Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 342 | Leaving Progressivism for Biblical Christianity | Guest: Alisa Childers

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Today's interview is with apologist Alisa Childers. She speaks from personal experience on the encroachment of progressivism into Christianity and the manipulative ways leftists get Christians to forsake their biblical beliefs. -- 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 guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far, so excited about today's conversation with Lisa Childers. You guys probably know who she is. She hosts a podcast. She's got a YouTube channel. She just wrote a book called Another Gospel. That's what we're going to talk about today. She talks about from going from this deconstructionism, progressive Christianity, to where she is today in understanding apologetics why biblical Christians believe. what they believe. And so we're going to get into all of that, the difference between progressive theology and what is considered conservative theology. When I say conservative theology, I'm not talking about politically conservative. I'm talking about believing, for example, that the word

of God is inerrant, believing in the historical creeds when it comes to the gospel, who the triune God is. And so we're going to talk about the differences and her own journey. It really is just an amazing conversation. She's an amazing person. And I know. that you are going to be so edified and encouraged after listening to her speak about this subject. Before we get into that conversation, I got to take a quick ad break. Elisa, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, it's so great to be with you, Allie. Thanks for having me.

For those who don't know, and there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast who do know, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Well, I am a blogger and an author, and I have a YouTube channel. I basically am an apologist, which is an unusual career choice for me because I used to be in the contemporary Christian music business, and now I'm an apologist. So it's pretty kind of sweet the way that God has written that story for me. But yeah, I just had a book come out. So it's pretty exciting.

Yes, and your book is called Another Gospel, correct? And we'll get more into it. but can you give right at the top, just kind of a brief summary of what it's about and why you wrote it? Yeah, it's basically my story of walking through a church that went from evangelical to progressive. And along the way, my faith that I grew up with was really deeply challenged. And it caused a dark night of the soul for me, just a crisis of faith. And so the book walks the reader through that journey along the way, kind of discovering what progressive Christians believe how that differs from historic Christian. but hopefully people will learn from my story how to spot those types of ideas in their churches

and small groups and even in the social media that they're consuming online. I'm so excited to talk more about that and to hear you differentiate between progressive Christianity and what you know is biblical Christianity. First, can you back us up and tell us your story? Tell us your testimony how you came to know the Lord and then how you came to where you are right now. I grew up in a Christian home with wonderful Christian parents who really gave me the real gospel. They regularly read their Bibles with us and in front of us, repented to us, and in front of us, family prayer was a very important part of our life.

And also, one thing that I think really showed me the gospel in action was that my mom always had us out working the soup lines at the Fred Jordan Mission in Los Angeles, where I grew up. And I got to watch the gospel really change people's lives. And so I honestly can't remember a time before I knew Jesus, before I was aware of his presence, before I knew that the Bible was the Word of God. I've lived my life as best that I could to live by the Word of God my whole life. And so I think because of that, I didn't really ever go through a significant time of doubt about what I believed. I didn't really have a reason to doubt it. I loved Jesus.

I loved people and I loved His word. Then I went into Christian music for a while. I was in a group Zoe Girl. Some of your listeners may remember Zoe Girl, and I did that for about seven or eight years. Just loved getting to share the gospel with young girls and encourage them to stand strong for Christ on their public school campuses and in their youth groups. And so it actually wasn't until all of that came to a close that I went through a really significant time of doubt and even deconstruction as we're hearing that word. our social media so much now. So essentially what happened was when Zoe Girl came off the road, I had a new baby, and my husband and I began attending a local church here in Tennessee.

And it was wonderful. We loved it. We loved the pastor. We loved the people. And about eight months in the pastor invited me to be a part of a smaller group. And he compared it to seminary. He said, we're going to go through books. We're going to have discussions. And at the end of four years, you're going to come out with an education that's on par with somebody from seminary. And so I was really excited. And I went to the first class, only to be really surprised when the pastor announced that he was actually an agnostic. He called himself a hopeful agnostic. And of course, this wasn't something he was saying on Sunday mornings.

And so over the course of about the four months that I lasted in this class, everything that I'd ever believed about Jesus and the Bible and the gospel, was explained away. It was picked apart. It was deconstructed. And while I was in the class, I would try to argue with him. I would try to refute him. I wasn't very good at it because I didn't have any intellectual backing to what I believed. But it wasn't until we left the church that all of those doubts that he had planted began to take root in my own heart and grow. And so it threw me into a pretty serious dark night of the soul where I was intellectually questioning everything I'd ever believed. And I just cried out to God one night. It just said, God, if you are real, if all of this that I have believed my whole life is real, please send somebody to talk to me. And so shortly after that,

