The Progressive churches of Christ

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Will here. I'm here joined by Joe and Jack Wilke. Really excited about this, this week's episode and next week's episode as well is we're kind of doing a two episode arc here previewing kind of the idea of the Church of Christ on the left, kind of the more progressive side. And then next week we'll be looking at the Church of Christ on the other side. The maybe the lean, the leaning too far right side of things. And so we're just going to get into a lot of that. I'm going to let Jack intro it mostly. I did want to say since we're as we're getting closer to Christmas time, getting closer, closer to the holidays. If you're like me and tend to procrastinate Christmas shopping a bit. The good news is the Focus Press store, there's still the sale going on. Jack, correct me if I'm wrong, it is 25% off. Is that correct? Of just. [00:00:54] Speaker B: No, that was Black Friday but it is normal sales now. So most items have some kind of discount taken my books, Brad's books, Joe was books or Joe's book, Will's books however, but Joe has a couple books. Yeah, the Devo book. So yeah, I'm in a little bit of everything that really count you contributed. [00:01:10] Speaker A: So focus press.org shop though, right? [00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:01:14] Speaker A: So check those out. They make again make for great gifts specifically the devotional books are really good stocking stuffers and gifts if you're looking to help somebody grow spiritually. So yeah, just encourage you to check that out as we get into the Christmas season. And so yeah, with that Jack, I am going to go ahead and hand it over to you here as we're kind of starting once again this two episode arc of the Church of Christ that leans left, the progressive side. And kind of obviously we want to kind of tear that apart and talk about why that's not a good thing and kind of maybe ask some, some open ended questions here for discussion and the next week we'll get into the other side. But Jack, with this week specifically focusing on the left side, the progressive side, what all did you want to bring up at least for introduction to this episode to kind of give people an idea of where we're headed with this? [00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think most people have a sense of the spectrum that's out there. If you ever traveled and looked up the local church of Christ and went there and maybe you walked in and there's a piano on Stage or a woman preaching or you walked in and there was no kitchen in the building. There was whatever it may, you know, hellfire and brimstone pounding the pulpit over some, you know, minor issue or whatever the case may be. Like it could be anything at most of. I think we're going to grant that there's a giant broad spectrum and most of the churches probably fall in a 70 to 80% along the spectrum and we'll call it left right just for ease, you know, of simplicity. People kind of know what that means. Progressive versus old school. Or what we'll talk about next week is that side of it. But there are kind of extreme ends and I mean like really extreme ends. Like pro LGBT and as I said, women. Women in minist and the look exactly like community church with the rock band on stage, things like that. And then all the way again to the other side. I will make a note. The non institutional folks, we've had some requests for an episode on that. I'm just woefully ignorant about it. We're not really going to touch that. We would like to research it and get to it at some point. That will not be part of this two episode arc because I don't really know where to map them on this left right thing or other. And so we're going to just stick to progressive and we need a term for. For next week. So you guys be working on that. But yeah, the, the progressive side of it. Now I want to start off by. I know a number of them. I've read some of them or watched some of their stuff to get a grasp of it. Give them some credit because the rest of the episode is going to be where we disagree and the. Where we see the excesses are and where things go wrong. You see a heavy grace emphasis and again I think this goes wrong. But I think they don't want to sit in the judgment seat of seat of God and condemn people and stuff like that to where they want to make sure God's love and grace are heavily emphasized. That's really good. Yes, it goes too far in a lot of different ways. And so there's that side of it. I think they get some things right, some of their critiques right about the hardline stances they see on the other side. Critiques that I would share. But as with a lot of things, they. They see the problems but their solutions I don't think are good. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Well, it's an overcorrection. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly it. So yeah, good diagnosis, wrong prognosis wrong, whatever the term is. I shouldn't be talking medical terms. So, yeah, that kind of gives us the intro of where we're going to go with this. Again, I do want to give them some credit on those things, even though, as I said, the 95% of this episode are going to be the ways we aren't giving them credit, the things we disagree with and. And such. But I think you guys know what I'm talking about, the kind of churches we're talking about, the kind of congregations and leadership and just the ways that it manifests. So let's go ahead and get into that a little bit first. The universities, I think, are some of the easiest ways to map this out. Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU. As Dr. Brad has been dealing with, I think Harding, you can kind of start to. They've. They have. [00:05:16] Speaker A: Careful now. [00:05:17] Speaker B: It's kind of funny. For a long time you had kind of them and maybe Oklahoma Christian and a few others in the middle. And then, I don't know, Freed, Hardeman, and I'm drawing a blank on where's Faulkner. Yeah. And there's Heritage. Heritage Christian, you know, so there's a few of those more towards the right side of things. But you will find some really wild stuff at Pepperdine University, at Abilene Christian University, beliefs about the Bible and about cultural issues as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, they, they've had to deal with those things of what are we going to do about LGBT issues? Same thing with Lipscomb and, you know, creation, evolution stuff and the inspiration of the scriptures, things like that. And so the universities help map. You map those things out. And so a lot of times you can trace if a guy came from a church or came from a school and as the preacher for a church, kind of where that leads. And so that just as we're mapping it out a bit. Yeah, you guys add what you want to. To that part of it. [00:06:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I find that so interesting. Like, you can tell the leanings and you. We used to get into this with Bear Valley. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:25] Speaker C: You get the preaching schools and all. That's a liberal preaching school. And the competition. Yeah, yeah, the competition. And so you start throwing them out and such. And, and so I think we like to do that with our universities, but there is a legitimacy to that of like, if the guy did graduate from, let's say a. People may get upset about Lipscomb, but I think that's pretty far down Pepperdine, definitely. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:45] Speaker A: There's no question about Lipscomb now. [00:06:46] Speaker C: Yeah. At this point, I think Everybody's pretty, I would hope everybody's on the same page that Lipscomb is pretty, pretty progressive. But you know that this person is going to be more open minded. So Jack, to your point with some of these and we'll get into the churches here in a second. But like the good part is they are open minded where Church of Christ is not exactly known for open minded. The problem is they're so open minded that their brain falls out. There is a difference. There's a balance to be had on the progressive scale of like that's what we do. We think deeper, we want to ask questions. And so we've been labeled as progressive because we do some of the same things. We do align with some of that going, hey, why do we do this and why is this a tradition and why is this, you know, we're willing to ask questions and so sometimes and why we want to be very clear on this. Sometimes the mere asking questions gets you labeled as a progressive. And I don't, I think there is a difference in that. I think they have taken especially the, the Abilene Christians and, and the Peppermints and such. They were very open minded and willing to ask those questions and then they just let fly and it went way off the rails and we want to make sure we're not there which we'll parse out. