00:01:40.940Sure. Absolutely. I'm a pastor's wife. My husband is Kent Butterfield. He's the pastor
00:01:46.020of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham. We are Reformed Presbyterians.
00:01:51.380I am a mother, and I'm a grandmother, and I think this is maybe my 22nd year of homeschooling,
00:02:01.480and I haven't always been all of those things. So I was brought to the Lord by a Reformed
00:02:09.640Presbyterian pastor in Syracuse, New York, where I was a tenured professor of English literature,
00:02:16.660my field is 19th century, along with women's studies and queer theory. And so my conversion
00:02:23.240came with a lot of mess, because sin makes a lot of mess for people. And I have written about
00:02:33.980my conversion to Christ in a number of books, and I have tried to faithfully live that out,
00:02:41.660and I sometimes have, and I sometimes haven't. I think I'm probably most known for my repentance,
00:02:47.380which is fine with me. I do think it's funny that public figures who are Christians who
00:02:53.200repent of their sins, I find it strange that that's met with shock and awe, but we can talk
00:02:58.240about what that means. But at any rate, that's who I am. I'm an older woman. I'm 61 years old.
00:03:05.620And so the most recent book I've written is written to other women. And it's a firm conversation
00:03:13.360that could be typified by let's get a grip. Okay, great. Well, so let's go right into it then. What
00:03:20.860is the name? And if you could, I know you've got a copy. Could you hold up your latest book and
00:03:25.060tell us a little bit about it i do have it right here it's called five lies of our anti-christian
00:03:31.780age and it's published by crossway and it came out in september great what what are the five
00:03:38.620lies can you list them for us yeah absolutely and i can maybe list the three reasons before
00:03:43.600we get to the five lies if that's okay so um but i mean you know like every book has a story and
00:03:49.420the story behind this book is a number of moms and grandmas who are writing to my website or
00:03:54.500stopping me at Costco or stopping me at church, really confused about where the evangelical
00:04:02.100church is in guiding us in this difficult time.
00:04:07.240Our post-Abergefell world has put some real pressures on the church, and the church seemed
00:04:13.260to be running the same play, and it was not working.
00:04:16.460And so many of these people were writing with grief and sadness because their children,
00:04:21.640who had once professed faith were now prodigals and yet their church was saying things like be
00:04:28.380a soft presence you know why don't you check out this preston sprinkle video maybe we should humanize0.93
00:04:34.140transgenderism and they were you know like that that's the opposite of what i think we should do0.93
00:04:40.680and and so really the question which was posed to me is um why we can't major on the majors if we1.00
00:04:48.020don't even know what the majors are anymore. What in the world happened? And so I just sat down and
00:04:52.800came up with three reasons that have produced five lives. And so the three reasons that we can't
00:04:57.920major on the majors is because we have failed to recognize that the seeds of the gospel are in the
00:05:04.240garden. Nature matters. No Adam, no Christ. The second reason is that we don't seem to know what
00:05:14.880time it is. We don't, we either reject Aaron Wren's heuristic about being a negative world,
00:05:22.000or we somehow don't think that the pressure of Obergefell and Boz Talk has, or even the
00:05:30.120anti-bullying legislation, which is just a pro-trans, you know, ideology in your government
00:05:35.680schools, that somehow that doesn't matter. And that works on this very strange notion that,
00:05:41.380you know, because God's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, you and I don't need to know what
00:05:45.680time it is or what the weather's like. We just, and then the third reason is the one that's
00:05:50.600probably most painful for me because I was the beneficiary of this particular kind of Christian
00:05:56.400love. And that's that I had neighbors who knew how to love their enemies, not pretend their enemies
00:06:04.780were their friends. And so those three just real failures of the evangelical church
00:06:13.180have taken these five lies that have been in the world for quite some time now, some longer than
00:06:18.400others, and they are now pretty central in most broad evangelical churches and in every parachurch
00:06:25.320ministry I can find. The first lie is the lie that homosexuality is a normal sexual variant.0.78
00:06:33.240The second lie is that pagan spirituality is kind and inclusive, where biblical Christianity can be harsh and demanding.
00:06:46.500The third lie is that feminism is good for the church and the world.
00:06:53.580The fourth lie is that transgenderism is a normal gender variant for some people.
00:07:00.140And you'll notice there that all of these lies, including the pagan lie, are dependent on a false distinction that feminism has put forward, and that is to distinguish sex, biological sex, from gender.
