TSTT Evangelicalisms Looming Catastrophe Part 1 Where Are The Fault Lines

Welcome to the Sword in the Trial, the podcast the Founders Ministries. Founder's Ministries exist for the recovery of the Gospel and the reformation of churches. I'm Jared Longshore and. I'm Tom Askell and we have the vote Bacham. That's right in studio with us. So delighted to have you here with. Us, brother, Thank you, Yes, delighted to be. Yeah, man, it's good to have you all the way from Lusaka, Zambia and vot he's joining us for the last couple of days and tonight for a special institute a public theology event. And so you preached yesterday morning at Grace Baptist Church. Had a wonderful time there last night. We kind of caught up on what's been going on in your life the last year and the providence of God. That was a wonderful opportunity just to hear you kind of piece things together with a timeline and I think that's available, isn't it. Isn't that conversation going to be available in the on the iopt facebook page and also. In the armory. So thanks for that, and tonight you'll be speaking again. We've got a pastor's conference today you'll be talking to a bunch of guys. So man, welcome to Southwest Florida. Thank you. Yes, I guess before we get into it, just the heads up that we do have a conference coming out Militant and Triumphant January down here in Southwest Florida. Voting will be preaching, You'll be preaching, I'll be preaching. Conrad and Bayway will be preaching, James Coates will be preaching, Travis Allen will be preaching. Lots of folks going to be here. We'd love for you to come. You can register Founders dot Org. Yeah, and Vody will also be teaching the third course that we are offering in the Institute of Public Theology on cultural Apologetics, so that'll be right before the Founder's Conference, so you actually can register for that course. The registrations are open for IOPT and if you want to take that course, you need to get in early on that so you can come for the course, stay for the conference. It'll be a wonderful opportunity to really be fed and challenge. We have a neat opportunity going on right now too. We have a donor who has said he will match all the gifts given to iopt through the end of the year. So if God has put you in a position where you can contribute, we would love to have that help. We need that help, and we trust the Lord to guide you in that. You want more information, just contact us. We'll be glad to tell you about it. Well, Vodie, you've written the book fault Lines, the Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's looming catastrophe. We've already spoken on this podcast about your book, and so a lot of people already know about it. And if you have not yet purchased a copy and read through it, then certainly do that quick, fast and in a hurry. You're delighted with the way it's been rolled out, got us clearly blessed the book. How are things at this juncture, however, many weeks or months we are now downstreamed from having the book published. Yeah, I mean, things are better than we could ever have anticipated. And like we talked about last night, you know, we had this plan for the launch of the book, and we had to launch team and pre orders were going well, and you know I was scheduled to head out on this you know, this this tour to promote the book and and then, of course, you know, my heart fails and end up with a couple of heart surgeries and never got to get out and do that promotion. And yet yeah, you know, so it's it's been doing well. It really seems to have to have struck a nerve, you know, and I'm excited about that, you know, both in terms of the positive response that it's received and also the negative response that it's received. I think, you know, you can learn as much about an idea in terms of who's opposed to it as you can in terms of who's in favor of it, as well as those who are silent about it. As a side note, you know, we produced the film by a standard. I'm thinking, you go after this whole critical social justice stuff, and then you know, when we release the film, you collapse, nearly die, and then you write the book fall Lines. When it's released, you nearly die. Yeah. I'm feeling a little uncomfortable around whatever A demon that is serious spiritual warfare manifests. It's interesting. I'm not even kid man. You were talking last night and I was like, yeah, it's is serious. It is. Wow. Well, well it's been interesting to see the response. Of course, man, I'm so grateful for the positive responses from all kinds of sectors. You know, people that I mean normally aren't in aren't in our circles, and yet they're true evangelical Christians and they're grateful for this. And so I mean, you were telling us about. Chuck Swyndall's uh wonderful of the book, you know, and man, thank God for that. And I've I've heard from people that are in the broader evangelical world and they're not reformed, uh, and yet they're wonderful godly Christians and they are praising God for the book as well. So there's been a good response. It's a national bestseller, which it be came very quickly after its release, and you don't have the exact numbers now, but still. It's still doing it's still doing well. Yeah, and we've been we carry it here at Founders and I don't know how many. A lot of places are not carrying it, by the way, isn't that crazy? You know, I went in we were still in Jacksonville, you know, I was, you know, in the rehab program and doing well, we're getting close to getting out of there. And I just thought, you know, it'd be great if we could go into Barnes and Noble and you know, take the take the family in there, and stand by the book, you know, on the shelf and you know, take