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Well, the differentiating factor for me is like if every time you're just asking the question or just asking a question if every time your answer ends up the more progressive side. Yeah, there's not a lot of, you know, coincidence going on there. Of oh, that just happens to be the correct side every time. But like, and not to necessarily obviously, you know, we all three of us believe that, you know, that we, our opinions are correct. I mean we wouldn't believe them if we didn't believe that they were correct. And so I don't want to necessarily compare us to them. But like I would say the difference with us is we've asked questions. Sometimes we'll come down on maybe this is not the right way to go and maybe it is the right way to go. You know, tradition versus more progressive. And when I say progressive I'm talking like breaking away from maybe what we would consider to be man made traditions. I feel like the three of us and a lot of the, there's a lot of people out there as well in the church. Christ like this as well can come down on both sides. Whereas Joe, what you're talking about again. Well, I'm, we're just Asking questions. We just want to ask the tough questions. And then it always ends up every time being progressive, progressive, progressive. Like that can't be the solution every time. And so to me, that's the differentiating factor there is. And that's why I think these schools also, just to stick to the schools for a second, tend to drift. It's very rarely does it seem to be a very hard, fast. [00:09:00] Speaker C: Wow. [00:09:00] Speaker A: They, you know, overnight they, they turn li. Liberal or progressive, but more so a decision here, decision there. They asked a tough question here and it led to this. And you know, before you know it, five, six, ten years down the road, you look up and like, oh, Lipscomb used to be really solid. Now they've got women up doing, you know, leading in chapel. They've got people in their Bible department teaching that the Bible's not inspired. And, you know, obviously that applies to Harding as well as we discussed. And so, yeah, that, that would be my contribution to the, to this point is just asking questions does not make you progressive. What does make you progressive is if you go the progressive route every single time you ask the question. [00:09:35] Speaker C: And what is the, what is the driving factor here? I think numbers is a big one. Like for the universities, it's going to be more money from, from donors, and it's going to be more people coming to your school because for some, take something like Pepperdine, man, they have a gorgeous, gorgeous campus here in Malibu. Like, that's incredible. It's beautiful. Guess who you're going to attract in Malibu, California? You're not going to get the bastions of the faith. You're going to get progressive Californians. And so what are you going to do? You're going to align yourself with them. You're going to find your ideological shift going that direction. And like you said, well, you ask questions. But what's at the basis of them asking questions? Why do they ask the questions in the first place? Is it to draw closer to God? Is it to come to a better knowledge of the faith? Or are there underlying things? And I think this is what you get in churches, which is how is it that every single time a church starts to decline in numbers, they start asking questions and rethinking instruments? They start rethinking. [00:10:26] Speaker A: We've restudied it, right? [00:10:27] Speaker C: We've restudied it. Like, that's very convenient. This is because all of a sudden you wanted to restudy to draw closer to God or you started to see the shift in, in numbers and you got a little freaked or a little spooked. And you decided to do something about it. So I don't know. To me, that's a big one. [00:10:41] Speaker B: I disagree that it's a numbers thing. I could see, like a Pepperdine that they. That's going to be kind of their pool to draw from. I think what you've seen, and I know from people on campus with stories of a couple of these that we talked about, are a little more central. They present as being biblically solid, you know, biblically conservative or whatever to the parents and in their recruiting efforts. And then the kids get on campus and, oh, you know, here's this woman preaching this week, like. And so because they know financial people are going to send their kids here, things like that. We're going to. And so they're kind of playing both sides a little bit on that. That kind of thing. And so I don't think it's purely numbers. I do believe there is an ideological belief there. I. The harshest. Not harshest, but, like, the most difficult reading of it you could have is just the praise of men. Like, these are things the culture wants us to, you know, be more egalitarian and just compromise on all kinds of things. So we will. And so there's that side of it. The other. One other thing I'm going to add is academic Christianity drifts that way. I mean, this has been something that's been. I mean, Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism 100 years ago on people in the academic spheres who were trying to undermine God's creative acts, you know, undermining the authority of the Scripture, undermining all kinds of things like that. And. And so the more you study and bring those into schools, these things come out. So. Sorry, go ahead, Will. Sorry. [00:12:04] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Well, there's a long. Go ahead. [00:12:07] Speaker C: No, no, I'm just curious why you think that is, because I think that's very much in line with the. The idea of this episode with progressivism. You do see that in, you know, higher education, you see these solid preachers, they go on to get their Master's. Maybe they're going to get their PhD. And all of a sudden their PhD thesis is on something that, you know, what. You know, Matthew didn't actually write Matthew or something along those lines. Right. The synoptic problem and things like that. And so they start coming down on these real weird. Well, we all know Genesis. That's not exactly how it happened. It's more along that. Jordan Peterson like, it's just archetypes and things like that. Why. Why does it have to drift? [00:12:44] Speaker B: That Way, again, I think the simplest explanation is praise of men like, oh, you're not one of those people who believes God actually created the world by speaking it into existence, Right? You know, like there's, there's that side of it and. Yeah, go ahead, Will. [00:12:58] Speaker A: I was gonna say almost an intellectual intimidation factor in the sense of we. I typically think of that in the evolutionary creation terms where, like evolutionists will, you know, tell college students. I mean, all the smart people believe this. So I could very much see that as well. Joe, to answer your question of, hey, once you get to this level of book knowledge and academic smarts and all this, the real smart biblical theologians actually believe this stuff and almost in a, an odd group think type of, type of environment. And that, that might be pure conjecture there, but it is, it is interesting, Joe, like you bring up that it just happens to be all the people that kind of continue up the theology academic ladder, so to speak, end up going that, that route. And so I don't know if there is a group think element, a once again kind of biblical intellectual intimidation aspect. But one of the things. Did you have a, did you have a theory on that? [00:13:49] Speaker C: Go for it. I do, but. No, go for it, Go for it. [00:13:51] Speaker A: No, go ahead, give your theory and then I'll ask my question. [00:13:54] Speaker C: I think when you start with the premise of I have to come up with something new for a thesis, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna view it from a different standpoint. I'm gonna, you know, I really want to dig into this thing. Like, there's a lot of, as it talks about in First Corinthians, he came with kind of the base things of the world. Like there's nothing special about the gospel that, you know, the son of God came to die on a, on a tree. There is not a whole lot of wisdom from the Greeks. And I think that's where you start to blend the wisdom of the Greeks and you really want to like, outsmart yourself in this professing to be wise that became fools. Romans 1, right. So I think the longer you have to just stew on, well, give me something that's slightly different for the sake of being different. I think that's. No, I don't think that's all of it, but I think that's an element. [00:14:35] Speaker A: You can even see that in, in sermons or in preaching within the church of Christ. And I've had to catch myself of, like, this is a basic text. Not basic. This is a well known text. I just need to preach what it says and not try to come up with some new illustration, new thing. But I, I completely agree with you. You hear that in sermons of like, sounds bad, but like, okay, you're just trying too hard at, at that point. Like, that's not what that says. You're, you just had too much time in your office to sit there and think about how, what new way you could present that particular passage or whatever. And so that's an interesting point. The question I wanted to ask is we continue to try to hopefully describe what we're talking about here. Just in case that there's people who are maybe still unfamiliar with it. I was going to ask you guys, I put down a list of like, what are the characteristics of this progressivism on. In the Church of Christ? Like the Church of Christ left whatever word we want to use. What are some characteristics? So I'll kind of give my list and then if you, if I'm leaving anything out blatantly, just as we once again continue to try to add color to this image of what specifically we're talking about. But one of the ones, the one, one of the ones that I thought of and I guess I'm kind of going away from the schools and now focusing more on congregations and specifically church leaders and prominent voices being overly critical of, quote, unquote, too religious or pharisaical Christians. [00:15:49] Speaker B: That's. [00:15:49] Speaker A: To me, one big characteristic is the criticism. If there's a big major issue, the criticism is usually directed at the too, you know, people that are being too pharisaical or too legalistic is another word that's used. Being quick to defend the world is another one that I had and we've talked about that before when we did our kind of Olympic controversy episode of like, they're very quick to jump to the defense of the world and a lot quick and a lot less quick to jump to the defense of the church I put on there. They, in some cases can have a oh, well, let's worry about more important things type of attitude and almost kind of like a, an air of, oh, you're actually worried about, you know, what instruments you can use or you're, you're really worried about if a woman can get up and teach. Like we have more, let's just teach Jesus, like that kind of attitude. I'm probably not really wording that very well, but I feel like that's one. And then finally just I put an imbalanced desire to stay relevant with the culture. I think it's probably a noble thing to try to stay Relevant with the culture in the sense of like knowing what's going on, knowing how to reach people, knowing what your people are dealing