00:07:16.040And then the fifth lie is that modesty is bad for women because it encourages patriarchy, and embedded in that lie is the idea that patriarchy is bad.
00:07:28.820So those are the five lies. And, you know, I believed all of those lies. And I believed, I certainly, I believed and I advocated for those lies. When I was a lesbian activist professor, I was not just the lesbian next door. I testified before the New York legislature. I wrote books and policy. I have created, my fingerprints are still all over the sin that I see in this world.
00:07:55.840So part of the tone of this book, part of the urgency of this book is I am saved, praise be to God.
00:08:05.940But I'm also a grandmother, and I believe if you made a mess, you need to clean it up.
00:08:10.160So I'm trying to do a little cleanup here.
00:08:13.100And by cleanup, what I mean is not make myself look good, but just let the church try to give a good logic lesson.
00:08:21.400Let the church see that some of, many of the slogans that are passing around for gospel kindness are really of the devil.
00:08:33.480Right. Right. I'm with you on the clean up the mess. It's, you know, in the little book that I wrote, I had the same kind of thing saying there's, there's a fine line between penance, which is gospel-less, but versus, you know, the scripture talks about doing good works in keeping with repentance.
00:08:50.140You know, so it's faith, you know, by grace, through faith in Christ alone.
00:08:58.100It's always going to be accompanied by good works.
00:09:00.140And when it's, you know, the same, you know, the way in is the way on.
00:09:02.700You know, the faith and repentance, you know, Luther, you know, talks about how the whole Christian life should be marked by a life of ongoing faith and repentance.
00:09:11.520And so, yeah, when we make a mess, we clean it up, not as a form of gospelist penance, but we do it.
00:09:17.900that's that's some of the fruit of repentance that when you can tell when someone is truly
00:09:21.920repentant and not just worldly sorrow but has it possesses by the grace of god a godly sorrow
00:09:27.320godly regret over the sin which they've committed they want to make it right that's what restitution
00:09:32.360is that's you know to make the the person that we've offended the person that we've hurt
00:09:36.600to make them whole um as best we can in this life and some things can't be made whole i like uh
00:09:43.120I, I like, um, rush doing, uh, he, he said, um, when it comes to, you know, capital punishment
00:09:50.300in the case of murder, um, because you can't make the person whole, um, you know, you've taken a
00:09:55.440life. Um, and it's, it's such a grievous crime, uh, that, uh, the reason why it bears capital
00:10:00.700punishment is because, um, it's something that, uh, the person has done something so egregious
00:10:05.020that they have to be immediately transferred to a higher court. So, you know, there are cases
00:10:11.500where we can't make it whole, but as best we can, by the grace of God, we seek to not to earn his
00:10:15.800favor and not to somehow erase our past failures, but because it's the fruit of truly being
00:10:21.880repentant. So yeah. So all that being said, let's, let's talk a little bit about feminism. I feel
00:10:26.920like that's, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I feel like there's a lot of feminism in1.00
00:10:31.640the church today. I, you know, I feel like it's kind of something that it's like two fish, you0.92
00:10:38.060passing by as they're swimming through the ocean. And one says, the water sure is nice today. And
00:10:42.080the other says, what's water? Can you talk a little bit about ways, maybe signs of feminism1.00
00:10:49.560that you see in the church today? And especially, Andy Stanley, like you already said, you can pick
00:10:55.520on him all day long, but I'm thinking maybe a little closer to home. Most of our listeners are
00:11:01.740reformed Christians and they'd be going to, they wouldn't be going to Andy Stanley's church.
00:11:06.680They would be going to an OPC church, PCA church, Reformed Baptist church, most of them, you know, reformed and confessionally reformed. And yet I see feminism there.
00:11:17.100oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and i also hear um and even some of the you know some of the1.00
00:11:24.320feedback i get on the book is well can't you say that feminism is sometimes good like like hey that
00:11:29.960first wave that was looking pretty good wasn't it i mean do you so so it's interesting to to me the
00:11:35.480way that we're tempted to look at maybe some of the symptoms of a movement that we like
00:11:42.420and therefore apply a kind of welcome to the whole movement.
00:12:09.980I do kind of dig into that a little bit in the book.
00:12:12.420But I think what I'd like to do to answer your question, to help people maybe see it in the church, is to think about the way that feminism introduced this idea that biological sex and cultural gender are really different.
