Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - We’ve Got Issues [Featuring Dr. Phil McGraw]

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

“Dr. Phil consistently stands up for a biblical worldview, which is something many pastors, church leaders, and people in our congregations aren't willing to do,” Pastor Allen said. He had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Phil to talk about Merit Street Media, a new network Dr. Phil and TBN launched that provides a biblically informed perspective on news and culture. They also discuss Dr. Phil’s book, We’ve Got Issues. Dr. Phil said, “When people come with ridiculous arguments, this book gives (readers) the information they need to push back and say, ‘No, wait a minute. That's wrong! And let me tell you why it's wrong.’” Pastor Allen also provides a biblical perspective on the importance of leadership and the need for godly voices. He said, “We've got to begin to understand what we believe, why we believe it, and the impact it will make. And I think Dr. Phil is a helpful voice in that.”More information:Pastor Allen’s interview with Dr. Phil on TBN: https://www.tbnplus.com/c/sy/sMW1pnGB?episodeId=gyS4w0Ns&play=1Dr. Phil’s website: https://www.drphil.com/Merit Street Media: https://www.meritstreetmedia.com/--It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you.Listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6dListen on Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

You don't reward behavior that you don't want to see more of. You reward behavior that you do want to see more of. But yet, we've become a society where, for example, we pay people not to work. We got into this pandemic situation. We were paying people more money to not work than to work. When you take into account that they didn't have to spend $7 a gallon, for gas to commute. They didn't have any wardrobe costs.

They didn't have any child care cost. And you take those things out. They could sit home in a beanbag eating Cheetos and make more money than they could if they got up and worked. And then they turned around and say, what happened to the supply chain? Well, are you kidding me?

And my guest today is Dr. Phil. We had an opportunity to sit down and talk about his new book. We've got issues. I think you'll enjoy hearing his perspective. I know I did. We'll get to that in just a few minutes. But I want to put it in a context. I think it will be valuable.

We are presiding over a season or living through a season where there is a significant lack of leadership. Just about any place we look. I live in the church world predominantly. And I can tell you in the church world, that is true. There are some components of that, and we have to change it. I mean, I want to take a couple of minutes before I get you to Dr. Phil. We have to decide we're going to be the change agents. If we sit in our churches and look through the stained glass windows and say, those people are the problem,

and when they're different, our world will get better. We have surrendered completely, our assignment, our leadership, our role as Christ followers. So my messaging overwhelmingly is directed towards the people of God and trying to encourage them to be salt and light in our world. And to do that, fundamental change is we've got to stop being overlookers of evil and becoming overcomers. There's a graphic difference between those two positions. We've excused it.

We've kind of winked at it, nodded at it. It isn't helpful. We have to overcome evil with good. I can give you some really clean examples. I had a call this past Saturday afternoon. I'm working on sermons for the weekend. I get a call from a friend who's been a national media ministry leader of great prominence. and he was really concerned.

He said, Alan, a thousand pastors just signed a document, a pledge in support of Hamas in their conflict with Israel. And he said to me, they're just not educated. And I said, that's not acceptable. They can read and they have Bibles. They have just signed a pledge to support a terrorist organization committed to the genocide of the Jewish people. That's inexcusable. It will bring the judgment of God upon their lives, upon the communities of faith they serve. and upon our nation.

We can't just overlook evil and excuse it as people who are ill-informed. There are consequences that come, even if you're making choices without the best information. Ignorance is not an excuse. We lost a whole generation of Americans to the ravages of nicotine addiction and the diseases that came from it. We may have not known that the cigarettes they were smoking were as addictive and physically destructive, but it didn't spare them the consequences. And if we take a position in opposition to a biblical standard, we will inherit the consequence.

Ignorance won't protect us. So let's stop overlooking evil and decide we're going to overcome it with good. That's a first step. You know, there's some historical example. Some of you'll know the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. He preceded Winston Churchill. And Neville Chamberlain was determined not to stand up to Hitler and the Nazis as they expanded power across Europe.

