Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 413 | The Dead End of Deconstruction | Guest: Alisa Childers

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

What is "progressive Christianity"? Do "progressive Christians" believe that God is evolving and changing? And if so, can they truly call themselves Christians? In today's episode, author and speaker Alisa Childers is back to talk about her own journey through progressive Christianity and how she came out of that system of beliefs. Plus, how orthodox Christians can best be in conversation with progressive Christians and why it's important to define your terms! --- Today's Sponsor: Freedom Project Academy has perfected live online learning for more than a decade! Go to FreedomForSchool.com & request your free information packet today. --- 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 am talking to Elisa Childers today. You guys love Elisa. You loved our first conversation. So I wanted to talk to her again. This time, I wanted to talk about how we actually tangibly approach progressive Christianity. What about our friends who identify as progressive Christians? How do we talk to them about the Bible and these very contentious theological issues? So I hope this conversation equips and encourages you to do just that. Without further ado, here is Elisa Childers. Elisa, thank you so much for joining me again. I think most people listening or watching know who you are and what you do, but will you remind people or tell people who may not know? Yeah, it's great to be with you again, Allie. I am a blogger and an author and a podcaster, YouTuber, and I basically write about just discerning the true gospel amidst some of these false gospels we see coming into the church. And I've particularly been focusing.

on progressive Christianity, giving a biblical answer to progressive Christianity, because that is essentially the environment within which my own faith was challenged several years ago. And so I write about that in my new book called Another Gospel. Yes. So you were raised pretty conservative, evangelical. You knew the gospel growing up. Sometimes when we hear about people going into progressive Christianity, they don't really have a foundation of truth.

maybe their parents didn't raise them in the church or they didn't read the Bible on their own, but they had a vague sense of Christian spirituality. But that wasn't the case for you, right? Like you were plugged into the knowledge of the truth of the gospel, correct? Yeah. In fact, I had a, just generally speaking, I had a really good experience with the church, which like you mentioned, a lot of times people who go into things like progressive Christianity, they're reacting against a bad experience they had in church, like maybe even some,

legitimate spiritual abuse or hyper-legalism, something like that. So yeah, my general experience was really good. My parents gave me the real gospel. They lived it out. The Christians that I knew were people who loved Jesus. They loved the Bible. They loved people. They loved people. And so, yeah, it was kind of a surprise to me that I went through a time of doubt as an adult because I never thought that would happen. And just as a refresher for people to set up the rest of our conversation, can you describe from your own experience and just what you've studied since then, what, quote, progressive Christianity is and why it's different from the faith that you espouse now? Right. So with progressive Christianity, it can be a bit tough to pin down and define because it's

really based on this sort of postmodern mood that's dominating our culture that's just steeped in relativism. So what that would mean to people who are unfamiliar, with those terms is I'm sure everybody's heard the phrase, what's true for you is true for you and what's true for me is true for me. And we shouldn't judge each other. We shouldn't tell each other we're wrong because that would be hateful or intolerance or something along those lines. So because it's kind of steeped in that type of moral relativism and just general relativism when it comes to the nature of truth, it can be difficult to pin down what it is. So I think a broad view of what progressive Christianity is, is it's a group of people who essentially most of them grew up in the

evangelical church, and they're now rethinking everything they've ever essentially been taught about Jesus and the Bible. So all doctrines are sort of put on the same level. So whereas we would probably say, you know, there are these core essentials that we really can't agree to disagree on and still call ourselves Christians. In progressive Christianity, everything is sort of up for grab. So you can believe in the resurrection or not, but you can still call yourself a Christian. And so I think the general idea of progressive Christianity is that Christianity, according in their mindset, is progressing. So in some cases, there are progressive Christians who even believe that God is evolving and changing in his knowledge. And he is learning as the world evolves and goes on.

And so therefore, doctrines are going to change. There really are no core. essentials that you would have to affirm in order to call yourself Christian. And so essentially what that's going to end up looking like is a lot like the theological liberalism that we saw sort of cropping up in the late 1800s, early 1900s, marrying those theological assumptions with this postmodernism that we see now today. So what is the point in the mind of a progressive Christian of holding on to Christianity at all? When for a lot of them, And they would say that there's misogyny in the Bible that God apparently does things in the Old Testament that they don't like. Paul certainly says some things that they don't like.