with. But I think a lot of it can get very imbalanced in the sense of like you're not trying to stay relevant to try to appeal to them or to have the culture think you're cool or that you're acceptable and that kind of thing. So those were just some of the things that I put down. I didn't, I didn't know putting you on the spot here. But if you guys have any thing to add as far as what are some of the common characteristics of, whether it be church leadership, again, prominent voices within the church of Christ that lean this direction, things that you would add to that characteristic list, you'll hear a. [00:17:18] Speaker C: Heavy emphasis about people and specifically the loss, in my opinion. I do think that that's one of those. I have no problem thinking about people reaching out to people, thinking about the loss. But you see this in churches where it's like, you know what? We decided we were just not even going to worship on Sunday morning. We were just going to go serve the community. We're going to go out there and. And we just thought. [00:17:38] Speaker A: Because it's about the people, right? [00:17:40] Speaker C: Correct, correct. It's about the people. We are going to offer communion to those out on the street and kind of bring them in the way Jesus might. The, the. He gets us commercials. Right. So there's a heavy emphasis on people, not as much on doctrine, because doctrine can drive people away. Religion is, you know, wow, that, that people don't resonate as much with religion. [00:17:57] Speaker A: Well, Jesus Christ, the ones that Jesus criticized the most was religious people. You hear that all the time, of course. [00:18:04] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. He didn't like religion. Jesus was about relationships. Well, that's not true at all. They were just practicing a man made religion that they added and added and added to the text that, that he was obviously coming up against with the Pharisees. But you do see that quite a bit where they do want to make it more relational based. And once again, there's not necessarily a problem with it. This is why you'll see in the progressive churches, they do more for homeless population. They do more for, for those in the community with coat drives and, or clothing drives and you know, food drives and things like that. They do more for people than just about anybody, which is incredible. Meanwhile, the doctrinal shift is taking place in the church where they start to make it more about people. And when you think about people, all the Time. The people actually would like to see xyz. The people would like to. To not have you preach on some of the real tough things. The marriage, divorce, remarriage. We don't really want to preach on those things because we're about people, we're about relationships that'll break relationships. So relationships, there's a lot of them, but they're shallow. It's kind of like having a, you know, something a mile wide and an inch. Inch deep. That's kind of the relationships is they bring in a ton of people. But how deep are the relationships when you can't challenge them and when it's not grounded on strong doctrine? Does that make sense? That's. That's one I'd add, Jack. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's really funny that the progressive wing of the churches of Christ look pretty well map pretty closely to the progressive stuff you see in denominations, community churches, whatever it may be. Whereas the right wing of the churches of Christ is almost like its own unique animal. Like it's its own way of reading the Bible and all that. Whereas this is just that general drift to all the things you guys talked about. And it might be a church where they don't dress up because what. It makes the loss feel uncomfortable. And we want to make sure everyone feels comfortable when they come in. [00:19:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Like that's something you see a lot of. And so things like that. And it's funny everything we listed and just go back and listen to our critical theory episode on how to know when a church is captured. Because you can see like it's always the elevation of the marginalized and it's always the making sure that everybody's comfortable, that everybody knows that they're welcome and things like that. And yeah, everyone is welcome, but there's also requirements and there's doctrine, there's things that have to be upheld and standards that God has. And it's a constant lowering of the bar to reach more and more and more people. And so in that sense, what Joe was talking about a numbers game, but I don't. I don't think it's a numbers game. I again give them credit for the compassion for people kind of thing, but. [00:20:36] Speaker C: Well, at what point does that. I don't mean to cut you off, but I think that's where you're going. At what point does that shift? That's what I'm curious about. Compassion is fantastic. And I think if I was to. We'll talk about this next week. If I was to really have a Problem with the right side of the church, it's that there is like zero compassion. Cut you off the knees if you ever sneeze wrong. Whereas this is compassion. That's fantastic and that's great. Where's the line, though, where it's compassion to the point of fault, where now it's. It's too much? I'm curious because as we're talking, you got the. We talked about the universities in the churches. I don't know that I'd call out any specific churches because the saddlebacks and things like that, like everybody's going to know Rick Warren and such. Yeah. The. In the denominational world, they're easier to spot. The obviously, the Joel Osteen is very progressive church. Christ, they're a little harder to spot. And yet they are out there. At what point has that compassion, which we do stand for, we do think is fantastic? At what point does that turn to progressive? [00:21:34] Speaker B: Hey, guys, I wanted to tell you about our new sponsor, the Quarterly. Starting its ninth year, the Quarterly is, according to several readers, the best magazine in the brotherhood. Featuring a wide range of writers, the Quarterly is a fantastic mix of encouragement, edification, education and enjoyment. The latest issue features both sides of the eating in the church building debate, a detailed look at the events while Jesus was in the womb, the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian, a formerly classified FBI article examining how Moses and Joshua used spies and what principles can be gleaned from it. And that's just barely scraping the surface. Digital subscriptions are free, and the print subscription costs less than a family trip to McDonald's. To subscribe or download previous issues, just go to cobbpublishing.com quarterly and look for the Focus Press ad in the latest issue. [00:22:23] Speaker A: I'm not. I'm not necessarily using the alliteration here on purpose, but I think when compromise takes place is when the compassion has gone too far. When you are compromising either. Obviously. Obviously. Doctrine that I would say goes without saying compromising there. But even just compromising. Well, you know, we were really compassionate to this, to this family. And they come, they're here once every two weeks. And, you know, I'm. We're just really grateful that they're here and like, not really calling anybody to a higher standard, not saying, hey, we're really grateful that you're here for two weeks. What are you doing the other two weeks? Why are you not here everywhere? Like, I almost always, if the compassion is going to go that far, to where there's compromise taking place in standards. Compromise taking place in how a church functions amongst the members, church discipline, like, I don't know if that's answering your question, Joe, but to me, that's what you really have to watch out for. Is or is your leadership compromising on things? Are they kind of letting stuff slide just for the sake of. Well, because you look at Jesus in the New Testament, Jesus was very compassionate. Jesus didn't compromise, though. Jesus was very compassionate towards the woman caught in adultery that everybody always wants to jump to. And he told her, go and sin no more. He didn't compromise, but he was still compassionate. So I do think you can. You can do both. The problem is, once again, the line generally gets crossed, in my opinion. Jack, what are your thoughts? [00:23:42] Speaker B: Well, yeah, with that, I mean, all we're talking about here and next week we'll be talking about is balancing truth and love. And the problem is the other side. We're going to talk about where they. They really hammer truth, but they don't really. I would disagree with how they get to truth sometimes. Like some of the truths they hold with this one, they hammer love. I disagree with the way they apply love. I think some of the ways there are things like you. They found this out, whether it's. They talk about, like in the national parks, those signs, don't feed the bears. Don't feed, you know, whatever animals, and certain animals, you will make them dependent on you. They won't be able to get their own food and they'll starve to death when the tourists aren't there. So don't do that. And it's. There's a term for it of like compassion that's, that's not harmful. Compassion, whatever. The. There's a. An anthropological, sociological term for that of trying to help people in ways that end up ultimately actually hurting them because you don't have truth on your side. And so what Willa talked about earlier, really downplaying, I don't think Jesus would care about dot, dot, dot, you know, it's just about loving people. It's just about, you know, really embracing one another and things like that. Like, you just. I had somebody comment this to me the other day on my site about, like, well, all the Bible tells us is to love. You know, the only thing that matters, you don't even need the rest of the New Testament is just love one another said, all right, you're gonna have a hard time defining love one another without the rest of the New Testament. