Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 316 | Resisting Woke-ism in the Church | Guest: John Cooper

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Today we're very excited to welcome John Cooper of Christian band Skillet onto the show. We discuss the ungodly "woke" mindset that is slowly working its way into the church and how critical race theorists and others on the Left demand that Christians change their values. Today's Sponsor: SimpliSafe: Go to http://simplisafe.com/ALLIE for a free HD camera Today's Links: You can find John Cooper's book here: https://stores.kotisdesign.com/cooper-stuff/books John Cooper's Podcast: https://cooperstuffpodcast.com/ -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. So today is a little bit different. Typically we do something related to the news on Wednesday. But today we're actually doing an interview.

And we are doing an interview with the singer for Skillet John Cooper. He is an awesome Christian, has so much wonderful theological, cultural commentary. And I'm really excited for you to listen to or watch this conversation. If you are watching on YouTube. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. John, thank you so much for joining me.

It's so cool to be here. I'm excited. Yes. Can you tell everyone who you. are and what you do. Okay, who I am. My name is John Cooper. I sing in a band called Skillet.

We're a hard rock band. We are a Christian band. And that's my day job back when the world had day jobs. Back when the world still was normal. So that's what I do. Right. But you also, you host a podcast. You post videos, several places.

I know I have a lot of followers and listeners that send me your stuff. you give a lot of Christian commentary, a lot of cultural commentary from a Christian perspective. Can you talk about kind of when you started also being a public voice that has given so much light and guidance in this crazy, chaotic world that we live in? Yeah, well, thank you. Well, this is how I know that your listeners are good people because they're sending you my stuff. My podcast is called Cooper Stuff. and originally started for me, to be honest, probably about 2011, 2012, when I just was like,

okay, I've been a Christian since I was a kid. I'd been in Christian music at that point for 13 or 14 years or 12 years. And then I was just like wondering, what in the world is happening? Everything just seemed to fall apart. And it wasn't just that the world was confused, which the world was desperately getting more confused. but it was Christians that were getting confused. It was friends that I had that had been saved for a decade, two decades, that were all of a sudden walking away from God.

Or we would talk about the faith. And as I would talk to them, I would say, hey, I don't think what you're saying actually sounds like Christianity. I think that sounds like universalism. Are you sure that you're a Christian? And all of a sudden, we went through some really hard times, people in my church that fell away. Public figures fell away, as everybody knows. And I just was like, okay, I need to do a real deep dive into culture to understand what is really happening. And I'm not a very smart person. It took me about

three years to finally get to it. But I just began to really dig deep. What can I do to help Christian people hold on to the simplicity of the gospel? It's not supposed to be utterly confusing. I mean, the disciples were not the smartest people in the whole planet. You know, they weren't the academics of the time. Certainly the words of Jesus can save simpletons like me. And I saw people falling away. I wanted to do something because in the Christian celebrity world, there weren't really any voices doing that and not many.

And if there are voices in the Christian celebrity world, to be honest, they tend to be on the other side. They tend to be on more of what we call the woke side. you know, the side that is like, hey, it's okay to have a liberal view of the Bible because God loves everybody. And I was just like, you know what? We are leading people straight into destruction whenever you change the truth of Christ in order to make it more palatable to people. And that's why I started Cooper stuff. Right. And can you talk specifically about some of those points of confusion that you saw and that kind of spurred you to start talking about,

different cultural and theological issues. What have you seen, maybe what kinds of thinking, what cultural forces have you seen pushed people into that point of view that kind of just says, you know what? The most important thing is just that God loves everyone and beyond that, I don't need to talk about the hard stuff. Yeah, that's really dangerous stuff, isn't it? I should say this, and I saved it.

I'm a big fan of your show and my wife is a fan. and so she bought your book for our daughter. My daughter is going to be 18 next week. And my wife was reading it. She's like, dude, she calls me dude. Dude, this book is so much like the book that I've just written a book. And she's like, it's so much like it, you guys are seeing the same thing. So it's very similar.

Awesome. So I wanted you to know that. Great stuff there. And I'll begin to look at it. I'm like, yeah, me and Allie, we're reading from the same notes. Yeah, the same Bible. but when I was in college, I studied, I love philosophy and I love political philosophy. I'm not that smart, but I studied postmodernism.