pictures of whatever. And we go into Barnes and Noble, and you know, I'm looking around. I'm looking at the shelves. I'm looking at the best sellers. I'm looking at books that are behind us on the best sellers list, and they're all out here and we're not there. And then I go to the you know, religion section, and I look at where it's supposed to be and it's not there. And so I go to the counter and I ask him, you know, hey, do you have you know, this book, you know, fault Lines? And they look in the computer and they say it says we have one, and it was back in the back. They had to go back in the baver, you know, to get the book. And and you know, so I contacted the publisher and I'm like, you know what, what, what's the deal man? There are books that are behind us on the best sellers list, that are out there on you know, best sellers and you know so and that was the case in many places, and there are still a lot of places. Uh. There are Christian bookstores that have decided not to carry the book. Well, you know, LifeWay didn't really have their brick and mortar stores anymore, but at the convention, Life Weight didn't have it in their in their bookstore. So uh. Again, all of that just points to God's providence and the way that you know, this thing has has uh has traveled in spite of the fact that most of the ways that you would promote a book have been have been closed. So you know, just couldn't be more more pleased. And so I'm telling people go to your bookstore and uh and and ask for it and ask them to carry it. So you know, we were reading through fault lines as elders here at Grace and just work through the introduction or first chapter. I think it's the introduction and you name names like right off the bat, and you draw the the fault line and then you name the names. And I remember saying, you say, why is it that that these men are on this side of the fault line and these other organizations are on the other side of the fault line? And I thought, I mean, wow, like you name the names and that's so real, like we're sensing the realness of that in the evangelical world right now. And you can read the book to find the names. We mentioned. The names not like a secret now it's it's in print and we've talked about it. But it was clarifying again to say, yes, this this divide really is there. And it was interesting to me that it came from you, Like you're in Zambie. You've been in Zambia for many years now, yeah now, I mean you're certainly well known evangelical. You've been here in the States and you're still here. But it was interesting that it came from you. Like I almost feel like y'all don't want to say it, like nobody wants to say it over there. I'm over in Zambia. Let me give y'all some outside perspective there. It is like boom, you actually put the names in print. Why is it, you know, as you as I'm still trying to process, why is it that we have certain names on this right side and then we have the other on the other side? You know. I titled the book fault Lines because as I looked at this, the way I saw it was that there is this this fault, and there are people on either side of this fault, and we know, you know, fault lines are where earthquakes take place, right, And this fault was shifting, This fault was moving, and the divide was becoming clearer. And I think the divide has become clearer even since the book has come out. And I just didn't think that it would be helpful for me to not be open and honest about what I was talking about or about who I was talking about. I tried to be as charitable as I could and not ascribe motives, but just paint a picture of what anybody who's watching was actually seeing. Yeah, here it is the nature of the coming catastrophe. Why are people in groups like the b Daniel Buelle, Tim Keller, Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Nine Marks and Gospel Coalition together for the Gospel being identified with critical social justice on w one side of the fault. And then you list others MacArthur Owen Stray and Doug Wilson Sproll on the other side, and and Tom Askell and I had to pay to put me in. There, or to pay me to not put you. Yeah, yes, I mean there it is. Man, are you look at those names ten years ago, fifteen years ago? I mean, uh, and those are all of our friends. Yeah, those are all people that we've been doing conferences with, or we used to do conferences with a decade ago. Yeah. This is crazy, I'll be honest, it's crazy. When I read it. When I read it with the elders, I said, wow, And I would like I would it would be helpful And you might not have this. I'm not. I'm not assuming you do have an answers. Maybe we do. It'd be helpful to know what in the world when you have a fault line and people end up where they do? Why? Mark Dever, Jonathan Lehman, you know, Al Mohler, all E SBC over here, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproll, Doug Wilson, Tom Askell, Can somebody help me? Like why did that? You know? What are the what are the doctrinal presuppositions that caused people to shake down on the sides they did? You know? Later on in the book, I identify what what I believe to be the cause of a lot of it, and it's not doctrine. I believe a cause. The cause of a lot of it is relationships in fact, and I try to be clear about the fact that you know, not everybody who's identified on that side of the fault line, on the critical social justice side of the fault line, is there because they hold to the ideology. In fact, a lot of those individuals are opposed to the to the ideology. They're not opposed to it publicly, they're not opposed to it openly, but they're opposed to the ideology. But they have invested for the last ten twenty years in people