#STRask - How Can So Many Professing Christians Support Things That Are Anti-Christian?

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Questions about how so many professing Christians can support things that are anti-Christian, such as LGBTQ issues and abortion on demand, and how to work with Christians who have views that seem to contradict things stated in the Bible.   How can so many professing Christians support things that are clearly anti-Christian, such as LGBTQ issues and abortion on demand? Are they really believers? How do you work with Christians who have views that oppose the Christian faith and seem to contradict things stated in the Bible, especially if they are close friends?

Welcome to another episode of the hashtag SDR Ask podcast from Stand to Reason. We're so glad you're here. So, Greg, in the last episode, we actually, we ended up talking about a question about telling the difference between misled lambs and wolves in disguise. And I actually have a question that continues on from that idea. So we're just going to keep going with that. So some of the things we said before, if you'd like to hear that, just make sure you hear our last episode. But if you're just coming from that episode, then this will follow along well from that. So this comes from Kenny. How are so many professing Christians able to also support things that are clearly anti-Christian, such as LGBTQ issues and, quote, reproductive rights, which is just a euphemism for abortion on demand. Are they really believers?

Well, keep this in mind. Something like 65% of Americans self-identify as Christians. That alone ought to tell you something, that not everybody who self-identifies as a Christian is a Christian. identifies as a Christian is a Christian. And when I say is a Christian, I am not kind of getting up on my high horse and judging a whole bunch of people. I'm trying to assess because the word Christian used to mean a particular thing. It used to mean a disciple of Jesus who followed Jesus as the way. Now, this is language I'm getting from the book of Acts. Christians were first called Christians in Antioch. It was a word that was given to them by someone else, but they would call themselves the way because they are identifying

themselves with the man who said he was the way. And they were disciplined followers of him, which is why the New Testament book of Acts describes them frequently as the disciples, the disciples this, the disciples that, etc. So, those who were called Christians who self-identified as the way were disciples of Jesus. That is, they were followers of Jesus. Now, it's clear that those nowadays who self-identify as Christian are not followers of Jesus because they do not believe the same things about the nature of the world that Jesus believed. And which, by the way, is fairly easy to quantify from the text itself. Jesus was a Torah observant Jew. And so, with a high Christology, Jesus being God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us,

he is the author of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament through the other disciples in the person of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament through the other disciples in the person of the Holy Spirit, okay? That is God's Word, and Jesus was God, so it's Jesus' Word as well, not just the red letter stuff. So what I'm saying is to be a follower of Jesus is to embrace the entire Scripture and all the teachings of Scripture properly interpreted and understood, okay? It is really clear to me that massive amounts of people who call themselves Christians have no interest at all in following the Jesus of Scripture.

And when you look at their worldview insofar as they're able to characterize it, it's a smorgasbord of all kinds of different ideas and things that they pick and choose because they like it. Most people who have a religious view are choosing what they like. It's not just my assessment. it's the way they describe it. Well, I like Buddhism, or I like the idea of being reincarnated, or I like this, or I like that, or I like Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Anybody who says they like Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount has never read Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, because there is lots not to like if you take his words in a straightforward fashion, all right? And so what we have is a massive number of Christians that give lip service to Jesus and

Christianity who are not, in fact, followers of Christ. So, this is why we shouldn't be surprised when we have people who are self-identifying as Christian and adopting all kinds of values from the world and not from Jesus himself, either directly in his teachings in his earthly ministry or from Jesus' Word, where he spoke through the apostles and disciples and prophets of old, okay? So, to be pro-abortion is the same—it is in the same category. Let me put it this way. I actually think it's worse, but it's broadly in the same category as being pro-slavery, slavery in the sense of the antebellum South in America. To be in favor of that institution is profoundly unchristian. Now, there were people who claimed to be Christians that were in favor of owning human beings and mistreating them. But I hope people realize that is ridiculously contrary to anything

like a robust Christian worldview, okay? So, could there be some people that might have been really regenerate that was going along with society and just didn't know better? I don't know. Maybe. But I have to make my assessments on their behavior. The externals, I have to make my assessments about the internals based on the externals. And we have no other way to do it. You say you have faith without your works, I will show you my faith with my works, James 2, and lots of other examples like that. Jesus says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you do not do the things that I tell you to do? So, when I look at views that people hold that are profoundly unchristian, that is contrary to a robust Christian worldview. It doesn't even have to be that robust. In other words, you don't have to