I never knew anybody would believe postmodernism. So it took me about three years, 2012 to 2015, and I remember telling my wife, 2015, I was like, I finally made it my mind about what's wrong with society. I didn't know that we don't believe in truth. I thought we were arguing about which truth was real. Maybe it's Jesus, maybe it's The Big Bang, or maybe it's Darwin's evolution. I thought we were arguing about absolute truth as opposed to that absolute truth even exist.

And once you begin to believe in relativism and your truth and my truth is kind of different, and maybe, in fact, you can't even know my truth because the color of your skin or your gender or your economic status, what have you, at that point, then we can't agree. on anything. So nothing is good, nothing is bad. There is no way to reach any sort of conclusion about morality, even the way we should treat each other. And what I began to notice was the amount of Christians that were resolute that Jesus is the truth, but also not believe that there is such thing as truth. And I was just like, what's going on with you guys? And so I think that the influx of postmodernism and relativism in the world has become so.

ubiquitous and it's taken over language, you know, it's changed our words. And all of a sudden Christians are repeating a lot of the, what I would call postmodern phrases that really don't mean anything anymore. And now they are applying them to Christianity. So now we have a Christianity that Jesus is real, but he's not, he doesn't have to be the same for me as the same for you, which actually goes against scripture. So no wonder people are utterly confused. And that is one of the biggest things that I just feel really passionate about. We have to strip that away in order to then begin these discussions about who Jesus is. Is he actually the same yesterday, today, and forever?

Is he actually the sinless savior of the world? Or is he not? And other than that, there's no way to have peace without it. So that's something I feel pretty passionate about. And in your study, how have you found that postmodernism seeped into the church? has now taken such a strong hold on what seems like a large chunk of people who identify as Christians. Yeah, it's really scary, isn't it? If I probably had to, if I probably had to take it down, boil it down to one simple thing that I know is going to be oversimplified, but it's what I believe.

I believe it's an issue of authority of scripture and sufficiency of scripture. If you think about it, it's really about both of those things, because what Christians tried to do, they wanted to become so relevant to the world that they began to say, well, part of being relevant is not drawing lines in the sand. Because then you kind of got to view psychology as a little bit on par with scripture in that sense, right? It's about loving people. And you know, you write about in your book about self-love, which is something that I only heard of like three years ago. And I heard a Christian say it, well, there's no way you can actually love the world unless you love yourself. And I was like, uh, yeah, chapter and verse, please.

And so once you, you have all these things on the same level of scripture, I believe there's a lot of goodhearted, wonderful Christian people that had good intentions that thought, I don't want to offend people. So I'm going to say, hey, if that's true for you, I understand. I'm not going to draw a line in the sand. And because of that, we can disagree. But before you know it, you're agreeing to disagree on actual essential issues, things that actually make the, okay, that's not a religion. That's not Christian, excuse me, that's a new religion. That's not Christianity. And you have to define the terms and you have to be, you have to be strong about it, or else you will end up with a generation of people. As we've seen now, you quoted this statistic on your show recently. What is it?

Three percent of all millennials who claim to be Christians even believe in absolute. truth. Don't believe in authority of scripture. That is a product of weak, can I just say the truth here? It is a product of weak pastors that wanted to be so relevant to the world that they forgot to be relevant for the gospel. Hello, I'll start preaching, Ali. I don't even care. Oh, I love it. I love it. I know my audience will love it too. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Can you talk about how you see a connection between the postmodernism that you kind of discovered, you know, five to, to, eight years ago. And the wokeism that you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, you know, critical race theory, intersectionality, social justice that has definitely seen

into the church. Do you see a connection or maybe postmodernism led to wokeism or do you see those things depending on each other within the church? I think that that's really interesting. I would say yes, because I kind of see postmodern modernism as. as a bit of a foundational work for an extreme version of humanism. I mean, I hate to just start throwing wrong terms all the time, but because of postmodernism, the goal of this, what I would consider to be this woke utopia, would be that it's all to do with like,

I call it works based, you know what I mean? It's all social justice driven. It's all that I know what is good and I know what is good because of my own heart. So then when you apply that critical race theory model to it, in postmodernism, postmodernism believes that there is no absolute reality. So a good person,

if you're not watching, I'm putting good, in scare quotes, a good virtuous person, according to the world's standards, then would seek to elevate the reality. It's not true reality, it's perceived reality, right? We need to elevate the perceived reality of people who suffer injustice. And so all of that is to do with postmodernism.

