Truth Unites - My Church Advice for Mikhaila Peterson

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Here I respond to a recent interview with Mikhaila Peterson and Jonathan Pageau, seeking to clarify Protestantism from how it was represented in some of Jonathan's remarks, and also offer some advice for Mikhaila (and anyone else exploring different traditions) for how to find the right church.    Here is the original interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hycMQ...  Here is the church I recommend, Immanuel Nashville: https://immanuelnashville.com/ Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Recently, I watched a really interesting interview between Jonathan Pajot and Michaela Peterson. I really like both of them. I've learned so much from Michaela's father, Jordan Peterson, many hours spent watching his interviews and other things on YouTube. And I really admire Michaela's spiritual openness and her sincerity. I think it's just a beautiful thing. So I was watching this, and I just felt this sense of pastoral burden for Michaela and so many others like her.

there's so many people in this circumstance, they're exploring the different Christian traditions and learning about them. And it can be overwhelming. I mean, there's so much to these different traditions, so much history, so much backlog that brings us to the present moment, you know, there's two and a half billion Christians. It's amazing. Almost one out of three human beings is a Christian. And there's so many different traditions and so much to the history. So one of the things I'm really passionate about on my YouTube channel is speaking into those conversations and trying to represent Protestantism fairly and accurately because I think Protestantism is often caricatured. So I wanted to offer sort of some friendly advice or some friendly appeals, a few gentle pushbacks.

Really, this will be a short video, really just two points I thought might be helpful to clarify about Protestantism because you hear these representations of Protestantism over and over that are really not representing it at its best or accurately. And then just some general practical advice for people who are exploring the different traditions of just hoping this would be helpful for people. So let me start with Jonathan's comments about a Protestant view of scripture. The idea that the Bible is the only source of reality, let's say, or only source of truth, that's something that the reformers say.

So what's on the other side? That's what I've been hearing. The reformers say, like, if it's not in the Bible, it's not true. And then it's like, okay. So, but that's not, that wasn't the standard before. Now, I don't want to defend the, the way that the Catholics had their notion of purgator. I'm not Catholic.

So I don't feel like I have to defend that. But the idea that if it's not in the Bible, then it's not real. It's just. So where's all the other information then? So the way, let's say the way that the more traditional church understand it and the way that the Catholic and the Orthodox understand it is that the church is a body of people, but the church is in a book. God is in a book. Now, Soliscriptura doesn't mean that we think the Bible contains all truth or all reality, or if it's not in the Bible, it's not true,

as though the Bible were sort of the exclusive source for everything we know, or, you know, we understand that God is not a book and the church is not a book, and there's a living tradition that we should listen to. All Sola Scripura means is that we see tradition as correctable. We think that the scripture alone, so Sola Scripura is a Protestant slogan that means by the scripture alone, and it means that the Bible is the only infallible rule for faith and life. So infallible means incapable of error. So we would say that we affirm that God, the Holy Spirit, is at work throughout all of church history, but we just think that if you think of like a triangle, the scripture is at the top, it's going to be the only norm or rule that's going to regulate everything else because we would say that everything else can err, the church can air.

And we would say that Protestantism is a kind of renewal effort within the one true church because we think that institutions can, you know, in church planting contexts, you call it mission drift. but the idea is we can tend to deviate off of our mission and off of our purpose, and we have to sort of regulate ourselves by what the apostles originally taught, by what we have that we know is an infallible revelation from God given to us in the Holy Scripture, and because the church makes mistakes, the church falls into errors. And I think Michaela's questions about this were really good questions. Let me just play one or two of them here. So if Protestants are, you know, the Bible is the most important thing, word of God, they've got that. And you're saying that it's this tradition. How do people who are joining know that the tradition they're seeing in orthodoxy is real? I think the part that I'd be concerned with is joining a church that has gone sideways that, like, isn't what it appears under the guise of orthodoxy or under the guise of Catholicism or something. And I would say those are really good questions.

Those questions sort of get at the instincts of what makes a Protestant. We're trying to say we need to tether Christianity down to what Jesus taught, what the apostles taught, what the Old Testament taught, because we want to make sure that things haven't drifted away from that. Another area where I thought it could be helpful to offer a clarification of what Protestants think is this area of contrast between the East and the West in terms of how salvation is understood. So here's how Jonathan put it. In the more mystical way of understanding Christianity, it's not about doing good things to go to heaven. It was never about that.

And it was never about not being able to do enough good things in order to go to heaven. It's about becoming something, that you become heaven, you could say. You're transformed into something that's free. And that's going up the mountain or moving up towards something higher. So it's more about,

so the idea that let's say you shouldn't lie, isn't about like, well, if I lie so many times and I'll have so many years in purgatory or whatever. It's about if you lie, you're destroying yourself and you're destroying the world around you. If you tell the truth, then you're building yourself and you're building the world around you. And that will transform you into something more than what you were before. And so the Christian life now doesn't become a bunch of stuff you have to do, it becomes a bunch of ways you have to be in order. to be transformed, transformed into something more. So that's more the mystical, and I think it's

more the original way of understanding Christianity. Now, I know that Jonathan was trying to be respectful in his characterization of Protestantism, and he was responding on the spot to questions, so I don't fault him for any of these things, really. But I do think it could be helpful just to clarify a little bit, because you often hear this contrast as though Western Christianity sort of fell into legalism, both Catholic and Protestant alike. And in the East, sometimes specifically the Eastern Orthodox tradition, kind of avoided that way of thinking. And I have just, you know, two comments, I suppose, about this where I think we need to be

