Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 375 | Max Lucado, Carl Lentz & Ravi Zacharias: When Christian Leaders Disappoint

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Today we're covering a much-requested topic: the situations surrounding Carl Lentz, Ravi Zacharias, and Max Lucado. What do we do when our Christian teachers and leaders let us down? Sin can happen to anyone, and it's always sad to discover that people weren't who we thought they were. Such is the case for Carl Lentz and Ravi Zacharias, who were revealed to behave differently behind closed doors. But remember, the strength of your faith shouldn't rely on our imperfect human leaders, but on God, who never changes. We also discuss the unfolding drama around Max Lucado, who is under fire for his views on LGBTQ marriage. Max ended up apologizing for his views, even though he still likely believes in the biblical definition of marriage. So why do it? --- Today's Sponsors: Bambee can change HR from your biggest liability to your biggest strength. Go to Bambee.com/Allie to schedule your FREE HR audit! Ettitude offers sustainably-made bedding, sleepwear, bathware and accessories all made from 100% organic bamboo fabric. Go to Ettitude.com/Allie & get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping! --- Today's Sources: Disgraced Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz might get payoff despite ‘multiple affairs’: https://pge.sx/3pRw5Km    RZIM whistleblower details 'toxic' culture of manipulation, mockery in letter to board: https://bit.ly/3qT6e6a  Outrage Over Max Lucado Shows There Is No Room For Dissent In LGBT Church Politics: https://bit.ly/37Mczsr  Max Lucado Apologizes to LGBTQ For Preaching Against Homosexuality, Harming Them: https://bit.ly/3pQoPhT --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 352: Trump Impeachment, Abortion in Argentina, & Ravi Zacharias --- 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. Happy Wednesday. We are halfway through the week. I hope everyone has had a great week so far. Today we are going to talk about a subject that you guys have been asking me to talk about for a while. And that's going to be the subject of Christian leaders kind of letting us down or letting their congregants down, letting their followers down, the people who have learned from them, who have benefited from their teaching, who feel that their affections for the Lord have been stirred. by the teachings and the studies that these pastors and these leaders have published over the years. And these leaders are Carl Lentz of Hillsong, Ravi Zacharias, the very esteemed apologist, and then Max Lucado, who is an author and a pastor. There are three very different, well, two of them are similar, but three very different scenarios in which I think believers are looking to these leaders and wondering, okay, am I able to trust this person's teachings? How should I feel about all of this? And how do I feel if this teacher, if I feel like that teacher laid a foundation for my faith and now I feel like that foundation

is crumbling, what do I do? So first let's talk about what happened. And then we're going to get a biblical perspective of how we are to look at Christian teachers in general, but especially after it has been revealed that their character is not the character of Christ, that is not congruent with the Christian life. So first, let's talk about Carl Lentz. I've been avoiding talking about this. I think because I didn't want it to seem in any way that I was saying, I told you so, or rubbing this in people's faces. And the reason why I was sensitive about that and slow to talk about this is because I have serious theological disagreements with Hillsong and in particular Carl Lince.

And I have serious political disagreements with Carl Lince. And I've talked about his stances negatively on this podcast before. His social justice activism, how wrong I think he is on issues of race and so-called racial justice and social justice, how unbiblical some of his Instagram posts have been when it comes to, for example, Black Lives Matter and what justice actually looks like. It doesn't seem that his views on that are actually rooted in scripture, but are actually rooted in popular social movement. And so because I've been critical of him in other ways, I was slow to talk about this scenario because I didn't want it to seem like I was gleeful about it or like I was gloating in any way.

and I didn't want it to come across as gossip because the fact of the matter is is that, yes, I do disagree with Carl Lentz on lots of things. We probably agree on lots of things too, but I do disagree with him on lots of things. I have been very skeptical of his leadership and his pastoral abilities for a long time. But I am not happy about this story. I'm not happy to talk about this scandal. I am not gleeful. I'm not gloating in any way when someone,

who professes to be a Christian and who has a lot of believers following them falls and shows themselves to be a hypocrite, shows themselves to be leading two lives, to have one character that they show on stage on Sunday, and then another part of their character that reveals who they really are. It's sad. And so I'm sad about this. I want you to know that before I explain what happened that I'm sad about this. I'm not in any way trying to say, look, I told you so. And, you know, this is just a product of Hill song.

I'm not trying to make that argument at all. But let me tell you what happened. It was revealed recently, I think it was last November. So it was several months ago now that it was revealed that he had been in an affair or engaging in a month's long affair with a woman named Renin Karim. She is a designer. They met somewhere in New York, I think at like a park in New York and they ended up talking. They exchanged numbers and then they started getting together.

It seems like it was just for kind of emotional support at first. And then, of course, it turned physical into a full-fledged affair. They were talking apparently, according to her, she did a few interviews. They were talking constantly and they were really each other's person. Like they seem to have fallen in love with each other, at least from her testimony. And then, um, according to her story, Carl Lynch's wife found text messages on his phone. And that's when the whole thing kind of blew up. And that's when the whole thing ended.

