, wow, I don't think I would have even
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noticed that. What can thoughtful Christians do to get better at being more considerate when they're
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reading a story? Just again, I love these questions. And I certainly, I miss things too,
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of course. But, you know, what I've tried to do over the years is look at how language is being
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used. And frankly, it's far more important to me as a theologian than even someone who engages the
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media. But language is never neutral. And how language is deployed, do you talk about abortion and
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the killing of the unborn? Or do you talk about reproductive health, reproductive rights,
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reproductive freedom? None of that's neutral. And the media in the United States, and frankly,
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it includes a lot of what people think are conservative media, they're operating out of
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the same vocabulary list. And that's very, very dangerous when those words are very carefully
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crafted in order to carry a moral agenda that we believe is contrary to scripture. And just to give
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you another example, I'm looking at a news source just a couple of hours ago, they were referring
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to gender alignment surgery. Whoa, you know, that's the very same surgery that used to be called
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sex reassignment surgery. And by the way, it's horrifying. And it's in its very, you know,
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implications and reality. But you'll notice how all of a sudden that's changed. And, and I try to
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document those changes. Okay, here, it would have been called unethical, unimaginable, contrary to
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the Hippocratic Oath, then it becomes gender reassignment surgery, then it becomes gender
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alignment surgery. Watching that is just, I think, really, really important. And I appreciate you
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mentioning it. That's, that's what I try to draw attention to. The other thing is just to say
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that the media have taken on a very, the mainstream media, the New York Times, Washington Post,
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they've taken on a different posture and a different set of ethics than they would have had
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just a decade ago. They are much more explicitly editorial in their news coverage. They are, they're,
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they're not only acknowledging, they're kind of championing now advocacy journalism. And it's a very
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good thing for Christians to know. It's not just that you've got news reports written by people who are
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much more liberal than average Americans, not to mention average American Christians, but
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they're now just owning this activism. And that's a very good thing for us to know.
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You often talk about controlling the language means controlling the culture. And we've seen a shift
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in rhetoric and languages you're talking about so quickly over the past few years. And one of those
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shifts is in that realm of so-called gender identity and the use of someone's preferred pronouns.
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I get a lot of messages. We've talked about it on this podcast, but I still get a lot of questions
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about, okay, if my, you know, for example, I'm in, I'm in nursing school and they're asking me to put
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my gender pronouns on my name tag or this hospital or this business organization that I work at is
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requiring me to ask someone their preferred pronouns, even though I know that they're a woman and
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Christians want to know how to, how to navigate that. What's your advice?
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Well, you know, it's a, it's a very similar situation to a contact I received from someone
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working in a hospital on the West coast and then someone working in a prison, Chris, both of them
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Christians. And they said, look, I've got to do a input processing, but one in a hospital, one in a
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prison. And now with the transgender revolution, I have people who are saying X or Y.
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Uh, and, uh, it's, it's obviously contrary to, uh, to their, uh, their actual biological reality.
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This is going to be really tough for Christians, uh, because the, the people who are filling out
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these forms and doing these things or, or having to reveal a preferred pronoun, they're often not at
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all in charge of the policy. They're not in charge of, uh, of what, what happens in, in taking someone
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to a hospital, et cetera. And so there's a sense in which as Christians, we're going to have to
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figure out together, and this is going to require a lot of biblical thinking. It's going to require
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congregations, Christians talking to one another. What can I do? And what can I not do? Where is
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what I'm doing consistent with my Christian faith? And, uh, and, and, and where is it so inconsistent?
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I can't do this anymore. Uh, I would say where it's elective, we must never get into the business
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of, uh, of, of identifying our pronouns as if we have to. Um, but, uh, you know, the white house
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has just put the preferred pronoun thing on its, uh, its portal. This is the way the culture is going.