I imagine they take issue with Jesus saying, you know, quoting Genesis that God made them male and female, male and female. He created them in Matthew 19. If you reject so many parts of the Bible and so many parts of Orthodox Christianity, why would a person? progressive Christians still want to say that they are a Christian, that they are a follower of Christ? What's the point? There can be a couple of different reasons for that, at least that I've seen in the reading I've done and listening to the Progressive Christian Podcasts. And so the first one would be, I think, maybe an instinct to hang on to Jesus. They believe God exists. They believe that the general idea of Jesus and Christianity is true. And so I think that the,

There could be even an instinct to want to hang on to Jesus. And the sad thing about that, though, is often God and Jesus both get sort of redefined to match their own sort of preferences and what they believe is good and moral and true. And so you end up with a kind of a different Jesus and a different God. Right. The other response I've seen to a question like that is that there's a large number of progressive Christians that truly believe they are the ones who are upholding historic Christianity. They believe that, you know, this whole idea of God creating the world,

calling it good, and then man rebelling against God, that sin separating man from a perfectly holy God, then Jesus coming to earth, living a sinless life, taking our sins upon himself, dying on the cross for our sins, being resurrected, looking forward to the restoration of all things and the final judgment. All of that is viewed by a large number of progressive Christians as being a pagan idea. In fact, Brian McLaren in his book, A New Kind of Christianity, called that the Greco-Roman six-line narrative that he believes was imported into the church from pagan philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. And so he's trying to recapture what he believes is the real gospel, which he defines in a completely different way.

So I think we just have to understand that in the minds of a lot of progressive Christians, they actually believe they're the ones that are upholding the ancient faith, which is kind of astonishing to me because when you really go back and read the ancient fathers, you read, of course, the New Testament, and you read the words of Jesus, like you mentioned him referencing Genesis and gender and marriage and all of these things, you get much closer to what Brian McLaren would call the six-line Greco-Roman narrative that, of course, I don't believe it's imported from Aristotle and Plato, but that's sort of the view is that we're the ones who have hijacked Christianity. They're the ones who are

trying to bring true Christianity back. Which is so interesting. So they kind of feel like they have had almost like a new revelation that our church fathers did not have, that the apostles did not have, which reminds me of something like Mormonism, like a new prophet comes along. I mean, Mormons believe that they are upholding the true church, that that is, that's really the Church of Jesus Christ that they are upholding. Of course, we know that it's a completely different religion. And it almost sounds like the same mentality that a lot of progressive Christians have, which I guess is the point of your book, that, hey, this is not just a form of Christianity, like even the name progressive Christianity is kind of a misnomer because what they're presenting

is a different kind of faith essentially yes a different kind of gospel but also what I'm hearing is a different kind of God you mentioned that their characterization of Jesus for example they talk a lot about Jesus how they're a follower of Christ and how you know Jesus was X, Y, Z social justice advocate but they actually disagree with Jesus. on a variety of issues. And then they separate Jesus from the God of the Old Testament and sometimes the God of the New Testament, which means they don't actually believe in the triune God that is the defining feature of Christianity. That's why Christians say we don't worship the same God as Jewish people do or as Muslim people do,

even though these are Abrahamic religions, because Christianity alone worships a triune God. But it sounds like progressive Christianity doesn't worship a triune God. They very much separate the Trinity into these three beings that aren't at all reflected in Scripture. Is that a correct description? I do agree with that. And I think the little nuance I would bring to it is that one thing we have to remember, because you brought up Mormons and other kind of false movements like that, they'll often use similar language that the church has historically used words like Trinity,

words like resurrection and love and these kinds of things, but they'll completely redefine those words. So you're probably not going to find a lot of progressive Christians that would admit that they're not Trinitarian. They would believe that they are. They would use the word Trinity. They would affirm that. But you're absolutely right. And I think where we see this so on display is their view of the atonement. So very often, in fact, almost universally in the progressive Christian movement, they're going to view the idea that God the father required the blood sacrifice of his only son to make some kind of atonement for our sins. They're going to view that as implicating the moral character of God. They refer to it as cosmic child abuse. Well, the only way that you can see that

as cosmic child abuse is if you so separate the father from the son and you almost strip the son of his deity in essence and say, well, he was just this hapless victim that we murdered and God was just kind of sitting up there in some sort of like sadistic joy, taking joy in it. And the only way you can come to that conclusion is to not have a robust and well-rounded view of the Trinity. And this, I mean, this gets into so many areas as far as their Christology and their view of the nature of God. But I think you're right, if you're going to have an orthodox historic view of the Trinity, you're not going to fall into some of the trappings we see in progressive Christianity in regard to who they think God is, who they think