00:12:27.980They're just different things. They're different categories. And in philosophy, a category is important because it's got boundaries. It's almost like its own cell.
00:12:36.140biological sex is um you know the creation ordinance women are born with the creational1.00
00:12:42.800power capacity to be nurturers who bear children but should that interfere with our sense of1.00
00:12:51.740gifting or calling why then we have we appeal to cultural gender and basically cultural gender1.00
00:12:59.060There was a category basically for feminism to go to war with progeny and patriarchy, babies and men.0.99
00:13:09.220And I think that we just see this everywhere.
00:13:12.320And I think part of why we see this everywhere is this refusal to see that just in the same way that the Bible is a unified biblical revelation.
00:13:26.780um god is is not going to create god does not create us with a with competition in our calling
00:13:35.700um and so you know i certainly railed against this i mean at a certain point i was a single
00:13:42.760woman who thought she was a lesbian reading the bible trying to make sense of genesis 127
00:13:49.540And here's what I knew. I didn't see my actual self in it yet, but there was a little part of me that was downright thrilled. Could God be so loving that even I might be able to step into this creational capacity?
00:24:42.660We spend, we spend the day together at worship and prayer and Psalm singing at a fellowship
00:24:51.780meal at the church, at a fellowship meal at our house.
00:24:54.160I mean, it's a full, full day, and we've been able to just open our arms wide and draw other people into that, and so that's been a good thing.
00:25:05.280We also do have, now we're not a church plant anymore, and we do have a midweek prayer meeting, you know, the Wednesday night prayer meeting, and it's just the old, well, it's interesting who goes to it.
00:25:17.200It's like the young people, the old people, and then it's interesting, people who go to a local megachurch that are tired of the slogans and the programs.
00:25:31.920And so pretty soon, my friend and co-author Andrew Brandt said, pretty soon, it's like we're going to be a small group of the so-and-so church.
00:25:51.900Yeah, and with the midweek ministries and then making them so particular for women and for men, it's weird that I've actually had to inform people in doing this, you know, carefully.
00:26:04.960But in my preaching, I've had to inform the church.
00:26:08.360The elders are not the pastors of the men only.
00:26:13.020they are the pastors of the church um so so and and i think that's another thing that happens is
00:26:20.040so one you create only women women only context so that a particular woman can function in some
00:26:25.520kind of leadership role that's really questionable in biblical terms but still proudly being a
00:26:30.260complementarian card holding individual but then i i also think that um what happens is that even
00:26:36.540if you don't do it in word um you never label it this way in function she in you know a pseudo
00:26:42.920capacity she becomes um it's like well this is my pastor so and so you know that so the the pastors
00:26:50.900who preach on the lord's day they well those are the men's pastors but we have our own set of right
00:26:57.140of pastors um and and that is i think you know massively problematic yeah yeah and i would say0.87
00:27:05.540I think women do need, especially in such a gynocentric world where, you know, I speak before, you know, school boards on the subject of transgenderism and parental rights, which is a, you know, that's a story unto itself.0.66
00:27:18.460But, you know, everybody there is a woman, right?0.90
00:27:21.700All the people in charge are women.0.98
00:27:23.600So we live in a world where most of us are used to seeing, you know, the women are ahead of the school boards and the women are here.
00:27:31.060And so I do think, I think that as Christians, we need to learn how to submit to our pastor and our elders and learn to submit and trust to godly men.
00:27:47.600And I think this kind of wholesale rejection of biblical patriarchy, I'm not super comfortable with the term complementarianism because I just think itā
00:28:04.340I prescribed it to patriarchy, but go ahead.
00:28:06.360Yeah, I just don't like it because it's not a biblical word, and it's a little too plastic for me.
00:28:11.940But I think that part of the rejection of biblical patriarchy is, I think some of it is unfamiliarity.
00:28:23.420And sometimes you really do just have to take a young woman aside or an older woman aside, a single woman aside,
00:28:28.760and say, it's really going to be okay, but you're just going to have to, you're going to have to0.50
00:28:33.220submit to this. You're going to have to get a grip. This is really the biblical model and you're not
00:28:39.440going to die and you're really going to learn something. And it's going to be really good
00:28:42.820because we want the godly men in charge of the teaching because we need the godly men to kick0.95
00:28:52.300those wolves to the curb. And if they don't do that, then those wolves are going to be
00:29:01.040infiltrating the weakest of us. And it's going to be really ugly. And I mean, this is, you know,
00:29:09.600one wants to be careful about saying this, but in the years that I've been a pastor's wife,
00:29:14.680It does seem to me that Satan's widest angle on a church body can sometimes be the most unhinged woman.