who are open about promoting the ideology. And so I think for a lot of these guys and a lot of these entities, their silence is more a product of their desire to hold on to relationships than it is evidence of them holding to critical social justice ideology. And I have to believe that a lot of those guys, once they see that this is heresy driving this, this is an ethical outworking, a practical outworking of a pagan religion, that they will say, hey, I can't go that far. I can't. So it makes me think that either it hasn't dawned on them yet, or they're suspicions, but they haven't fully realized it's done. It's done on them. It's done on them. It's done on them, and and and you know, we don't want to violate any confidence here, but you and I have had conversations about individuals who have said in private that that they get this, that they see this, but that they don't want to offend. In many instances, they don't want to offend their their black brothers and sisters who see this differently than they do, which which is incredibly racist. Condescend it's condescending, right, you know. One of the things that I appreciate about and again I read about this as well. I appreciate the fact that, for example, when I came out as Calvinist, that brothers in the SBC basically said, you know. It don't matter if you're black, if you're. Black, right, it doesn't matter if you're black. You know, you're you're you're you're anathema, you know, And being anathematized to me was an was an act of respect. They they treated me like a brother. And what a lot of these guys are doing right now is they're not treating people like brothers. They're they're walking around on eggshells and they refuse to call people out because of this. Well, anyway, I'll let them, you know, say what it is. But that's not treating people like brothers. If you actually have disagreements but you hold back on those disagreements and you don't hold people accountable because of the color of their skin, then you're not treating them like equals. I would. I still think there is there's I think along with that that's certainly huge and probably the primary, especially with a number of the people. I'm sure there's individual differences among the people that are on the wrong side of the fault line. But I wonder about a truncated vision of the truth claims of Christ, of a shrinking back to a church Ianity rather than a Christianity that says, well, that's a political thing. It's outside my purview as a pastor. I shouldn't be involved in that. The trivializing of the Kingdom of God idea. So hey, that guy wants to play that. If it's real, clear biblical ethic inside the church community, that I'm on it. But that's more it's a political it's a sociological thing. It's a philosophical thing that we can agree to disagree. I think that that's a problem as well. Yeah, another problem of why people aren't addressing it. Yeah, yeah, it is, and it's but it's becoming more and more obvious. You know, You've got people who, over the last decade or so have been very open about the fact that many Christians have become too political, right, open about the fact that, you know, they're against this sort of transferational approach to Christianity. And yet the critical social justice movement is inherently political, and these same guys haven't said, listen, you guys are too political. Right, the critical social justice movement is inherently transformational. Right, But these same guys who have spoken out against that are not speaking out against this manifestation of it. And this hypocrisy is becoming more and more apparent. And at the root of this hypocrisy is the fear of being called racist or the fear of throwing away investments over the last couple of decades in people, and I think it's sad. I agree with you. It's one of the most difficult things for me and getting my mind around this, and when I finally did, and talking to a lot of people, people smarter than I am, more experience than I have, and I've trusted for years. Is you know, you keep asking them if you see that this is dangerous, and some would say they see it, and some would say, well, it's not as dangerous a fad. It's gonna pass in two years, you know, if I have that said to me. But whenever you begin to see it, how can you not speak out on it? And here's what I have concluded. I don't know. I put a bag over everybody's head after a while and just started looking at what they're saying, what they're doing, what they're not doing, what they're not saying. And when you pull the bags up, you're just disappointed. I mean, you feel betrayed almost by these guys. But I've concluded that there's a bunch of guys that just don't have the kind of biblical courage that is needed to say what must be said if we're going to be faithful to Christ, to do what must be done, if we're going to be faithful to Christ. And they think somehow they can maneuver, manipulate and kind of keep things together and hold on both to the relationships and to the truth, and it just can't be done. And the truth is being hammered and the gospel is being cloud it over for the sake of well, you know, we're all brothers, and give time, give space. In my mind, it's like we've got a house on fire, and this is not the time for negotiation. This is the time for sounding the alarms, grabbing the buckets and doing what we've got to do to fight this thing. And man, men, we've counted on our doing it. And that's the thing with the fault line is, like you said, you're not going to be able to do that. You're not gonna be able to maneuver it. So if you're on the wrong side of the fault line, and as I'm looking at the book, I was wondering which side is the right side and