Jesus is, and who they think the Holy Spirit is. Right. I would say that probably most progressive Christians, and the same way that most conservative Christians might not know all of the intricacies of the theology that they hold or why they believe certain things, they could have been attracted to, like some people literally personality-wise are more attracted to Calvinism and more attracted to Armenianism. And some people in both camps don't exactly know why they believe what they believe. It does seem like that's also true of people who identify themselves as progressive Christians. They probably don't realize that they hold to a view that you just described. They were attracted to it because they saw it as more empathetic. They had friends in their life who

weren't Christians or who were gay or who were abused in the church or who held on to some kind of sin that they didn't want to condemn. They are maybe naturally very feeling people and they have, or maybe their political progressives. And so they are looking for a theology to kind of match that and bolster their social justice aims. And so they might have gone into progressive Christianity with feelings of compassion and not even realize that they are now holding on to a false gospel. How do you encourage people who have friends that way, who they know are loving people who say that they love Jesus, but believe in all of the false teachings that you just described, how is someone who is friends with that kind of person supposed to lovingly speak truth to their

life without getting, you know, immediately shut down. Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly, that's one of the most common questions I receive, because we can talk about what progressive Christians believe all day long and how to answer that biblically, but how to actually apply that knowledge in real life relationships is such a big question. And it's a difficult, it's a difficult relationship to have. And I think that, foundationally speaking, if we can understand a couple of things, it will really help to foster good conversations with people in our lives who might be buying into some of this. And so the first thing is, is we have to look past the immediate question and try to figure out where the question is coming from. And so I have a

whole chapter in my book where I talk about reasons why people have left their evangelical upbringing and gone into progressive Christianity. And you mentioned a big one just now, the morality issue. I can't even imagine for young people today growing up in this in this environment where they're not just being told they're wrong or the Bible is wrong about issues of sexuality. They're actually being told, hey, if you even believe that, you're hurting people, you're causing people to be depressed. And so I can imagine for a young person, they're thinking, well, I don't want to do that to somebody. I want to, I want to love people. I want to help them. And so we have to understand that, you know, that's one reason a lot of people are attracted to progressive Christianity. Another reason is they may have been

through some legitimate spiritual abuse. Of course, we've seen scandals, lots of scandals come out in the last, especially even couple of years, two, three years, where there have been abuses of power, even sexual abuse in the church. And so there can be people who have been through that, that they're going to go over to this progressive Christian movement because it seems more loving. They're going to be accepted. They're not going to be judged. They're not, nothing's going to be required of them, and that can feel very healing and very loving. And so there are reasons like that. Hyper-legalism I mentioned earlier, people that were just so suffocated in their faith

where their particular stream of Christianity was adding to the Bible. I just talked with a guy yesterday who said that the first church he ever went to was so legalistic. They told them that eating lucky charms was satanic because it had... I've actually heard that before. I don't know if that's a Southern Baptist thing or what it is, but I wasn't taught that growing up, but I've heard other people being taught that. Yeah.

I mean, I wasn't allowed to eat lucky charms because of all the sugar, but I never heard the charm part, but that it was the occult or something like that. So I think when that kind of thing happens, people just, they throw the whole thing out. So sometimes there can be this sort of inner desire to really know who Jesus is, but they're just misguided. So I would always look for where the question is coming from. For example, if somebody's asking about the Old Testament God, or they bring up the Canaanite conquest,

or even the horror of the Noah's Ark story, we have to understand they're not necessarily. Some people are just being skeptical, but a lot of times there's a genuine wound in there, and they're trying to reconcile their understanding of God as a good being with what, you know, some of the judgments that he executed in the Old Testament. And so there can be a lot of knots that need to be untied. And we have to do that gently. And this is the other thing I would tell

people, if you have friends in your life that are persuaded by this, is A, there's one of those reasons probably behind it. But B, there's also like this rejection of absolute truth. So this is largely a postmodern movement. So we have to back up a few steps and realize that we're not even starting on the same playing field. Like, Allie, you and I could have a conversation regarding some theological point. And we would be beginning our conversation based on the fact that if we disagree, one of us is probably wrong or we're both wrong, but there is an objective truth about that particular teaching.