In fact, he was so naive, so foolish, so cowardly. He went to Munich and negotiated a treaty and then proudly announced peace in his lifetime while the Nazis were gobbling up Europe. And ultimately, it cost hundreds of thousands of more lives to undo what he stood watch on while he overlooked evil. Let's not be that generation. We've overlooked evil while we lost 60 months. million children do abortion. Maybe we should change our approach. We've been quiet and polite and

kind, and we sacrifice thousands of children a day. That's just not okay. We're going to have to make a distinction between nice and godly. I constantly have conversations with friends of mine, people I'm doing life with, and they'll describe some scenario while somebody's making very ungodly choices, destructive choices, and then they'll say to me, but they're really nice people. We've got to be wiser in how we understand our relationships. They may be good business people. They may be good artists. They may be good athletes. But if they're behaving in an ungodly way, we need to use ungodly as a descriptor and not nice. Because there's a great difference in being a talented athlete and being ungodly or a talented artist and being ungodly or a talented minister

and being ungodly and being nice. Again, we can't get to the best responses and an appropriate action until we get our language and our ideology to line up. There are some truths that are timeless. They're not up to Alan to navigate. I don't get to make up the definitions. If we're going to be Christ followers

and we're going to follow a biblical rule of authority, then my Bible says God created us male and female. There's not 14 other options. Marriage was God's idea. He put marriage in place. He didn't take a poll and then decide how he would define it. He said that for this reason, a man would leave his father and mother. And so marriage is defined biblically between a man and a woman. In all of the brokenness of our lives, there are many reasons why we know marriage is difficult and marriage is fail. But God hasn't redefined it to satisfy a current generation. Again, we're a bit confused, things like just our biological sex. You know, that's determined by physiology. That's not determined by my emotions or how I choose to identify. Now, we can have other conversations around that, but we can't set aside these fundamental principles thinking that we're going to negotiate a more peaceful future. Because the people you're negotiating with have no intention of honoring a biblical worldview or godliness or biblical.

standards of holiness or purity or righteousness, and the confusion in the church, and tragically, the confusion being promulgated by the church is adding to the frustration and the continued deterioration of our homes. I spent my life in the church. I love the Christian church. I'm an advocate for the church, but we've been a little naive, a lot judgmental, and perhaps even more confused. When I sat with Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil, tells more truth about our culture and a biblical worldview than most of the pulpits that I listen to on a pretty regular basis. And yet we tend to dismiss him and go, well, he's not a Christian. I don't know where he sits on Sunday morning. That's not really my assignment. I can tell you when I

read his books and I listens to his programming, he on a very consistent basis stands up for a biblical worldview, which is something that many of the pastors and church leaders and people in our congregations aren't willing to do. So I think we're going to have to think beyond some of the categories we've held. You know, 30 or 40 years ago when Christianity was the primary influence in our culture, the fabric that held us together, we could afford to bicker over the style of music we like to church, or what time our worship service was convened, or the color of the grape juice that we used for communion. Christianity is no longer the primary component of our social fabric. We are one of the voices. And if we don't learn how to stand together, to quote our founders,

we're going to hang separately. And so we're going to have to become a little more sophisticated. We're going to have to refine our vocabulary a bit and begin to talk about a biblical worldview and following the patterns of scripture and not just our traditional denominational labels because major mainline American denominations, global denominations, are stepping away from orthodoxy, stepping away from a biblical worldview. So it's no longer safe to think just because someone belongs to a mainline evangelical denomination that they hold an Orthodox Christian perspective. That's just no longer true.

I did a pastor's conference in Columbus, Ohio a couple weeks ago. My brother has a church in that city. If you're there, you need to go visit the church next door. It's a great church in Hilliard. We had a wonderful pastor's conference, but while I was there, I checked in on a church. I've known for a long time. I knew the pastor who founded it. I appreciated a lot of his leadership in the body of Christ in previous seasons.

But in this current season, it's a very confusing position. I looked at their website, and they affirm their commitments to orthodoxy in some very elegant language, language that required some sophistication and education. And then they follow that by affirming a series of values and practices in their congregation that step away from a traditional view of Scripture. It cannot be understood as Orthodox. So in the same document, in the same place, they try to assert that they are one thing

while their behavior is something completely different. That's wrong. It's deceptive. It's dishonest. It is not historic Christianity. It will make you friends in this current culture, and it will turn down the volume of people that are angry about those of us

that choose to yield to the Lordship of Jesus. But it creates enormous, confusion in the body of Christ. And so I tell you that, that we've got to begin to understand what we believe, why we believe it, and the impact it will make. And I think Dr. Phil is a helpful voice in that. He has pushed all his chips into the middle of the table to help start a whole new network with my friends at TBN. They call it Merritt Street Media. And Dr. Phil is investing a lot of energy and time when I sat with him in an attempt to help ground the American family in a set of values that will,

that our families flourish and grow stronger. That doesn't seem so complicated, but it's a message that in this current season certainly has a pretty strong headwind. I don't know how much you read. I'm going to give you a reading assignment before we go today. If you're not reading, you're just insulating your ignorance, and that's not a good way to go. I meet people a lot of times.

