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0:30
All right, guys, we got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:38
His name is Tim Barnett.
0:41
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson, and let's get into it.
0:55
All right, guys, we got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:58
His name is Tim Barnett.
1:00
So he is a Christian apologist that works with Greg Cockel's stand to reason.
1:03
Fantastic organization.
1:04
And he runs Red Pin Logic with Mr. B.
1:07
That's his YouTube channel.
1:08
And he is the co-author of a book that I'm sure you've heard of by now.
1:11
And that's the book he wrote with Alyssa Childers.
1:13
It is the deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond.
1:17
And so if you've been listening to the show for any length of time,
1:19
you know, Alyssa's been on here several times and again here recently
1:22
to specifically talk about this book.
1:24
So we wanted to get Tim on to talk about it as well.
1:26
So I really enjoyed our conversation today because we talked about how he got into Christian apologetics,
1:31
what's up with the Red Pin, even though it's actually a red marker.
1:34
But when we get into the discussion of deconstruction,
1:36
we talk about what he feels is the most nefarious part of this.
1:41
We talk about how there's technically no end goal,
1:43
how much of this just sounds like leftism, how Christians kind of have their theology downstream
1:50
of culture and downstream of the politics that they persuade with.
1:53
That's actually where he and I disagreed a little bit.
1:55
But then we just get into how Christians are not really equipped for this fight
1:58
and how some deconstructionists actually do understand certain parts of theology,
2:03
which makes them even more dangerous within this whole movement.
2:07
We talk about toxic theology, but then we get practical at the end
2:10
and we just talk about, okay, a person in your life is deconstructing.
2:13
They're walking away from the faith.
2:15
They're not going to end up back in an evangelical setting or church.
2:18
What are we to do with those people?
2:19
What's the church to do?
2:20
What are friends and family to do?
2:21
So I really enjoyed my time with Tim.
2:23
You'll recognize a lot of the questions from my conversation with Elisa,
2:26
but we did kind of weave in and out of different things and I really enjoyed his answers.
2:29
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:31
Tim Barnett, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:34
It's good to be with you. Thanks for having me on, Kyle.
2:38
We are happy to have you here, but I just got one question from the very beginning.
2:40
Are you recording this from a cave?
2:42
Because I can like barely see you in there.
2:44
Is this part of your mystique? Is that what's going on?
2:46
That, you know what?
2:48
It's kind of like, yeah, Batman has the bat cave and Mr. B has like the Mr. B cave.
2:53
No, that's, we just, we've been working on some new camera,
2:57
new lighting, new some new tech and I am not techy at all.
3:01
So I had a guy here, friend of mine, for probably four hours yesterday
3:06
and he was plugging in new stuff and man, it is like, and so when I came in here this morning,
3:12
I'm thinking, please Lord, let this stuff actually work, you know.
3:16
And as we're turning things on and so I'm hoping that people can see me,
3:23
although it does, it's a lot darker than I normally have it.
3:25
Hey, I will tell you, I'm not very tech savvy either,
3:29
but I do at least know how to turn the brightness up on video on the back end.
3:32
So we'll see about that.
3:33
But to all you tech guys out there, when you're working with people that are not techy,
3:37
all we need you to do is to create a single button for us that once we press it,
3:42
everything works, so lights turn on, cameras turn on,
3:46
everything's in focus, everything sounds great.
3:48
So tech guys, is it really that hard?
3:50
Just let us hit one button.
3:51
But to launch in here, Tim, we need to kind of set the stage.
3:55
You know, I talked about you a little bit in the intro and gave everybody an idea of who you are,
3:58
but you are a Christian apologist, you're kind of in this Christian apologist space,
4:03
but you weren't doing that since you were like three or four years old.
4:05
So I'm not sure what you wanted to be when you were growing up,
4:07
but now you're doing TikTok videos and YouTube stuff.
4:10
So you have about 60 seconds to take us from early childhood
4:14
to being a Christian apologist ready to go.
4:16
All right.
4:18
So I grew up in the church, but it was one of these things where we didn't go very deep.
4:22
And so I knew kind of some of the things of what we believed as Christians,
4:26
but not why we believed them.
4:27
And I was good at science and math.
4:29
So I went into university to study engineering, but that morphed.
4:34
I fell in love with teaching.
4:35
In fact, I spent a lot of time helping my fellow, you know, friends,
4:39
students with tests and that kind of thing.
4:42
And so I thought maybe I could make a living at this.
4:44
So got a degree in physics and science.