00:29:26.000And that, so I do think that it is very important that the pastors and the elders, you know, we don't want that.0.86
00:29:35.080In that vein, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit.
00:29:37.840I'm curious what you'll say about this.
00:29:39.600So I would prescribe to biblical patriarchs and people say, well, what's the difference?
00:29:44.020you know, complementarianism, biblical patriarchy, why use patriarchy? It's, you know,
00:29:48.440it's a pejorative or it's become that, you know, and it's got all these negative and, you know,
00:29:52.740and I'm like, well, for one, I, a word that was coined in 1988, you know, that's, you know,
00:29:56.92020 minutes old is, is, you know, that's not really that my preference. I'd like something that's,
00:30:01.120you know, really old and, um, and rooted in history and scripture. Uh, but two, you know,
00:30:05.740when, when you get down to the, you know, but what's the rub, what are the actual differences,
00:30:09.800the distinctions. And one that I would say is from first Timothy chapter two, verses nine through
00:30:15.78015, that when Paul gives his reasoning for male headship, he does not only cite the order of
00:30:23.280creation, but he also cites the order of the fall. And he cites that, you know, the woman was
00:30:29.440deceived and became a transgressor. And, and so when you read dead guys, you know, that guys who
00:30:37.560lived before 1960 and the post-war sentiment and those kinds of, you know, you read 1900 years of
00:30:44.300guys. I mean, it was incredibly common. Nobody was blushing or batting an eye. They would just say,
00:30:51.140yeah, well, one of the reasons that a woman shouldn't lead is not just because men have1.00
00:30:56.020greater physical strength and that they can bench press and women have hips and they're able to0.94
00:31:00.320birth babies, but also, and this is hard for our world to do these days, especially on social media,
00:31:05.560but I'm going to speak in categories, generalities. So we can find one woman who can
00:31:10.940outbench one man. Likewise, what I'm about to say, we can find some women who could beat some0.98
00:31:16.880men in this. But in general, do you think that women are more susceptible to deception than men?
00:31:23.540You know, absolutely. And I think you really see it played out right now in transgenderism.0.96
00:31:28.280Why is rapid onset gender dysphoria primarily a woman's problem?0.90
00:31:34.020And so you can talk about it in terms of, you know, what is deception?
00:31:38.020Deception is a greater willingness to empathize with a point of view that isn't yours.
00:31:44.940It's a greater willingness to receive and to welcome.
00:31:50.440So there can be all kinds of very useful qualities to being that person.
00:31:57.460but not if you're in the company of wolves so i think so that's so in the company of wolves
00:32:05.360that is very dangerous to you and to everybody around you and i don't know any person who gets
00:32:13.400up in the morning and says you know i'm really hoping that i'm going to tear my house down today0.74
00:32:17.280i'm you know on my list of things to do is let me destroy my house with my own hands or destroy my
00:32:22.920church but um you know easily your your capacity for empathy can be turned and torqued in very0.71
00:32:33.920dangerous ways and we're seeing that in rapid onset gender dysphoria so anybody who would reject
00:32:39.300that i would want them i i need then you to explain to me why this you know rogd is primarily
00:32:47.480women like what you know what's going on there right that's really good to use a a current
00:32:54.900example and statistics that they would actually have to be able to refute and then you know even1.00
00:32:59.640using biblical examples as you have the principle there in first sympathy two but then in terms of
00:33:04.240case studies um like they creep into households and lead astray weak-willed women um that why are
00:33:13.440the false teachers always male in the new testament and why why do they go after always the women and
00:33:20.640that you know and again of course there are some exceptions but speaking in general rules um it
00:33:25.780does seem as though the general strategy is uh false teachers a guy and he's going to try to
00:33:33.280deceive a girl right yeah absolutely and about that other point you're making um you know this
00:33:40.000the how did transgenderism become normalized like why in the world would even somebody as
00:33:47.840as just dysfunctionally minded in his ability to handle a theological concept like Preston
00:33:54.880Sprinkle even someone like that why would he recently do a program on humanizing the
00:34:00.880transgender experience like what what is going on there well it is a not just a propensity but now0.99
00:34:06.980a virtue to make the anomaly the norm. And so that's the other thing that the church0.99
00:34:16.760has to be aware of. Christians don't throw people away. We do not throw people away.