And eventually he had to talk about it publicly. And he had to admit what happened as far as I know. And of course, there's so little that we know. We only see the surface level. There's always so much going on behind the scenes. as far as I can tell from what we can see publicly, Carl Lynch and his wife are working through this. They are still married. Carlins stepped down from his position as pastor of Hillsong, NYC.

Brian Houston is the head of Hillsong, and there was leaked audio that went more into depth on what was happening behind the scenes that caused or that precipitated the resignation. of Carl Lynch, apparently it was more than just this affair. But here is part of what the audio says. A staff member found a very compromising chain of text messages on Carl's laptop. We drove right across town to talk to Carl and confront him. And that was the beginning of the process we are at now. So that's a little bit different than the story that we originally heard from the woman that Carl Lynch was having an affair with. When we talk about an affair, these issues were more than one affair, they were significant, and at least some bad moral behavior had gone back historically, but not necessarily those affairs, Houston said in the recording obtained by page six.

If it was just about a moral failure, perhaps it would have been possible to work our way through it, have a period of restoration, but the nature of where my relationship was with Carl already. And then to add the significant nature of the moral issues meant that I believed, and our global board believed, the only option was to terminate Carl. Then Houston said that, there had been problems with Lentz ahead of the affair revelations. He was a difficult man to have any kind of direct conversation with because he was always defensive. It would always be put back on the other person as though they were the ones with the problem, which is, you know, a typical gaslighting tactic of people with, you know, kind of narcissistic

personalities, if I can say that. They were not easy meetings tonight already, and I was already at the point at the end of the summer that I felt like Carl and Laura's time in New York was coming to an end. this is what Brian Houston, the head of Hill's song was saying, not just general narcissistic behavior. So he uses the word narcissistic too, manipulating mistreating people. I think sometimes other hurtful things. The breaches of trust connected to lying, constantly lying, basically broken trust. He said the church had hired a New York law firm as an independent investigator to probe

Lynch's leadership. So again, we don't know everything that's going on behind the scenes. We don't know what leadership decisions were made. It sounds like Brian Houston knew. that Carl Lynch needed to be let go and needed to be fired. And I do think it's good to have to hire an independent investigator just to make sure that there wasn't a pattern of behavior that actually victimized people within the church. If that is the case, then that needs to be found out and that needs to be dealt with. And if there was actual abuse, then obviously that has to be dealt with

in the civic realm. Like that has to be dealt with on a legal level, not just a church discipline level as well. Lince was a personal spiritual advisor to Justin Bieber at one point. I don't know if that's still happening. He baptized Justin Bieber in a bathtub. Justin and Haley Bieber apparently ended their relationship with him months before the scandal broke. I don't have any more details on that. And so it is interesting. I will say it is interesting while Carl Lince was posting all of this social justice stuff while he was gaining followers. And he was gaining a reputation among social justice activists. Some of them professing Christians, some of them not.

This was going on behind the scenes. It does seem like so often performative activism, whether that's in the form of, you know, social media posts or using the right woke language or holding a woke sign, whatever it is, that people see that as a way to insulate themselves from critical in other areas of their life. They feel like if they have enough social justice points, if they say the right things about systemic racism, or they say the right things about police brutality, or they post the right things, the black square, the right rhetoric and language, they talk to the right people, they listen and learn, they read the right books. Some, it seems like, use that

as an insulation from people peering into other parts of their life that actually reveal their true character, then their performative activism does on social media. And so I don't know that that's the case with Carl Lentz, but it's interesting how often he invoked the name of God and invoked the Bible to, I think, erroneously defend his left-wing social justice views. All the while, obviously, his heart, at least in this period, was far from God. The name of God might have been on his lips. But at this time, at this period, his heart seemed to have been far from God. And that's true of all of us if we persist in a sin. Sin separates us from God. And so I think this is tragic for his family. It's tragic for Carl Lentz. It's tragic for the people that go to Hillsong. And I wish I could say that,

oh, well, this only happens when you have someone like Carl Lent, who obviously only had a superficial understanding of theology. That's the assessment that I would have given, that he is kind of a feel-good preacher that makes people want to come to his church simply because they know that he's not really going to talk about the hard stuff. And he's really more about how he sounds and what he looks like than preaching the gospel and preaching sin and salvation. That is the assessment that I would give of Carl Lynch. And I wish I could say, look, this is just what happens when you don't have depth. This is just what happens when you don't have substance. This is just what happens when you have bad theology.

But then that kind of assertion gets very muddled when you look at someone like Ravi Zacharias who is just about as theologically solid as anyone. That doesn't mean I agree with him on everything. But I don't think anyone would have said, well, Ravi Zacharias doesn't really know scripture. He doesn't really preach the full gospel. And so I can't just say, well, you know, this is just a product of Hillsong and superficial theology and celebrity pastors. that wear skinny jeans and have tattoos and care more about what they look like.