have a real thoroughgoing understanding of how Christianity applies to everything to know that Christianity is against chattel slavery and the abuse that was associated with it. By the same token, how can anybody be a Christian follower of Jesus and defend killing unborn human beings? I don't get that, unless they are really, really naive, carnal, maybe young Christians. I hadn't dealt with the abortion issue when I became a Christian first, and I have said in the story of reality, capitalizing on some aphorism that I'd heard, that Christ catches his fish and then he cleans them. You don't clean them first and then catch them kind of thing. So there is a process of reformation, according to the truth, after regeneration. That's my view.

And that happened in my own life. So, I was pro-abortion even after I became a Christian, but I didn't stay pro-abortion long. That was something the Holy Spirit dealt with in my life. So, with the exception of people who are carnal Christians, in the sense that they're babies, and therefore they're still by nature fleshly—and Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 2 or 3—with the exception of that, somebody who's been around for a long time and identifies as a Christian and is an aggressive supporter of abortion and gay activity, they are gay-affirming in all their activities, do not be deceived. It was what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, and verse 9 and following.

And in that case, he doesn't mention abortion, but he certainly mentions sexual sin, including homosexuality. but he certainly mentions sexual sin, including homosexuality. Do you not know that people who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom? So, if people who practice those things will not inherit the kingdom, how is it that good Christians, that people who are genuinely Christian, are actually promoting those things, that if people do what they're promoting, they cannot get into heaven. How can we call that a Christian position? Okay, so what I'm kind of describing, in a sense, is a spectrum. And this goes back to our earlier discussion from the last show. Sometimes there can be people that, in a certain sense, are innocently naive. It might be because they're immature. They're just kind of brand-new Christians.

They don't know how it all works together. Or they just get some things wrong because they haven't been tutored in these things. But when you see a number of things that increase in their gravity and severity that this person who identifies as a Christian is rather identifying with the world, it becomes more and more evident that they are after the flesh rather than after the Spirit. And that's the language that Paul uses in Romans 8, chapter 8, what I described as a trajectory. So, if you're on the trajectory of the world, if you're just like everybody else and believe all the same things that the rest of the world

believes in practical things, even though you give lip service to Jesus, which there's a lot of that going on, lip service means nothing. If you're doing that, but you look like everybody else, you're probably like everybody else in the most profound way, spiritually, and you're going where everyone else is going. The way I put it in the past is if you're living like hell, then you're probably going there, no matter what you self proclaim. But if you're on a trajectory of pursuing holiness and godliness and putting to death the deeds of the flesh, also a phrase from Romans 8, that is characteristic of those who are in the Spirit or of the Spirit, regenerate people. That's the way Paul defines of the Spirit there. If you have the Spirit, you're regenerate. If you don't

have the Spirit, you're none of His, Paul says. So, we have to do our best to look at the trajectory people who claim to be Christian are actually on. And if they're a trajectory that really is very much like the world, especially in weighty concerns like abortion and like sexual behavior, then they are of the world, regardless of what their words say. If instead they are struggling with worldly temptations but are seeking to grow in virtue and be faithful to Christ in the things that Jesus advances as truth, whether explicitly, red letters, or the rest of Scripture that Jesus affirmed, that's a person who's on the trajectory of the Spirit, or as Paul uses the term, in the Spirit, who are characteristically putting to death the deeds of the flesh,

which is what Paul calls being led by the Spirit. Yeah, I think you've made a couple distinctions here that are helpful, Greg. One of them being there are people who are young in the faith and there are people who are older in the faith. There are people who are promoting these things actively and there are people who are just going along. And I think the farther you go towards older in the faith and the farther you go towards promoting actively, the less likely or less confidence I can have that they are true followers of Jesus. Of course, we always have to keep in mind, I wouldn't write anyone off immediately. Because remember, the Corinthians were believers. Paul treated them as believers, even though they were doing some pretty bad things. And one thing I think is a real problem right now is there's just a lot of ignorance on the part of Christians who have not been taught about the Christian worldview.