I discovered apologetics and just the robust, rich answers that we have to all of these questions that had come up in this class. And so through apologetics and studying systematic theology and church history. The Lord really rebuilt my faith. And so I'm so thrilled to get to have a small part in maybe helping others to walk through their own doubts and faith crises. And often those are perpetuated, not just by atheists, but by people who call themselves Christians. Can you talk about some of those specific beliefs of yours that were challenged that you thought that you were confident in, but then someone came along and kind of pressed against them? You didn't feel like you had defenses to defend the things that you thought that you were confident in,

and so you just kind of moved away from them or you allowed them to deconstruct or fall away. What were some of those beliefs? What were some of the arguments that he gave that made you start doubting them? I think the biggest one had to do with the Bible. So I had lived my whole life just knowing that the Bible was the Word of God, that it was reliable, that we had an accurate copy. And anytime I met somebody who disagreed with the Christian worldview or with the gospel, I could just blow it off because I would say, well, they just don't believe the Bible. And so in the class, when the pastor was able to essentially intellectually

persuade me that the Bible had been corrupted, that we don't have an accurate copy, that the people we thought wrote the books of the New Testament probably didn't. In fact, a lot of the people we read about in the Bible probably never existed. And he would bring all of these intellectual arguments. And of course, I had no ammunition to fight back with. And so in my heart, I knew it wasn't true. But in my head, though, I was sort of persuaded. And so that affected all the other beliefs that would come up. So when he would talk about the atonement, which was such a big one for me, because I knew that I was a sinner and that I needed a savior. He started referring to the atonement as cosmic child abuse or something that is implicating the moral character of God,

I knew the buck stopped there. I thought there's no way that I'm going to go on believing in God even if I have no solution for my sin problem. And so going into the Bible and the reliability of the Bible to even get accurate information about what God has revealed to us was a huge part of my journey. So as that was happening, would you say that your worldview in general was changing? What you thought about things like social justice? What you thought about things like morality, right and wrong?

Were those all being constructed at the same time that your beliefs about, for example, the inerrancy of scripture was being deconstructed? Yeah, that's a good question. One thing I did notice in this church was a really strong social justice emphasis. Which didn't bother me so much at first because, again, I had grown up doing a lot of homeless ministry, watching my mom minister to prostitutes and doing street evangelism with my dad. And so I thought, well, that's all a good thing. But when I saw that begin to replace what my understanding of the gospel was, basically a holy God reconciling sinful man to himself through the death and resurrection of Jesus, all of the social justice stuff started to take on less of a. of a meaning to me because it's like, well, we can give people comfortable beds and we can clothe them,

but if we're not giving them Jesus, if we're not giving them the gospel, then we're just making their life more comfortable here, and that has no eternal significance. And then I began to see some of the social justice things that I would agree with morph into more of an agreement with what culture would say were the causes that we should advocate for. Like, for example, same-sex marriage and LGBT inclusion in the church was a huge conversation. going on based on the idea that culture is saying that it's oppressive to have any other view than 100% in total inclusion. And so there was a lot of confusion for me. I think that if I look back, my position on what the gospel was and what the truth was, my worldview never essentially changed.

But I was living in a bit of cognitive dissonance because I had been persuaded almost in a philosophical or logical type of place that my beliefs were kind of ridiculous or they're kind of stupid or unjustified or un-indefensible in some kind of a way. And so that's what led to this serious time of doubt because I just thought, man, if the gospel isn't true, then I'm doomed. And so that's why it was so important to me to get to the bottom of the Bible and what good theology is and what the gospel actually is because often progressive Christians will use that term the gospel, but they mean something really different than Christians have historically meant by that. Yeah, and let's talk about kind of what that does mean. The biggest difference is between

progressive Christianity and the different kinds of Christianity, what we would refer to as biblical Christianity. And I know if there are people who profess to be progressive Christians out there, they don't like that contrast that I made or even. in those terms, I understand that, but I'm honestly not really sure how else to describe it. Can you, in your experience, and from what you know, talk about the biggest differences, the core differences, in the understanding of the gospel of atonement, of the sufficiency of scripture between progressive Christianity and the faith that you now hold? Yeah, a lot of people think when they hear the phrase progressive Christianity, they think, oh, it's just a group of Christians that might be changing their minds on some political issues or might be kind of loosening up on some social issues and things like that.

But what people need to understand what Christians need to understand is that progressive Christianity is teaching an entirely different gospel. And this gospel is going to give you a different God. It's going to give you a different Jesus. it's going to give you a different view of humankind. And so one of the reasons this was so important for me to discover is because I was watching a lot of my friends go into progressive Christianity because they were essentially rejecting whatever type of evangelicalism they grew up in. So maybe they grew up in a really hyper-legalistic setting or they had been through some kind of spiritual abuse. But they were throwing out the gospel along with some of the, you know,

the things we would all disagree with about maybe some of the ways modern church culture has become. And so I wanted to get to the bottom of what real Christianity is. What does Christianity mean? What makes it unique in the world? What has made it unique in the world for 2,000 years? And so I went back to the earliest sources. I'm talking about pre-New Testament creedal, material creeds that Christians affirmed and agreed upon even before the New Testament was written, going back to Jesus in the apostles himself, the New Testament documents, the early church fathers, what did they all agree on? What did they say Christianity was? And what I discovered is it's very much how we would describe the gospel today, that Jesus died for our sins, that he, there was a

divine purpose for his death to solve the sin problem, that his death was compared with the Old Testament sacrificial system. So Jesus' death was a sacrifice that paid the price for our sin, that he was punished in our place. And these are all terms in progressive Christianity that are rejected. And they'll call that cosmic child abuse. And so if we know that we're sinners, which is also something that's kind of rejected in progressive Christianity, they'll agree that we make mistakes and we do wrong things. And they might even use the word sin. But in progressive Christianity, sin isn't what separates you from God. It's your own shame. And so essentially, you're not really separated from God. you just have to realize how beloved you are. You have to realize that he hasn't separated himself from you.