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And that's what's so tragic about all of this. It's institutionalizing and coercing what we know
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to be untrue. Uh, you know, there's just not an easy answer to that. You know, if you're working
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for a company that's, uh, that, that isn't requiring you to affirm the, uh, the, the moral
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revolution contrary to scripture, but you have to fill out a form, you know, excuse me, if, if,
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if you are male and you can say he, uh, him, that's not untrue. It's, uh, it's ridiculous,
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but it's not untrue. It's, it's true. Uh, the problem is that that implies an
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entire worldview and, and Ali, but this is where we're headed. We're headed to the fact that
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students who are going to be applying for colleges and universities, people, teenagers
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applying for their first job, uh, you know, a lawyer who wants to become partner in a law firm,
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all of this is now going to be demanded of us. And, uh, it's going to, it's going to take a lot
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of really clear thinking, uh, which we can't always, we can't always come up with the policy
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upfront, but we better know our convictions upfront. Yes. And I, I definitely agree with,
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um, the idea that stating your preferred pronouns or putting it in the signature for your email.
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If you work for a particular company, it acknowledges and affirms a particular worldview that gender
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identity is different than biological sex, which we just don't believe biologically or biblically to
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be true. It's just not, um, a reality that is founded in science or any kind of, uh, theological truth.
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So I do encourage people to resist as, as much as you possibly can. And of course we don't believe
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in, in bearing false witness against someone. And so, uh, we don't believe in lying about someone's
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sex is separate than their gender identity. It is very complicated. And I think some pushback that
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in particular conservative Christians get is, well, that's not loving your neighbor and not using
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preferred pronouns or not affirming someone's gender identity is unloving and hateful. And Jesus was just
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all about love. Um, how can you empower someone to kind of refute that argument that they may get from
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progressives or progressive Christians? You know, Allie Beth, uh, one of the first principles of
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Christian thinking is what's called the, uh, the unity of the transcendentals. And that sounds very abstract,
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but it comes down to the fact that the Bible presents the good, the beautiful, and the true
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as the same thing, the good, the beautiful, the true, and the loving as the same thing. And the
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reason that they're united in, in one is because it's God who is infinitely loving is God is the
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source of all love. It's God who's infinitely true. And, uh, and so God's not divisible. The, the,
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the good, the beautiful, and the true, the loving, it's all the same, which means telling a lie
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is never loving. It means telling someone the truth, uh, or refusing to tell someone the truth
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about themselves is never loving. It means that, uh, just as you say, bearing false witness is
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actually to break God's command. So obviously the, uh, the attitude we have in dealing with people
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becomes a test of our love, but being required to tell a falsehood about someone is not an act of
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love. And, and Jesus, by the way, who after all said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life,
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and the truth, uh, Jesus spoke so carefully, you know, the Jesus that people often imagine when
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they throw that out, it's not the Jesus who cleansed the temple. It's not the Jesus who spoke
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so sternly to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It's not, it's not the Jesus who said, did you not
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know that from the beginning, uh, God created marriage as the union of a man and a woman? Uh,
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this is, in other words, Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels never demonstrated truth in one place
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and love in another. It was always love and truth. And, uh, that's a test for us because
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the culture around us, and frankly, even some Christians who aren't thinking very carefully
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are telling us, no, love means that you just, uh, accept people as they are. Well, you know,
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that's the one thing that Jesus did do and didn't do. He accepted them exactly where they are,
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which meant as sinners, but he came to die for sinners in order that through his atoning sacrifice
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and our faith in him, we may be saved. In other words, he didn't love us as we are to leave us
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where we are. He, he, he loved us as we are in order to redeem us by his blood. That's a very
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different thing. Yes. And I would say that last part is exactly the characteristic of Jesus that
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people, um, like to forget about when they're talking about Jesus affirming various identities
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or social movements in the name of love. Well, he cared so much about sin that he, he died for it.