careful. Because that's kind of the spirit behind this, is I just think it's really important to represent each tradition at its best. So oftentimes these contrasts between the East and the West can make sense at a general level, but aren't really reliable at a granular level when you hone in more. So a lot of times people will say, you know, the Eastern traditions of Christianity are more mystical and the Western traditions are more legalistic and so forth. And, you know, as a generalization, you can understand why someone is speaking like that, but the contrast is too absolute because there's lots of mysticism

in the West and lots of various forms of legalism everywhere. You know, it's at that. that's going to happen. And it's kind of like if somebody says the northern United States are more liberal, the southern are more conservative. And you think, well, that's true as a generalization, though it kind of depends on where exactly you're looking. But if you're deciding where to move, you kind of need to look at a more granular level, like what's the city and what are the other factors and so forth. And so there's just a general worry about these contrasts between east and west. But the other thing and the main thing I want to articulate a concern about here is about a false dichotomy between the legal aspect of our salvation, having to do with our guilt before God,

and the sort of transformative aspect of our salvation and our need for change. And Jonathan at one point talked about, you know, it's not as much going to heaven as becoming heaven and so forth. And I think it's very fashionable to make a contrast between these two different aspects of salvation. But I would want to say it's really a both-and. It really is both transformation and forgiveness. And I think deep in the human heart, there's a recognition we all have that we need both of those things. We need, all of us know what it's like to have a guilty conscience. And while the Western tradition does fall into legalism at times, the fact is that this basic question of,

how am I made right in the sight of God? That's a biblical and valid question. You think of Jesus himself. You know, when Jesus speaks about forgiveness in the Lord's prayer, he uses a financial metaphor. Forgive us our debts. This is a valid way. And you really can't get too far in the scripture without seeing the legal aspect of our relationship with God. In the epistles of the Apostle Paul, for example.

So I just want to push back a little bit because what I would say is that the Reformation represented a recovery of an understanding of God's grace. and that this is a valid and important part of what we are to understand Christianity is. It is a religion. If you could sum it all up, there is a God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one true God who made the world. Human beings are made in God's image. We have turned away from God, and this is what the Bible calls sin, or rebellion against God.

That's the reason the world is such a broken place. We all kind of know that. Jesus Christ came into the world to repair that problem, to fix that problem. And one of the aspects of that problem is the problem of guilt, just as there are other aspects of it, like the problem of death. And that problem of guilt was dealt with at the cross,

and also in his resurrection, when he died, and I'll even use the, you know, this sounds kind of simple jargon, but I'll use it, the language of paying the penalty for our sin. I think that's a valid and biblical way of thinking. And I think it's a mistake when we set that over and against another aspect of salvation.

it'd be kind of like saying marriage is about being friends, not being faithful. It's like, well, no, it's both, right? And Christian salvation is about both forgiveness and transformation. So let me conclude with just some advice for Michaela or anyone else who's in a position where they're trying to investigate these different Christian traditions, and they're saying, how do I go about that? I'd say four things. First of all, the key is prayer.

I really believe that. Sincere prayer. You know, the kind of prayer where, if you've ever prayed a prayer, prayer like this where you say, God, I put everything that I am into this prayer. If you ever prayed a prayer like that, I've prayed like that, where you just say, God, this is me, this is what I'm asking, you know, show me. And I believe with all my heart, God answers those prayers. He says in Matthew 7, verse 7, Jesus said, ask, and you shall receive. Knock on the door. It'll be opened. And I, I, that's why I so appreciate when there's someone who's sincere, like Michaela, asking questions,

because I believe God's going to meet and answer. I really believe that. Anybody who seeks God will find him if they are seeking him sincerely. So the first thing is pray. Ask the Lord to show himself to you. The second is reading the Bible. Basic thing. It's often helpful to start with one of the Gospels, for example,

because Christianity really boils down to Jesus. Who is Jesus? Thirdly, studying church history. And as much as that's, I wish there were a shortcut, but I just don't think there's really a shortcut to just pulling out the books and reading. If someone would like to understand the reformers, what were the reformers trying to accomplish? Again, they're often caricatured. But a great introductory book is Timothy George's book, Theology of the Reformers.

And of course, it's great to read the reformers themselves. It's also great to read church history books. I like recommending Yusto Gonzalez's two church history books because they're very readable. the last thing I'd say is attend different churches and give it some time, you know. I know Michaela's in Nashville. There's a great church in Nashville that I have some connections to, and that's Emmanuel Church in Nashville, spelled with an eye. I would really recommend that one. But just visiting different churches and giving a time, you know, there's lots of people who will say,

with overconfident claims, kind of like, we are the true church, and here's why. And I think it's good to be skeptical whenever someone tries to make it sound sense. simple or tries to rush the process because the fact is it's complicated and it takes time to discern between the different traditions. But I think just there's no shortcut to just exposing yourself to different churches and in that kind of prayerful vein that you're doing. So anyways, Michaela, if you watch this video, I pray that God blesses you. I pray that he makes his face to shine upon you and blesses you richly in every way.

For everybody else who's searching the different Christian traditions. I hope this video will be helpful on a couple of small points, but also on my YouTube channel, I do lots of videos like this when I'm trying to explain what a historic Protestant approach is, because for all the, you know, hugeness of Protestantism in the United States, what I've discovered is lots of people don't understand what the historic Protestant claim was, and lots of Protestants don't. And we need to go back to, you know, the history book, and understand what were the Protestants doing? Why did they feel that there was a need for reform in the church?

What were their reasons? And so that's a lot of what I'm trying to do on my channel. So if that's of interest to you, you can subscribe and we can stay in contact, and that'll be awesome. All right, thank you so much for watching. God bless you.