And so right then and there, which is those two points, you see such a stark contrast with the historic gospel, because even the earliest Christians and Jesus himself affirmed that his death was sacrificial. And so they're rejecting that. They're disagreeing with Jesus. They're disagreeing with the early Christians. Well, that's going to affect the way that they view the whole rest of the foundational structure of what the gospel is. And so that's why I think it becomes so social justice oriented because that's kind of all they've got left. Right. And if the point of Jesus's death and resurrection was not to take care of the sin problem and to reconcile us an unholy people to a holy God by giving us a new name, a new identity, by forgiving us of our sins and wiping our slate clean, well, then you have a very, you have a very, feeble or I should say a very soft foundation on which to lay your feet and build the rest of your faith and the rest of your beliefs. Because then you are no longer essentially separated from what a lot of non-Christians believe, that it's bad to feel bad about yourself, that God is just kind of this person who loves you and wants you to feel good about yourself, too.

and is kind of coming along for the right of your life? Well, there's a lot of agnostics that believe that. There are a lot of universalists that believe that. There are a lot of people who don't call themselves anything except for spiritual who believe that too. And yet, I would say a lot of the people, a lot of the progressive Christians that halted that belief, that there was no penal substitution, that there was no real atonement or reconciliation that needed to happen through Christ, they would still call themselves

Christians, and they would still say, well, I believe in the gospel, but how are they defining those terms? If they don't believe what, you know, our church fathers and Jesus himself said was the core tenet of Christianity, what actually defined Christianity, the gospel that rests on Jesus Christ's substitutionary death and his resurrection, how are they defining those things then? Well, that's a great question. And it's going to have a lot to do with how they, view the Bible. And so I think we can get a better understanding for how they're going to define things like the gospel and even who Jesus is. When we understand that, you know, if we look at historically Christians, of course, we've argued about interpretations. We have

so many different denominations that disagree on different interpretations and what we might call secondary issues. But in progressive Christianity, they're not viewing the Bible as the word of God. It's not the authoritative standard for truth. Now, they'll say, I have a high view of scripture. I really respect the scriptures. But they're viewing the scriptures more like an ancient spiritual travel journal than the authoritative word of God. So they'll look back at what someone wrote in the Old Testament and they'll say, well, they're not really speaking God's word. They were just doing their best to understand God in the times and places in which they lived. So ancient Israel, they did all these sacrifices, but they didn't have to, according to progressive

Christianity. That's just they looked around to the pagan cultures around them. They saw them doing animal sacrifices and they thought, well, we need to do that to appease Yahweh. And so the progressive Christian, they're removing any sort of meaningful foundation upon which to build any kind of a historically Christian theology because they're essentially removing the Bible as an authoritative source from the picture. And that goes for the New Testament too. Progressives tend to not be in agreement with Paul very much. They'll like Jesus. They don't really like Paul. And so how they're going to define things like the Bible, again, more like an ancient spiritual travel journal than the word of God. The gospel becomes essentially it's activism for whatever social justice cause

culture is saying is really important right now. And so I think that's why in progressive of Christianity. We saw that move from what began with the emergent church, what seemed like it was built on theology, theology I would disagree with, and you would disagree with, but it still was based on a theological foundation, like we're going to act out of what we believe about God, where that's almost entirely jettisoned now, and they've embraced critical theory, critical race theory, they're fighting for LGBT inclusion. That becomes the gospel. In fact, there was a book written by Brian McLaren called a new kind of Christianity that has sort of informed the theology of modern progressive Christians. And he says the way we, you and I, Ali, would describe the gospel where you

have creation and the fall and then the atonement, reconciliation, redemption, final judgment. He says, that's pagan. That's a influenced by Plato and Aristotle and Greek philosophy got in there, but that's not the real gospel. He said the real gospel is what Jesus preached. And that's gospel through a Jewish lens. The problem, though, is that when Brian McLaren begins to describe what that Jewish lens is, it sounds a whole lot like what you see on the news in 2020 about environmentalism, socioeconomic reform, green energy, LGBT inclusion. And so according to McLaren, that was Jesus Jewish gospel, which is, you know, anyone who understands Jewish culture in the first century, that's just laughable. And so it's, that's why I say it's an entirely different religion,

because you can just see this, this is not Christianity. And if it's not Christianity, it's not going to be the real Jesus. Right. And I think what you see is another fundamental misunderstanding, or at least in the most generous terms of disagreement, on the nature of God and the Trinity. Because you see a lot of separation while Jesus never talked about that. Jesus never said that, you know, they'll say Jesus never talked about abortion.