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This kind of hippie social revolutionary that I think a lot of progressives describe Jesus as
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just isn't in alignment with who he is in the gospels, but it's also not in alignment with the
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gospel in general. It's a completely different religion. And, uh, something that I think that we
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are seeing, I think we're seeing a lot of churches kind of wrestle with that. Unfortunately,
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it seems like a lot of Christians don't feel like they have the equipment to even be able to answer
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questions that are really answered in the first book of the Bible and the first chapters of the
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Bible. What is male and female? What does marriage and family look like according to God? Why do you
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think it is that so many churches that may have historically or denominations that may have historically
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been solid on this issue? They so quickly cede ground.
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Well, Ali Beth, I think what we're seeing is a lot of them have very little commitment to biblical
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truth and biblical theology. And, uh, biblical theology comes down to the fact that you just
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indicated exactly the right reflex for Christians. Our reflex should be what's marriage. Well, the
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creator gets to decide what's the meaning of male and female. Well, the creator decides and has
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revealed to us in the first sentences of scripture. And that means that the scripture storyline going
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all the way through takes as its absolute premise, an unconditional affirmation that God made us in
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his image, male and female created he them. And that, uh, that Adam and Eve, uh, our first parents
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were united in marriage. Therefore they were in the, in the, in the garden naked and not ashamed.
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And God establishes, uh, human humanity creates us in his image, establishes marriage. And then the,
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the family, the natural family, by the time you get to the end of Genesis two, you have the mechanism,
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the means whereby God is allowing human beings to be faithful to the command he's given us to be
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fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God's plan was that from the beginning. And then we follow
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through the storyline of scripture all the way to men and women redeemed by Christ of every tongue and
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tribe and people in nation. You, you, you have to follow this through. And, and again, how many
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Christians have the instinct you just demonstrated to say, well, I don't have to kind of figure out
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by mood what the Bible says about marriage. I don't, I don't, you know, I can start right in the first
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two chapters of scripture. And here's the thing. Jesus himself was so clear. The scripture cannot be
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broken. Not one jot or tittle will pass away until all is fulfilled. Jesus never said, well, this is the
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old Testament definition of, uh, uh, of humanity of, of, of gender and sex. And, you know, I'm using
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contemporary words, but you get the point I'm meaning. He affirmed everything. And here's the thing. It's
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part of the most glorious demonstration. You see it, especially in the gospel of John, Jesus, for instance,
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in John chapter nine, when he has the man blind from birth and he is confronted by him, what does he do?
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He reaches to the ground and he, and he spits on the dirt and, and puts it on the man's eyes and
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says, go, go wash. But here's the thing. He is the very agent of creation who made the first human
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being, Adam out of the dust and breathe life into him. And the new Testament just goes back and says,
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okay, what Jesus is saying is, is what the creator is saying, because Jesus was the logos, the, the,
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the very, uh, the very Lord of creation from the beginning by the father's decree. And I don't mean to
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get too deep in the theological weeds here. It just, I bet that just, it just gives me such security to
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know that Jesus is actually demonstrated by his words and by his deeds. The fact that he is the
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fulfillment of everything that we find beginning in Genesis one and Genesis two, he never contradicted
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it. Yes. And I think that that is also why people get very confused in their theology as it affects the
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rest of their worldview is because there is, um, a trend of kind of separating Jesus from the Godhead
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or separating Jesus from what people say is the God of the old Testament and saying that Jesus kind
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of just did away with all of that. The God of the old Testament is this bigot wrathful God that we
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really don't have to worry about. We can, um, what's the term unhitch from the old Testament, uh,
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because it is, it's no longer relevant. And I think that is also how, even though you could speak
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to how this argument doesn't even work, that is also how people kind of feel like they can get
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permission to redefine things like gender and marriage and sexuality, because they think all
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of that was left in the old Testament. And finally, we just have this uber tolerant hippie in the new
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Testament who establishes that the only rule is the, is that there is no rule. Um, can you tell us why
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that it's just a poor hermeneutic, that's a poor understanding of who Jesus is and how to read
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the Bible? It's a, just a denial of scripture. It's a denial of verbal inspiration. It's a denial
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of, uh, well, for instance, you just said it rightly. There's so many people who say, well,
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there's this, there's this old Testament God and the old Testament about him that we have to
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unhitch from in order to, uh, to get to Christianity. So Jesus profoundly would not do. I mean,
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look at the gospel of Matthew. These things happen in order that the scriptures that would be the
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Old Testament might be fulfilled. It's Jesus himself making very clear that the pattern is not
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Old Testament and the New Testament correction. It's Old Testament promise and New Testament
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fulfillment. And you're so right, Alibeth. There's so many people who want to separate
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Jesus from the Old Testament, but we have to note, they also want to separate Jesus from Paul.