And we can begin our conversation that way. I might be wrong. You might be wrong. But we would both have the understanding that there is a truth there. And that it's found in, and that it's found in scripture, that it's not just somewhere out there and that you and I aren't inventing. For example, I don't know, you know, what you believe in regards to predestination. But if we were debating that, we both believe at the end of the day that God's word is inherent, that it's our authority. And we might be looking at the same scriptures and interpreting two different ways.

But at the end of the day, we don't conclude, okay, well, truth is relative. it's okay we can't get to an agreement on this and that's okay we both know that god is right and that we'll figure it like you know one day we will know um and so like you said we're starting with the same foundation but you're saying with progressive christians um you're not necessarily starting at the same place right that's right so it's it's largely this what's true for you is true for you and what's true for me is true for me type of mentality so we have to understand that when someone is coming from that place, any kind of truth statement you make, like if you say, well, I think you're wrong about that or, or, you know, but I think it's this. Those are sort of

viewed as combative and they're viewed as an attack. But I'm sorry. I'm wanting a little bit of clarity or maybe there is no clarity. Maybe it's just a standing contradiction. Is that they would say that we're wrong. Like they would, a progressive Christian would say that we're wrong. Like we're wrong about the atonement. We're wrong about the inerrancy of scripture. We're wrong about the idea of the Bible being God's word. And so how is relativism, which I agree a lot of progressive Christians espouse, how is that reconciled with their very bold assertions that we're wrong about the Bible? Well, you're absolutely right. It is an absolute standing contradiction. And that's why it's so hard. I've heard people refer to it as trying to nail jello to the wall.

because it's so difficult. You're absolutely right. In one breath, they'll view any kind of a truth claim as combative, but yet would have no hesitation even saying what we believe is not only wrong, but morally evil. And so it's very, very hard to navigate conversations because it's kind of like your truth is your truth and my truth as long as it's in this sort of scope of what we believe is right and true. In fact, a perfect example of this is a book I read by Lisa Gunger, where she documents her deconstruction and her journey into progressive Christianity and even wider spirituality than that. And essentially, she's saying I started thinking that, like, this was true, what I was taught in my conservative evangelical church. Then I got out a little further and I saw that there was a broader, you know, even lots of different views within the church. that then I sort of, she ends up dropping into this, what she calls this circle. And really what she's

describing is pluralism, relativism. And so I wrote her view on this. And essentially, what she's assuming at that point is that pluralism, relativism, are the correct worldview. And because they fit the most people within it. So it's the same absolutism. It's the same belief and objective truth that we have. It's worded differently. But you're absolutely right. It's really a contradiction. And that is why it's so difficult to have those kinds of conversations. So I would recommend, you know, if you have family members or good friends, ask a lot of questions. Because with this movement, it's so based on their definition of love, which is going to match culture's definition of love, which is acceptance and affirmation and even celebration of whatever

it is you want to believe, of course, unless you're conservative. That comes without saying. But, you know, if you can find a way to ask a lot of questions, and they're going to need to feel and know that you love them, that you're not just trying to get them with gotcha questions, you're not just trying to lay your views and oppress them with your views or whatever. But if you can ask a lot of questions, and there are ways that you can frame questions that will kind of, as Greg Coker says in his book, tactics,

put a little pebble in their shoe. People did that with me. They put pebbles in my shoe where you kind of like, well, that was irritating. why and then you think it through more and then that can actually cause you to change your mind on something but I think it's it's such a relational thing you have they have to know that they're loved by you and that you generally care about their opinion that you generally want to know what they're going to answer with these questions and it's just going to be a long a long haul of prayer loving them with true

biblical love which speaks the truth sometimes you know the Bible says love rejoices in the truth So it's a fine balance that we have to walk, but it can be done. Yeah. And I think understanding, like you said, that you're starting in two totally different, two totally different places and asking questions, people often ask me as I'm sure they ask you, what do I say when someone says X? And always before I recommend giving a response, which you might readily have, someone might say something that you know is absolutely false.