4:47
But on the way, I was answering a lot of challenges that my friends had about Christianity.
4:52
I didn't know what apologetics was at that time,
4:54
but I found myself doing apologetics.
4:57
They'd ask me a question, how do you know God's real?
5:00
And then I'd go home and, you know, look for answers.
5:02
And at that time, all I knew was Google.
5:04
So I just Google it, you know, and found some atheists and found some Christians
5:08
and found this world of apologetics.
5:10
And from there, man, I was a teacher for a little while, had a blast doing it.
5:15
I love teaching.
5:16
But then this side gig teaching apologetics really started to take off.
5:22
And soon it became, it became a job, you know, I was getting a ton of events.
5:27
And then standard reason the ministry I worked for based in Southern California,
5:31
although I'm Canadian, people probably pick up the accent.
5:35
They, they offered me a job about eight years ago.
5:38
And I've been just kind of writing this wave ever since.
5:41
It's really cool.
5:42
Well, standard reason is awesome.
5:43
Greg Coco is awesome.
5:44
He's actually one of the very first interviews we ever did on the show.
5:47
His book, Tactics, is a must read for everybody.
5:49
Yeah.
5:49
And I think everybody found out you were from Canada when you said the word about,
5:53
you know, earlier in this, though, I think you gave yourself away on that.
5:56
Now, before I get into some more stuff on the stuff that you're doing now
6:00
within Christian apologetics, you talked about growing up inside the church.
6:03
So I did not grow up in the church.
6:04
But I grew up in Oklahoma, the bell buckle of the Bible bell.
6:07
And so because, you know, we went to church occasionally and because we didn't swear in
6:12
public and because we listened to country music and occasionally voted Republican,
6:15
we thought we were good enough to, you know, to go to heaven.
6:18
But for you, you know, do you see any dangers?
6:21
Because obviously my boys, they're three and one.
6:23
I'm raising them in a Christian home.
6:25
I have some of the same concerns in kind of reverse where it's like,
6:29
okay, we're going to Christian school.
6:31
We're going to, you know, church every week.
6:33
We're talking about the Bible inside the house.
6:35
But I've seen kids that grew up in that environment.
6:37
They turn out to be sluggers or deviance or whatever.
6:40
And so it's just like, yeah, it's almost, it almost gives a, I guess, power to the Calvinists
6:44
that are like, well, hey, they're either elected or they're not.
6:46
It doesn't really matter how you raise them.
6:48
So what are your thoughts on that?
6:49
Yeah, I mean, we could spend an hour talking about this.
6:53
Man, I, the way I, the way I think about it is, look, we often do a decent job
6:59
telling people, our kids what to believe, but we don't do a good job saying,
7:04
telling them why we believe it.
7:06
And so look, I got some beliefs from my parents that I still hold today.
7:10
Like, like they said, hey, God's real.
7:12
And I just said, okay, I accept that belief.
7:15
You know, early age, five, four years old.
7:17
Okay, God's real.
7:19
I accepted the belief like I was accepting a Christmas present, you know?
7:22
Thank you very much.
7:23
I'll take it.
7:23
But they also told me Santa Claus was real, right?
7:27
And so there were, there's beliefs that they gave me that it turned out,
7:32
wait, that's not, that's not right.
7:34
That's not true.
7:35
And so, you know, you got to figure out which ones are right and which ones are true.
7:39
They also, you know, they told me that brushing my teeth will prevent cavities.
7:42
All right, fair enough.
7:43
But I mean, I do, and I do this when I talk to audience, they say,
7:47
how many of you believe that cracking your knuckles?
7:51
What will that, what will that cause?
7:53
And they all say, arthritis, not true.
7:55
Not true.
7:55
The Harvard study is done, not true.
7:58
Or, you know, crossing your eyes will make them stay that way, not true.
8:02
And then I always finish for this one.
8:03
I say, swallowing your gum will stay, the gum will stay in your stomach for how long?
8:09
And everyone yells, seven years.
8:12
Right.
8:12
And I'm thinking, how did we ever come to believe that, right?
8:16
If it, look it, whatever you eat today, it's going in.
8:19
It's coming out probably like this week at some point.
8:22
If your digestive system is working properly.
8:25
So, so it's, it's just interesting.
8:27
We take in beliefs and sometimes they're not true beliefs.
8:29
Sometimes they are true beliefs.
8:31
We've got to figure out which ones are which.
8:32
And here's the, here's the thing.
8:35
Jesus, when he spoke about the parable of the soils, he talks about this one particular soil.
8:40
He calls it the rocky ground.