Because while Ravi Zacharias is a celebrity pastor, he doesn't fit the same characterization as Carl Lynch does. The through line that we're going to see in this is sin. That can unfortunately happen to anyone. And so I'm going to explain now the Ravi Zacharias scandal. And then we're going to tie this all together with a biblical perspective of how we should react to it. Okay, let's talk about Ravi Zacharias. Now, I'm going to put in the description of this podcast, the past episode that I did on Ravi Zacharias, because we have talked about this. When this first came out, after he died, he died about, was it a year ago now?

I'm not sure. It was several months ago. It might have been over the summer that he died. And it came out that he had unfortunately been treating employees of the, the spa that he had part ownership of, he had been sexually harassing them and even forms of sexual abuse were found out. I think a lot of people did not want to believe it because Ravi Zacharias and his apologetics tools, his books, his speeches have really helped a lot of people understand the Christian faith and be able to defend the Christian faith. And in that way, has stirred their

affections for the Lord and has propelled them towards understanding God's word and better grasping the gospel. Now, on that, I want to read a passage that that applies to this situation and just the idea that you can no longer trust your faith or you can no longer trust your growth because the person that helped you grow or whose materials helped you grow no longer can be trusted because they have revealed a character or part of themselves that you are realizing, that you are realizing is incongruent with the faith that they professed to have. So let me read you, 1 Corinthians 3, 4 through 7.

For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed is the Lord assigned to each. I planted Apollos watered, but God gave growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth. So if your faith was cultivated by reading Ravi Zacharias or, hey, maybe even listening to a Carl Linz sermon, and it caused you to go deeper into the gospel and to understand and desire God's word more, if it made you more excited to understand who God is and to seek after Christ, that faith does not

become counterfeit just because a teacher has revealed himself to be counterfeit, or just because a teacher has revealed himself to lead a double life. If they are preaching the word of God, that's still the word of God. Remember, Paul also says whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed. And he's talking about in Philippians 1, how there were people that were preaching the gospel for selfish ambition and for selfish gain, maybe in some way to try to hurt Paul. And Paul is saying, okay, so what do I make of all of that? If there are people who have bad hearts, who have bad motivations that are preaching the gospel, how am I supposed to deal with that? And Paul says, whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed. And so if you were someone

that understood the gospel because you heard it from Ravi Zacharias, or you heard it from another teacher who later left the faith or revealed that they were leading a double life, that does not make the gospel counterfeit. And that certainly does not make your faith counterfeit because Jesus is the author and perfector of your faith, as Hebrew says. And 1 Corinthians 3 says that it is God who gives growth. Philippians 1 says whether by pretense or by truth, the gospel was proclaimed. Philippians also talks about that it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good purpose. So your faith is genuine because God is genuine. Your faith is real because God is real.

Your faith is not dependent on the trustworthiness of Carl Linz or the trustworthiness of Ravi Zacharias. Your faith is based on the trustworthiness of God who does not change, as Hebrews 138 says. He is reliable. He is the author of your faith. He is the one who gives growth. Now, let me talk a little bit more about Ravi Zacharias and what exactly, what exactly happened in all of this because I think the reason why I went that direction is because

I think most of you already know the details of it. We've talked about the details of it. But there is a little bit more here. So Ruth Mahatra, I actually met her several years ago. She's a very, very sweet person. And from what I can tell, a very trustworthy person. She's the PR manager and spokesperson for RZIM. She wrote a 26-page letter to the RZIM. board on February 6th. She detailed the various ways in which she was misled and how she was put into compromising positions given how questions were being raised as evidence of the late apologist misconduct continued to emerge. Ravi first started being exposed in 2017 for inflating his academic credentials and grooming a Canadian woman, Lori Ann Thompson, online. Ruth says that after

Ravi sued Thompson for racketeering, claiming they were attempting to extort money from from him. She was left to quote field questions about the apologist and the integrity of the ministry for which she had no good answers. But when she pressed her colleagues for more information, she said she encountered internal resistance. In her letter to the board, she wrote that within the organization, she felt systemically marginalized maligned and misrepresented to others by key members of senior leadership. The RZIM senior leadership met with Nancy Gifford, the global media director and Ruth in an off-site conference room for a three-day conciliation meeting, which then turned out to be a 10th session where senior leaders vented to Malhotra and the

outside conciliator. They had hired Judy Dabler allegedly told her that she was one step away from complete and total insanity. And so apparently Ruth was just gaslighted and maligned when she tried to bring up these concerns several years ago. Zacharias's daughter Sarah Davis subsequently asked Malhotra to go to Dabler Center by herself for a week of intensive session. So she was made to feel like she was crazy for bringing up these concerns. I know I've said gaslighting a few times, but that's what gaslighting is. And it is the language of, and it is the tactic of an abuser. They said, I don't want to force my hand on this, but I'm prepared to do so, Davis reportedly told Malhotra. So Ruth, in her letter to the board,