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Like, I remember the reason I thought of that, Jack, is you had posted a question oh, it was about. This was back two years ago. We were doing the thing deeper episode on like, should Christians celebrate Christmas, religious holidays? You asked something along the lines of, you know, what are your thoughts on this? Should you do it? Should you not? And somebody commented, I'm just worried about preaching Jesus or something like that in just the most kind of above it all arrogant way that they could. And that's kind of what I'm talking about. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:25:32] Speaker A: That doesn't mean we don't get into the details on this. [00:25:35] Speaker B: Right? [00:25:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Your point? Well, I think is right on the compromise. The problem is they may not see this compromise. So take something, for instance, big one going around. I think we talked about this. I know we talked about it a lot off air. I can't remember how much we talked about it on air. Lord, suppers for everybody, Communion. We should just open communion for everybody. To me, that is a progressive shift. That is now they, I would look at it and go, compromise. To your point, Will, I think that's just a compromise. [00:26:00] Speaker A: But they don't. [00:26:01] Speaker C: You're saying they don't. Yeah, that's the problem. They don't. They're going to look at it as the more loving thing. They're also going to look at it as. It's a, it's a different interpretation of scripture. Rather than seeing it as a closed thing for the believers, which I think is pretty obvious personally in the text. They don't see it that way. And so I would agree that I'd look at it as compromise. What would you say to the average person in their church though, where they present this? They're not presenting church like, hey guys, we're going to compromise on this one. That's not at all how they do it. They're going to present it as the more loving thing. We've studied this. Obviously, academia matters a lot to the progressive churches. And so they can always call back on academics who believe, who agree with him. So you're the average person going to this church and boy, they're bringing out all the big guns and boom, boom, boom, this guy believes it and this guy says it. And I was doing the study in the Greek and you go, I don't know how to. I don't know Greek. So boy, that sounds legit to me. How would you. I'm putting you guys on the spot with this. But this is, I guess the, the biggest question because we're, I don't think the preacher class likes us a ton. We're talking to the average person in these Churches, what would you say to them? How do they recognize when they've been in angelic? We, as you said, we've already seen the church captured one. We've already done that one with critical theory. But like, what advice would you guys give them for understanding when their church is going progressive? We look at it and say, well, it's compromise. How do they know if it's compromised? Especially depending on how it's presented. Does that make sense? That question makes sense. [00:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:23] Speaker C: Spot a little bit with that. [00:27:24] Speaker B: But I think one of the things that you see is, well, hey, the Bible says this. Well, actually here's my 20 page paper on why not. And as I said, you know, on an episode a few months ago, they one side oversimplifies the complicated, the other side over complicates the simple. And these are simple things that. The same thing with, with women's roles. Right? Of. Well, I know it says women keep silence in the church or keep silent in the churches, and she's not to teach or have authority over man. But if you consider the cultural context. [00:27:57] Speaker A: Perform some mental gymnastics. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And let me, let me give you 30 minutes of lecture on why that three second verse doesn't mean what it says. It means like, no, that's okay. I'm gonna go with Paul on this one. [00:28:09] Speaker A: It's. [00:28:09] Speaker B: It's okay. And so you see that happening and it's always. But then when you stand against it, you look like the meanest guy in the world because. And that's, that's how that is. Their incentive structure is to look like the nice guy is to look like the accepting guy. And that's why this, there's no brakes on this thing as it keeps going more and more and there's more acceptance, more acceptance, one generation after another. And it's really interesting, Ruble Shelley, a guy who's one of the big names in all this, Lipscomb roots and all that has come out. There was discussion recently on the LGBT stuff and he was drawing the line, he's egalitarian, women preachers, all this stuff, like gender stuff, he's been horrible on. And he's come out now to basically with all of the fruit of his labor of all these years has turned into this. And he's like, well, hold on, pump the brakes on this. We gotta, you know, not that far. Like that's just the natural result of. [00:29:04] Speaker A: What you don't get that option. [00:29:06] Speaker B: Right, right. Like your ideology was just love people and let's get this stuff out. You know, like, let. Why Are we arguing over this? Like Will brought up earlier and stop drawing lines. Now I gotta draw a line. Like, hang on, you can't play both sides of that fence. And so it's very interesting to see the chickens come home to roost on this kind of thing of. Look what you did. Like you, you, you insisted it was mean to pull out the Bible and say where's the line? And then it went too far for your personal feelings and now you want to do that to other like no, no, you don't get to do that. [00:29:40] Speaker C: When you said the, the mean, you got to be willing to put up with the fact they're going to see you as me. The other one that comes to mind on that is they will view you as ignorant. You're the, the redneck who can't just accept what, what the Greeks say. [00:29:51] Speaker B: Trust the experts all over again, man. [00:29:53] Speaker C: Exactly. That's what it goes back to. That's exactly what was going through my mind is trust the experts, trust the, trust the academics here. And so the other one that is you talked about in the church, beware of the well, is that what it says? Type of thing which sounds very much like Satan in the garden. Is that really what God said? [00:30:08] Speaker B: Did God really say that? [00:30:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Did God really say it? But the other thing is, in my opinion, I don't know how you guys feel about this one. I think a church who relies too much on the original languages. I struggle with that one. [00:30:21] Speaker A: Oh, that's a hot take. That's. [00:30:22] Speaker C: I struggle with that one. I look, I'm not a Greek scholar. I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I've taken six semesters of Greek at this point and I barely remember any of them or barely remember any of it. I am not a scholar in the least. I know enough to be dangerous, as they say. I think churches that are willing to go back to that time and again and go, well, let's look at the Greek. You know, you see something like, well, I don't know, elders with, with believing children. And we go, well, okay, actually the Greek says, and so we try to twist her. One woman man. Right? That's what the Greek says. It's a one woman man situation. It's not actually a guy who's married to a wife. It's just a guy who doesn't flirt. And we can see that from the Greek, like can we trust our, our English Bible? Can we look at it and get come from that? But the more that they're going to rely on the Greek, especially as it twists what I'm reading in the English text. I'm very wary of that, very wary of that. [00:31:11] Speaker A: Here's what's interesting to me about that though. I see something very similar. Save it for next week. On the other side, that is true of you over reliance on the, the second passive tense and this and this, that and the other thing that nobody really understands except somebody who took four semesters of Greek and that's. [00:31:30] Speaker C: Trust me, that didn't help. [00:31:32] Speaker A: But you know, I do think, I do think you're right, Joe, that I think on the progressive side maybe that that's something that is. [00:31:39] Speaker C: It's on both sides dangerous. [00:31:40] Speaker A: But I see it on both. [00:31:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's an appeal to authority. It goes back to Jack's thing and it's appeal to a higher authority where the average person goes, guys, I can't even understand that. So it should be 3D to a 2D picture. It doesn't change the picture, it just gives a little depth to it. And unfortunately I think you see in progressive churches it takes a 2D picture. Instead of turning it 3D, it changes the picture completely and they go, well, hold on a second, that's, that's not what I'm reading. But well, I guess they're right. I mean this guy, he, he's got his PhD in Greek and so he knows what it's at. So basically you come away with a lot of people who go, I can't know the Bible as well as that person. So I'll just trust the experts. I, Yes, I have a real problem with the trust the experts. I do think it can be seen and understood from everybody. Yeah, the person who knows Greek and Hebrew will get a little extra tidbits along the way, no doubt. But Jack, I see you smiling over there some curious. I just, I mean I'm worried about it. [00:32:30] Speaker B: So there's an old preacher line about the original languages should be like your underwear. It's good to have them there for support but you don't need to show them off all the time. Yeah, I've heard that one. And it's, that's a good way of putting it. Like you can get something out of it. But yeah, the other thing is the counter would be. And we got other stuff we need to get into here about the hermeneutics and things like that. But somebody's going to listen to this and be like, man, you guys are just anti intellectual. You just dumb down. Read it. We'll read what it says, says what it means, you know, like that, that's good enough for me. You know, Joe and I obviously both went