8:43
And he says, look, there are these, these individuals that this seed that is in this rocky ground,
8:50
and it springs up like right away.
8:52
The problem is it doesn't last.
8:55
The sun comes and scorches it.
8:57
Now, he tells us what, what that parable means.
9:00
This is Mark chapter four for people.
9:02
They want to look this up.
9:03
And he says, look, these are the ones who received the word with joy, at least initially.
9:09
And they endure for a while.
9:11
But then he says, persecution and tribulation come on account of the word.
9:17
And then he uses this term, they fall away.
9:19
That's his term, not mine.
9:21
They fall away.
9:22
So what we need to be doing is, is not just telling them what to believe,
9:29
but also preparing them for that faith crisis, or those big questions or doubts that come.
9:35
And I, so I tell people about this parable.
9:38
I call it the parable of the biosphere.
9:40
And now some of your audience, I mean, I'm 40.
9:44
There was a movie in high school called Biodome.
9:46
Yeah, I'm always sure.
9:48
You know, it was a, it was a funny, you know,
9:51
it was a classic.
9:52
And of course, Pauli Shor, he gets, he kind of gets locked in this biosphere, this biodome.
9:58
And he's got, they've got to live there for a certain amount of time.
10:02
Now there's an actual place in Arizona called the biosphere.
10:05
It's called biosphere two.
10:07
The earth is biosphere one, this place, this ecosystem, completely glassed in enclosure.
10:13
It was designed so that, man, if we, we want to at some point put people on, say, Mars,
10:20
well, how would we do that?
10:21
Well, we need a perfect ecosystem, the right temperature, the right oxygen,
10:26
the right, you know, atmosphere, all those things, water.
10:29
And so they did this experiment in real life.
10:33
And one of the problems, at least this is kind of,
10:37
I don't know if this is a wives tale or if this is the real thing.
10:39
It's hard to find a source on this.
10:41
But they say that the trees would grow up to a certain height and then they just fall over.
10:47
And the scientists were like, what's going on here?
10:50
We got the water right, we got the soil right, we got everything right.
10:52
What's going on?
10:53
They forgot to account for something.
10:56
They forgot to account for wind because it was completely enclosed.
11:00
It turns out when trees in the real world grow up, they often have wind pushing against them.
11:08
And that causes their roots to grow deeper.
11:11
Now, if there's a pastor listening right now, this will preach.
11:13
This is your Sunday sermon.
11:14
Okay, right here.
11:15
It is like we need to be pushing our students like wind,
11:21
offering challenges so that their roots will grow deeper.
11:26
And my fear is, and there's a, you know, we could go into this,
11:30
my fear is we have this isolationist model in the church.
11:34
Let's isolate our students, our kids from the challenges that are out there.
11:40
But they end up having no root in themselves.
11:43
And then they go off to whatever, university, they hop on YouTube or TikTok or whatever.
11:47
They see a challenge and they think, game over, we're done.
11:51
There's no response to this.
11:53
And they're like that tree, they just fall over.
11:56
So we need to do a better job at just man training, just like you train in a gym on the speed bag,
12:05
or practicing holds and moves.
12:07
And this, because there is an aggressive opponent that is out there waiting to
12:13
devour our young people, you know, he goes by many names, but he's the father of lies.
12:18
And, and there's a lot of lies out there that,
12:21
that us apologists need to be combating with truth.
12:24
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14:01
Several things there. Number one, Viva Las Biodom.
14:05
So there's a reference to everybody that watched that.
14:08
I've seen that movie in about 20 years.
14:10
But also, I think it's overall, we talk about resilience here a lot
14:13
because I don't really care about strength because strength wanes over time.
14:16
It's resilience and stability to bounce back.
14:19
And if you're clearing all the obstacles out from in front of your children,
14:22
you're not creating resilient children.
14:23
You're creating weak children.
14:25
The Coddling of the American Mind by George Lucanoff, and I forget the other guy.
14:30
But that's a great book to say, like, look, what you're doing to your child
14:35
is not serving them in the way that you think it is.
14:37
But this is an parenting conversation today.
14:39
I do want to kind of get back to what you're doing in terms of your professional apologetic stuff.
14:44
And then we've got some book stuff to cover today.
14:46
But you've got a YouTube channel that has done really well.
14:49
And it's TikTok and all that red pin logic.
14:51
So I guess my question is just briefly described, kind of where that all came from.
14:55
But here's my biggest question about that.
14:57
What's up with the coffee cup?