Jesus never talked about gender or marriage, which I always bring up. Actually, he does in Matthew 19. He speaks to Genesis 1 and he says God made the male and female. And he describes what marriage is when he is speaking about divorce to the Pharisees. But they'll say, you know, he doesn't talk about all of these social issues, but he does talk about loving your neighbor. He does talk about not judging people. He does talk about helping the poor. And so they will say, even as they say that the Bible as a whole isn't necessarily authoritative, they will take particular passages, take them out of context and say,

well, these are authoritative and they actually are supporting, you know, the government program that I want to support or the particular cultural issue that I want to support. And there seems to be, there seems to be, I guess, a rejection of the reality that Jesus is God, that everything that God said in the Old Testament that Jesus agrees with. Yes, there is a new covenant there, of course. And so there is some, there is newness that comes with Jesus's ministry, but Jesus is God. Jesus doesn't disagree with God. He doesn't disagree with something that God did or said in the Old Testament. And it's almost like they see Jesus as an entirely new entity. Would you say that that's a correct description? Yeah, that's very accurate. In fact, when people ask me about the Jesus of Progressive Christianity, what you often find in Progressive Christianity

is that the title or the name Jesus gets slapped on whatever cause they, they as a person, think, is worthy, or whatever they would do, they'll say that's what Jesus would do. And so the Jesus that gets constructed in Progressive Christianity often just looks a lot like the person looking back at you in the mirror. In fact, there are progressive books written where progressive authors will chronicle where they think Jesus disagreed with the scriptures or where he opposed them or ignored them or denied them, where they'll find scriptures

where they believe in their kind of twist of it that Jesus was disagreeing with an Old Testament prophet and setting the record straight, so to speak. And so in progressive Christianity, sometimes you'll find that the Gospels will hold a higher authority. In fact, there was one progressive book that tells the story. of a woman who was a lesbian who grew up in the church. And in this cathartic sort of healing, so to speak, moment, she ripped out all the pages from the Bible that mentioned homosexuality

and threw them in the fire. Then she ripped out the four gospels through the rest of the Bible into the fire and clutched the four gospels to her heart. And this was what this one writer was using as an example to show that this, what she called canon within the canon, has higher authority. so the stories about Jesus have higher authority. But the problem with that is even if you do that, even if we grant that premise,

progressive Christians disagree with Jesus on almost every point. They disagree with this about what the Bible is, about what the gospel is. They disagree with Jesus about what the atonement was. And so it really, really becomes this self-styled religion that is basically, in fact, you'll hear progressive Christians say that. I couldn't believe in a God who, and then fill in the blank. So essentially, whatever I wouldn't do, I couldn't serve a God that would do that. So God, I'm more moral than God, and God hasn't come up to my standard, at least the God that they read about in Scripture, according to their own moral standard.

But personal conscience and feelings are very emphasized in the progressive Christian movement as the authority. So even in some belief statements on progressive churches, they'll take off the Nicene Creed and put in things like, we respect the right of personal conscience. so you can lead yourself to what you think is morally good and right. And where does this come from when it comes to their understanding of human nature? Like, what are some of the fundamental things that progressive Christianity asserts about who we are as human beings that leads them to make these kinds of conclusions that we have the authority to, you know, tear apart the Bible or to kind of twist what scripture says to our own liking? Well, ultimately, progressive Christians deny the doctrine of original sin. And so even though they'll say Christians, you know, we make mistakes, we do things that are wrongheaded sometimes, the idea that we have this sin nature that was passed down to

us is rejected in the progressive church. And this is where, Ali, your book is so relevant because what you write about in your book is exactly what the answer needs to be to progressive Christians who would say, look, you as a person, you're perfect just as you are. In fact, a prominent progressive leader put that on Twitter just recently. You are perfect just as you are. You are enough. You are beautiful. You should follow your heart. You should follow your dreams because God, and this is where they'll replace original sin with what they might call original blessing or original goodness. They'll say, look, God created you and said that it was good. You need to own that. You need to claim that.

And there's a Richard Roar who is incredibly influential in the progressive church. He says you just need to discover your true self. You need to put to death your false self and you need to discover your true self. So his gospel is all about yourself, going inward, getting contemplative and doing the right kind of contemplative prayer to discover your true self. And essentially that's where they're drawing salvation. Right. And that is obviously a difference between what the Bible says and putting down your old self and your new self. And when the Bible is talking about that, it's talking about the old self that is dead in sin, that is rotten and is decaying because of our depravity, because of our original sin.

And to put on the new self in righteousness and holiness, a new self that is given to us by Christ that is not characterized by doing everything we want to do or living our truth, but in following Christ and to not. ourselves picking up our cross and following him. So you do see how it is, it uses kind of the branding and the rhetoric of the gospel of the gospel, excuse me, to give another gospel, which is the name of your book. And you're right. There is such, um, such a similarity between kind of what we're seeing in these new age self-help, self-love books and podcasts that basically just say, you know, inside you is this perfect, flawless inner goddess. And your journey in life is to get to her. And the things that are holding her back are society's standards are even Christian fundamentalism and unfair expectations that have been placed on you

by the church or by society or by the patriarchy or the system, whatever it is. And as soon as you can throw those things off, the systems that so easily entangle, maybe people, progressive Christianity would say, then you'll find your true self and then you'll be manifesting, not just who you really are, but everything that you really want in life. And so if you think about that perspective of human nature, everything kind of starts to make sense, that of course you wouldn't be talking about repenting from true sin. Of course, you wouldn't be talking about the holiness of God and our obligation to submit to God in every part of our lives. Because it's really more of a god of self and the god of the Bible or whatever God is kind of we've constructed

is coming along for the ride in our journey to manifest our true selves, which is exactly why they can't deny something like the inherent goodness of LGBTQ identity because that's part of the true self. And if your journey is to find your true self and not to follow Christ, of course you're not going to deny yourself anything you really want. But one thing, one thing that you said that I thought was interesting is that the progressivism or progressive Christianity basically says, you know, we don't inherit original sin. But you also said that they are kind of accepting this critical theory, critical race theory, which we've talked a lot about on our podcast. And critical race theory does assert that some people, that white people in particular are born into racism. and that we are, we're inevitably part of that system and we actually have to repent and be sanctified