So they're easily deceived by ideas like they want to follow Jesus. Jesus says, love your neighbor. Therefore, loving my neighbor means protecting women from dying in back alley abortions or whatever. They're applying it wrongly. They're trying to follow Jesus, but they just don't have all the information that they need. And I think it's possible there are people like that out there. In fact, I got an email recently from someone who said it used to be that the Christians that she knew were all pro-choice because of love for the woman and trying to protect the woman. And so she was kind of shocked when she started meeting Christians who were pro-life because she had been so indoctrinated into the idea that the pro-lifers were evil and hated women. She had been deceived, which

when you become a Christian, there are a lot of things you're going to have to think through that you've been trained to think. So you could be trying to follow Jesus wrongly. And so I wouldn't be too hasty on judging people, especially those who are young in the faith, but just realize that our culture is very deceptive. Just as the Corinthians were deceived by many ideas, and Paul had to correct them on many, many things, people are deceived by good Christian ideas that are applied wrongly to situations, and they're following along blindly using love your neighbor to promote certain things that actually aren't loving their neighbor, but they don't know

it's not loving their neighbor because they have no training in any sort of Christian worldview. Maybe they're not familiar with their Bibles, whatever it is. So I think those who are following Jesus will respond when you encourage them and show them what the Bible says and you start to help them to understand and you do it kindly and graciously. I think those who are following Jesus will respond to that. If they're not truly following Jesus, then they will resist that to the end. So I think sometimes you can't know where people are until you start to work with them and try to make your case. That's really well put. And it reminds me that I think it's necessary to make a comment about the Second Great Commandment because it's so frequently invoked in circumstances like this.

And the comment I want to make is the second great commandment is the second great commandment. You cannot pursue the second great commandment in a way that violates the first great commandment. If you are, then you are not fulfilling the second great commandment. The first commandment is to love your Lord, your God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. But Jesus is making a point that one is going to flow into the other. And so your commitment to love God is to love his people. But if what you're doing and you think is loving his people is you're loving them in a way that is inconsistent with loving the Father, that is obedience to his, not just his, in a sense, rules, his ways, the virtuous ways that he wants us to live, but the way he made the world for human flourishing.

If you are not loving them in that way, then you are not loving them. You are disagreeing and unloving towards the Father, and therefore you cannot possibly, in doing that, be loving towards your neighbor. If you are promoting their same-sex attraction, and God says that that pursuit of that is wrong, then you are dishonoring God by promoting that. And if you're promoting that to them and it's wrong, then you are not loving them. Right. Because love doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness. Now, that's in 1 Corinthians 13, and that's the great love passage where Paul makes love really clear. Notice it's interesting.

It doesn't ever characterize love in that famous passage in emotional terms. It's all in behavioral terms. This is what love does, you know, like for God so loved the world that he gave. In this manner is the way God loved. He gave his only begotten Son in the same way here. And so we get this confused. We think, well, they have loving feelings for each other, and I want to encourage the loving feelings they have, even though their behaviors, according to God, are wrong. We think we're loving them because we're letting them do what they want to experience loving feelings towards each other, when in fact the behaviors they're

engaging are destructive and disobedient to the Father. So, if we're going to invoke the second great commandment, we cannot do it in a way that nullifies the first great commandment. They have to be working in unison. Well, and it's also the case, and you did touch on this also, but even beyond the fact that disobeying his commandments is dishonoring to God, Paul says explicitly that the law is there to show us how to love. It is for love that we don't commit adultery and that we don't lie and we don't steal. Those laws were written to show us what love is. So if we're rejecting the law, we're not loving. In order to love others, then we've missed the whole point of the law.

The law is there to show us how to love. So in light of all of that, Greg, I want to squeeze one more question in here. This one comes from Luke. How do you work with Christians who have views that oppose the Christian faith and seem to contradict things stated in the Bible, especially if they are close friends? Well, this seems to me almost like a repeat of what we've been talking about. A lot depends on what it is. A lot depends on what it is. There's heterodox, there are heterodox views, and there are orthodox, heterodox, and heretical. Orthodox are accurate theological views.