And you can combat it immediately with your answer, which sometimes, I mean, sometimes that is the right thing to do. It's just a simple, okay, you think this, but actually this is true if it's just a, they have their facts wrong. But when someone makes a theological assertion or, you know, I talk politics, when someone makes a political assertion, typically what I try to do is before I say, no, you're wrong in here is why, I say, what do you mean by, blink? What do you mean by X? Can you define this? Because a lot of times, And this is not really exclusive to one side of the theological or political aisle. We will say things that we hear or even that we understand, but we don't understand well

enough to actually be able to define and articulate. And I think that's really important for all of us to make sure that we know the terms that we're using, why we use certain terms, what they mean, especially biblically. But it's also important to press people that we are disagreeing with on what they mean. Get down to the nitty-gritty. because if we are not starting in a place to where we define words the same way, like if they're saying love and you're saying love, but you mean two totally different things, then you're going to keep on talking past each other. So if someone says, well, I'm a progressive Christian because I love

LGBTQ people, you as a non-progressive Christian are going to say, well, I love LGBTQ people too. And they're going to say, no, you don't because you believe that it's a sin. And I'm going to say, well, yeah, I do believe it's a sin, but that's, and then you're going to get confused. So you have to first define what love is. And for us, we believe that love is defined by Scripture that God is love. And therefore, everything that God does in Scripture defines what love is and tells us what love is. So if we start with the idea of the definition of love that God is love, and he himself says that God made them male and female. And we see that definition of marriage reiterated throughout scripture. And we see the definition of gender reiterated throughout scripture. Then defining gender,

defining marriage is God defined it. Who is love is also loving. But you do have to realize that a lot of times progressive Christians, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but they are not starting from the assumption that we are, that God is greater and more loving and holier than us, and he is the definer of all things. And we have to submit to his definitions. They rather, whether they know it or not, hold themselves as, the definer of things and that God and love and acceptance and whatever other definition or word there might be is really defined by what they want to define it by. And so if God does something in the Bible or a Christian does something that they don't view as loving, well, then it's just

not loving and they're going to throw it out rather than subjecting their mind like, okay, it's really difficult for me to understand why God would do something like that. But it must be loving because he is love. It's, well, it's really hard for me to understand why God would say or do something like that because it doesn't seem loving to me. So he must have not done it or I just don't agree with it. And so you also have to realize that we're starting from a different place of authority as well, correct? Yeah, you make a really good point there because one of the things you'll hear quite commonly

in the progressive Christian movement is people saying things like, I could never worship a God who, and then you can just fill in the blank. So essentially, they're taking their own personal conscience, what they think is good and true, and then holding God to their standard rather than doing it the other way around. And this was perfectly articulated by a guy named Bart Campolo, who's the son of famous evangelist father, Tony Campolo, Bart's story is that he deconstructed into a type of progressive

of Christianity for a while. And now he's totally out of the church. He identifies as a secular humanist. But some of his thoughts are very helpful because it gives us a picture of what's going on in people's minds. But he said in an interview, now I'm going to paraphrase because I don't have it right in front of me and I spend a minute since I listened to it. But he said something along the lines of, why would you worship this God when you can imagine a better one? And so in his mind, he can create a better God in his own mind than his perception of the God of the Bible. And so that was a large reason why he ended up rejecting Christianity. And so you hear that a lot.

And I just want to go back to this point you made earlier because it was so good about just understanding the definitions of words. We see this in the social justice conversation all the time. When that conversation sort of re-entered the evangelical atmosphere a while back, A lot of people would use the phrase social justice, and what they meant was caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, doing evangelism, you know, blessing, clothing the naked, visiting people in prisons. That's what people thought, like one group was saying. They didn't understand that the other group meant dismantling institutions and systems and pitting everybody as oppressed versus oppressor. And so for years, I've seen so many people just talk directly past each other because they just don't bother to define the phrase social justice.

