Truth Unites - It's Time To Speak Up

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Gavin Ortlund urges Christians to speak up against the normalization of evil and moral confusion in our culture, while staying grounded in courage, wisdom, and gospel hope.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is about the importance of being willing to speak up. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, just based upon what is happening in our society. Sometimes we can falsely assume that we don't need to say what is obvious. We think, well, everybody can see this. It's obvious. Therefore, we don't need to talk about it. And then you get to a point where we realize, actually, there are people who need to hear from us. I was thinking about this recently because of this interview, not an interview, this video that Ben Shapiro did,

addressing Tucker Carlson hosting Nick Fuentes. And I really appreciated just the moral clarity of Ben's response. I think he is correct in this protest he's giving that you cannot allow evil to be normalized and it is not cancel culture to draw basic moral boundaries. And yet even a message like that, you know, you cannot assume that that is obvious or unnecessary to say. Just watch the reactions to it. I was reading an article by Bethel McGrue that I appreciated. I've had at least one strong disagreement with her if I can, if I'm remembering and thinking of the right person. But this article was very well written and I appreciated the lament that she had that, you know,

why is there not more moral backbone to speak up against what Tucker Carlson is doing? And by the way, when I address this, I am not trying to make a political point on the right to the left, this is a moral point, and it applies to our society wholesale. It is easy to find examples on either side, and I'm not interested in trying to compare the sides right now. That's a legitimate question to ask. I'm not even getting into that right now. I'm just saying this is happening everywhere. It's a temptation. We all need to be aware of it. It's not hard to find examples on the left. Just look at the last election we have where we find people, where these horrible scandals come out about text messages they have sent that have pretty horrific, violent language,

and yet they still win the election, and you think, wait a second, that should have been a disqualifier. So it's not hard to find this. It's everywhere. It's a societal issue. But what is rising up in my mind about this is, it seems as though we're in a time where ordinary people need to be a little more vocal. So in other words, we can't, you know, 20 years ago, we might have been able to a little more think, you know, people understand that political violence is wrong. We don't need to say that because people already understand that. or people understand that blatant racism or whatever it is, fill in the blank, is wrong, so we don't need to talk about that as much. Now, I don't think that's ever a wise assumption to make, but especially right now,

I think the message that's stirring around in my heart, I'm curious if this resonates with others as well, is ordinary people who normally keep more quiet should consider, are there ways where we can speak out and be a little more vocal about basic moral decency and just the basic guidelines of how civilization works. And, you know, for example, when we see a disturbing trend to not assume, oh, that's probably not getting any traction, we don't need to warn against that. It's like, no, now is the time to not make that assumption, but to speak out against things. And part of this, I think, is the internet.

The simple fact is the algorithms can make viewpoints that once were obviously fringe seem normal to certain people based upon what is coming refracted to them through the algorithms. And so people get drawn into things. And so we're at a time where we need to go back and revisit the basics and be bold to speak up against just the most basic of issues, speaking out against political violence, for example. Here's a metaphor. Suppose you're playing kickball at recess and you do this every day. And then after a couple of months, all of a sudden it gets really popular, a whole bunch of people join in, but a lot of them don't know how to play kickball, and it gets really chaotic. You might get to a point where you need to gather everybody together

and do like a refresher on the rules and say, you know, hey, you have to touch first base before you go to second base. You're not allowed to shove people out of the way, this kind of thing. That kind of refresher is what our whole society needs right now about just basic moral clarity. and therefore what I'm feeling in my heart, and I'm curious if you feel sense the same need, is people who are ordinarily more quiet, we would benefit from you speaking up a little more right now, in the appropriate way as God leads you, as befits your circumstances and your calling and so on and so forth. Now is not a time to just ignore evil or act like everybody sees that it's already wrong. And it's, you know, the good news is there's a lot more sane people than it feels like when you're on the internet.