They're kind of proud guys, especially. I don't know why we do this, man. You know, guys will say, I haven't read a book since I graduated from high school. Well, I give you a different phrase. Just start to say, I like to be ignorant. You know, we've got to continue to learn or we're backing up. And I advocate for reading the Bible, but I advocate for reading in general as a matter of habit in your life. Or you're really forfeiting what you need in order to flourish in a rapidly changing world.

I think you'll enjoy my conversation with Dr. Phil. I know I did. He's going to share some ideas with you that I think will strengthen our faith and strengthen our response in this culture that will bring some good things to our children and our grandchildren. Enjoy my conversation with Dr. Phil. But I like what you said about how you have

continued to respond to the changes. There are truths that we hold that are timeless. There's some values and principles that cross generations. But the containers and the methods in which we deliver those have to fit the hand of every generation. Right. You know, if we're going to give a drink to a toddler,

we give it a different kind of cup than you would to me, I hope. And there's not right or wrong. It has to fit the hand of every generation. And you have done that in my preparation for today, going back and watching some of your programs and listening to you, you haven't always cited Scripture as a reference, but you have lived the principles of the Word of God. And particularly when I stopped to read your book, your latest book,

and then some others, I got excited because it's a message we need in the body of Christ. consciously, not peripherally as somebody who was a friend of Oprah or worked in trial sciences and has been engaged in Hollywood, but you come from the heart of America, and I think the values that you're sharing are what has made our nation strong. And we need that strength desperately. You know, we live in a, to me, it's such a bizarre time. Pastors are reluctant.

You make it a distinction between culture and politics, which, you make a distinction. between culture and politics, which I think we have to help people understand. We have to engage cultures. Pastors are very reluctant to do that. It feels like to me the doctors in the medical community have forgotten their Hippocratic oath. The attorneys in the legal community

have forgotten the notion that justice is blind and is grounded in some documents other than their feelings. And you're offering this clarion call to courageously engage. It's not something. something new. I live in Nashville and Dave Ramsey lives there and he says, you know, he gives us our grandparents financial advice. And you're bringing forth a value set that has shaped our

nation for a long time that has taught us to treat one another with dignity and respect. And I'm excited about your new audience and your willingness to make the effort. Something good will come from that. Let me ask you a question. Why do you think that high profile people are reluctant to speak out about their faith, about their beliefs, about values that, because a lot of them I know hold these values as dear to their heart as I do, but are very slow to speak out about it. That's a really good question. You are world-class at listening to both sides,

and trying to, you're better at that than I am. So I'll just make people angry, but I'll jump in the pool. I don't think we have, I think we've lost our fear of God. I think we've had so much for so long that we don't imagine it could ever go away. And a casual read of history tells you that empire's come and go. You know, I'm asked all the time, do I think Jesus is coming back next month?

And, you know, I don't know that this is the end of the age, but I know if we don't change our behavior, it's the end of an empire. and that will have dramatic effects upon our children and our grandchildren. So what's happening right now demands a response of courage and I think we don't,

we just don't think we need to make a sacrifice. You talked about it in the book, and I think we've all observed it. We're distributing money at the moment like it's coming off the color printers in our offices. And people don't want to work, they don't want to sacrifice,

because life has gotten better when we haven't. and that's a training protocol that's been built into our character now. And we're going to have to do the hard work to change it. Well, it seems like we've forgotten some of these things that we didn't invent these things. But one of the most fundamental principles of psychology is you don't reward bad behavior. I mean, think about it as a child. You've got your child in the grocery store. and you aimlessly wander onto the little toy aisle,

and they throw a tantrum in the floor, you don't race over and get a piece of candy and run up, go, oh, here, here, take this piece of candy. You don't reward a tantrum. Well, some parents do, but a common-sensical parent doesn't reward bad behavior by giving them a piece of candy or a toy. But yet, as a society, we seem to have somehow,

have forgotten, you don't reward behavior that you don't want to see more of. You reward behavior that you do want to see more of. But yet, we've become a society where, for example, we pay people not to work. We got into this pandemic situation. We were paying people more money to not work than to work. When you take into account that they didn't have to spend $7 a gallon for gas to commute, they didn't have any wardrobe costs, they didn't have any child care cost, and you take those things out, they could sit home in a beanbag eating Cheetos and make more money than they could if they got up and worked. And then they turn around and say, what happened to the supply chain? Well, are you kidding me?