by doing the things that critical race theory calls us to do in order to be truly anti-racist. So how is, I don't know if you know the answer to this question, but how is progressive Christianity, he says we don't have original sin, wedding itself with something like CRT, which says, well, yeah, some people do have original sin and you do have to repent from it. Yeah, well, that's a really glaring inconsistency, isn't it? And there are a lot of those in the Progressive Church. For example, they will market themselves as being the most tolerant of all people. They will promote themselves as being affirming of everyone, of every creed, whatever you want to believe is fine. But as you and I both know, as public people on YouTube and on

social media, that is not the case. Progressive Christians are some of the most bitter foes if you disagree with their ideologies that they're marketing as tolerant, but they're really not tolerant of someone that has more of a conservative view or somebody that has more of a historic view. And I think that the reason that things like critical theory and critical race theory have become so wildly popular in the progressive church, frankly, is because that's the train that culture is on. And so they're going to look out into culture. They're always going to line up. That's why just before the critical race theory came in, it was more critical theory as it would apply to sexual issues and homosexuality and gay inclusion. And then it's like, oh, culture has shifted here.

Now we're going to go over here. And so it's sort of like if we look back through history, there have always been movements of Christianity or people, I should say, that are marketing themselves as Christians. But they're just going in step with wherever culture is going. And as we can see, going back all the way to the first century, Christians have always been called to be countercultural if culture is disagreeing with something in the Bible or something about the way that Christians are called to live in Christ. And so this idea of critical race theory is incredibly popular because they don't also, they're not going to want to be canceled by the world. And so it's just always going to be in lockstep with what culture is doing, at least in my observation, throughout history and then culminating in this progressive Christian movement today. And I think some pushback would be, well, you know, Christians at one point, they, you know,

there were Christians who owned slaves. There were Christians who supported slavery who tried to use the Bible to support slavery. And so I think if you don't take a second look at that kind of perspective, that a progressive Christian might say, well, all of you people who are still trying to defend what we say is harmful, like, you know, traditional marriage and things like that, you are exactly like the Christians who defended segregation or defended slavery and who stood against progress. But I think it's really important for us to be able to discern the difference between the dehumanization of slavery, which Christians actually gospel believing Jesus loving Christians like William Wilberforce fought against. And some of the issues that we are that we are

facing today. We can't just look at this kind of broad perspective of history and say, okay, this is the right side of history. This is the wrong side of history. These people have always been on the wrong side of history because I disagree with their ideology. These people have always been on the right side of history. The fact of the matter is is that these issues are different. And when we try to conflate these issues, we actually end up lessening, for example, the severity of something as sinful and awful and depraved as slavery in the United States. When we conflate them with all of, you know, our pet political issues of today like climate change activism or something like that. Would you agree? I do. And I think that that does often get

conflated because I think in progressive Christianity, there are no gospel essentials. Everything is sort of put on the same level. And so they can look at something like, well, somebody says, hey, there were Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery. Of course, that's true. There were. But if you look at what the Bible actually says and you look at every scripture in light of other scriptures and scripture as a whole, what you see is that the type of slavery that we had in the United States of America was actually punishable by death in the Old Testament. You weren't allowed to just go kidnap people and take them as slaves. That was punishable by death in the Old Testament. So if you look at the trajectory on slavery in the Bible, the word that

is translated as slavery in English really was more of an indebted servitude. It was voluntary. They were to be released after seven years with lots of flocks and wine and grain. They were to be treated well. And it was a way for poor people to be able to work their way up and out of poverty. That's a stark contrast to the type of slavery Christians may or may not have been using to justify. But as you point out, people like William Wilberforce, when you read the Bible correctly as a whole, they're saying, wait, no, this is not biblical. However, when you go to the LGBT issue, which is an entirely different issue, There's not one positive scripture about that to even compare the problematic ones to.

And of course, rooting all of that in our understanding of Genesis and what kind of a thing we are as people, we see all throughout scripture that even affirmed by Jesus, as you pointed out, that there are two genders, that marriage was created by God for a very specific purpose. And so they're not even comparable when you really understand what the Bible is saying. but see so often in progressive Christianity. Now, I'm not talking about the thought leaders because many of the thought leaders are biblically literate, but I think much like maybe evangelical culture, a lot of people in the pews are not biblically literate.

So they're just listening to what their leaders are saying and they're thinking, well, that makes sense to me, but they're not searching the scriptures for themselves, which is a good reminder for all of us to be doing that. Yeah, exactly. And you and I both agree that progressive Christianity is not the only, you know, that's not the only kind of false teaching. There are people who would call themselves conservative evangelicals who might hold to something like the prosperity gospel or a very decontextualized superficial understanding of the scripture that says, you know, in a different sense,

maybe not hipster Jesus, but, you know, my buddy Jesus is still coming along for the ride to make sure that I get this promotion, that I make sure that I am happy in my life and he's going to grant me everything that I need, but it still kind of comes from the same place, even though those two sides might not agree on politics. You're still fashioning God in your own likeness. You're still making him into something that he's not. You're still not understanding the authority of God, as scripture tells us. I heard it said once that the most controversial, without us even realizing it, the most controversial verse in the Bible is Genesis 1-1, that God created the heavens in the earth. That right there has huge implications for the rest of our theology. If he says what is,