It's the loud voices and the extreme voices that often get amplified. And so what I'm saying is the rest of us need to speak up a little more to address that. What does that look like? Well, I don't have, this is pretty simple, but I've just been thinking of five ideas. Number one is courage. Being willing to just speak up, even if you get ratioed, even if you get canceled, whatever it might be, just kind of being a little more just content with the fact that, yeah, it's a volatile time and there'll, I'll get some hate. So what? I mean, the last thing I want to do is get to the end of my life and never have

been willing to take hits, right? So sometimes I think this can be a danger. There are temptations in different directions. So we need to be aware of our own temptation. If you're a 22-year-old YouTuber and you know you have a hot temper and you can get into arguments too easily, Okay, you need to be aware of your temptations in that direction. Courage, the appeal to courage could go in the wrong direction, right? But if you're like a 42-year-old, old guy like me, I'm 42, and you have more institutional roots, there could be a temptation in the opposite direction to not speak up enough. Whatever the answer is in our times, it's not to just sit out the moment and go radio

silent and say nothing and do nothing. Now is a time to speak up and to lean in. Second of all, triage. I often talk about theological triage, but here I'm even just thinking of moral triage. You know, when we see like really aggressive and blatant forms of obvious evil, like we're seeing right now rising up, then it puts other things in perspective. And there are times where you say, you know, this other disagreement we're having, this online squabble we're having, it's a worthy conversation. It needs to be talked about, but there's a time to scale back a little bit

on that because of how dire these other issues are that have come up and seek more co-belligerency with reasonable people to oppose the extremes and the evil. A third thing I think about a lot is how to reach young people right now. You know, there are a lot of young, disaffected people who channel their resentment into politics and into extremism and into violence. That is, is a societal crisis. And I think sometimes those, the old people like me, I know people who are older than me are probably looking at me saying, oh, you're not that old. But I am old relative to the people I want to give my life serving with my YouTube channel. So when I, when we old people, think about the young people, we can be intimidated and think, well, surely they don't want to

be mentored by us. Yes, they do. A lot of young people will respond well. Of course, not everyone. to older folks reaching out to them, a lot of them are looking for father figures and mother figures and mentors. How can we help reach our young people? You know, simple, the people at your church, the people in your community, reaching out to them. Parents not allowing your children to have unfiltered access to the internet. I want to encourage every parent to read Jonathan Heights's book. This book is really important for us to wrestle with and learn from its message, the anxious generation. I'll put a link in the video description. When we see young people moving into unhealthy directions, a lot of times the internet is a factor. It radicalizes people

and it can happen anywhere. You know, there's no safety from it. It's not like if you live in a rural place, you can't be radicalized by the internet, right? No, it's like the internet gets everywhere now. So you have to be mindful to shepherd your children about their internet usage. I am just so grieved about this, the way we don't set people up for success. We give them when they become a young teenager and they've got a phone or they've got an iPad and there's no supervision, no shepherding, no help. And it's not good for them. And they don't have the self-control at that point in their life to deal with that. The whole thesis of Jonathan Heights book is that we've overprotected people in the outdoor world and underprotected people in the online world. I think it's a huge issue we need to

think about. Parents, please consider that. Number four is faithfulness over the long Hall. You know, a good diagnostic question I'm asking myself a lot these days is, is what I'm doing today, something I'll be proud of in 2035. And you can extend it even further, of course, but even 10 years is enough to give perspective and say, there's lots of noise, there's lots of trends, things come and go. I have to tune out a lot of stuff. And I want to give myself to building long-term health, institutional building, service, sewing seeds that are long-term. and being faithful over the long haul. That's a constant need.

You know, are we thinking about the long-term, slow growth impact of our actions, not just chasing the heat of the moment? Pastors and ministry leaders who are out there who are faithful year after year, God bless you. If you, those of you who are like this, you're just, you know, I know ministry is not easy, but if you're doing that over the long haul,

please know, it's having more of a difference than you realize. A lot of you people who do that, You're like the glue holding us all together. You don't know the difference you're making. Don't give up. The long-term building is needed in our society. Last thing is keep returning to the gospel. This is what I need every day.