00:34:23.820We are not the people at school board meetings holding up pictures of mangled bodies saying,
00:34:28.060this is an example of what not to do. We are the people who are proclaiming the gospel of
00:34:33.500jesus christ that says god cannot be mocked the creative order is indeed ontological um
00:34:40.640and the very good news of that is that even if you have tried to mock that created order and
00:34:46.960you have gone through the whole you know battering of surgeries if you are a christian and you are
00:34:53.100in christ and you have repented and you believe when your body is resurrected in the last day
00:34:58.560you'll be the man you were meant to be right that is what christians say at school board meetings
00:35:03.780um so we're not throwing people away but if you start to create a situation where you can't hold
00:35:11.000the center because every anomaly renorms the norm that's where i just say please go go sell
00:35:20.200insurance get out of the game just just you know i i'm sure we'd have a nice time at the bowling
00:35:25.440alley but don't don't teach because this is this is really crazy and i think when you have
00:35:31.840any kind of a new testament ethic or a christian ethic that that does you know unhinge the old
00:35:41.060from the new what you're going to end up is a very theme-based christianity a christianity
00:35:46.980based in slogans and nouns right but no resurrection power and and just and really
00:35:54.240no ability to speak truthfully into the into the reality of what it means to be a person who knows
00:36:03.800your indwelling sin, trying to fight it in the context of a world that has made it its reigning
00:36:11.580idol, you know, and so we just have to be able to say to people lovingly, kindly, you know,0.91
00:36:18.500and 500 times if needed homosexuality is a deed of the flesh it is a sin of the flesh it's found0.79
00:36:26.600in the flesh it is forbidden by the law and it is overcome in the savior and and and that's true
00:36:35.080whether you want to call homosexuality ssa or you want to call it sexual orientation i did you know
00:36:40.300there are a lot of neologisms that we're going to pour into this but how do we liberate the captives
00:36:46.420without giving them that truth but if you're somebody who who has to re-norm the norm you
00:36:53.000just can't say those things right yeah everything these days comes down to the lowest common
00:36:58.360denominator that's how our society you know continues to function and and it's all in the
00:37:03.960name of empathy and there's always a few guys at the top who know what they're doing it's a
00:37:09.080weaponized empathy but for most of the the public whether it be in the church or whether it be in
00:37:14.520our body politic, you know, just our populace, most of the public, I think, you know, against
00:37:19.700their better judgment is trying to be kind. They're trying to, you know, yeah, trying to be
00:37:25.400kind. Can I just jump in here? Because it just, I, it's really funny when this happens at a school
00:37:31.900board meeting and the whole school board, and they'll use this expression in Durham, which is
00:37:36.800blue, blue, blue. They'll use this expression, you know, just hold space. Don't try to solve
00:37:42.760problems and you know at some point i mean and i do i'll just ask you know you get you get three
00:37:47.640minutes they have to listen to you but aren't you the school board aren't you here to fix the
00:37:53.200problem of the school lunch and the math class that like you're here to fix problems and that's
00:37:58.660the thing empathy can never fix problems right because that's considered almost in violation
00:38:05.060of the standards of what um what helping means you've said this before you can't fix problems
00:38:12.460you must, you're mandated to feel problems. Feel the problem, but don't actually. Have you heard
00:38:20.140Doug Wilson and like Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy? Oh, yeah, I love it. And I think they
00:38:26.200really get a bad rap because people aren't listening. They're not saying there's never
00:38:33.160a time to empathize. And I'm not saying there's never a time to empathize, but I'm just saying
00:38:37.640that's hardly the magic bullet. They get a bad rap as they talk about the sin of empathy,
00:38:42.780because people aren't willing to be empathetic with those who say empathy is a sin. Isn't that
00:38:47.520ironic? Well, but I think it is, I think that if you reject the concept of sympathy, you're
00:38:52.600rejecting Christ. You're, you know, you're rejecting, you know, the gospel. They speak
00:38:56.980highly of sympathy, compassion to bear with, but they distinguish that from empathy to suffer in.