and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad, what's male and what's female, what's holy, what's unholy, then that defines, that should define everything we think about ourselves, about who Jesus is, about what sin is, about what he did on the cross. But because I think a lot of times we put aside Genesis 1-1, that is the first step to kind of picking and choosing, okay, yeah, this kind of fits into my preconceived notions of what I want my worldview to look like or what I want the world to look like. This doesn't. Okay, now I've kind of deconstructed, as you have said,

and then constructed something that I like and something that makes me feel comfortable. Do you think that's why people who go through this deconstruction very rarely can reconstruct something that is anything like biblical Christianity? Yeah, what a great observation. So when I'm thinking of Genesis 1-1, that's going to tie in with the fear of God, right? If you know that he spoke all creation into existence, then whatever he speaks, we should be,

we should fear that in a holy way. We should fear God. In fact, we know from Scripture that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but this is something that progressives will say, no, you shouldn't fear God. Fearing is bad. We shouldn't fear God. I have a friend who was deeply in the progressive Christian movement who has come back to the real gospel now. But he tells the story of he had a tattoo on his arm that said, fear God when he was a younger Christian.

But when he went into the progressive movement, he covered that tattoo up because he was at a Rob Bell event. And Rob Bell, he met Rod Bell, and he said, look, you shouldn't, why do you want to worship a God that you have to fear? And so much of this is just based on the self. And I think that's where this all leads to. Genesis 1-1 starts with God, this holy God creator, who what he says goes, he is good, he is loving, he is just, he is all these attributes, and we are not. But in progressive Christianity, that gets flipped.

I am good. I am, you know, all-powerful to make my dreams come true in all of these things. And like you mentioned, God's along for the right. He just wants me to be happy. He's sort of involved in my life when I want him to be, but not, you know, he doesn't really care who I sleep with. He doesn't really care how I live my life. But he wants me to be good and do good to other people, but, you know, just kind of a big

whatever. But it's really based on me and my happiness and my fulfillment and what makes me feel good in the moment. And so I think that people are deconstructing because they're putting the self first. I see it if you listen to deconstruction stories, you will always see that there is a foundation that they start from, that starts with themselves, whether there's, they realize it or not, I think. Yeah. And I've noticed that, you know, there are a lot of resources about deconstruction and why it is so important. And one of the things that I have seen,

people who have deconstructed, they immediately label anything, something you or I would say, with some kind of very nefarious sounding term. And so they'll call it spiritual bypassing, or they'll call it, you know, they'll say that, saying the word biblical Christianity is, it's gaslighting, or they will call us fundamentalist, or they will immediately try to characterize what they were or what they grew up with or what they view as the wrong form of Christianity is something very evil and wicked, all the while claiming that conservative Christians,

who, you know, I'm not talking politically, have a conservative, conservative theology. They're the ones who are judgmental. They're the ones who are condemning. They're the reason why people are really leaving the church while painting those people as this very scary monster and boogeyman. It's very interesting, but it does seem to be coming from a place of personal anger and resentment and fear. And maybe a very sincere place. Like maybe they really did go through some kind of abuse in their church. Maybe they saw the youth pastor that they loved growing up turn into a complete hypocrite. Maybe they did see a lot of bad things in the church.

And so they feel like the only way to salvage their faith is to deconstruct it and to come up with something else. They see that as a protection and even redemption from maybe the real abuse and the real hypocrisy that they saw growing up. The problem is what they're left. with what they have constructed, does it have the saving power or the solace that they're looking for? You're still just left with the self, which isn't salvific. Is that a correct assessment? Yeah, and I think one thing we have to understand about deconstruction, which, by the way, is a right of passage in the progressive movement. If there's one sacrament in progressive Christianity,

it's deconstruction. You go through your deconstruction, and that's part of being a progressive Christian, but what we have to understand is deconstruction is a little bit different than doubt, because the whole concept of deconstruction is rooted in postmodern relativism. So it's based on the idea that truth can't really be known. If objective truth exists, none of us have access to it. And so basically what we think is true are just constructs that have been built up for us. So people who grew up in the evangelical church, that's just the construct of truth you were given. So it's actually your job and your duty and responsibility to deconstruct that.

But what we have to understand is that deconstruction happens on the level of even changing what words means. So it's a process of picking apart and explaining away and discarding all of the beliefs that you grew up with because you're tearing down that construct that was built for you. The problem, though, is that when you base that on postmodern relativism, this idea that truth doesn't exist, then you have no way to. build back any kind of a construct of truth. So you're left in this sea of agnosticism, which is actually praised in the progressive Christian movement. So it's essentially a culture of doubt. If you say in a progressive environment, well, hey, here's my position. I've really landed on this. I'm pretty certain about this particular theological tenet. You're viewed as less enlightened. You're not as mature. Maybe one day you'll get to that place of spiritual maturity where you can cast off

all of these little boxes you've tried to put God in and you can just come into this kind of sea of uncertainty and that is where the value is. And so I think that when Christians hear those phrases like deconstruction, we need to understand that because that's a whole different animal than maybe taking a look at what you believe. Is this true? I need to look at some evidence and see if what I believe is justifiable. Yes. I have so many thoughts about what you just said, but I thought your point about when you

deconstruct and you don't have any foundation on which to build any kind of faith except for moral relativism, you end up in this sea of agnosticism. And I've noticed that people who are in that sea really want other people to get in with them. They don't like people who are on the solid ground. It makes them really uncomfortable. Like, don't you want to be treading water with me? Like, don't you want to be, like, floating on the waves. Isn't this great? You don't have to worry about walking around. Like, you don't have to worry about the hardship of being on solid ground. And and they really want everyone to get in the waves with them. And they call people who are, you know, standing on the solid ground of scripture.