through preaching school, got some level of education and so we're not totally anti intellectual. But that's going to be the charge on this, of wow, so you're against using Greek, you're against using Hebrew, you're against the, the schools and the, you, you've critiqued the academics and things like that. So what would you say to that? To say maybe these people just know the Bible better than you and that's why you're not one of them and you've got all these problems with them. [00:33:29] Speaker A: I can go first, Joe, if you want. [00:33:31] Speaker C: Yeah, no, go for it. [00:33:33] Speaker A: I guess my response would be to understand the Bible to its fullest. Does every, did God expect every Christian to go through preaching school? Is that, is that an expectation? Like, if that's the line of reasoning, then it would stand to reason that, you know, to truly have the, the best, most closest to God, complete understanding of the Bible, you got to go through preaching school for and where. I think, and this is coming from somebody who did not go to preaching school or anything like that. I like the word support that you use in that analogy, Jack, is, I feel like that's what the languages are the most useful for and also the higher levels of education of when it comes to the historical, you know, the restoration church fathers, that kind of thing. Like, I think that stuff is really valuable as support, not as a fundamental way to understand the Bible. That is different than if you just picked it up and read it in a park, you know what I mean? And so that's, to me, what I feel like is the biggest difference there is. Yeah, you can, you can get a lot of support. You can gain a lot of maybe, you know, factual information, contextual things that maybe you would not get if you didn't have the higher levels of education. But if I take somebody who's never read the Bible before, give it, give them the Book of John or give them the Book of Romans and sit down with them in a, again in a, in a park outside and we read it together. I feel like that God, I feel, I feel like that is something that the Bible has been given to us as a way to where we do not have to have the PhD to understand what it's saying. Are there maybe some things that require a little bit deeper study? Of course, it's not like you're just going to know everything just by a simple reading of it, but I don't know if that answers your question. But that's kind of my thoughts on it. Joe, what would you have to add to that? [00:35:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not con, I'm not critiquing people going and getting their PhDs. As much as it may sound like that's the case. I'm not critiquing those in other Greek. We had Dr. Denny Petrillo on the podcast. I am a big fan of a lot of what he does. I think he is a fantastic guy and a fantastic Bible student, Bible scholar. He knows thousand times what I will know. I love to learn at his feet. Going through Bear Valley was a True Dan Owen. Dr. Dan Owen was another one. Just a, you know, they're true treasures and there's a lot of guys out there that are like that. I'm not against that. I think there's a place, time and place for those guys. Two things. First off this podcast is not for those guys if they want to listen, that's fantastic. We're talking to the average person who doesn't know that and trying to, not trying to let everybody know it's okay that you don't have the PhD. So that's the first point. The second point is we're specifically critiquing the doctrinal shift that almost, it's not always because those guys haven't shifted, but almost always comes specifically with modern academia. There's always that shift or almost always that shift that is, you know, well, all of a sudden they've rethought some things. That's what we're critiquing. And so if it takes a PhD for me to turn progressive, no thanks. I do have a problem with that. That's what I would say to those things. I'm not against people knowing it. I'm against those being used to combat or to weaponize. Yes, there's the term to weaponize against the average Christian who's just trying to do their best. Does that make sense? Jack, what are your thoughts? How do you answer that? [00:36:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it does make sense. I, I think we got at this a little bit earlier. The idea that sometimes people in the academic world don't understand the incentives on them to again come up with novel things to join the group, think things like that, like you don't advance. You hear those things about, oh well, all the peer reviewed science on, you know, says the climate change is happening. Like, you know why? Because they won't peer review stuff that disagrees. Like it's such an echo chamber. And I think there's missing that and so, like, you have to realize the limitations and sometimes the backwards incentives of academia. But that doesn't mean that higher learning is a bad thing. But as you said, you are looking at the fruit of it. And if it's somebody that's coming along going, actually, hey, guess what? 2,000 years of Christianity, we actually just figured out. Me and my buddies over at, you know, at the university, like, okay, hang on. The other thing is, you know that clip from Goodwill hunting? I'm not going to recommend the movie because of all the language, but there's the part where he's, you know, kind of going back and forth with the smart Alec guy and the, you know, there, whatever it may be, and the guy's quoting all kinds of political theory at him and he just starts quoting word for word the guy's argument for him. Like, yeah, yeah, I read that same book that you did, too. You see a guy go into one of these universities and come out and, oh, yeah, Genesis, it's a framework. Yeah. There's two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2. Yeah, I mean, this. Oh, yeah, it wasn't meant to be literal. It was ancient Near Eastern myth. Yeah, I read that one. Like, wow, amazing. I can't believe you came out and now you, the smartest man in the world, is parroting what every other person that came out of that factory says, like, you figured it out. Good for you, buddy. And so, and then they, boy, they'll pat themselves on the back. I got this. You know, I, I know we, we need this intellectualism in the church. Like, okay, pal, like, I read that too. And I somehow I didn't persuade every one of us. Like, you, again, you didn't solve 2000 years of Christian confusion here. And so that's my answer to that is kind of the predictability of it takes away from, from some of that. And again, the, the incentives of the academia. So let's go a different direction. The restoration heritage thing is something that we're going to deal with on both sides of this, of what do you do with. We're not beholding the Campbell and Stone and all the other guys that were, you know, the raccoon John Smiths and going back to David Lipscomb and all the influences down the years of the churches of Christ, however they play a part. And what I think is interesting this week and next is both sides claim to be the intellectual heirs of what those guys started. And this side of things says it's because the restoration movement began as a unity movement and to be a unity movement Means downplaying divisive issues. So are they right about that? [00:39:36] Speaker C: You can read Alexander Campbell and realize we disagree with him probably more today than people realize. Yes, he is our, you know, the father of this movement, Campbellites and things like that. He was willing to downplay certain doctrinal things that I don't think we would be willing to so as to. To be unified with other people. That is interesting when you start looking at that. That's why I don't think we can just follow. Obviously we're not just following one man other than Jesus, but they could easily make the case from that statement. Yeah, we are the ones that are following in the footsteps of that unity. We're going to downplay some of the doctrine. And honestly, he does make some good points. He does make points that we ourselves are struggling with today, especially concerning, we'll get into the hermeneutic, but especially concerning the hermeneutics of like, we can parse out so much where there's zero unity. And that is a big issue. So, yeah, as much as it's driving back to the Bible and that's what the other side we'll talk about next week is going to say back to the Bible. Back to bio, Back to Bible. True. But in his back to the Bible, he made a lot of room for being unified about things that we have massively split over. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Yeah, Joe, I mean, great thoughts there. I really don't have a ton to add. I think if you. And this is where I am going to, Joe, you just talk about back to the Bible. Back to the Bible. An honest reading of the New Testament tells you that that's not the case. As far as the. Well, maybe we'll, we'll bend a little bit here on doctrine for the sake of unity or maybe we'll, we'll again, to use the word compromise here. Jesus doesn't do that. Paul doesn't do that. Now what's interesting where we'll once again kind of preview next week a little bit, there are things that, that we are allowed to compromise on and kind of bend over or, you know, bend a little bit. And that is the opinion issues, the things that, that are not, you know, necessarily doctrinally primary, of primary importance. But this is where the disagreement will come in with those who are on the progressive side versus us who would obviously argue that we're not on the progressive side, which is they might look at something like women's roles or they might look at something like, I don't know, instruments or, you know, kind of the basic ones that we always talk about and view that as an opinion issue. And so, Jack, this is where I'm going to turn the question back to you and ask you essentially a question that we've kind of batted around here before, and that is, how do you draw the line? Because you say, well, is this something that the Church of Christ should kind of scale back, the emphasizing doctrine? And my answer to that is no. But the difference with people is going to