And so you're right, we can end up having fruitless conversations if we don't first define our terms, which is such an important thing to do, especially when you're in relationship and in conversation with a progressive Christian. Something I'm concerned about is that women, and maybe this is not even true, I'm just kind of in female circles, being a woman, it seems like women are more attracted to this than men are more susceptible to the tenets of progressive Christianity and a lot of material Bible studies, books, sermons that I see geared toward women. They are not dealing with these tough theological issues that all Christians really need to work through. Why do we believe in the Bible? How do we define our words? How do we wrestle with tough questions of doubt? But instead, it seems like a lot of women, especially today, maybe this hasn't always been the case,

but women in the church are being told, well, no, your biggest problem is that you're insecure, or your biggest problem is society, your biggest problem is that people put too many expectations on you. And really, what you need to do is realize that Jesus thinks you're awesome and beautiful. And as long as you realize that, then you'll manifest all of this goodness in your life. and we are almost told that we're victims of motherhood, that we're victims of our femininity, we're victims of our womanhood. And because of, you know, society, the patriarchy, whatever it is. And that's all we're hearing.

We're not dealing with these very tough questions. And so we are kind of getting this self-centered message where Jesus is coming along for the ride and telling us that we're awesome and pretty and that we're. We should just chase our dreams and feel good about ourselves, but a lot of Christian teachers aren't telling us, how do you deal with your sin? How do you deal with the biggest problem that you're going to stand before a holy God one day? And that if you can't, if Christ is not your advocate, if Christ, you know, if you are not in Christ, then you're going to spend forever in hell. We're almost not even presented with the basic gospel. Our gospel is like you feel bad about

yourself. Jesus is here to make you feel good about yourself. And to me, that could be why they end up sliding into a false gospel, progressive Christianity, because they don't have a firm foundation that they're hearing from a lot of these so-called female Bible teachers. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think we see it, I don't know the ratio of men to women. This teaching comes from men a lot as well, though, in this. But you're right. Some of the biggest and most popular, most highly platformed female teachers in the progressive movement. I mean, we're talking millions of followers. And one thing we have to understand, I think, why it so goes to that me-focused gospel

is because the basic foundation of progressive Christianity is most progressive Christians, and I only say most just to make room for somebody who might view this differently, but this is pretty much across the board. And we may have talked about this last time, but progressive Christians, don't believe that our sin separates us from God. I mean, that's where it starts. It's not that they'll reject the idea that we do wrong things, and they might even use the word sin,

but sin isn't what separates us from God. It's just our own shame. And so they'll even teach Genesis 3. And, you know, when Adam and Eve saw that they were naked and they were afraid and they hid, they'll say that was bad. They need to realize that they're beloved before God, that they're not separated from God,

that God doesn't reject them. And I think, I mean, one of the biggest examples we see of this is with Glennon Doyle, who started as a Christian mommy blogger. She's got millions of followers today on Facebook still claims the name of Christ. Still in her latest book says that she's a Christian. And she actually teaches the Genesis story by saying, you know, we need to stop looking at Eve as a cautionary tale. And we need to start seeing Eve as our hero. And she actually says in the book at one point, own your. are wanting, eat the apple. And so she's saying like this whole narrative that Eve sinned,

this whole narrative that Eve was rebellious or wicked because she ate the apple. We need to reject that because that's oppressive to women. We need to view her as our hero and do what she did, have the courage to eat the apple. So we have to understand, like, this is the message that women are getting. And so if you're told that your sin is really not that big of a deal, it doesn't really separate you from God. You just need to realize how beautiful and loved and and just embraced and accepted by God you already are. You can see how that's going to go right to that, just that me-focused gospel. If I just work on myself, if I find my inner goddess like I've heard you say.

And if I just find that inner sense of divinity that's already within me, then everything's going to be great. And so you can see even just from that first building block, how the gospel just gets completely lost. If you don't have that, you don't have the rest of it. Okay, I am just pretending. I am a doubter. I have these tenets of progressive Christianity. The reason why I can't fully feel like I'm on board with the rest of Christians is because I see a lot of Christians who seem hateful to me, or they seem hypocritical or they seem unaccepting. And the God that they worship seems very cruel. He seems very puny. I don't understand why, you know, he lets bad things happen or he sends people to hell. And so I've embraced this much softer and I think more compassionate and more accepting form of Christianity.

And I just can't bring myself to believe the efficacy of the Bible. I can't believe myself. I can't bring myself to believe that Christianity is the only way. What do you, if you had 30 seconds to just share the gospel with me and tell me what is true, and kind of at least lightly deal with some of the doubts that I'm struggling with. What do you say to me? I think it's someone that's in the situation you just described. From what I heard from what you said, you love Jesus, right?