It makes them uncomfortable to the point to where they will call you prideful. They will say, this is another term that I see overused a lot. You're lacking nuance. You don't have any nuance. You don't, you know, I've gotten this. You know, you're young. You shouldn't be so sure of these beliefs. You'll realize that the world is messy.

that it's gray, that you really just have to kind of realize that, you know, morality is relative in whatever terms that they use. But they want to castigate people who are on solid ground. That doesn't mean that we know everything or that we think that we know everything or that we have the perfect understanding of everything, but that we are seeking to base our worldview on the Word of God and that we are trying to get closer and closer to the truth of Scripture every day of our lives. That that is what we are trying to build our world view upon, they will call you prideful. And they, they fancy themselves humble when really a lot of times they're just confused. And they want people to be confused along with them,

I think. I think you're right. In fact, this is what's such an interesting distinctive of progressive Christianity is that they will sort of castigate people who want to evangelize with the historic gospel. So for me or for you to tell somebody about the good news, this message of salvation, that basically starts with some bad news, right? People need to understand that they're a sinner, that they need a savior, that Jesus is that savior, that his sacrificial death on the cross can accomplish that salvation for them if they put active trust in him and what he's done. But that's viewed as hateful or small-minded or judgmental. But yet they want their agnosticism. They're equally as evangelical.

for their agnosticism. And I think we see this play out all the time. Every time a Christian celebrity goes through a deconstruction story, they not only have to post about it, but then they begin to use that as their platform. And they begin to try to persuade, as you mentioned, other people to come into this sort of agnosticism with them, because they really are as sure about their agnosticism as historic Christians are about the authoritative truth of God's word. And so there are sort of trading one view of objective truth for another. They're just calling it something else. And that's why whenever I read a progressive book that is advocating for relativism, they always, always, bottom right back out in objective truth. But they're just saying that it's a different objective

truth. And, you know, if you view agnosticism as the highest good and the highest truth, you're still, you're still someone who believes an objective truth because you think relativism is true. Exactly, which is obviously self-contradictory. And I think some of them don't realize the conundrum that they're in. And you'll also notice that like if you make, if you get into a discussion with someone with sometimes, I'm not, you know, generalizing, but sometimes you'll notice that they do use when they disagree with someone

or when they get dogmatic about something that someone they theoretically disagree with says, they will use terms like, well, you're not, you know, God doesn't, I've heard, you know, God doesn't love you. You don't know Jesus. You're not a real Christian. You're not going to heaven. And so I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought I was the, I thought I was the judgmental one because I haven't actually said any of these things about you, but here you are telling me that because I hold different tenets of the faith than you, that I am going to hell. And you're the very same person who tells me that I'm a fundamentalist exclusive. So what is it? Does truth really exists? Is salvation really exist, a heaven and hell really exist?

Or those just places that you place people, depending on whether or not they agree with you? Yeah, it's sort of a selective belief in heaven and hell because, largely speaking, progressive Christians are universalists. They don't believe that God would actually send anyone to hell. But then when you interact with a lot of progressive Christians online and social media and in your blog posts and stuff, then you begin to think, well, I think they actually do believe in hell, but it's just for a very small number of evangelicals to go. because there's so much vitriol. And, you know, in apologetics ministry, not to just dunk on progressive Christians,

there are some that try to be charred and you can interact with, of course. Yes. But in my interactions, generally speaking with atheists and in my interactions with progressive Christians, it's much harder to interact with progressive Christians because they will go so quickly to the mocking and making fun and just sort of brutal, just meanness.

So mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't know if they see it. I don't know if they see it. Well, you know, I saw a really interesting article. I think it was in Quillette, I think, the other day. And I don't have it pulled up, but it was about a guy who was raised.

He was raised in evangelical Christian, it sounds like. And then he actually saw his youth pastor that he admired, had been his spiritual mentor. He ended up getting arrested. I think it was for child pornography or child abuse or something like that. And that is when he started. to walk away. And he started to, you know, he didn't actually become a progressive Christian, but he decided that he wasn't going to become, or he wasn't going to be a Christian because it had to just be this fake faith if the person that he admired so much ended up going that direction.