Heterodox are inaccurate views that do not disqualify a person from salvation. They are not off the reservation. Heretical views are off the reservation. I think people use the term heresy too loosely. I would—the way I'm most comfortable using it, and I think it's more consistent with the historical use of it, is if you believe a heresy, you're not a Christian. If you believe Jesus isn't God, that's a heresy. If you believe that Jesus didn't die for sin, that he wasn't the atonement for sin, that's heresy. If you believe that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that's a heretical notion coming from a person who claims to be a Christian. Okay, so these identify somebody as off the reservation. If a person is teaching something heterodox, in other words, they're mistaken, but they're still brothers or sisters

in Christ, then we appeal to them as a brother or sister based on the text, which we apparently both agree on as inspired, and try to help them to see what is correct. If they are teaching something that's beyond heterodox, it's heretical, it's off the reservation, that needs to be addressed a little bit more aggressively, I think. But these are always fraught with difficulties in relationship, you know. Some people are just flat out gone, and they have already deconverted. And then trying to, you know, beat them up about, here's what the truth is. They're not going to believe the truth because they don't believe the source of the truth, likely. And then sometimes you're shifting into a mode where you're trying not to drive them further away, but to try to love them graciously in the midst of their actions so that you still maintain an opportunity in their life to make a difference over time to bring them back. So there's a lot of, there's judgment call that's involved in the relational interaction. And it's, this is not easy because these are friends, these are colleagues, these are family members,

children, spouses that people have to deal with this in. And you can't just go in like a bull at a china shop because you're right. That's not going to work with everybody. Some people it'll work with, okay? But other people, they don't have the ego strength, they don't have the psychological makeup, and you have to come in more carefully. Think like of John chapter 3 and John chapter 4. You have Nicodemus, you have the woman at the well, and Jesus dealt differently with each of them, much more direct and stronger with Nicodemus than he did with the woman at the well. I'm just saying that there are relational elements here, too, that have to be kept in mind, not just what is the truth and speaking the truth. There are tricky relational elements about how to speak that truth most effectively. Also, it's unclear to me when Luke says,

how do you work with Christians who have views that oppose the Christian faith? Is he talking about a ministry or is he talking about just at a job? So I'm not – if it's just – if it's a ministry, well, now it's a more serious situation where maybe they're outside the boundaries of your ministry. And so that's a different situation. If you're just talking about at a job, sometimes what happens, especially if their views more directly reflect the culture than Christian views, and they're very open about it, and they're constantly talking about it, that could be a chance for you just to say, why would you think I would agree with that?

Like, you know, you're saying that as if I would agree with it, but why would I as a follower of Jesus agree with it? Or you could say, you know, how do you kind of square that as if I would agree with it, but why would I as a follower of Jesus agree with it? Or you could say, you know, how do you kind of square that as a follower of Jesus? Because I don't really understand how that works. Can we talk about that? So maybe there are ways, because what I know is those can be very stressful situations when someone is going on and on and saying things, you know, are false. And you're trying to do your work or you're trying to be their friend and they're just adding all this other things in there, it's okay to just say, hey, you know, these are actually kind of controversial things you're throwing out there.

Why don't we just set a time we can talk about them another time? You can use the tactics questions. There are all sorts of ways to diffuse those situations and try and reach out and kind of figure out if they're just misinformed or if there's something else going on. Maybe they're saying they're Christian, and maybe they don't even know what the gospel is. I mean, you kind of have to feel that out and find out where you need to start. So, you know, this—I know we're out of time here, but I want to just add this at the end. This series of questions for the last two shows, this one and the one before,

I'm glad the questions are asked, but what they do is evidence that there's a lot of confusion in the local Christian community. In other words, people who are identifying as Christians and who don't even know what that means or what it entails in terms of moral behavior, virtuous behavior. And that's not a good sign. I mean, I'm glad we're dealing with these things because of that,

but we're going to run into more and more and more of this as time goes on because the church is getting watered down and the the culture is, in many ways, invading Christianity. So, there are lots of people who are culturally secularists, but they hold the name Christian. Others that are naive, born-again people that are untutored, and therefore they're carnal, as Paul was describing of the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2 or 3, that they're fleshly by nature because they are babes in Christ, like the writer of Hebrews talked about at the end of chapter 5 and the beginning of chapter 6. He said, you should be eating, you know, solid food.

Now you still need milk. You need the basics. And that's where a lot of people are at, unfortunately. And it's hard sometimes to tell the difference between a misguided babe in Christ and a theologically hostile older Christian that is really embedded in a secular worldview and not a Christian one. So the answer is always tactics. Ask good questions.

Figure out what's going on. See if you can help them and understand more clearly what the Christian worldview is about. All right. Thank you, Kenny and Luke. We appreciate hearing from you. And if you have a question, we hope to hear from you soon. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.