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And, and, and the clearest statements on homosexuality, and, and frankly, our entire
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understanding of these issues is, uh, is found in exposition, not in the Old Testament, but in the,
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uh, the writings of the apostle Paul, you take a passage like Romans chapter one, it, it not only
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explains the sin and documents the sin of same sex sexual activity. It goes at same sex passion and it
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goes to the very root of it and explains it in the strongest terms of biblical condemnation,
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condemnation, not to single out, um, uh, homosexuals as, uh, as sinners in contrast to the rest of
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humanity, but rather to demonstrate the depths of sin into which human beings have fallen. And, uh,
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you take first Corinthians, you take, uh, his letters to Timothy. Uh, you, if you're going to do this,
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you're also going to have to separate Jesus from Jesus. Uh, for instance, in the gospel of Matthew,
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where he defines God's purpose and definition of marriage. And that's why, by the way, the liberals who do
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this, they're never satisfied just to say out with the old Testament or out with the apostle Paul.
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They eventually have to say out with a lot of the gospels too. And, uh, that's what that,
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the group known as the Jesus seminar was all about. It's the same trick, but this is where
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Christians are alarm bells need to go off and just say, no, we are accountable to every single word
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of scripture. As Martin Luther said, every single word of scripture, it's not only scripture says it's
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God says. Right. And those who call themselves, you know, deconstructionists or encourage people
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to so-called deconstruct their faith, they will take something like sexuality, homosexuality,
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and say, well, it's just these few verses in Leviticus or Romans, but really it means this,
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or really it's been translated this way, or it was added in, in the 1940s. But again, that's a poor
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understanding of how to read the Bible. We use an alliteration on this podcast, if I can even
00:23:52.360
remember it from, um, from, from memory about the definition of marriage in the positive sense,
00:23:57.960
not just in the negative of what it's not, but in the positive sense is rooted in creation. It's
00:24:03.020
reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself. It is in Ephesians five. We see that
00:24:09.120
it's representative of Christ in the church, which means that it is reflective of the gospel. And so
00:24:14.460
we're talking about something with eternal gospel significance. We're not talking about a few
00:24:19.440
verses in Leviticus that we get to decontextualize that people have used to establish this, whatever
00:24:26.240
they call it, cisheteropatriarchal oppression. I mean, we're talking about a positive, eternal sense
00:24:32.820
of what marriage actually is. And that's why it's not one of those issues to me that we can just say,
00:24:39.440
well, yeah, sure. We kind of disagree on that, but that's just a peripheral issue.