So I look at wokeism in church life, excuse me, I absolutely look at that as a form of relativism because wokeism is built in Christianity, I'm talking about, sorry, wokeism in the church is built on the idea that what matters most in the world is being a good person because Jesus loved people. And that all of a sudden becomes the reigning attribute of God. So as opposed to traditional orthodoxy,

which teaches us that God is always going to be everything that God is, right? He's never going to stop being loving in order to be a God of righteousness. That's not how it works. When God punishes the wicked doer, he is still being all loving because it is the infinitude of his love that also is matched with his hatred of unrighteousness. So once you go, no, it's all about God's love. God loves people. God is love. And so therefore, love must also be God. That is the way it works. So now, wokeism becomes something that says, we need to do whatever we can do to just make love.

I believe the idol. Love is like an idol now that we worship. We don't worship Christ. We've created a God, and he's 90 feet tall, nine feet wide, and we're like, it's love. And that must be what Jesus is like. And so I do think that wokeism is, I believe, is causing a civil war in the church. And they are making it seem like it's all about race. But it's not really about race. It's actually about this other thing, which I believe stems from relativism. And the reason it's justified is because people think they're doing a good thing. So they think they're getting to a good place, even though they're doing something bad.

It's kind of like trying to get clean by doing something dirty. And it's just not going to work. And so I think that that is. part of wokeism. Yes, I always say that critical thinking is the enemy of critical theory. And one part of critical thinking is you define your terms. And that's why people always ask me, you know, how do I talk to my friend who is kind of inundated in this social justice world? She's a Christian, but she seems to be confused, taking on wokeism. And I think the best thing to do in those conversations is to simply ask clarifying questions because so often the people who have maybe unknown,

knowingly kind of dawned this wokeism as their new lens of the world and even the Bible, haven't actually thought about, okay, I'm talking about justice, but what does God say that justice is? I'm talking about love, but what does God say that love is? I'm talking about, you know, reaching the least of these or reconciliation or unity, but am I using the biblical definitions of these terms or am I using worldly definitions of these terms? And so I often think the best thing to do is to ask people who are positing these ideas and using these terms, well, what do you mean by X? What does the Bible say that love is? Who does the Bible say that Jesus is? How does the Bible define justice? Because so often it seems like these people using these terms have actually been evangelized to by the world rather than the other way around.

And so we are echoing words and definitions that we have allowed the secular. world to define when Christians should be defining them and championing them. And so I think critical thinking and clarification in defining our terms and saying, okay, yes, God is love. You're absolutely right. But what does God say that love is? The Bible says that God is love, not that love is God. And so we don't get to redefine that.

But so often, I think we're afraid to ask those questions. and we're afraid to push back because, you know, we don't want to seem like bigots. We don't want to seem like it's almost like the two options are like you're either a racist bigot or you're a critical race theorist. What is your encouragement for people? I 100% agree with that on every single front. And in my book that I told you about, the book is called Awake and Alive to Truth. And the subtitle is Finding Truth in the Chaos. of a relativistic world.

And there's a chapter in there that deals with this sort of thing. You're absolutely right. I think that maybe this is a bit of a way I would say. I think you nailed it when you say the world is defining the terms. See, when I was growing up, I grew up in the 80s. We believed in my generation in just hedonism, right? It was a hedonistic world. And that just means you live for pleasure.

Whatever you can find that's going to satisfy your flesh is the, best thing to live for. And that's why the 80s was so materialistic, obviously drug rampant, sex rampant, all of that, right? 80s and 90s. Live for hedonism. Well, living for Jesus in that culture, I would say, is actually quite, I don't mean that it's easy, but it's easily defined, wouldn't you say? Because that just means that all you have to do to make a stand for Jesus is to not have sex outside of marriage and not do drugs and not whatever. All those pleasures you just say, no, I don't do that, and you automatically make a stand for Christ, and you might get made fun of for your faith.