14:59
What's up with the red pin and actually, why is it actually not a pin?
15:03
It's a marker.
15:03
You're not fooling anybody.
15:05
Yeah.
15:05
It's a marker, not a pin.
15:06
Why are you calling it red pin logic?
15:08
Yeah, that's a good question.
15:11
Man, I feel like I've been exposed as the fraud that I am, you know.
15:15
So we started red pen logic during the pandemic.
15:19
And it was really a response to, hey, I can't travel and teach and speak like I normally do.
15:24
So what are we going to do?
15:25
You know?
15:26
And here's an example, by the way, when people talk about evil
15:28
and suffering in the world, we often as Christians talk about God using evil.
15:33
He permits evil for some kind of reason.
15:36
We see it in scripture.
15:38
And here's just one.
15:39
Okay.
15:39
And I'm not saying this is the reason there was a pandemic.
15:42
But I'm saying when I'm stuck here in Canada and we can't meet in our churches,
15:47
we can't meet.
15:47
I mean, the government is like going full totalitarian.
15:51
Like you guys aren't allowed to breathe.
15:52
You know, people are walking on the sidewalk with masks on, you know, on them by themselves.
15:56
This is crazy.
15:58
Well, how are we going to reach people?
15:59
I, uh, I started a YouTube channel.
16:03
I went to stand a reason and said, hey, there's this thing I want to do as a teacher,
16:07
former teacher, what we would do is get out the red pen.
16:10
And we would, we would correct because we care.
16:14
This is not to put students down.
16:16
Any teacher knows that.
16:17
I was like, I'm not making fun of my students with a red pen.
16:20
I'm saying, Hey, you know, your physics problem here.
16:22
You made one misstep here.
16:24
And that led you down the wrong direction here.
16:26
And that's why you got the wrong answer.
16:28
So if you had, you know, caught this, then you would be on the right, the right path.
16:32
And that's all we're doing.
16:34
I'm, I'm taking tweets and memes and TikToks.
16:36
You name it.
16:37
And we do it like with a physical red pen on some graphics, but we're also doing it kind
16:43
of metaphorically picking up the red, you know, actually Sharpie.
16:46
And, and then here's, here's one, two, three reasons why this argument on TikTok doesn't work.
16:52
Um, you're right.
16:54
It's not a red pen because red pens are so stink and small.
16:58
And I'm like, I got this thing.
16:59
I got the cup, you know, out in front of me.
17:01
And I want people to see what I'm doing.
17:03
So I'm like, what has a big red lid?
17:05
Well, Sharpies do, you know, and, uh, and so I, uh, tossed that in the cup and, and, um,
17:13
and here we are today, you know, and it's kind of become, it's become this almost like a character,
17:18
you know, like, I think of the red pen, like, I don't want people to watch Mr. B critique a
17:26
challenge and think, I can't do that.
17:28
Look, it's, it's like you can do this too.
17:31
You need to pull out the red pen and we can get you trained up.
17:35
We can get you thinking.
17:36
And that's all the channel is designed to do.
17:39
It's not to answer every challenge.
17:40
It's not to go super deep.
17:42
Hey, if you want to go deep, go to Mike Winger's channel, uh, channel,
17:45
you know, Mike Winger, the Bible thinker.
17:48
He has like hour long videos, um, you know, women in ministry, 12 hours.
17:52
That's one video. If you want quick bite size content, that's what you're going to find
17:58
at red pen logic.
17:59
Well, I give you a minute to state your view on TikTok.
18:04
Okay.
18:04
I play usually the whole video and then I'll take two minutes to respond.
18:08
And oftentimes you'd weigh more than that.
18:10
It's easy to make a claim.
18:11
It's a lot harder to refute the claim because there's a whole lot of things you got to unpack.
18:16
So that's where it all came from.
18:19
Well, I was going to say just the distillation process of information is actually a skill set
18:23
that people don't really understand.
18:25
And so because people, they asked me like, you're a podcaster.
18:27
What does that mean?
18:28
What do you do all day every day?
18:29
I'm like, okay, well, three times a week,
18:30
stare at a blank screen and turn that into hours worth of content.
18:33
That's my job.
18:34
But the other thing is, is take a book that's somewhere between 200 and 500 pages,
18:38
distill it down to what is actually digestible to the majority of the populace of your audience.
18:44
And that's, that's a difficult thing to do.
18:45
But that's what I'm going to attempt to do right now,
18:47
because we are talking about your new book that you co-wrote with Elisa Childers.