00:24:44.460
Um, I hope I'm not trying to make too big of a deal of that though. People would accuse me of
00:24:49.340
being political for doing so. Well, I mean, eventually, uh, because these issues come down
00:24:54.640
to policy, they become political and there's no way to deal with these issues, honestly, without
00:24:58.820
running the risk of someone saying you're being political. Yes. I believe the law should protect,
00:25:02.780
for instance, the life of the unborn. If you want to call that political, uh, I'll say to my critics
00:25:06.940
and, uh, yes, I want that to be policy. Uh, politics is the way that establishes policy. But you know,
00:25:12.780
when you're talking about, uh, for instance, the argument, you hear these people, especially,
00:25:16.360
and by the way, it's not so much these days, the LGBTQ, the secular activist community that, uh,
00:25:22.960
that I think is our problem in the sense of, uh, our, most of our immediate arguments. It's,
00:25:28.400
it's with kind of leftist evangelicals who style themselves that way, who want to say, well, yeah,
00:25:33.820
maybe it's true that they're just like these seven clobber scriptures. And I want to come back and say,
00:25:37.380
well, number one, just in terms of, of our understanding of the Bible, if, if there was
00:25:41.560
just one sentence in the Bible that this is wrong, then it would be eternally wrong because God said
00:25:48.060
it. But we're not just talking about seven clobber scriptures. That's the way they,
00:25:52.720
they try to dismiss them. Um, in, in the new Testament in particular, there is a use of vocabulary
00:25:59.020
that frankly is so candid, especially in Paul. The language is so candid that there is no doubt
00:26:07.380
what we're talking about here. People will try to say, well, you know, the old, the, uh, the Bible,
00:26:11.520
either the older or the new didn't know about the idea of sexual orientation. Oh yeah, Paul did.
00:26:15.980
That's exactly what Paul's talking about. He's talking about, uh, those who are burning with
00:26:20.600
passion, uh, both men and women, uh, for others of the same sex. He, he understands what he's talking
00:26:26.500
about. And, and all that to say that, uh, uh, our understanding of scripture comes down to whether
00:26:32.600
or not we just start out saying, we know that God's given us not only what he has spoken to us,
00:26:37.620
but all that we need. This is the sufficiency of scripture. We have an, all we need to understand
00:26:42.740
these things. The Bible is not going to be corrected by, uh, modern, uh, medical, uh, arguments.
00:26:49.060
It's not going to be corrected by, uh, the sexual revolutionaries. It's not gonna be corrected by
00:26:53.540
the divinity school at Harvard. Uh, the Bible is going to stand, uh, just as it is. We're not in
00:26:59.920
need of some kind of therapeutic knowledge from the 21st century to help us to understand what God
00:27:05.380
really intended. Yes. And I think it's so important for us to just reemphasize that truth when it comes
00:27:12.980
to the Christian life is not separate from love. So we don't talk about this and say, this is how we
00:27:18.860
hate people, or this is how we otherize people, or we are emphasizing this sin as the chief sin or
00:27:27.300
anything like that. The reason that we're talking about this so much is because it is such a pressing
00:27:31.300
cultural issue. It's a sensitive, a rightfully sensitive cultural issue because you're talking
00:27:35.540
about, uh, people in a very personal way. You're talking about people that you love, people that you
00:27:41.000
want to be hospitable and kind of respectful to. So the reason that we are kind of centering the
00:27:46.000
conversation on this is because so many Christians want to know how to be truthful and how to be
00:27:51.620
loving and how to be Christ-like without compromising, um, on this issue. And it can be very difficult
00:27:58.380
when you're hearing people, like you said, who profess to be Christian saying, well, the only way
00:28:03.400
to love is through total acceptance and basically having no daylight between you and any atheist morally,
00:28:12.180
sexually, politically, and Christians just kind of, we have to resist that thinking.
00:28:18.540
Well, absolutely. And we have to understand where it comes from. It's really separating God
00:28:22.520
from the good. I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, if the, if God is, is good and he has given us
00:28:28.560
a perfect word, then to insinuate that somehow standing on that truth and affirming it, teaching it,
00:28:36.280
sharing it with people, if that's not good, then you're saying God's not good. Or you're saying that
00:28:41.440
the Bible is not really his, uh, his perfect self-revelation. And, uh, once you say that,
00:28:46.600
then frankly, Allie Beth, you know, whatever you believe is your own little personal religion and,
00:28:50.440
and, and, uh, whatever God you believe in is your own little personal imagination.