The reason is the world is too overwhelming right now to try to address the problems if we don't have hope in our hearts. So you have to go first to the scripture, go first to the gospel. Allow heaven, the forgiveness of sins, the true hope that we have. have, those of you who are followers of Jesus, allow that to kind of tenderize your heart and give you oxygen and give you a sense of, okay, it's going to be okay. Then you face the online world, you face the challenges of your day, you face the brokenness that is around us, and you face the challenges of the world from the standpoint of a heart that is full of gospel hope, and you can speak that hope to

others. Sounds simple, I say it all the time because I think we need that. But in all of these things and many other things we need to do, speak up. Now is a time for normal people who are normally less vocal to be a little more vocal. Here, let me conclude, though, with an objection and a worry, and this is something that I actively wrestle with in my own life. How do we speak up without getting sucked into the noise? This is a huge fear I have in my own life, and I would invite you to pray for me about this, is that you see YouTubers over the course of their career sometimes getting pulled into unhealthy,

healthy directions. And where they were five years ago versus where they are now, it's like, oh boy, they've moved in a, it's easy for the pressures to pull us along like that. Now, I also see some great Christian YouTubers out there being faithful year after year. I always try to commend them. But that's a temptation. And so I always think about this. I'm like, I don't want the internet to change how I'm functioning. I want to stay true to my mission. You know, I want to be faithful over the long haul to kind of keep my focus on the right place. That's why when people ask how to pray, I'm always saying, pray for wisdom, but also pray that I would keep my focus on Christ and upon serving people and so forth. It's hard to do.

So if we're saying in this video, speak up, be a little more vocal. How do we do that without getting sucked into the unhealthy noise? Right? It's very challenging. And I think this is kind of nuanced. In my own mind, I've got these two biblical principles. On the one hand, you've got avoid foolish controversies. Okay, so put that on one side of your mind. This is all over the pastoral epistles, for example. There's many voices about not getting into a controversy that's unproductive. On the other hand, you've got 2 Corinthians and other passages where Paul defends his ministry. And so 2 Corinthians 4-2, for example, just reading this verse right before I started, an amazing verse that concludes with these words, by the open statement of the truth,

we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. So Paul is saying, don't get into the foolish controversies, but on the other hand, don't go completely radio silent and never say anything, right? There's a time to speak up and commend yourself to everyone's conscience or your ministry and speak out and be courageous and shepherd people. And so the tension here that I actively wrestle with and frankly don't know the answer to is how do you do both of those? How do you avoid the foolish controversies but speak with wisdom and courage when you need to? I know there's no formula for this. And Second Corinthians itself is a kind of tortured letter where Paul's wrestling with the occupations.

of having to do it. I don't have all the answers here. I actively wrestle with this. I need wisdom to know how. But one of the encouragements we have is there are more reasonable people out there than we realize who probably, you know, if you're speaking up, you're trying to reinforce basic moral boundaries. There's more people out there who appreciate that. And if we can all kind of start coming together around the basics, again, doing the moral triage, that's a good first step. I don't have this worked out. But one thing I know is, and I, you know, even this past week seeing some of the criticisms that come against me and you just think, I don't know what to do. I'm not even talking about the stuff I've already talked about this week about

from non-Protestant traditions, the Protestant versus Catholic type stuff. I'm talking about other things, people who malign me as a liberal. And I don't always know what to do. You know, it's like, do you defend yourself? When is it a 2nd Corinthians 4-2 moment? And when is it an avoid-foolish controversies moment? It's tricky. I don't have it all figured out. For right now, because it's weighed on me a little bit over the past week or two, and I felt this sense of frustration at the feeling of being gaslit at times. I think the best thing to do for me is just pull back a little bit and then do a second Corinthians four two kind of thing when it's really clear how to do that. And it's really about serving people and so forth, because I don't want to

get within a mile of self-defense or frustration or speaking in the flesh, you know? So that's where I'm at in my own thinking about all this stuff. But I say all that to say, this is tricky. And we need wisdom about that. I don't have it figured out. But here's what I will say. If you're normally accustomed to just sitting things out and being quiet, now might be a time to speak up, at least in very modest and constructive ways. Help us reestablish basic moral parameters where our society seems like it's just being shaken at the foundations. And I'm going to take some, and then, and with this, one final word I'll leave you with, is being willing to take breaks and just slow down and, again, plug your heart into the gospel.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have less polemical stuff, whether it's about Protestantism, atheism, politics, anything like that, and focus through this holiday season and a little bit more upbuilding positive stuff because there's seasons to do that. but that's not because I don't want to speak up. It's because I think I want to speak up more, but in the best way. And my heart needs to be in the right frame for that.

I hope you will consider this in your own life, though. Again, I'll sum it up with just a simple point. Now is the time to speak up. Now is the time not to be quiet. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'll be curious what you think about this one. Thanks for watching everybody. God bless you.