be, well, what's doctrine? What is it specifically that we're allowed to compromise over versus what we're not allowed to compromise over? Obviously, the three of us would stand firmly on. You can't compromise on women being in the pulpit. That's just not an option. You can't compromise on. On having instruments in your worship. You can't compromise on, you know, what's the proper way to salvation and things like that. But that's where the difference of opinion comes in. So I'm gonna throw in a question back at you, I guess, but what thoughts would you have for that? [00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah, so the. The catchphrase that gets thrown around that goes all the way back to the beginning with these guys is the we're not the only Christians, but we're Christians only. And just kind of a broad. We're not going to hyphenate it. We're not going to add on. We're just Christians, and we're okay with all kinds of all stripes of Christians, Presbyterian, Baptist, whatever you are, with a few certain stipulations that we can all kind of find unity together. And Campbell, really, Alexander Campbell especially, wrote against how the creeds of the different churches, them really laying out their doctrinal views, had split Christendom into a million pieces, that it wasn't meant to be that way. So if we can just get a few different things that we agree on, we can kind of have this broad unity. That's the problem. The few different things you can agree on. And so he tried to lay out, here's what it needs to be, what those few things are. And I had a Presbyterian guy actually send me R.L. dabney, a Presbyterian minister from the 1800s, critique he had done of Campbell's Christian system at the time. And so it's very interesting to see what people thought of Campbell at the time and this whole unity movement thing. And I mean, Dabney just ripped into him. It was. The whole thing was like, this is a joke. This, you know, makes all these claims. And I think some of Dabney's Points are good. Some of them weren't as good. But one of the things he pointed out is this was supposed to be a unity movement. And in the first 30 years, they're the most fractured movement in, in all of Christendom. And that's what we're talking about here today. And so like the of. Of how it's gone in a very similar direction, you've got the purity spiral thing. And I think that in Dabney's point is this was baked in from the beginning. This was always going to happen. And so these progressive guys who are like, look, it's just a unity thing, it's a unity thing, they're parking themselves on. We're never going to go beyond a few doctrinal like half dues. But their incentive is to just make that list shorter and shorter and shorter to where almost anything goes. And you can't do that. And so the incentive in the other direction is to keep making the list longer and longer and longer, which we'll talk about next week. But again, just even in their own day, people were looking at it going, this isn't a unity movement. And so for us to kind of a historically read that back into it and basically to say, let's just keep it at a minimum to keep everybody happy, keep everyone connected, it wasn't that way from the beginning. Hey guys, Jack Wilkie here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate. Thanks again for listening. [00:45:13] Speaker A: I guess my question with all this, and we've touched around it, but I wanted to ask it directly is what is the primary motivation here? I think it'll be very interesting to ask that question for next week, but as far as for this week, Joe, you, I know you brought up numbers earlier, but overall, as far as this progressive movement goes, whether it is church leaders again, prominent voices in the Church of Christ, or just congregations in general, what is the motivation? What is the motivation to make the list shorter and shorter? Is the motivation just numbers? I don't necessarily think so. Is the motivation a just I, you know, really wanting to be accepted by the world, like, is there an insecurity there? I throw that around as well of like they just really want to be accepted by those who are, you know, it. Think about it. Somebody who's really conservative and strict on things, no matter, you know, Even outside of the church realms seems uncool. Like ah, that's not a very cool person to be around if they're really strict and kind of hard nosed about things. Even if you're talking again parents or like outside of the church and so trying to go the other direction. That's where you get these parents who I think they're insecure in their parenthood when they're trying to be buddies with their, with their kid and be the really cool parent. And like I'm just gonna let anything go. And I think a lot of that is based in insecurity as a parent. And so it might be a weird analogy to make there, but that's my question is, is this motivation driven by an insecurity about not being accepted by the world? Or like what, what are Yalls thoughts on that? [00:46:37] Speaker B: Reading it most charitably, I think it's. They just want to see as many people labeled Christian as possible and there is a positive way to take that. I obviously can go way too far really quick. Go ahead, Joe. [00:46:51] Speaker C: No, I 1000% agree with you. We talk about numbers in a bad way. Like they're just trying to fill the, you know, Philippines. No, not that way. As much as they're trying to bring in as many people as possible. When you lower the bar, you get a lot more people. You get a lot of people that look at it and go, man, I want to be part of that country club. Well, yeah, there's nothing really special about it all that much. [00:47:09] Speaker B: Well, it's not so much even so much numbers in the pews as it's at the judgment. You know, I want, I want to look at, look at it in such a way that the maximum amount of people are going to heaven, that I'm not writing anyone out of heaven that is should be in heaven. And so I'm not going to emphasize something that might split me from a brother who is going to be in heaven. And like I think there's good to that, that, that impulse there. But again, as I say, if it just goes unchecked in way too many cases. [00:47:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. I'm not saying it is about the numbers in the pew. I don't think people are that. Okay. There are a few that are that petty. I don't think most are. I think it is. We just want to see as many people become Christians as possible. And the way they see that happening is relationships. It is compassion, it is showing the loving parts of Jesus, which is great. It is fantastic. Okay, when do we get around to the doctrine. When do we get around to what Jesus actually required to take up your cross and die daily? When do we get to those parts? That's the part that is lacking in this. But yes, it is an attempt to bring people closer to Jesus. [00:48:05] Speaker A: I guess that's. That. That's what's always frustrating to me, doing a Bible study right now with somebody who's Baptist, kind of a group setting type of thing. And man, every, every time we get to a section where I'm like, okay, I really kind of want to know what this, what this guy thinks, like, what he believes. I try to ask a very specific question about. So what do you think this means specifically? Like, when Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, lord, Lord will enter, but he does the will of my father. Like, what, what specific people do you think he's talking about? And man, it is like nailing Jello to a wall to get these. To get some of these. And of course, that's a denomination. It's not within the church of Christ, but obviously within the dominational world to get people to say, no, I don't. I think that person would be going to hell, for instance, or I think that person is outside of the realm of being a follower of Christ. To Yalls point that that is. It is very difficult to get somebody who is leaning progressive and continue to go that direction to say that about somebody. There's no specifics. There's. It's all very generic and vague. And that, to me is one of the more frustrating sides of this when it comes to really trying to get anywhere when you're having these conversations is they want to keep everything very zoomed out, generic and vague, and never, as you just said, Joe, get very specific into, okay, what did you just actually teach about X, Y and Z? I don't know if that makes sense. But yeah, look at, look at Billy Graham. [00:49:21] Speaker C: Look at, look at the sinner's prayer. When you go to that side. How many people said the sinner's prayer thinking they're perfectly fine. It had mass appeal, a widespread audience that was willing to commit themselves to Christ and ask Jesus into their heart and all these things, which is complete bunk. It's not true in the least. Like, it doesn't work. That's not how one comes to salvation. But when you do make the bar that low and when you do make it a widespread thing that you can reach the masses, man, you got a lot of people that committed their lives to Christ. And I would bet there are some people that were at a Billy Graham about to say concert, but you know, at a revival, and maybe they asked you to sit at heart and that gave them the spark that eventually led toward their baptism. I. I have no doubt that that would be the case. And so you could look at it and say that was bad and how it happened, but maybe there are some people that were true seekers that came out of it. But at the end of the day, I think this is progressivism, which is somebody may be able to come out of progressivism and find the true Jesus in this, but how many people are going to stay stuck in never really knowing Jesus? Because they only know the. The parts like the sinner's prayer, the parts that are presented to them. So that's the biggest issue in that. Jack, I know you wanted to get into. I don't know if you have some thoughts on that you wanted to get. [00:50:32] Speaker B: Into with some of this that we're talking about in the. The restoration thing and the unity movement and all that. Have you guys seen the. Rick, actually, he's a preacher in Texas