the wrong side of those voters' names on the right side, So I'm saying, that's the good side of the fault line over there, if you're on vote Bacham side, And if you're on the other side, clearly the gray, the light gray, must be the wrong side. But if you're on the wrong side of this fault line, but you're a good guy, if you're if you're on the wrong side of this fault line. But you actually you're an orthodox Christian and for whatever reason, whether you don't have the courage or you don't have the worldview, you're not standing up to the to the to I'm saying, Okay, well, you're gonna come over at some point. That's what fault lines do. That it's going to separate and eventually you know you're gonna be like a John Piper Farewell, Rob bel You're you're gonna you're gonna have to do that, right, You're gonna have to do that at some point. So I'm thinking as this plays out, that's the thing like you're going sadly, you're gonna lose some people, and they will they go straight into Harrison. And that's the looming catastrophe part of the type of the subtitle, right, that we are going to lose some people. Yeah, we have already lost some people. Yeah, but then we have a trouble of I think it's like a Lapsey controversy thing like what are you gonna do with the leaders that then say, hey, we we missed this, yeah for worldview or for courage, we miss this. How how do they how do we get guys to come back on the right side when the inevitable comes. At least from our vantage point, it's inevitable. You're not gonna be able to actually stay over there. That's the question, man. And uh, I'm interested in what both your brothers have to say about that, and my own thinking on. It is this, I want them back. I mean, we need them. I've looked some of these guys in the eye and said, we need you in this fight, we need you at your best, please come help us, and they have it and evidently they're not going to but God willing at one point, at some point they're going to see, yeah, okay, we can't stay silent. And when they come back and praise God, I want them back. But they've failed as leaders, don't You don't have a position of leadership and fail to the destruction of the people who are following you and then say, oops, okay, now I'm going to lead over here. I think you just need to kind of confess your sin, acknowledge your failure, and be faithful in whatever sphere you've got. But don't don't expect people to keep following you. You've given that up. That's not for you. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I really honestly don't know. I agree with you in that I hope that at some point point, you know, the damn breaks at some point, you know, all of this shakes out the way that we all hope it will, and that eventually some of this becomes a bridge too far. What's after that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't but you know, I hear from too many pastors to me churches yesterday. I mean, we had people from churches all over and some that came from long distances to be here to hear you be here for the day, and with tears weeping twenty year members, elders in churches saying this stuff has come in and I'm the only elder that's trying to stand against that. We've had to leave our church after twenty five years. My wife has this wonderful ministry to women. And how many more churches have to be destroyed by this? When the watchmen on the wall that we have trusted for years keep say, you know, it's not that bad, Faed, I just I. Don't know's it's a boogeyman? Yeah, boy man, Yes, it's a man. And I love these guys but we can't follow them, I can't commend them. Yeah, I wonder if one of the things to do if you're on the right side of the fault line is just begin to build and form a new coalition, you know, like a new Gospel coalition. I mean, you mentioned you were at the Gospel coalition, and then you wrote what you wrote and you get canceled from that, and but trying to actually say we care about we actually care about law. So when you're watching, you know, we were looking at Jamar Tisby earlier, and as Jamar is working out his ethic hard, he's working out an ethic. The response is not to say, well, we don't want to work out an ethic. You shouldn't be working out an ethic. You know. It's like, no, we want to work out an ethic, but yours isn't biblical. We want to work out the biblical ethic. We do care. We also like Abraham Kuyper. And so here is here's the vision. Here's a banner being raised for those who are clearly on the right side of this fault line. Here's a banner being raised because people are saying, well, who am I supposed to trust? Well, you certainly are only are supposed to trust people that are on the right side of this fault line. And then in addition to that, you want to trust people that can kind of see the times to say, yeah, this is why we got here. I think a lot of guys went woke because they there was something missing, you know, there was like I want to actually love my neighbor, and then they somehow bought into a pagan law, is what it means. Yeah, they bought up a pagan law. But hey, you know, shame on those who weren't actually loving neighbor. Well, who weren't who were allowing these ideologies and this cultural you know, decay to happen that because there wasn't an answer. So I think we still need that answer. And it's almost like, regardless of what happens with the leaders that are on the wrong side, let's let the new leaders just build develop right statement of affirmations and denials, doctrine, practice, institutions, organizations. Let's just go and then whoever comes comes, yeah, well, just that way, they have something built for them, and it won't just be when you cross over the