We call it persecuted, if you want to call it that. You might get made fun of for that, but the lines were clear. The difference between hedonism and 2020, which is humanism, is that what the world does, as you said, is borrowing our sense of righteousness, our sense of doing the right thing and pleasing God and loving one another, which is actually not a natural thing to do, right? Our selfish nature does not like look to, how can I go around helping people? So in our theology,

original sin means that you don't naturally look for those things. It is the spirit of God that changes you in the inside and gives you a love for people that you begin to have the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Well, the world is kind of like taking that on. And so now what you have is a world who believes that they are more virtuous than Jesus Christ himself. And that is just really weird.

And so now you have Christians confused because they are being now called bigots by a world who thinks that they are more loving than Jesus. Whereas in hedonism, my generation, nobody ever looked at a Christian was like, I'm a better person than you. They didn't like Christians because they thought Christians were like no fun or they were do-gooders.

They were goody goodies. And we ruined the party. Now it's like, oh, you're actually a, a bad person because I have more virtue than you. So now we live in a time, this is how I would encourage Christians. The Bible is still the same. You should count it joy when you are persecuted for your faith. You just have to get used to the idea that you're going to be persecuted with lies as opposed to because you stood up against hedonism. You're going to be called a bigot. You're going to be called somebody who you don't care about the poor, even though by all statistics, everybody knows

that religious people give way more charity than non-religious people. Conservative people give more charity than non-consertive people. We all know those things, but you're still going to unjustly get called something. And my encouragement to Christians is, does that still not equal joy? Because you're being persecuted for what you believe, even though it's unpopular. So I think if we understand the worldview and we define the terms, then we just have to say, hey, I'm counting it all joy. I'm getting a chance to stand for my faith in Christ.

and by being honest with people, I am actually speaking the truth, which is what my responsibility as a believer is. Yeah. You make such good points that it's a different kind of lying in the sand today because secular people and people who identify as Christians, but really are universalists, like you mentioned earlier, they have co-opted Christian terms, whereas that, you know, that didn't used to be the case. We weren't even using the same language as the world.

But now you have people who don't know God at all using terms like justice, using terms like compassion and love and even citing Jesus, even though they don't believe Jesus is the way the truth in the life. And so I think that's part of also why Christians are confused because you hear people in the secular world using Christian terminology and you're thinking, oh, shoot, okay, well, that sounds right. That sounds godly and good and righteous. So maybe that is how I am supposed to be.

But again, not going to the word of God to define those things, but allowing people who hate God to define those things, who don't believe people are made in the image of God to tell you what human dignity actually is. It's kind of like when I say, okay, you know, you hear pro-choice people saying, oh, to be actually pro-life, you have to agree with all of my different social programs and social issues and whatever. and I say, hang on, pro-lifers, actual pro-lifers. People who believe in the legalization of dismembering babies in the womb do not have the moral authority to define what is pro-life and what is not pro-life. And I say the same thing to Christians, Christians. People who hate God, who, according to the Bible, are enemies of God who are under the influence, as Ephesians 2 says, of the prince of the power of the air, do not have the authority to define justice or injustice. They don't have the authority to define human dignity. They don't have the authority to define right and wrong.

God has that authority. And so I think we have to be careful. Whose authority are we under? Who are we allowing to define our terms? And we have to resist the redefinition of terms. There was a, sorry, I know I'm ranting, but there was a post the other day. That's not ranting, Ellie. That's called preaching.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I feel like I'm ranting. But I would love to hear what you think about, think about this, because I got into a conversation with someone about it on Instagram. There was a post that said, you know, supposed to be from a Christian perspective saying that only white people can be racist because racism is prejudice plus power. And I posted, you know, this is wrong. This is a redefinition of terms.

God doesn't distinguish between the kinds of hate that he prohibits in the Bible. And I had a Christian, you know, message me and say, you know, I've got my MDiv from Fuller seminary and you're wrong about. this. And I think a lot of Christians are allowing the world to redefine those terms. What is your, what is your advice to people to resist that who fear being called a bigot, who fear being called racist, but know that they have to stand strong and outwardly speak out about what is actually true and what these terms actually mean? I think, yeah, so many good, good things. Okay.

I like what you said. I'm going to rewind only a little bit. Go for it. And then I'm going to hit that because you're absolutely right. One of the things I wanted to share, where should I start on this? There's so much. You know what's really annoying? I was going to say what's really annoying to me and it goes directly at what you just ended with.