You want to follow Jesus. You want to follow the teachings of Jesus. You might not understand some of the things that you're reading in the Old Testament. It's difficult for you. But you're a Christian. You're going to embrace Christianity, which, you know, the first question I would ask is, are you a Jesus follower? And most likely the person's going to say, well, yeah, of course, I'm a Jesus follower. And the second question I would follow up with, especially if I just had a short amount of

time, is I would just say, well, what do you think about what Jesus said about the Bible and what he said about or whatever issue might be coming up? You know, if they're rejecting the Atonement, what do you think about what Jesus said about the reason that he came and the reason that he died? and you're going to get one of two answers. Either they have no idea what Jesus said about that, because maybe they're not really spending time reading the Bible, but they've sort of created this sort of cosmic Jesus that's based on this mystical sort of preference that they have in their own hearts.

Or they're going to say, well, you know, if they are familiar, they're probably going to go to some teachings that aren't really where Jesus addresses what he did. But if you go to the upper room, I mean, Jesus identifies himself with the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. And I would just point them toward those things. And just, you know, because they have such an aversion to Paul, generally speaking, you know, we can just sideline Paul for a second, even though we affirm that Paul was,

you know, writing scripture inspired by God, he's writing God's word. But for the progressive that sort of already has this sort of wall up with Paul, well, let's just go to Jesus, you know? Do you agree with Jesus on the Bible? Do you agree with Jesus about the reason he died? do you agree with Jesus on a marriage and gender and sin and hell and heaven? And you know, you can do these things gently and bit by bit. But that's probably where I would go is I would go to Jesus and say, well, what did he say about it?

And then we can decide, like, do we agree with Jesus or we disagree with Jesus? And then what are the consequences of actually disagreeing with Jesus on that? And I think that's a great way to sort of maybe put that little pebble in the shoe to have them think about what they're actually claiming. Yeah. And it's so important for us, too, to understand our Bibles, to know our Bibles and to be able to wrestle with this ourselves. Unfortunately, I think that, you know, some conservative Christians almost see because progressive Christians use Jesus as their mascot and they almost paint him as this like left wing freedom fighter, this soft guy who doesn't care about sin at all. Some conservatives almost want to skip over Jesus because they think he is an obstacle to defending. their theology when really that's not true at all. If we look at the life and the words of Jesus, we uphold them obviously, we follow him and we affirm them as true, you will find that he is juxtaposed to progressive theology, that he does contradict progressive theology. So I think that is such a good tactic asking the questions like we talked about, but start with Jesus,

who is the reason why any of us believe any of it. But progressive Christians typically do say that, you know, they might not agree with the rest of the biblical canon, but they do follow Jesus. So start with Jesus. Start with what he thinks about scripture, with what he says love is, why he says he died. What does he say about who God is? And so I think you're absolutely right. That's a great place to start. If you could recommend some people or some resources for others to follow or to purchase

friend themselves so they can read and learn more. Do you have a list of those recommendations or just some off the top of your head that you would suggest? Yeah, I can do both. So I have a resource page on my website that just gives lots of good book recommendations, podcast recommendations, things like that. If you want to learn more about this, regarding the things we just mentioned about Jesus view of scripture, Jesus view of all of these things, I have a lot of videos on YouTube that can help you with that. Of course, I address that in my book as well. A great book to get that is just a good introduction to some of this stuff is called I don't have enough faith to be an atheist by Frank Turek and Norm Geisler. There's also Cold Case Christianity by Jay Warner Wallace.

And then a third book I would really recommend just when it comes to the practical side of having difficult conversations without getting becoming difficult, having arguments without being argumentative is a book called Tactics by Greg Kokel. Yes. And I think that I saw that you were reading that and your book club, we are going to it in my book club as well, which is great. That means thousands of people are going to, are going to read it. And I'm really excited because I've heard so many good things about it. And I actually haven't read it myself. And so I'm super pumped about that. Okay, is there anything else that you want to leave people with? I think you, you mentioned your website.

Can they follow you on social media? And where can they get your book as well? Yeah, thank you. So you can follow on social on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Elisa Childers. And you can get the book anywhere books are sold. If you want to go to my website, elisa-childers.com slash another gospel. There's some buttons there. You can buy it at several different retailers or Amazon or wherever you buy books. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Elisa, for joining me again.

Oh, so fun. Thanks, Allie.