00:39:03.360yes and also yes exactly but ultimately jesus rescues the captives right right and and that
00:39:13.660requires something that isn't empathy you're right yep it requires strength your feet are actually
00:39:21.160firmly planted on the ground you got a hand holding onto the tree as you put the other hand
00:39:26.740yeah jumping in the quicksand with the individual doesn't uh you can feel it but you can't fix it
00:39:32.540so um and with that i like how you brought up you know so you're bringing up a reason you're saying0.99
00:39:38.000yes you answered my question you know in general is there a greater you know tendency for women to
00:39:43.240be deceived than men and you answered the question by saying yes but you also gave the why you know
00:39:47.920you said because of the way that god designed them it's not um that women are unintelligent0.98
00:39:52.640it's not that women are stupid but god designed women to be caring to be feeling to be empathetic0.72
00:39:58.240and in the right ways and maybe sympathetic um and so like you know i i think of you know0.98
00:40:05.200well when the the russia ukraine thing started you know um you know and now we've moved on to
00:40:10.520israel and palestine but you know uh my how the time flies when we're trying to start world war
00:40:15.700three but um you know when it was still ukraine and and russia and that was still the popular
00:40:20.420thing um i remember there were like certain uh you know celebrity women you know who were uh
00:40:26.500one of them wrote a poem and read it, you know, of, uh, if only I was Putin's mother, you know?
00:40:32.000And I thought like, and I thought, well, you know, that, I mean, I like that. I appreciate
00:40:35.920that in the sense that that makes sense. Like that is how, um, I think that is how God has
00:40:42.200designed women to think not their only capacity, but that is a central theme and focus. Like I bet
00:40:48.440Putin had a bad mom, you know? And so she, that's the essence of the poem. He probably just had a
00:40:52.540bad mom. He needs a good mom. And I think that's all fine and dandy. I think it's better than fine
00:40:57.380and dandy. It's wonderful. The hand that rocks the cradle, we need that hand. The problem though
00:41:03.280is when that hand's not rocking the cradle, but when that person with that sentiment is a Supreme
00:41:09.760Court justice, or when that person is a Senator, or when that person... And so then shifting gears
00:41:15.900One more example, Kintaji Brown Jackson, you know, soft on pedophiles, you know, and I remember, you know, thinking about that, you know, and thinking, well, of course she is like, like her, I think her, her, her deepest, it's, you know, she's been designed by God to think, like, I want, I want to, there's something wrong here.
00:41:40.420He needs love. He needs nurturing. He needs caring. Men are not that way. So men hear that there's
00:41:48.100another man who has engaged in looking at, you know, pedophilic images. And for men, we say,
00:41:57.340let's get some rope. Yeah, absolutely. Let's find a tree. And I think that's particularly helpful0.96
00:42:05.180when it comes to the position of the civil rulers.
00:42:08.960That's not always the most helpful thing
00:42:35.140to call the elders right that is a terrific time to say i am getting really um roped into something0.75
00:42:45.300and i kind of sort of think jl would just take a tent peg and you know rail it through the head
00:42:53.220right now but i'm really seeing this from the wrong point of view i think i think that's part of1.00
00:42:59.260also the way women are designed is that we are more likely to play around with point of view1.00
00:43:06.980to just sort of say, well, if I see it, if I do this, if I do that, but that's when we need to0.99
00:43:11.380call, you know, if we're, if we're married, we call our husband. If we're, um, we're single,
00:43:16.720we call the elders, we need some help in interpreting. And that's part of, that's a
00:43:22.460body issue. Right. And to lay off the women and to point the finger at the men for a moment,
00:43:28.560And I've noticed that if I'm honest, part of the reason I think we got into this problem is we, you know, you talked about like, you know, the anomaly and making that, you know, taking the footnote and making it the headline.
00:43:42.840Well, one thing that I think conservatives do politically, but then also the church, is because there's been so much of this neo-Marxist thing going on, whether it's BLM and social justice or feminism or transgenderism, what conservative men have done and even pastors is they've found that minority, whether it be a person of color or whether it be women, which I've never understood why that's a minority.