said this, I believe that the leadership's treatment of me in 2017 and 2018 was unacceptable and revealing of the toxic environment at RZIM that has existed for far too long. In summary, what senior leadership subjected me to was personally traumatizing, publicly shaming, and potentially spiritually abusive. I have reasons to believe that I am not the only RZIM staff member who has suffered due to the approaching actions of senior leadership. And I pray that when possible, my colleagues' voices will be heard and acknowledged as well. So underneath the affairs that were apparently going on and the abuse that was going on between Ravi Zacharias and the women who worked at the spa that he partly owned, apparently he, you know,

like revealed himself to them and asked them to do sexual things with him that they were not comfortable with, but they felt coerced into because, of course, he's in a position of power and leadership, and he's this great man of God who has helped these women find a job. some of these women were in very vulnerable and desperate situations and they were able to find employment through him and through his spa. So not only was all of that happening, but underneath there was a toxic environment at the ministry, which very often happens. It's kind of what we saw with Carl Lynch, that there were underneath leadership issues going on there, that these things don't happen in a vacuum. There are people typically who speak up and they might not know everything

that's going on in the same way that everyone didn't know what was going on with Carl Lin. not everyone knew that, you know, he was having an affair. They knew that there were some integrity issues there. They knew that there was some narcissism there. There was some selfishness there. There were some character issues there. It seems like the same thing was going on with Ravi Zacharias, not just with him personally, but also with his team,

that there was this kind of environment of you don't get to ask those kinds of questions. You don't get to make any accusations. You don't get to point out any of your concerns. being told that you're a crazy person and you're going to be pushed to the margins. That's what seems to have happened, according to Ruth Malhotra at RZIM. And so we see that there's always something going on beneath the surface. Typically, the scandal that comes out is just the tip of the iceberg. And I think that's a good practical lesson for us to see and for us to learn that when people raise those kinds of concerns about a business or about an organization,

of course they need to be looked into and made sure that this is not just a person who has a grievance or this is not just, you know, a person who is making a mountain out of a molehill. Of course, you have to look at the facts and you have to look at the reliability of someone's testimony and someone's complaint. That is absolutely true. But if it is consistent and especially if it's represented, if it's a concern represented by more than one person and it speaks to some kind of pattern of behavior of a particular leader or leadership or environment, that it needs to be looked into. People cannot be gaslit for making complaints and for raising concerns that end up being legitimate and end up throwing a ministry or an organization and a church into a scandal that maybe it couldn't have been avoided, but it certainly could have been dealt with better. And now you're talking about not just physical abuse that came from Ravi Zacharias,

but potentially spiritual abuse as well. I mean, that is going to have an effect on someone's emotional health and potentially their psyche for the rest of their lives. I mean, we can't treat image bears. We can't treat people this lightly to where we are so desperate to insulate a particular leader or particular church or entity or ministry from scandal and disrepute and bad PR that we are unwilling to hold people accountable that God says because they're in sin, we have to hold accountable. Remember, teachers are held to a higher standard. Pastors are held to a higher standard than just anyone. The Bible says, not all of you should be teachers, that there is a particular responsibility. And there is a particular level of, there is a particular level of integrity that is expected,

especially from people who are leading others in doctrine, who are shepherding people and shepherding churches and shepherding ministries. And so this is a particularly sad case because, like I said, people have relied on Ravi Zacharias for a better understanding of apologetics. He's not, he wasn't necessarily in my Rolodex growing up of, you know, people that I listened to. But hey, there are people that I listened to growing up and sermons that I listened to by people who I would not listen to today, not necessarily because they've been caught in scandal, but because I realize that they're not theologically, theological. sound. So if you are someone who relied on Ravi Zacharias's work, then you shouldn't judge yourself or criticize yourself for that. Of course, you didn't know. And so much of what he did and what his ministry did was sound. And there's no changing that. There's no changing that. The fact of the matter is is that Ravi Zacharias, just like you and me, are people who are dead in sin apart from Christ and who Satan desperately wants to tempt, it desperately wants to trip, it desperately wants to make

fall. So Ravi Zacharias was someone who was caught in sin. He was someone who gave into temptation, and he victimized people along the way. I don't know what the end of his life looked like if he repented from those things, but if he was in that sin unrepentantly and consistently, then, that speaks to the question of his salvation. Not just whether or not, okay, was he an okay person? Was he an okay leader? But was he actually saved? And that's a really hard question, I think, for us to ask about leaders who have been so esteemed for so long. When we talk about false teachers, typically we're talking about

false teachings. We're talking about people like Rob Bell, who don't believe in hell, who are basically universalists or people who don't believe in the Trinity, don't believe that Jesus was God. Like, we're typically talking about some kind of heresy when we're talking about false teachers, but I think something that we need to learn is that false teachers, they can be false even if they are saying things that are true because their lives and their hearts aren't actually regenerated by the gospel. So you've probably heard that phrase before that people miss heaven by 18 inches. 18 inches is the length between the head and the heart. And so someone can have all of the intellectual knowledge in the world about Christianity.