Little Abner could figure this one out. You paid all the people that made the supply chain flow to stay home and eat Gitos. So now they don't want to work. And listen, I'm not a politician. I don't want to be a politician. I don't know enough about politics to talk about politics. neither do most people who talk about politics.

I'm just willing to admit it. But these things seem self-evident to me. And we have a $35 trillion deficit, and as you said, they just keep printing money. Do people not realize if you have $1,000 and they go print another $10,000, your $1,000 just became worse less? It's now worth less than it was before they printed more.

That's like a tax. And people, I think it happens so often and so silently and so behind a closed door that people don't realize as they're saying, we're going to send $900 million to this country and $900 million of that country, that your money just went down in value. You thought you had $100,000. saved up across your lifetime. It just became 80,000.

And we just stand by and let these things happen. It's like we need to stand up and start saying, look, we've got to start holding people to account. And this is a cultural thing. It doesn't matter if it's Democrat or Republican. I think we're better off when it's gridlocked. I'd be scared to death if we had a president, Congress, and Senate and House all from the same party.

That'd scare me to death. We're better off when it's gridlock. They can't do much damage. That's the way they built the system. Exactly. And that's why I say I'm talking about cultural things. We need to start paying attention to what we need to do to make our family strong again.

30% of fifth graders can't read a basic sentence. A like number of eighth graders can't read a basic sentence. sentence, 19% of high school graduates can't read the instructions on a prescription they get at the drugstore. But yet they keep progressing on because they make money when they move to the next grade. You know, we're no longer number one in science, math, and reading. I mean, we're way down the ladder. We're like 34th, 16th, and 9th.

And those numbers change monthly because we're simply not doing the things we need to educate our young people that are going to go out there and compete. No, you're right. And what I like about your message is I don't really think the problem is the White House. If we don't change our house,

the White House isn't going to make a significant impact. and your expertise and your willingness to tell the truth goes directly to our house. If we'll start at our kitchen table and our holiday table and then with the friends that we invite to our tables, we can change the world. We really can, and that's why I say this book is, I call out the things that need attention,

but as I say, I talk about what we can do. I'm the incurable optimist. This is a book that I think people, they'll really get into it, they'll go back to it over and over again. Because when people come with these ridiculous arguments, this gives them the information they need to push back. Say, no, now, wait a minute, that's wrong, and let me tell you why it's wrong. I have the information here to talk about that.

People know that their children spend too much time on social media. What they don't know is that they're actually targeted on social media. They're actually fed information that knowingly erodes their mental health. They don't know that, and they need to know that. They need to know how that works. And even the young people need to know that they're being manipulated, because those young people would not like the fact that they're being manipulated. And if they know that, they might go, huh, don't want to spend so much time there,

time there is somebody that's feeding me what they want me to see and not what they don't want me to see. And I think that this is a book with a message that says, here's how to push back. Here's how to take back control of our experience and our children's experience and get back to the things being center stage that have made this country the one that people are fighting to get into. If you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Phil, you can hear that whole interview that we had the opportunity to do just by going to TBN.org. If you're not familiar with what's happening there, TBN and Dr. Phil have partnered together to launch a whole new network. It's Merritt Street Media.

And there's a lot of original content from Dr. Phil and some other contributors there. It's really an interesting idea. It's really being sponsored from a biblical worldview, but it's not leading to. necessarily with a sermon, but it's leading from a biblically informed perspective on news and commentary on our culture. It's worth the time. And I'm grateful for what Dr. Phil is doing. It's a time in his life. He could be sitting someplace on a beach. And he's putting in a lot of effort and a lot of energy to try to strengthen. I believe the American family. And we need all the help that we can get. If you couldn't tell in the interview, I was surprised. You know, I know better than to let the media shape my perspective on people, places, or things.

And I try not to do that. But when I began to prepare for my interview with Dr. Phil, I realized the degree to which the sound bites I'd heard in the news had affected what I imagined him to be. And as I prepared and read some of his books and got ready to sit down with him, I realized I was ill-informed. In fact, I apologized to him. I thought he was Jerry Springer with a better suit. And I did not know really the nature of his character and the work he was doing. So I give you this caution. Please don't let sound bites from the news.