00:44:12.840since there's literally more women than men. But either way, you know what I'm saying. But they
00:44:17.580find that minority and they make them say it. So part of the reason when I say that women,1.00
00:44:23.080here's the irony, when I say that in general, I think women have a greater propensity towards
00:44:29.200being deceived. And this is one of the reasons. It's not the only reason. There's the order of0.98
00:44:33.280creation, but also the order of the fall is listed as a biblical example. And this is how people,
00:44:37.920theologians understood you know the roles of patriarchy and and father rule male headship
00:44:44.040and not just in the church but in you know if we're looking at guys who you know lived before
00:44:49.8801960 you know most of them thought that this was in the civil realm and in the ecclesiastical realm
00:44:55.520and in you know the familial realm and and they they understood this deception as a part a part
00:45:01.060of that piece but when i make that argument today the irony is that one of the major objections is
00:45:06.620to point immediately point to a woman and ironically a not not a flaming blue-haired you
00:45:12.620know feminist woman but a conservative woman she's but she's on point joe she's not deceived
00:45:18.280look at like she's every bit as conservative as you are she's and and i think of that and i thank
00:45:23.440god for for conservative female voices but i can't help but think is it is it but is it because this
00:45:30.120is the greatest voice we have or is it because at some level ironically in a tragic sense of irony
00:45:36.580conservative men who know that this is one of the major problems of of the hour that they didn't
00:45:43.740have the courage to say it themselves so they got a black person to say it for them they got a female
00:45:48.200person to say it for them they got you know and you've got these conservative guys who should be
00:45:52.600the shepherds who should be fighting the wolves but they don't actually fight the wolves they
00:45:56.140actually just hold on to the pay the paychecks and and give it to uh their female warriors to1.00
00:46:02.540fight the wolves because they'll get less pushback, I guess?
00:46:06.100So I think part of it is that there's a kind of, oh, I don't know, hirelings weren't meant
00:46:16.320to handle this moment. They just weren't. And maybe hireling sounds like a very mean name,
00:46:25.920but I mean it a hundred percent. In my denomination, pastors take vows. One of the
00:46:33.680vows, vow six, is to die for the doctrine. You know, when you hear your husband taking that vow,
00:46:40.960you realize that that includes you. And I can't think of a hireling who runs a parachurch ministry
00:46:48.700who would even take a whiff at that vow. So I think, you know, this is a season right now where
00:46:54.460satan is really shaking things up and the there's a particular way that the parachurches have set0.83
00:47:01.340the tone and they've they've set the agenda and you know you can't you can't change the overton0.78
00:47:08.300window from inside of it and so i'm just wondering if you know and i'm kind of i am sort of wondering
00:47:14.120if just they are being put out of business by just the the the heat right now but what you're
00:47:21.440saying reminds me of something else i remember speaking at a large you know event and it was
00:47:26.860there are a lot of college students and somebody said you know what do you think about female
00:47:31.500pastors and i said oh i think it's a sin and there was like shock and awe and and there's like a lot
00:47:37.400of like uh you know and i said well you know don't y'all think that i kind of turned to my panel and
00:47:43.400and there was a sense of um yes we do think that rosaria but we don't say things out loud like that
00:47:50.060in public settings and um i don't i just think that's ridiculous yeah uh i think it's i think
00:47:58.420it's ridiculous so yeah yeah and i think by god's grace at least for myself personally being able to
00:48:05.660you know it was hard and and i didn't do everything right but but being able to
00:48:10.700relocate in 2020 as some of these things we're going and starting fresh with a new church one
00:48:16.940of the things that i resolved to um being getting rid of the winsome bug and and speaking plainly
00:48:25.180not speaking meanly but just you don't have to be mean you just have to be clear clear clear will do
00:48:30.060the trick um if you just speak clearly in this day and age you'll have plenty of people who think
00:48:34.520you're mean um but it it does help like that that i you know actually started a new church and one
00:48:41.760of the things that i resolved was i thought it'd be a lot easier if i just start this from the very
00:48:46.080beginning you know if just from the outset um because you you know there is a sense in which
00:48:52.560when when you're changing because a lot of these guys um as we've moved because the world has
00:48:58.540changed as we've moved to a negative world from neutral world um you're right it's this this world
00:49:04.440was not meant for hirelings and uh and it also wasn't meant for ambiguity ambiguity or or vague
00:49:11.200language. It requires clarity. It requires courage. But it is difficult when you actually
00:49:20.960have to change, when you haven't been that, and you actually have to change that. And there's a
00:49:25.560lot of people who are upset and they're frustrated and they're partly right. They're wrong in the
00:49:31.820sense that if a guy, he's reforming and he's repenting and he's actually moving closer towards
00:49:37.440Christ and not further away, then people are wrong to be upset with them. But they're right
00:49:42.620in the sense if they say something like, yeah, but Joel, this isn't what I signed up for.