They can be very theologically sound because they understand what logically makes sense with the Bible or they can just repeat what they've heard before. Or hey, if you're someone like Ravi Zacharias, you've made a career out of the kind of theology and the kind of apologetics that he espoused, that could have been, I don't know for sure, but that could have been all intellectual knowledge. And he could have not had a regenerate heart. That could absolutely be the case. Like I said, I don't know about his repentance. I don't know what his last days were like. I don't know what that looked like. But I do know it seems like he was consistently leading a life that was not congruent with someone whose heart has been regenerated. Am I saying that

Christians don't sin or can't be caught in sin or can't go through a season of struggling and a season of really trying and sometimes failing to resist temptation. No, I'm not saying that at all. I don't think that we can reach perfection on this side of eternity. And that's not what I'm saying that Ravi Zacharias had to prove himself to be perfect. But to continue in this kind of abuse and this kind of sexual immorality does speak to a heart that has still been hardened by sin, who is still callous, who is still dead in his sin. And I think that the Bible is extremely clear on that. And it's actually comforting that we can look to the objective standard of scripture.

We can look to the standards of the gospel. And we don't have to kind of pick and choose who we want to be genuine and who we want not to be genuine based on our you know, on our liking of them or our liking of the apologetic work that they published. And so I understand that this is very sad for a lot of people. And unfortunately, I've seen some people kind of like write it off and push it to the side because they think that this is just, he's just being another, you know, victim of secularists and the Me Too movement. I don't think that that is the case.

I don't think that's the case. I do not think that if there were a sliver of doubt that he was guilty of these crimes, that his ministry, RZIM, would be coming out and revealing the results of the investigation, which has, I think, multiple times now revealed that he actually is guilty of the abuse that he has been accused of by various women. And so I think that we just need to, as far as, as we can trust the results of the investigation. I mean, we'll never know the whole story. We'll never know for sure. We'll never know, you know, what his side of the story is. But I think we have as reliable

of testimony and reliable of results from an investigation that we can possibly have. And we just have to kind of live in this uncomfortable reality that people can talk the talk really well. and they may not be walking the walk. And a false teacher can be a false teacher, even if they're preaching the right things because their lives and their hearts are not actually in line with the truth and regenerated by the truth. Again, that passage that says whether by pretense or by truth,

the gospel was proclaimed, the people that were preaching the gospel, as Paul is talking about in 1st Corinthians, were doing so by pre-tes, sorry, not First Corinthians, Philippians, were doing so under a false pretense. They were doing so from selfish ambition, but they were still preaching that, which is true. Now, he said that the gospel is still effective, but he did not say that those teachers were going to avoid wrath, that those teachers were regenerate, that those teachers were actually saved. He just said, look, God used these people who had selfish ambition to still preach his

truth. And so we can still praise God for that because remember, 1 Corinthians 3 says it is God who gives growth. And so we can still say thank you for using these very imperfect, sinful vessels to reach anyone for Christ. Please, Lord, keep those people who are now questioning their faith and strengthen them and make them realize that it is God who authors our faith and grows our faith and not imperfect teachers. So I think that's how we need to look at that. There was a really interesting article in religion news by a woman who she was promoting her book and she was talking about the dangers of purity culture and how, and I've talked about the dangers of purity culture too. People think they mischaracterize me in my views as someone who like loves

legalistic sex policy within the church. And that would not be an accurate depiction of my views. I think that there are problems with purity culture because it is emphasizing the wrong things. It emphasizes the dirtiness and the lack of forgiveness for someone who has sinned sexually and does not emphasize why we care about purity and why we care about sexual immorality and the joy of following Christ with not just our hearts and our souls, but our minds and our bodies as well. So I think it just kind of purity culture, especially just in the Bible about evangelical church in like the 90s, 80s, early 2000s was very legalistic, very much emphasized that if you do this, you'll be like this, you know, tattered blanket, you'll be like this used car. I remember reading a book that said that the farther you go, you know, with your boyfriend, the more of a used car you'll be.

and no one's going to want to take you off the lot after that because your value is so depreciated. How freaking unchrist-like and void of the gospel is that kind of message. And so this particular, that just makes me so, so angry, so angry that some people have been manipulated by that kind of false message. but this particular author of this article was talking about how maybe that kind of messaging has possibly led to men in power being able to being able to go on stage and gain their respect of thousands, if not millions of people, and behind the scenes, they still kind of have this, they have this, you know, sexual sin or this sexual abuse in some cases. cases that is going on because men were held to the same standard as women in purity culture.