Is that I expect the world to be deceitful. That just makes sense because our flesh is deceitful. And if you don't know Christ, there you go. What's really annoying is. annoying to me is that the world then has, has kind of co-opted Christian terms. They have twisted those terms to mean something different. Then what happens next is that our, as you said, MDiv class, our pastor class, our preacher class, then co-ops the new definitions of the terms and defends them. And I do not understand how that's what really makes me mad. I expect the world to do

nasty stuff when preachers begin to do it because they're, I don't know, maybe they have good intentions, maybe they're trying to bridge the gap, maybe I don't know what their intentions are, but it's wrong, and they need to be called out for it. And they're trying to say, hey, I kind of know what the world's saying, and we're kind of on their side if you think about it. And one of the things that's really scary about that, you're right, is that they're redefining all of the terms and on a foundation of something that we just do not. believe, and it is causing utter confusion. Maybe I'll give you an example, because a story kind of speaks to it more than me yacking about a philosophy. A good friend of mine, who I love, who's black,

when George Floyd died, he had a bit of a breakdown. We don't live in the same city. He had a bit of a breakdown. And on Instagram, I would say on Instagram stories, probably 20 times a day, he was reposting Black Lives Matter stuff. He's a Christian. Black Lives Matters. He's a Christian. Black Matter. Ibram Kendi quotes about, as you said, prejudice and power. Being anti-racist means showing up for protests and reparations. And if you don't

show up for protest, then you're actually a racist. He was posting all this stuff. So after about a week, I gave him a call because I just wanted him to vent. Go ahead and vent. I don't mind. We're friends. I called him. And I said, hey, how are you doing with things? And we talked. We had a great conversation. And he said to me, he goes, you know

what's weird, John? He said, what's weird is that I have some of my great white Christian brothers calling me, repenting for their white supremacy. And he said, John, I just tell him, why are you calling me? I don't think you're a racist. Why are you doing this? And I had to explain to him, he doesn't understand what he's posting means that all of his white friends are actually racist, according to the definitions. And he's like, what are you talking about? And I try to explain that. Look, I'm not offended. I love you. I know you're hurting and I feel you and I'm mad about what happened to George Floyd as well. I'm really mad about it. But you have to understand the philosophy. What you're saying means that your white

friends are actually prejudiced against you. And so what this means now, I don't know if you've seen this, I'm sure people watching have seen this. Have you seen things online where you have a spouse married to someone else that's a different color skin? Yeah. Repenting to their spouses or their biracial kids. They didn't know they had white supremacy. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you've been married for 20 years. This is not what love looks. That is a twisted version of love.

Yeah. When in the Christian worldview, we have already been reconciled in covenant to one another because we are reconciled to Christ. It is the best news that there is. It's the great news of Jesus Christ. So I agree with you. I think that's like maybe a story to put it in perspective. of how critical race theory will destroy the world.

And for all those preachers that are going, I don't believe in critical race theory. I'm just want to use some of the terms in order to reach the world. What you end up with is this confusion about saying that I read just this past week, again, that Jesus had privilege. Jesus laid aside his privilege in order to identify with the oppressed.

As soon as you get into that language, what you are saying is that Jesus, Jesus died for minority groups. Yeah. And the only way for majority groups to come to Christ is through identifying with a minority group. And now the minority group becomes the mediator. And that is not the gospel.

We celebrate one mediator in Christ. So I would encourage people, you know what? You probably are going to get called names. It is going to be unpopular. But in doing so you'll be rewarded. It's so much better to be rewarded by King Jesus. That's what I would say. Yes.

Amen. I say, blessed are those who are canceled for Christ. If Jesus said blessed are the persecuted, blessed are those who are canceled for Christ. I have a few things to say about what you just said. You're absolutely right there. Pastors say, no, I don't believe in critical race theory, but I do feel like I need to renounce my white privilege. I do feel like I need to preach a different gospel to my white congregants than I do to my black congregants. And I think that is an eternal disservice in particular to your black congregants if you love, which I know these pastors do, if you love the black and brown people that are in your congregation. And if you love God,

then you know that their deepest problem, their deepest problem is everyone else's deepest problem, that they are a sinner that will stand before God one day and that they need to be reconciled to a holy God by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the same biggest problem that your white congregants have. And so when we only preach repentance to white people, but we preach, I'm sorry only to black people, then we're not preaching the gospel to the very people that we are saying