Shape your perspective on current events. It's inadequate. Anything that I know about fully, when I see what's reported about that in the media, it's inaccurate. And so even if it's a message that I like, I don't allow a soundbite to be my primary decision-making. or my primary point of information, do a little work to study and investigate the things that you really care about. It'll make a tremendous difference. I'm grateful for Dr. Phil and Merritt Street Media and TBN and what they're doing.

I believe they'll make a difference. You know, my takeaway from that conversation, and I've had a few days to think about it, is the assignment that you and I have to lead with our faith. I would desperately like to imagine that after we have an election a little later this year, our world is going to change for the better, and I won't have to have anything to do with it, that I can just keep doing what I want to do, when I want to do it,

and there will be dramatic shifts for the better in our culture along our southern border. We'll begin to celebrate law enforcement again, that in the halls of Congress they'll tell the truth, that the teachers' unions will call the parents up and say, help us understand what we should teach your children. We don't think we're in charge. I think all of those things would be wonderful steps forward,

and it would delight me to know in that after the elections in November, they just happened automatically. I think that's a fairy tale. I think if we're going to get to better outcomes, you and I are going to have to change. I'm going to have to use my voice and you'll have to use yours. We don't need big platforms. You don't have to have a podcast and a big following.

I think the real determiner is if we're willing to go to our kitchen table and begin to talk to our families about the things that we believe are really important. Those things that you and I would probably agree on, but we know can bring some real division because our families aren't as united as we would like them to be. Our holiday tables certainly aren't. Our peer groups. So we kind of have this default position that, you know, we don't talk about faith or politics. We got to change.

We got to bring what we believe about right and wrong back into our homes, back to our family systems, and back into our friends groups, and then begin to align our friends around those things. I'm grateful for Dr. Phil. I'm grateful for TBN. I'm grateful for every voice and every large platform. But our faith is about the transformation of one heart at a time. My life was broken. I was in a really difficult place.

And by the power of God, he began to put my life back together and to help me have a new future. That's the story we have to give away. We just celebrated Mother's Day. When I was seven, the doctor said my mom had a terminal disease in six months to live. I had a brother that was six days old and another brother that was three years old and we were facing losing our birth mom and a pretty interrupted future. We went to church, but we weren't Christians, you know, you can do that.

And so my parents fly to Mayo Clinic for some really dramatic surgery and my mom in a moment of desperation says a prayer that she could know the truth before she dies. She doesn't expect to live. She has no imagination of a God who heals. And after four days at Mayo Clinic, the doctors come in and say, you had cancer, we have pictures, but we can't find it. And my mom's still here. You know, God redeems our lives one at a time. Everybody I pray for doesn't get healed.

I do funerals for people that I love that leave early. I'm not suggesting that. But I am suggesting that we have a message of hope that is more profound than politics. We have a vision of the future that is greater than elections. We may see God's deliverance expressed through elections or through political systems, but the courage to say, I want to be a godly person, I want to be a godly man, I want to be a godly husband, I want to be a godly father. Whatever that progression might be for you, if we're willing to walk that forward,

then I think we see God's solution. I hear these rather panicked questions very frequently. You know, well, what can we do? What can we do? The media lies. The judicial system is being politicized to destroy people amongst us. There's an endless list of things that we don't like. And people say, what can we do?

Well, there's something that can be done. And we can do something. We can become the solution. If you're not in the habit of reading, read Dr. Phil's newest book. We've got issues. Guess what? Spoiler alert. We've got issues. But here's the good news. Almighty God is capable of bringing restoration, deliverance, forgiveness. He can get us out of this pit if we will choose him. We're not without hope. We have a living God. We have to choose him with our whole heart, with our whole mind, with our soul and our body. And we've got to stop being the ones who are compromising. We'll do that. I believe we will see God's deliverance. God's raised up a voice in Dr. Philts surprised me to no end. I thought he was somebody that worked for Oprah and then got a platform.

And he's using his voice and his life and his influence to make a difference in our generation. I'm going to encourage you to be that person. You don't have to have a network in order to do it. You have a kitchen table. Start there with the people that you're doing life with. Share with them the truth of God that you know and your determination to honor it. And God will change the world we live in. I'll talk to you soon.

Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.