And it was also regarded in several kind of evangelical books growing up that men just have this like carnal desire and this lust that has to be satiated. And if it's not satiated completely and totally and consistently by their wives, then they're going to go out and they're going to have affairs. And so their responsibility was almost placed on women and wives sometimes. if their husband was unfaithful or doing things like Carl Lentz and Ravi Zacharias were. And so this person was pondering whether or not that part of purity culture had anything to do with these scandals between Carl Lentz and Ravi Zacharias.

I don't know. I think it's really easy to take, you know, to have to start with our theory and then to find evidence to back up our theory. I think that's possible. Like I said, I think that there are problems with purity culture. I do think that we need to emphasize, not deemphasize purity and not deemphasize the sin of sexual immorality, but talk much more about the forgiveness and the grace and the regeneration. I guess regeneration is like my favorite word for this episode today of the gospel and how that

means that our body is that our entire selves become living sacrifices for Christ, which naturally and necessarily encompasses purity, but not because it messes. messes us up or makes us less valuable when we sexually sin, but because God loves us so much. And he wants what's best for our bodies. He wants what's best for our hearts. He wants what's best for our minds. And people who love him, trust him. And they trust his rules. They trust his boundaries. They trust his goodness. They trust that he knows best what love looks like, what passion looks like, what pleasure looks like. And we fully rely on him to define these things. And we follow him in all of those areas. I think purity culture in the evangelical church de-emphasized the heart behind purity

and put it all on the external, on the legalistic, held men in some cases to a different standard, women to completely unfair standards. And it has left a lot of people, unfortunately, sexually broken. In some cases, I think possibly, I don't know if there's a causal relationship, but sexually abused and spiritually traumatized. And, and spiritually traumatized. And a lot of people bitter because they weren't taught about sex and sexuality and faithfulness and marriage properly within the church, but were fed a strong diet of legalism and they just rejected it. So it's really not hard for us to always go back to the gospel, to always go back to that, which we know is underneath all obedience to the Lord. and that is a love for Christ and his undying love for us. Okay, I want to quickly talk about a little bit of a different scandal,

and that has to do with Max Lucato. And so I will explain what went down with him in the past couple of weeks. All right, now I want to quickly talk about Max Lekato. A lot of people really like Max Lekato. Now, some people feel like he has kind of revealed himself to be on the left side of the aisle. I would say that that's probably true on some issues. I'm not saying that he has gone like full woke or full leftist or anything like that, but certainly there were some things said during the election.

There are some different teachers that he elevates that don't seem to be in line with, you know, theological conservatism. And so people have kind of been questioning Max Locato, at least theological conservatives have been questioning Max Locato for a little bit. And they were very perturbed by this exchange that happened between him. and the Washington National Cathedral. So Max Lucado was invited to preach at Washington National Cathedral in D.C. on February 7th, when this is according to the Federalist,

when the Washington National Cathedral announced on their Facebook page, Lucado would be preaching their Sunday service, calls for him to be disinvited, flooded in. And that is because apparently of a sermon that he gave in 2004. And I can't imagine it's the last sermon that he talked about this subject in. But he said that, homosexuality is a sin and that God instituted marriage between a man and a woman and only condones married sexuality. Now, I will say I have not listened to this sermon, so I can't tell you exactly what it said. But the congregants, the people who were attending, who were going to

attend this church service, were very upset about this and did not want him to be invited because of this sermon. Lucado did end up preaching, but, quote, only after retired Bishop Jean Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first ordained openly gay bishop was recruited to preside over the Sunday morning service as a calming device. Robinson provided a meticulously worded eight-minute long explanation for why Lukato's invitation was not revoked. To his credit, Robinson's speech was a thoughtful and classical liberal explanation for why inclusion, quote, sometimes includes people we don't agree with much at all. But he put his explanation to, but he put his explanation to the congregation

and the simple and binary context of good over bad, right over wrong, us against them. So he said this in his sermon, Bishop Robinson, to this angry congregation who was about to listen to Max Lucado. Let me just say this carefully to those of us who are LGBTQ. We've won. We've won. We know how this is going to end. This is going to end with the full inclusion of gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer people, non-binary people, all kinds of people.

We know how it is. He concluded his side of the zero sum victors, good over evil, that pulpit is their pulpit and they will manage it according to their ascendant beliefs. And Reverend Randy Hollerith, Dean of Washington National Cathedral, was also compelled to distance himself from his gentle guest during the Sunday service and did so in his carefully threaded introduction to Lucado's sermon. he, you know, caveated basically Lucado's presence and his sermon by saying before it that, you know, he has said some things in the past that have made the LGBTQ community hurt. Let me be clear.