have beared the brunt of prejudice. That is another form of prejudice, and it has eternal implications when you are too scared to preach repentance and preach the good news of Jesus Christ to your black congregants because you think the only thing they need to hear about is white privilege, that is actually a form of racism. And that is where critical theory brings us to new forms of racism, to coddling one group

and to castigating another group, not based on actual responsibility, not based on actual actions or attitudes, but based on immutable characteristics that the world has told us categorizes people as the oppressed versus the oppressor. Another thing that I wanted to know is that you said, you know, people are saying Jesus put aside his privilege to care for the oppressed. What people seem to conveniently forget is that, yes, Jesus certainly did spend time with the marginalized in society. He certainly did spend time with the societally oppressed. He also paid attention to what critical theorists today would call the societal oppressors. He paid attention to the Roman centurion. He certainly befriended the tax collectors. He even shared the

gospel with the Pharisees. What about Nicodemus? What about the greatest oppressor that we see in the New Testament, which is Saul. I mean, he paid special attention, Saul who became Paul. He paid special attention to these people who were considered societal oppressors because the commonality between the societally oppressed and the societal oppressors is that we are all oppressed by sin. And that is what Jesus came to liberate us from. And when we forget that, we're no longer preaching the gospel. We are preaching the gospel of critical race theory, which ultimately deconstructs and divides, but within its nature does not have the ability to reconcile, does not have the ability to build up the church. It only divides. It only creates resentment. It only creates more prejudice.

And I think that you're absolutely right. It leads to a deconstruction and destruction that is going to be scary to watch if we don't reverse course. Do you agree with that? I absolutely agree with that. I think we're in the middle of a semi-church split in America over, again, I don't really think it's over race. I think it's over this issue, which is what you're saying. And maybe I could give a little bit of a word of encouragement of something, me and my brother were talking about this. This isn't like, you know, this isn't a prophetic word. This is just what I see. This is what I think is happening. Remember how you said a second ago? There's the guy with the M-Div. And the reason I'm saying this is, I have a good friend called James White. I know you know James White is, right?

When I first began being friends with James White, I remember saying to him, hey, I want to speak out on an issue. And it was to do with critical race. I said, the problem is, is if I speak out against this, that means that I am going against people that are way, way, way smarter

than I could ever be. Okay. I could never hold a candle to the intellect of some of the people that I'm disagreeing with. It's not possible. And what, you know, the conclusion I came to, and this is what I want to encourage your listeners in, is that I believe that there is a bit of a rebellion happening, not with the M. Div class, not with the preacher class, but with the lay people. We are the lay people. We're not the smart people, but there is a bit of a revolution happening because all of us normal people are going, wait a minute, you guys are saying things that you didn't say five years ago, that you didn't say 10 years ago, you're confusing me. And now they've been looking into it enough. And there's more

and more people saying it on the internet like yourself and whoever Voddy Balcom, who you had on, who I love. And there are more and more people saying it. And more of the normal people are going, this doesn't sound right. And I believe we're going to see a lot of these preachers held to account because it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you have a philosophy that you stand up against the word of God, it is going to fall because the word of God is supreme. And the word of God, the word of God is the word of God, whether a simpleton says it or whether an intellectual, brilliant person says it. And I think that we just need to have that courage. I had to have that courage. have that courage, frankly, because I thought, man, I'm going to say something against Tim Keller,

who's a genius, and it is very much spoken to me and aspects of my life have been changed from this person. But I disagree with this. And what it comes down to is that we don't speak because of our own intellect. We speak the word of God, which is wisdom, right? So it is wisdom that changes. It's not about intellect. And so I want to encourage people, if you think, well, I'm not really a smart person, join the club. I'm not either. I'm an average student at best, but God will increase your knowledge of the scriptures. That's what the Holy Spirit does, right? He leads you into all truth of the scriptures, and you get more and more understanding. Jesus becomes so much more delightful to you, the more you get to know him. And then you begin to recognize truth. And when we don't recognize

it, we have to stand up against it. But what I see happening is more and more people saying, this isn't right. I'm not going to put up with this any longer. And I just encourage people to stand strong. Hold the line. That's the word. Amen. Amen. And we'll end on this question. You recently talked about on your podcast the importance of unity, but only unity under truth, not necessarily unity at all costs. Can you talk about how what we should be pursuing is biblical unity, not just agree to disagree when it comes to these core truth theological issues? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the idea of having unity at the expense of essential truth is, I mean, clearly,