with the chairs. That video. [00:50:44] Speaker A: I've heard you talk about it. I've never official. [00:50:45] Speaker C: Never gonna give you up, Rick. Rolling. [00:50:47] Speaker B: Yeah, not. Not Astley, actually. So this guy preaches in the Fort Worth area at. Whoa. I don't think it's called the biggest church of Christ in America anymore because they are now the Hills Church instead of Richland Hills Church of Christ or whatever. But he had a video that's went semi viral, I guess, for the churches of Christ and where he was talking about that impulse to keep adding on requirements to what it means to be a Christian, adding on first level issues. And he starts with a, you know, a couple of chairs, a couple guys that can sit together and oh, yeah, yeah, we're brothers. [00:51:18] Speaker C: Well, that. [00:51:19] Speaker B: Oh, you believe in this? Well, what about that? Oh, you believe in this. And it gets down the line to the guy that doesn't believe in Bible classes, doesn't believe in multiple cups, doesn't believe in hand clapping, doesn't believe in, you know, this whole list of things. And now that he's kind of separated himself from everyone else on the list, and it's like, you have a good point there. That there it can be hyper critical. Where do you draw the line? His chairs only move rightward in the speech. What about leftward? And okay, are you okay with women preachers? Are you okay with the band? You know, big band production on stage? Kind of. [00:51:54] Speaker A: That's what I'm getting at. The specifics yeah, specifics. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Answer something like, tell me where your line is. And as you say, nailing jello to the wall. It's very hard. [00:52:02] Speaker C: Okay. [00:52:02] Speaker B: LGBT people, like, if somebody comes in, you're gonna. A trans man. Are you gonna say that? A man who says he's a woman? Are you going to go along with that? Is that somebody who's going to be in your church? A woman who says she's a man? Can she be an elder in your church because she's a man? Like, I would assume they would say no. It's very hard to get them on the record because getting. [00:52:21] Speaker C: Right. [00:52:21] Speaker B: Getting them on the record might hurt somebody's feelings one way or the other. And so you have these conversations, and it's. It's the very. It's the Hegelian dialectic thing we talked about on the critical. Yeah, critical theory thing of. Well, it's kind of just throw thesis, antithesis, synthesis kind of come together, and maybe we'll make all of our opinions fit together. Like, no, actually, at some point, you got to draw a line. And so that's what you see is when you won't draw a line, what you're in is just inevitably going to happen, is you're going to keep drifting. You're just going to keep moving in that direction. As I said earlier with Ruble, Shelley, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys, you went too far. Like, you didn't draw the line, buddy. Now it's. Now you're living with what you created. [00:53:01] Speaker A: That's what's. So this was so hard about this, because. Is the balance. Because as I'm sitting there listening to you, Jack, like, let's just all come together and kind of bring this opinion. That's opinion. Let's kind of see where we fall, man. That is not how Jesus went about things. Jesus said, this is the way it is. I'm not, you know, Pharisees. What's your opinion? Okay, scribes, what do y'all think? No, he said the way it was. Obviously, he was Jesus, but Paul did the same. Here's the issue as we're going to visit it next week. That is how the. The church. The Church of Christ on the right can lean too far. Like, well, that's just how it is about every single little thing. And so. But as we're specifically focusing on the progressive side, once again, that is the. The difficult thing is that bringing opinions and everybody, let's just dialogue and kind of throw this. That's just not how Jesus did it. That's not how Paul did it? That's just not what you see. And the ignorance behind that, I guess, is what's most frustrating. But I don't know if maybe that is an overcorrection from what the Church of Christ on the right, the other side does, which is once again does, you know, thus say it the Lord on every single issue that they can possibly draw up. So, yeah, I know we've previewed next week a ton. It will be very interesting as we're kind of looking at the complete opposite side of what we're talking about here. But, yeah, as far as the progressive, the progressive side goes, the ability to say this is what it says or this is just the way that it is is very difficult for them to do. [00:54:23] Speaker C: This is going to be a bombshell question. [00:54:26] Speaker B: Now, here it goes. [00:54:27] Speaker C: If you, if you were falling on one or the other, maybe this is better save for next week. But I'm curious if you were to fall on one or the other more progressive or more. We got to figure out another term for those. [00:54:38] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, more to the left. [00:54:39] Speaker C: Or more to the right. I do feel like, by and large, the reason why I'm asking in this episode, the heart, in a lot of situations, in a lot of cases, especially for those that are going to these churches, I do think the heart is right for these people that do want to care for other people. They do want to, you know, they want to show the love of Jesus. They want to, example, exemplify. They want to go serve the homeless guy on the street. Like, the heart seems to be there. The mind isn't fully there on the doctrine. They don't. They don't grasp it. Now, the heart sometimes and the doctrine don't go together because the moment you bring in doctrine, it's like, hey, we don't go for that. And therefore, okay, maybe the heart isn't right. So I. I don't know. I don't want to judge that. There is the other side of it, which is, okay, maybe we have everything right. And I don't even agree with that. I don't think they do. But maybe we have everything right, but there's no heart for other people. I feel like the heart is a whole lot harder to manufacture than the brain, than the mind. So I'm not coming down on. I don't think it's good to be either side. We really do want to try to understand where the, you know, where center is, I suppose, in this. But at the same time as we're talking about it and thinking about it, and exploring more on the progressive side of things. It is such a scary slippery slope to the. Again, being so open minded, your brain falls out. At the same time, I see that there are really good hearted Christians out there that do fall for this, do fall for a little bit of the academia, do fall for things like, but they're trying to get it right and I really, really appreciate that. Maybe this is coming from the fact that the other side is, haven't had the best experience personally with the other side of things. So we'll get more into that and I know we've said we'll get more into that next week like thousand times this episode, so I apologize, but I am genuinely excited for that episode to parse out some of those things. At the same time, guys, I don't know where you fall on that, but man, I feel like the heart is a whole lot harder to manufacture than the mind. [00:56:26] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's not a. [00:56:28] Speaker C: Fair way to phrase it, but that's kind of how it comes across to me on the, you know, when he's talking about worship me in spirit. And in truth, these people genuinely do have a spirit. You see the people that are waving their hands and clapping and things like that. And sometimes it gets so into the theatric, electrical, it's like, stop. And then there's other times where people, yeah. Where people are genuinely just excited for Jesus, they're excited to worship. And then the other side is like, oh, like there's no excitement at all for what they're worshiping. And I look at it go, man, these people are, I don't agree with necessarily how they're doing it, but I can see they genuinely have a heart that wants to worship God. I don't know, I, I'm not saying that they're right in that I think they got to get their doctrine correct. [00:57:06] Speaker A: But, but you saying the other side's not right either, essentially where one side. [00:57:10] Speaker C: Is not right, it's just they don't have heart. [00:57:12] Speaker A: Where one side is, is all, is basically all, all heart, all spirit, no truth. The other side's all truth. No, no spirit, no heart. Which side would you rather be on? I guess is kind of your question there. And yeah, yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, I, I, I, I think I'm gonna probably save my answer for next week's episode, but it gets very difficult because you can't ever put yourself in a position where you're, where you're saying, well, the end of the day the heart Matters more than truth. And I know that's not what you're saying, but I do feel like that is pretty dangerous territory to find ourselves in. If that is, if, if that is kind of the, the conclusion that one draws at the same, you know, at the same time or on the other hand, everything you're saying is I, I don't necessarily disagree with Joe in the sense of if you've got all the head knowledge, you've got all the, the doctrinal things down pad and you feel like you just, man, you've got everything together, but man, you're just going through the motions. Your heart is not in it. You're not really there to serve God, serve people. You're just there to be doctrinally correct and that is your spiritual identity. That's wrong. Also, like, obviously I would agree with you there, but as far as like along the spectrum, which side would I more lean? I'll save my answer for that. Jack. Any closing thoughts? And I know we got to wrap up soon. [00:58:24] Speaker B: I don't think they're as different as you think. I think every, every time man philosophy touches religion, it comes out the same way, which is self glorification. And I think it's very easy to drift into the I thank you Lord that I'm not like these graceless, you know, conservatives. And then for the conservative