I don't agree with his statements. The cathedral does not agree with his statements. But here's Max Locato. So that was his introduction. Max Locato then felt that he had to write a letter to the cathedral. after he gave his sermon to kind of apologize for what he said. And so the sermon or the letter is available online, I'll read you part of it. He says, faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality,

but we agree that God's holy word must never be used as a weapon to wound others. He also said that he believes in a God of unbounded grace and love, and the LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love, because they are made in the image and likeness of God. Now, let me clarify some things that I think that he is correct on and some things that I think that he is incorrect on in this particular letter. First of all, I don't believe that he should have written the letter in the first place. If he does say in the letter, look, I affirm traditional marriage between a man and a woman,

but obviously he apologizes for the sermon that he gave and he apologizes for the apparent pain that he caused, and he does say that, look, we can faithful people can disagree on homosexuality, but what we know for sure is that the Bible is not supposed to be weaponized. The reason why I'm troubled by that is manifold. First of all, the Bible is very clear about homosexuality. This is not just been a historical teaching of the church that is based on the Bible, but it is very clear in scripture. This is not one of those issues, like the issue of Eschatore.

the end times or the issue of, I mean, I personally don't think the Bible is muddy on predestination, but faithful people do disagree on predestination. We do disagree on Calvinism versus Armenianism. We do disagree on infant baptism versus credo baptism, believers baptism. We do, you know, we disagree on things like whether or not believers are going to endure the great tribulation, premillennialism, post-millanialism, ah-millanialism. So there are issues in which faithful, faithful, faithful Christians can disagree. But homosexuality, being as clear as it is in the Bible, is not something that people who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, is infallible, and is trustworthy, can or do

disagree on. We've talked about that on this show very many times. That homosexuality in the Bible is not just this word that was thrown in there. the last century. It's not just this concept that was placed in there by, you know, insecure, straight patriarchal men. It wasn't just this concept that was popularized in the modern era. It's not just something that was in Levitical law. It's not just something that we throw out. The concept, not just, not of homosexuality, but if we look at the Bible from the positive sense of not just what does God prohibit, but what does he actually say is good,

we see the definition of marriage that is rooted in creation. It's reiterated. throughout scripture and both the old and the New Testament. It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19 when he defines marriage as between a male and a female. God made the male and female and they come together in marriage and the two become one flesh. He's talking about divorce, but he clearly reiterates the original designation of marriage and definition of marriage as male and female. It is reflective of Christ in the church and is therefore representative of the gospel. That's the alliteration that I came up with to talk about the Bible's emphasis of and strict definition of what biblical marriage actually looks like. So it's rooted in creation. It's

reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19. It is representative of Christ in the church as we read in Ephesians 5. And then it is also therefore representative of the gospel. And so the union between a man and a woman is seen throughout scripture. and it doesn't just have a physical significance, the Bible tells us. It has an eternal gospel significance to it. There's no way to read Ephesians 5 and that tells us that the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the church. And the wife is supposed to submit to her husband as to the Lord. This is a reflective of this eternal relationship between Christ and the church. There's no way to read that outside of the heterosexual context. And so anyone who says, oh, this is just a slight disagreement between Christians.

This is just something that we can kind of dance around different interpretations of, I don't know that it's understood that there is a spiritual, eternal gospel significance to God's definition of marriage that was started in the garden. That's like a Genesis 1 issue. And so for Max Lucato to kind of push this into the realm of the secondary or the tertiary, just like eschatology or just like, you know, know, anything else, is not, it's not accurate, one, and it's not representative of what I think he actually believes and knows to be true as someone who knows, believes it, and I think loves the Bible.

And he emphasizes, the more important thing is that we agree that God's Holy Word must never be used as a weapon to wound others. And while I do think that that's true, the Bible is referred to as a double-edged sword, the Holy Spirit does use God's word to convict us of our sin. And we cannot equate wounding people with saying what the Bible says is true. And with agreeing with God, we cannot equate wounding people with offending people by what God actually says. Remember, we talked about on the episode a few weeks or a couple weeks ago on Valentine's Day, what is love? If God is loved, then that means that everything that God says is good and right and true is love. That means everything God does is love.

That means that everything God defines, he defines in love. That means his boundaries is love. His definition of sin is love. His means of salvation and redemption and sanctification is love. And we do not understand love if we do not know God, since God is the perfect embodiment of love. And if God is love, we don't define love and then put that characterization, that human characterization of love on God, that means we go to God to learn what love is.

And so if God says something is right or God says something is wrong and we know that God is love, then what he says is right and wrong is done out of love. And so it is loving for us to agree with God on that. So he almost seems to seed ground in this way to say that, oh, you know, using the Bible to say what God says is sin and what God says isn't sin is a way to wound people. well, you're almost apologizing for what God says is good and right and true. The God who is love, the source of wisdom, the source of truth and morality. You're almost trying to let him off the hook by saying, oh, I'm sorry for using the Bible.