that's no unity at all. It's like right now in America in 2020, I don't think we're going to have unity if all of us actually want a completely different country. There's no way to have unity if there is no way to have unity if there is no. actual commonality. And so if the scriptures are not the foundation of the truth, then we will never reach unity in Christ. That doesn't make any sense at all. So I think I do believe, I heard Vody Balcom said, I know you had Vody on your show. I'm a huge fan of Vody. I think he said it best. He was saying, the sad thing is, is that a lot of people are causing a lot of this damage because

of their love for their brothers. And I think being a gracious person, that is a good way to look at it, that the people that are bringing all this division in and saying things that aren't true according to the word, best case scenario, they are doing it because they love people and they want to see people be brought together. But you cannot have, you can not have unity unless we believe in truth. So the way that I view that is, hey, there's going to be things we disagree with on the Bible. I don't care if we agree with eschatology or not. If you, somebody's post-millennial and somebody's pre-trip. That's not an essential. Our essential is that Jesus Christ is the son of God, but he always was. He is the eternal son of God. Jesus Christ

came to earth in the flesh in order to pay a sacrifice, a sinless sacrifice for the penalty of all of our sin. And if you don't believe, just one more thing, I'm amazed at how many Christians don't know that they are sinful to start with. It's the weirdest thing. How Christians don't believe in original sin is just amazing, but they don't. We are guilty of sin and we deserve for the earth, as Jonathan Edwards said, for the earth to open up and swallow us into hell right now as we speak, except that Jesus paid the price for that.

And we know who God is from the Bible. And once you take that away, there will be no unity. And now you've just bastardized the gospel because the gospel is no longer anything. unless we have a foundation on the Word of Christ. So I think my encouragement is this, I want unity really, really bad, but unity at the expense of the truth is just, that's not the gospel.

Jesus either is the way the truth and the life, you know, he's not the way the unity. He's not unity over truth. That doesn't make any sense. So that's my encouragement to Christians. I know it seems harsh. I know it sounds hard. Final thing, my final promotion for my sweet new book coming out.

Yes, please. I have a chapter in the book. It is called Jesus the Lion. And I wrote it because all we ever hear about is how nice of a person Jesus was. And obviously I believe that Jesus is nice. But Jesus said some hard stuff. And I share in my book about when I was growing up that I was ashamed. I was doing my own Bible reading.

and I was ashamed to tell anybody that Jesus doesn't always seem all that nice to me. Oh, yeah. But it's true. I'm like, they're like, he's so nice. And I'm reading this like, man, I mean, if your eye causes you to sin, it'd be better to pluck it out. Right. That doesn't sound, that doesn't sound so tame to me. This sounds like a guy that believed in truth over being polite, all right?

This is a guy that was like, truth is what? matters, and if it makes people mad, that's the way it has to be. And I wrote in this chapter about Jesus the Lion, he has words of life and words of love. And he's the same Jesus, of course, that says to, you know, the woman in sin, the prostitute or whatever, however you view that particular scripture, I don't judge you. Go and sin no more. That is Jesus. He is welcoming, but he is also that Jesus says, you know what, depart from me. I never knew you. I don't know you.

Get out of my presence. And we have to swallow everything that God is if we're to actually follow Christ. That's what it means. Yes, and amen. Okay, where can people pre-order that awesome-sounding book? Where can they follow you and listen to your podcast? Okay. You could pre-order the book, please.

John L. Cooper.com slash awake. So my website is called John L.cooper.com. And you can see stuff on there and whatnot. My podcast is called Cooper Stuff Podcast. You can get on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Cooper Stuff Podcasts.

And I'll have add some ads, I hope, for my book on their. Instagram, John L. Cooper. And, yeah, follow me. And we'll keep this thing going, baby. Awesome. Well, we will make sure to include those links in the description for this podcast episode so people can easily navigate there. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

I know this is going to be so edifying to the people who are watching and listening. And I pray that God continues to bless your endeavors, whether that's music or teaching the world about culture and theology and viewing the world through a biblical lens. And I just know that your book is going to be a huge blog. lasting for so many people and add so much wisdom and clarity. So thank you so much, All right. So cool to talk to you. Yes, definitely. Thank you so much. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and

objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.