to look across and go, I thank you Lord that I'm not like these doctrineless progressives. And we have to be very careful that the three of us don't get here and go, thank you Lord that I'm not like these people to the left and right, right, right. But like that's what, what man made religion does is makes you exalt yourself. And some of the most graceless people I've ever met are progressives who see you to the right of them and I mean just go on attack mode. Like the. [00:59:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so much for tolerance at that point. [00:59:12] Speaker B: Well, that's exactly it. And so like it all becomes a charade at that point. It's like, man, I thought you were a really accepting person. Now I've met some who really practice what they preach, who really are that way in both directions and you can kind of see it and there's things I would disagree with, but at least there's a genuineness there. And maybe it's just a misunderstanding, I think in the ways I think they take it to excess. So yeah, I don't think the manifestations are as different. It's which one? It's almost like an in group preference thing it's like who do I need to kind of show for here? Who do I need to perform for? And if it's by lowering myself and you know, getting down in brokenness culture kind of thing and all of the critical theory stuff we talked about, they're going to do that and think they're better than the people who won't do that. If it's I need to be high and mighty over here with my, my buddies who we're all. There's three of us who agree on things and everybody else is going to hell. It's just your incentive structure and all those things. And so that's. Yeah, I didn't answer your question at all. I totally broke it down and turned it into a question. [01:00:12] Speaker C: It's a valuable. I put you on the spot but it's also a valuable addition to two sides of the same coin in a roundabout way. I think that's a very, very valuable. [01:00:20] Speaker B: And we'll finish there. I'll say this. We had it on here to talk about command example, necessary and which is kind of the major sticking point here and we just didn't have time to get to it. Which that's good. We've left some material for next week's episode because that features heavily on that side of things is the role of command example and necessary inference in reading the Bible and understanding it. The folks on this side would very much downplay it. And I've got material on I was looking at as to the beliefs on that the people on the other side is live and die by it. And so we'll save that part of it for that. The deep end should be interesting. If you guys have questions, comments. If you're not a member of the deep end focuspress.org/ check that out so you can join us and leave your comment and join in the discussion. Get the extra button on Deep End episodes. The Devotionals, our teaching series. The Romans one is about to start and so just lots of content going up there every day. Anything else you guys have to add before we close this one up? All right, hold on. [01:01:19] Speaker C: I think we have it. We have a Think fast. [01:01:21] Speaker B: Oh, my bad. I forgot to think fast. I'm glad you said that. [01:01:24] Speaker C: That's okay. That is okay because I'm on it. So there you have Make It Fast. Just saw a few different articles a couple different places that the Bible is coming back and becoming one of the top selling books again. A lot of people are starting to buy Bibles and one of the articles specifically Pointed to people are seeing evil in the world and there. So like there's a tick tock trend, apparently just had a tick tock trend on. There's a tick tock trend of people going and buying their first Bible. I thought that was really interesting and the question I was going to have, I thought what's a. If, if there's one other book that they could buy, you know, Christianity book that they could buy, what would it be? But that might be a little too spicy because we might, you know, it's, it's difficult. We, we may come on different sides of what book that might be. So the other question I thought was, so somebody buys their first Bible and they sit down for a Bible study with you. Where do you initially go? Oh, this, where would you first. Yeah, where would you first open up the Bible to say, let me tell you about things? Do you go to Genesis, do you go to John, do you go to Matthew, do you go to Romans? Where do you start? [01:02:29] Speaker A: So yeah, my brain goes several places here in the sense of first. I kind of want to know what their religious background is. But let's assume they don't have any religious background. [01:02:40] Speaker C: They've never bought a Bible, they know nothing about Christianity. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:43] Speaker C: And let's just say they're basically agnostic. [01:02:45] Speaker A: Call it recency bias, man. But I'm probably, I'm probably going to Romans. I guess a close second would be Ephesians. I think you can, you can really get a lot of the gospel through Ephesians. It's a lot more bite sized, so to speak, than Romans is. But I was thinking like you go to the gospels and teach them about Jesus. Just hit John. John would be a really popular number one draft pick there and take him to John and show him Jesus. But yeah, I don't know, recency bias. Jack's going to Leviticus, Joe's going to Revelation is where he's going. [01:03:14] Speaker C: Yeah, there you go. [01:03:15] Speaker A: No, I would say now that I'm thinking about it, I'm actually probably going to say Ephesians instead of Romans. Romans. I feel like, is if I'm, if I have, like, if I have two hours with somebody to study the gospel with them and that's my entire window. I'll probably go to Romans. I feel like you can cover all of it, that you can cover a lot of it there. But if, you know, if I'm like, hey, I really want to introduce you to the Bible, introduce you to the gospel, introduce you what God has done for you, probably probably Ephesians. Is where I would go. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I like the Romans idea. I just taught on Romans the other day. The introductory to our course or our class on it. And you got to start off with the problem. You got to start off with the bad news. And Romans does that masterfully for the first few chapters, culminating in all of sin and fall short of the glory of God before getting immediately to the good news. So I think that's a good call. You're teasing me about the Old Testament, like. Well, I mean, I go to the Ten Commandments and everyone's got a problem with the Ten Commandments. I think that's a pretty good strategy. I've seen used of. Really walk people through. You think you're a good person. Here's the 10 most basic things that God could give, and you fail most of them according to Jesus's standard of adultery, murder, things like that in Matthew 5 as well. So you compare that. Yeah. And then immediately go to Gospel. So Romans, I think, is probably the best place to get you there and cover all your bases. What do you got, Joe? [01:04:29] Speaker A: It's what let's tough about that just real quick is like Romans 1 through 6. Sure. Once you get to chapter 7, it's like, oh, man, it gets a lot tougher. [01:04:37] Speaker C: Let's just say the first six chapters. Yes. [01:04:39] Speaker B: The second course. Yeah, exactly. [01:04:41] Speaker C: You'll get there after you've been baptized for 30 years. No, the. I was thinking if I had a long time to study, obviously I'd start in Genesis just to understand who God is. I think you could really do a good job in the first three chapters of Genesis of establishing who God is, why we're here, the relationship with God, the fall of man, the promise of Christ. I think you get it a lot in just the first three chapters. Romans is where I was going to go. John would be my other one, which is really understanding Jesus from that. But John would only make sense if you understood the Old Testament. Basically. Same with Matthew. Like, a lot of the Gospels are building on that. So Mark actually might be a really good one to go to, which just kind of tells the facts of it. It's not building off of Old Testament as much. Obviously, it's in there, but. But yeah, Romans I think was probably the safe bet. If I had more time, I'd start a Genesis and immediately jump from Genesis probably to Mark and then go to Romans and then Ephesians. So I don't know. I was just thinking about it. [01:05:34] Speaker A: Yes, that's a really good question. I like that question. [01:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:37] Speaker A: If you're for our deep thinkers. Comment. Comment your vote on. On which one of those. Or if you've got a different one, maybe start in, I don't know, Psalms. Jack's a big song. I can't believe Jack can say songs. [01:05:45] Speaker C: There you go. [01:05:46] Speaker A: It's a big psalms guy. [01:05:47] Speaker B: That's not what that's for. That's not. I mean like, yeah, you can teach the gospel from Psalms, but that. Yeah. No, I'm just messing with you. They won after their battles. [01:05:54] Speaker C: 51. Yeah, about. No, but. And the reason why I think this is important and why I love you guys. Comments. This may be a co worker of yours. This may be somebody you run in, you know, a circle you run in where they're just getting their first Bible. So be on the lookout, man, this is exciting that people are turning back toward God's word. They don't know anything about it, which is wild in our culture that there are people that just don't know, but they don't and they're finding it. And be on the lookout for people like that that are seeking and yeah, just be thinking about where you might take them first. So what you might do if you have a little in. If you had 20 minutes with them on an airplane or something. So. So yeah. Fellas, anything else that you'd add? All right, with that we'll wrap up. [01:06:30] Speaker A: We. [01:06:30] Speaker C: This is part one of two. So stick. Stay tuned, stick around for next week and we will get to the other side of it. But thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again soon.