00:28:54.500
Um, it comes down to one other thing, you know, I can remember when I was nine and, uh, I might,
00:29:00.860
my parents, uh, surrounded me with the gospel. I was at vacation Bible school and, uh, I heard the
00:29:06.980
preacher talk about sin. And then I realized, wait just a minute, he's not just saying that I have
00:29:12.260
done wrong things. He's saying that I am a sinner. That was when I came to Christ. Uh, and, uh, it was
00:29:20.640
because all of a sudden I understood I'm a sinner. That's a very different thing than understanding
00:29:23.680
I've sinned. Okay. So I'm a sinner. Paul talks about this in the, in the book of Romans and he makes
00:29:30.160
the most amazing statement. He said, I would not have known my sin had the law not, not said you
00:29:36.820
shall not covet. And that's so important because Paul said, okay, I'm only saved. I've only come to
00:29:43.860
faith in Christ because I know I'm a sinner. And it, it, only the scripture tells me I'm a sinner.
00:29:50.340
And he mentions that specific of the commandments that you shall not covet. And, and that's what Paul
00:29:56.860
is doing. That's what God's doing. The Holy Spirit is doing through Paul. And, and so it comes
00:30:00.740
down to the fact that if we love someone, we want to love them to faith in Christ. We want to love
00:30:06.720
them to themselves, understanding their sin and their need for a savior. We want to love them to
00:30:12.840
knowing the fully sufficient savior of the unfailing gospel. And, and so we have to be spoken to,
00:30:21.860
and we have to speak to others with the same specificity as the Bible does, because God
00:30:27.660
loves us to be so specific. Backing off that specificity isn't kind. It's consigning people
00:30:34.980
to hell. Right. Well, and I think it's also so easy to kind of give into the rhetoric, the people
00:30:42.540
who say that, you know, you have blood on your hands. If you're someone who talks about what the Bible
00:30:48.780
has to say about gender and sexuality, you're the one that's causing people to be depressed,
00:30:54.140
anxious, and suicidal. If you speak about this, well, that's the last thing that a Christian
00:30:58.600
wants to do. That's the last thing that a Christian wants to be. It's so easy to buy into that. But
00:31:03.760
like you've said, if, if God is love, then everything that he says is good or bad is also done from love.
00:31:11.320
And far be it from us to claim that we have the authority to redefine love as something other than what
00:31:16.980
God says that it is. And so Christians do have all of the equipment in the scriptures to be able to
00:31:24.160
kind of push back against what really is a lot of bullying and a lot of manipulation in order to
00:31:30.720
silence Christians from speaking the truth, right? No, that's so well said. And, you know,
00:31:35.840
Allie Beth, you made reference to the transgenderism issue. And, you know, let's put it this way.
00:31:41.380
It's not biblically-minded Christians who've now forced on seven-year-olds the anxiety of trying
00:31:47.580
to figure out if they're really a boy or a girl. It's not biblically-minded Christians who have
00:31:52.600
driven through the entire society and instability and personal identity that led to the development
00:31:59.480
of what can only be described as a radical and never-ending identity politics. It's not
00:32:04.240
biblically-minded Christians who injected this therapeutic mentality into the culture that says,
00:32:10.820
it's all about you going inside yourself to find out who you are, which, by the way,
00:32:15.220
has to be one of the most depressing experiences for any human being. And so I find it very telling
00:32:21.920
that now Christians are being blamed for creating instability and anxiety when, frankly, Christians
00:32:28.300
teaching the same thing for over two millennia are actually the only people who haven't changed our
00:32:34.780
Yeah, that's true. And I think what you said about this idea of going on this journey of
00:32:40.860
self-actualization and self-discovery being depressing is actually part of what's behind
00:32:46.200
a lot of the pastors acquiescing about this particular subject, because we've kind of bought
00:32:51.860
the secular New Age lie that the biggest problem that people are facing is a lack of self-esteem,
00:32:57.460
when really the biggest problem that people are facing, no matter their race, no matter their gender,
00:33:01.560
no matter their socioeconomic status, is that we are dead in our sin apart from Christ.