fault line to the good side, you're just against all the bad stuff. It's like, well, what are we for? I think we just need to keep running in that direction. I think we are and need to encourage more and more people to And. One of the reasons I think that's important is because the other side has very effectively changed the rules of the game. And what I mean by that is this, when you have discussions with people, they're saying, Okay, fine, you don't like the critical social justice movement, but what's your answer to racial injustice. We can't allow it to be framed like that, Yeah, because the very concept of racial injustice basically assumes their definitions, because racial injustice means disparities. Right, So if you're saying that I have an I have to have an answer for ending disparities, you're saying that the only way that I can play is if I accept the rules as you've laid them down. And what I'm saying is I reject your category. Men. I reject the idea that you know, discrepancies between groups of people is you know, sort of inherently that that is inherently evil. That's absolutely ridiculous. So I think you know, to your point of you know, having statements and being clear and defining terms again. It's one of the things I try to do in the book is define terms so that people don't get caught in these you know, these these COFKA traps that are being set and because of that, I mean, you're absolutely right. The only way out of this is for us to be clear and define terms and make sure that people understand exactly what we're saying and exactly what we're not saying. There's three things I think that have to be recovered, and we've been trying to do this. One is a biblical metaphysic. We need to get back to the reality. This is God's world, He's created. This is one one. I mean, that's foundational. Second, we've touched on it here law and gospel. God has spoken about his world, the rules of his world, the rules of his house, his church, and for his creatures who bear his image. And the third is the lordship of Christ. That Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth, and that all other authority has been delegated by Him for him. If we can recover those three things and start thinking biblically in those three areas, I think the foundation will emerge on which we must build to do exactly what you're describing has to be done. Amen, somebody offering play. Yeah, well, I mean, but this is why you wrote the book, this is why we started the Institute of Public Theology, this is why we've been trying to hammer the things we've been hammering the last few years. It founders ministries, and. By God's grace, He's empowering us and strengthen us to keep moving forward. I'm looking forward to the next several years to seeing how God will continue to lead. And this conversation is important because you know, we talked we were talked about this earlier. This is not just a race thing, and so i'm the people that are going to be against wokeness. But then character even the guys that are against wokeness and characterize it as merely as a race thing, Well, you know, you're totally missing the whole point. And so we do need this bigger conversation we've just had because we're dealing with a it feels like a Geneva moment to me, I mean, it feels like a historic moment. I know everybody always thinks are in one, but it certainly I mean, look at what's happening in our culture. Look at the chaos that is going on around us, and so what's happening in this evangelical fault line is mapping on everybody knows it's mapping on to what's happening in our culture. And the answer, I think is deep, Like to the law and the profits, it's much deeper than just some superficial If we just get our guy into the White House, if we just get our right guy in the SBC, I mean, like the Ed Litton thing, here's the deal. Should Ed letting be removed from SBC, hands down, he's cake. There are hundreds of people that are ready to take his place who have the exact same presuppositions he does, right, and we need to realize that in exchange of bureaucrats does not a reformation make, and we must go deeper if we're actually going to deal with this very fault line. In other face, let's continue this conversation, let's wrap this one up and have another one. But before we do that, I just want to go back to the point that you're making, Jared. This idea of the significance of this moment, the magnitude of this moment. I think that's another fault Line. One of the things that I'm seeing is that a way to identify where people are on this, at least one way is the people who say that this is a historic moment and the other people who say it's a fat, fat Yeah, I agree, you. Know, putting their mask on to go anywhere. It's just a fad. And and I think what a lot of people are doing. And I think a lot of those people who who get this and who for the sake of relationships have tried to, you know, play both sides against the middle. One of the ways that they're doing that is by downplaying it and saying, no, this is just a fad. And those guys over there who are railing against it, you know, they're overreact extremists. Yeah, yeah, I agree with the man. It's whistling in the dark and they're hoping that it's not true. Well, this has been a great conversation. Hey, we want to give away an autographed copy of fault Lines. So if you will follow Founders Ministries and iopt and Body Balkam Ministries on social media and share this episode, then we will enter you in a drawing and we'll select somebody to send an autograph copy of fault Lines to body. Thanks for being with us, and let's have another conversation to talk about. Where to from here? Part two? Yeah, what do we do