00:49:48.640So even if you're right about these changes, the church is making these changes, you're making
00:49:52.860these changes to the style of your preaching and to your theology and these. And even if you're
00:49:57.980right about all of it, I became a member of this church with a certain pretense, with a certain
00:50:03.920understand this is not the church that i joined and and i've been in this church for seven years
00:50:09.180or 12 years and i have friendships here in community and you're ripping this away from me
00:50:13.940and so it it really you know just speaking again for myself personally it really was a grace to be
00:50:19.020able to start over um and and then decide from again from the outset um i don't want to do that
00:50:25.400with people i don't want to do a bait and switch where you know gradually you know the you know
00:50:29.900we're heating up the temperature of courage and, you know, and, and this and that and the other.
00:50:35.480And so from the outset, you know, and, and through podcasting and recording the sermons
00:50:39.580online that, that from the outset, you know, there's 200 people that come to my church and
00:50:44.780there's, you know, a few hundred thousand that know not to, you know, like, okay, that's a church
00:50:50.660that I would never want to go. And I would say, you know, again, it's ironic. They would say,
00:50:54.340I'm glad he's not my pastor. And I, and I would say, you know, well, and that is actually,
00:50:59.780I think loving on my part that I, that I, that I let you know preemptively that you, yeah, that
00:51:06.460this would probably not be the church for you. I saved you. A lot of pastors, there is this bait
00:51:11.400and switch where they believe one thing, but they, like what you said, the example you gave,
00:51:15.860they won't say it publicly and people join their church for two years and make like friendship.
00:51:22.060And then I've heard countless testimonies of like, I went to this church for two years
00:51:26.600and then found out that they thought homosexuality was a sin.1.00
00:51:29.800Right. Kirsten Powers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. You know, can I respond to some of that?0.98
00:52:00.020I'm part of a very small denomination.
00:52:03.560You know, one of their central doctrines is the mediatorial kingship of Christ, which
00:52:09.000personally, I think that makes Christian nationalism look like child's play.0.62
00:52:13.420You know, I mean, you know what I mean?0.66
00:52:14.860Like, we came of age during something called the killing times.
00:52:18.920So I know we're small and peculiar, but isn't what is at the heart of evangelicalism is calling people to die to themselves and to accept Christ and to take up that cross and to follow him and to leave houses and mothers and fathers.
00:52:44.220and to count all of that as less than your love for Jesus.
00:52:51.240And yet we won't even just say it like it is
00:52:54.840because we might, what, I don't know, lose donors?
00:52:57.900I mean, I just, it's easy for me to say,
00:53:01.020you know, my secret weapon is I don't have a job.
00:55:28.800But if you, you know, like, so that's, you know, I would say that would be the strongest opposition. And I think that the strongest appreciation is from moms and grandmas who have prodigals, who have been in weak, mealy-mouthed evangelical churches, who have been told, let's, here's this, you know, here's this podcast by, you know, West Hill or, you know,
00:55:58.700let's think about this in terms of revoice or, and, and, you know, what they really don't want
00:56:05.080is their child to die in their sin and they're willing to sacrifice everything, but they have
00:56:11.040felt like the evangelical church is, is kind of, you know, cutting them off at the knees. And so
00:56:17.760I've heard from those moms and grandmas, faithful prayer warriors that yes, I can hang on. I can
00:56:24.940hang on to my daughter, but I can cling more strongly to Christ and that lying to my daughter
00:56:32.100won't help her know Jesus. And I need to remember that my daughter is a prayed for child
00:56:40.440and God's covenant is real. And those promises of the covenant are real, but I need to remain
00:56:47.520faithful. And so that would be the, I think the strongest accolade is just the people who
00:56:53.700understand that my encouragement in wanting you to see how we got here and why we got here0.59
00:57:00.720is so that you don't need to get a PhD in critical theory, because that would be dumb.0.66
00:57:05.920Don't do that. You need to be sanctified in your ignorance as well as your knowledge.0.98
00:57:11.260But we all need to help each other hang on to the promises of the Lord. And to that degree,
00:57:18.800we would do well to prioritize our families and our churches all right well thank you so much for
00:57:25.100coming on the show anyway uh any i don't know call to action or way that people can follow you
00:57:30.040or check out other things that you're doing it sounds like you're not on social media very much
00:57:34.340but maybe you could reference some of your other books if you want them to read them okay well i
00:57:38.480have a website rosaria butterfield.com and i've written i've written a number of books and then
00:57:44.640And often the new book is a correction of the old book.
00:57:47.740So, you know, but, you know, my coming to Christ story was The Secret Thoughts of an