What God says is good and right and true as a way to, quote, wound someone. And that also makes me sad. I mean, I would say that that's a form of blasphemy. He said that he believes in God, the God of unbounded grace and love. Yes, so do I. And we know how that God defines things. We know how that God defines sexuality and defines marriage. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

If we know, if we're starting with the idea that God is unbounded grace and love, again, everything that he commands is also unbounded grace and love. He says that LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love 1,000%. Of course, they are made in the image of God. everyone is made in the image of God. No matter how you sexually identify, no matter what you believe your gender identity to be, like you are a valuable person because you are made in the image of God. And I do believe that God loves you because he created you and he sent his son to die for you.

And there is all the compassion and grace and forgiveness for all of us in the world through Christ. That is absolutely true. That does not exclude me from saying, here's what God says is right. Here's what God says is sin. here's what God says sanctification looks like, salvation looks like, here's what God says sexuality should look like, those two things. If we have a right understanding of God being love and God being truth and God being mercy and God being holiness and righteousness, those two things for the Christian come together very easily in our mind, even if it's offensive to a world that does not understand that.

And I'm just afraid that Max Locato seeded too much grounds here. I mean, I know that he did. He acquiesced two much he apologized for something that he shouldn't have apologized for unless there was something said in his sermon that I just don't know that truly was, you know, unbiblical and hurtful and hateful and unkind. But if it's just a defense of marriage, the more you apologize to that, or the more you apologize for that, the more that you are apologizing for the God of the universe, God doesn't need, he doesn't need to be let off the hook. We, all we have to do is agree with him and we can trust that we are on the quote right side. And so I'm sad about this. I'm not surprised by this with Max Locata. Like I said, a lot of people saw him leaning to the left

on social and political issues. And I have often said to the to the disappointment and frustration of a lot of people, typically when we see someone going to the left politically, their theology is going to go that direction as well. Not always. But typically, because those things are so intertwined. And so he does say that he still believes in the traditional definition of biblical marriage. And that's good. If that's the case, and if you are agreeing with this God that you agree, is the God of unbounded grace and love.

And if you agree that people who identify as LGBTQ are made in the image of God, and therefore they are valuable and they are just as much in need of salvation through Christ as the rest of us are, there is no apology to be made for saying what scripture says about marriage and sexuality and sin and salvation and sanctification and all of that. There is no acquiescence. There is no ground that needs to be seated on that. Like I said, God doesn't need to be let off the hook. And so I think once again, if you're someone who has learned from Max Lucado, if you have appreciated his teachings, appreciated his books, he has so many wonderful books. If you are someone who has appreciated him, don't think that you have to now say, I can't appreciate anything that he's ever written

or anything that I've learned from him is now is now counterfeit. Certainly, certainly not. But we have to realize that we're all fallible people, that teachers are fallible people. And this is the wonderful thing I think about Protestantism in particular is that we don't elevate our teachers to the point of being insulated at all from criticism, or at least officially we don't. we shouldn't. There are still, I think, systems and hierarchies in place that do that, unfortunately, but it's a good reminder that part of Protestantism and part of the Protestant Reformation was to say,

look, we're not going to look to these leaders as infallible because we believe that God alone is infallible and we believe that we can trust what he says in his word and that whenever our leaders fail us, we can go to the Bible to remind us what is good and right and true. And ultimately, our leader is Christ, and he is our only intercessor. The Bible says he's the only intercessor between God and man. And so when Max Lukato disappoints us, when Carl Linz disappoints us, when Ravi Zacharias disappoints us, all we have to say is, is I still trust Christ because he is reliable and he is trustworthy and he will not fail me.

He will not betray me. He is not leading to double life. He is not pretending to be something that he's not. He is not going to compromise on the truth of God's word. He is truth. He says, I am the way, the truthy life. No one can come to the Father except through me. That does not change based on what leaders do or don't say.

All leaders are going to disappoint us in small ways and big ways because we are fallible. We are sinful people. We are vulnerable to temptation. And of course, Satan wants nothing more than to try to present the church is this hypocritical, duplicitous body that has nothing to offer the world in that. that has only caused harm. That is certainly something that Satan wants to do. But look, the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the church, no matter what its purported leaders do or don't do say or doesn't say because the future of the church, the perpetuation,

the protection of believers is reliant on the God of the universe, on Christ himself, who, like I said, does not fail us. All right, that's all I've got for today. Tomorrow. We are going to going to, I'm going to talk to Lila Rose, who is a wonderful pro-life activist. We're going to talk to, we're going to talk about the Equality Act and what it means in the way of abortion. And we're also going to talk. I'm going to talk separately about more about the Equality Act. Once again, we've talked about it several times, but it is in Congress this week and probably will be passed. As I'm speaking, it probably will pass the House. Don't know about this in it, but we'll talk about that tomorrow. We'll also talk about Xavier Bacera. a nominee by Biden and how rabidly pro-abortion he is and what that means for pro-lifers. Okay, I will see you guys back here then.