And so he describes how he became very social justice oriented. He became very progressive in all of his thought processes and the political issues. that he agreed with. I mean, you know, the climate change, the trans, indigenous movement, whatever it was, he was extremely passionate about it when he left his faith and what he realized, because now he's kind of come to the other side. He still doesn't call himself a Christian, but he looks back and realizes, okay, I was in a faith then. Even when I was saying I was a progressive atheist, I was in a faith. Then he talks about, he said, I was mean. Like, I was just mean about people. I was so rude about Christians. I was so rude. I was so

rude about people who didn't agree with me. I was that, you know, that troll, that bully that I said that I hated in Christianity. I became that. But by another name, and, you know, now he's still, he doesn't consider himself a believer, but he does kind of realize the hypocrisy there. It really is interesting. It is exactly like you say in your book. It is an entirely different gospel, and it's got different fruit. It comes with different rules, with different dictates, and it's not actually more tolerant or inclusive or open. It just is different. Can you end us with whatever you want to that's, you know,

included in your book that you feel like, you know, if I could just drive this one point home to people today, this is what I, this is really what I want to say. What would that be? Well, I would say this, you know, many people, I'm sure, that are listening to this and watching this are some of the things we've talked about. You've gone, oh, the light just went on. I've heard some of these ideas from the pulpit at my church, or I've heard some of these ideas discussed in the small group of, you know, my weekly

small group. And one thing I just want to drive home is that it's everywhere, but do not fear. So here's the thing. If we go back through church history all the way back to the first century, even starting with the apologists in the second century Christians have always, even from the time the Bible was being written itself, have had to deal with false gospels, false teachers and false ideas infiltrating the church. Our temptation in our particular cultural moment and placement in history is we want to kind of plug our ears, stick our heads in the sand, because anytime, as we've discussed, any time you disagree with something or call something out, you're considered. bully, you're considered rude and bigoted and hateful, and it will use every name in the book. But if we really are going to consider ourselves biblical Christians, we have to speak up about this stuff because progressive Christianity is a movement that is springing up and out of the evangelical church. It has fully infiltrated. In fact, most of the messages I get from people

are saying, I can't hardly find a church where these ideas haven't begun to take hold and have influence. So I want to encourage you. I know that sounds like really bad news and that sounds scary, but here's the deal. God is still God. His bride is still his bride and his promises are true. And so we can rest in that. We can speak the truth knowing that, gosh, in our culture, we might get unfriended on Facebook or we might, somebody might say something mean to us online. But ultimately, we're not paying the price that many Christians throughout church history have had to pay. And so I would just encourage us by knowing the same Holy Spirit that was with them is the same Holy Spirit that's with us. The same word of God they had is the same word of God we have. And just want to encourage people,

you know, if you're seeing these ideas infiltrate your church, set up a meeting with your pastor, share your concerns, be respectful, be loving, show them the scriptures where you think some of these ideas are contradicting and leave the rest in the hands of God. But don't shrink back because you're afraid of offending someone or being, you know, that fly in the ointment, so to speak. have always had to be the fly in the ointment. Every single book of the New Testament, if not directing false teaching and false teachers directly, every book of the New Testament addresses at least using good discernment and comparing what happens in all of our churches and our lives with what the Bible says about things. And so we are followers of Jesus. We want to agree with Jesus on things.

So just be encouraged to know that there's nothing new, that we are not the first generation of Christians that have had to kind of do our job in this area. But we can do it. We're we're stronger than we think. Yes, God has given us all of the equipment that we need to do that. And like you were saying so well earlier, that it's okay to doubt and to ask questions to say, hang on, I believe that. But I'm not really sure why I believe that. My encouragement, and I'm sure your encouragement as well as when you have those questions, don't go out to the culture to ask them to answer those questions for you. Go deeper into the word of God and say, you know, God, I need your help. Like, I really need wisdom in this. You know, that's kind of like

the prayer that you prayed. Like, please send me someone, send me resources to show me what is true. I think very often when we have those doubts, instead of dealing with them and wrestling with them, because that's really uncomfortable. It's really hard to do. There's some conviction there. There might even be some guilt there. The Holy Spirit working in us and sanctifying us, we are never promised, is going to be easy

or is going to feel good. And so I think because we are a people who really doesn't, we really don't like discomfort, we go to the culture to not help us answer our doubts, but to say, to just affirm them and to say, yeah, you're actually right. And any doubt in you that you have about God is actually your true self coming out. And remember, you need to follow your true self. Progressive Christianity over and over again says, you know, the world has it right. The world has it right. And Christians would do well, progressive Christianity asserts to look more like the world, to sound more like the worlds to be more compassionate and loving like the world, whereas the Bible tells us, Jesus tells

it over and over again, look, the world has it wrong. And not only do they have it wrong, they got nothing to offer you. They got nothing to offer you. But in Jesus, we find everything that we're looking for, the satisfaction, the sanctification, the solace, the dealing with our sin that we are looking for. We find that in Christ. The gospel is good news. And the gospel, the so-called gospel that the world gives you in the name of Christianity, it doesn't save and it doesn't offer us the things that are the things that our souls are longing for. That's right.

Christianity is going to give you a Jesus. It's going to give you a God, but it's not a Jesus who can save you. Progressive Christianity, yes. Sorry, progressive Christianity. Yeah. Thank you. You get a Jesus that can hold your hand and understand what you're going through, but he can't save you.

And that's not a Jesus or a God worth following, in my opinion. Amen. Well, thank you so much. Can you tell everyone where they can get your book, another gospel, and where they can follow you, and all that good stuff? Yeah, you can get the book wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the places. You can find me. My website is elisa-childers.com. And from there, you can find my blog.

I have a podcast. I just launched a YouTube channel that's just Elisa Childers on YouTube. And Ali has been a recent guest of mine, so you can check out our episode together. But yeah, just all Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at Alisa Childers. Thank you so much, Alisa. Thanks, Allie.