00:33:06.920
And so I think that's a lot of times why pastors, maybe they avoid talking about sin,
00:33:11.780
because we've believed that the most important thing we can give someone is self-confidence.
00:33:15.700
And like you said, how depressing if on our self-confidence we have to stand at the end of
00:33:21.760
the day, because I don't know about you, but mine wavers about every other second,
00:33:28.960
Yes. You know, if I'm dependent upon myself for my own self-definition, my own self-security,
00:33:36.540
my own self-therapy, and all the rest, I'll just say up front, I'm doomed. I pretty much had that
00:33:41.740
figured out when I was six, I think. I certainly knew it when I was 16. I'm now in my 60s, and let
00:33:46.400
me tell you, I've abandoned all hope. You know, the last thing I need is to define myself. I'm no
00:33:51.600
better at it in my 60s than I was when I was six. The security for a child, by the way,
00:33:57.920
comes when the parent says, we know exactly who you are. I'm going to tell you who you are. That's
00:34:02.660
what the creator does, even in our bodies, by the way. He's saying, I know who you are. I created
00:34:07.980
you. I'm telling you who you are. And that has been security for human beings through millennia.
00:34:16.040
We're in the midst of a vast cultural conspiracy to undo that security. And it comes right down to
00:34:21.260
what you mentioned, you know, the preferred pronouns, as if pronouns are a preference.
00:34:27.720
Right. I love what you said. And I think that's a great place for us to end that place of comfort
00:34:32.380
that we don't have to look inside of ourselves. We don't have to look to the media. We don't have
00:34:36.420
to look to culture. We don't have to look to social whims or movements to tell us who we are,
00:34:42.440
or authors, or influencers, or podcasters, this billion-dollar self-help industry. We don't
00:34:47.700
have to go to these people who don't know us, by the way, don't know our names, don't
00:34:51.320
care about us. A lot of these activist communities don't care about these kids that they are convincing
00:34:56.300
are confused at, you know, five years old. Some of these people in the scientific community,
00:35:01.000
they don't necessarily care about you. They don't care about your kids. But God does. And
00:35:05.260
He cares enough to tell us who we are so we can get off that hamster wheel of self-identification.
00:35:10.820
So thank you so much for reminding us of that. I hope people are leaving this conversation feeling
00:35:16.560
comforted. Can you remind everyone where they can find you, how they can follow and support you?
00:35:22.100
Thank you so much, Allie Beth. I always enjoy these conversations. Albert Moeller,
00:35:26.760
that's albert, M-O-H-L-E-R dot com, the briefing, Thinking in Public, and a host of actually thousands
00:35:32.620
of articles. I appreciate you allowing me to say that. If I could just say one final word, it's this.
00:35:36.900
You know, part of what it means to love Christ for the Christian church and for individual
00:35:41.660
Christians is to say to people, after the world's told you all these lies, and after you tried every
00:35:48.040
kind of therapy, after you've undergone any kind of surgery, we're the ones who are going to be here
00:35:53.460
to love you when everyone else has abandoned you. The people of grace and truth. And it's a part of
00:36:01.100
what we need to say to ourselves. We need to remember to be here for the broken, with grace and
00:36:06.540
truth, when the world, having lied to them, abandons them.
00:36:10.640
Absolutely. We don't just care about you when you are politically useful to us. We care about you
00:36:14.960
because you are an image bearer. And we care about your heart and your soul. We know that you're more
00:36:20.100
than just a body. You're more than just an agent of the state. And you're right. Christianity has been
00:36:25.380
the refuge for all kinds of marginalized people throughout our history. And we have to continue
00:36:29.820
to be that. Thank you so much, Dr. Moeller, for taking the time to talk to us.