18:51
One of our favorites on the show, it's called the deconstruction of Christianity,
18:54
what it is, why it's destructive and how to respond.
18:57
And so first of all, from the very beginning, you co-wrote this with Elisa.
19:01
So I want to know where that came from because I will say as a reader,
19:04
it was kind of distracting to me because I didn't know who was talking.
19:06
And so I was trying to judge you, but then I was actually judging Elisa.
19:10
And then it was like, okay, I can't keep any score here.
19:12
But I guess why write it, why co-write it, why make it about deconstruction,
19:17
why is that a big enough subject to where two big thinkers in this space need to spend time on it?
19:22
Yeah. So we, good question. We, a couple of years ago,
19:26
I was asked to do a kind of a Bible study for a camp.
19:30
And it was a week-long thing. So I had to prepare material for Monday to Friday.
19:35
And it was an hour's worth or so, hour and a half of material each morning.
19:40
So they asked me to do it on deconstruction. At that point,
19:45
man, I think Joshua Harris had come out. People might be familiar with,
19:48
I kissed dating goodbye, this bestselling book about purity culture from the '90s.
19:53
And the influence it had and actually some of the damage it caused for some people.
20:00
And there was Marty Sampson, Hillsong. I mean, he sings with Hillsong,
20:05
I mean, I'm not a huge Hillsong fan, but there's a song that Marty Sampson wrote,
20:09
Oh, praise the name. It's a, it's a really good song. And there was others, you know,
20:15
we could go down the list. And so they were like, what's going on here? Everyone wants to know,
20:19
what is this thing called deconstruction? So I started putting material together.
20:23
And I was delivering this stuff, this material, and sitting at the back of this
20:28
chapel that probably looks more like a barn from the outside than an actual church
20:33
and at this camp. And I, I realized that there's a connection between deconstruction and progressive
20:39
Christianity, because a lot of people who end up in progressive Christianity go through a process
20:44
that they're calling deconstruction. So I, I message, I sent a text message to Alyssa Childers
20:49
saying, man, you wrote the book on progressive Christianity. So when are you writing the prequel,
20:55
right? This is the book that should have come first. This is before deconstruction. So when
21:00
you write in the book on deconstruction, this is before progressive Christianity, when you write
21:04
in the book. And she said, Tim, I'm way too busy. I'm writing another book right now.
21:08
And so I just jokingly, well, kind of half jokingly said, Hey, do you want to write one together?
21:13
And she said, absolutely. Let's talk. And then that turned into absolutely went to the publisher.
21:18
Here's the thing. It's not just movie stars or it's not just, you know, the kind of quote famous
21:25
Christians who have, you know, music albums or big churches or whatever who are using the term
21:30
deconstruction. It is really our loved ones. It is, you know, it's some of these high schoolers.
21:36
It's who, you know, stumbled on a TikTok video. It's parents who are getting their their student
21:43
or their son or daughter coming to them and saying, you know, I think your beliefs are toxic.
21:48
I don't want anything to do with you anymore because you believe X, Y, and Z about, you know,
21:52
gender and sexuality. And so we saw, man, people were hurting, not just the deconstruction people,
21:59
but the it was impacting the church. And so we just went on an investigation. I'm telling you,
22:05
Kyle, we like trying to define deconstruction, trying to like figure this thing out was not
22:11
easy. We changed our minds on a bunch of things kind of in the process. And what we kind of landed
22:17
on was, you know, deconstruction is taking a certain form and it is just dangerous. It is,
22:25
it is in fact, deadly to your faith. If you go a certain way about it. And, and so that's why we,
22:31
we want to help. We're trying to show people how to respond to this. And that's why I wrote the book.
22:34
When he talked earlier, you use the phrase trained up. And so I think that's a good thing that this
22:38
book can be used as a almost like a training guide for when deconstruction hits your doorstep,
22:44
not even for you personally, but just for other people. How can you respond? But y'all's definition
22:48
of deconstruction, which this is very important because some people think, well, deconstruction
22:51
is positive. I'm going to look at the coordinates and doctrine of my faith, make sure that I'm
22:56
solid on it and then I'll rebuild a better house. It's like, that's not what it is. We all define it
23:00
as a faith deconstruction is a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regard or without
23:07
regarding scripture as the standard. And so we'll get way more into that. Carl Truman wrote the
23:12
foreword, the dudes a giant, he wrote the rise in triumph of the modern self. It's required reading,
23:16
but it's hard. Like even for me, I read a page or two and be like, I don't think I'm smart enough
23:21
to even understand these words whenever they're put into a sentence, but it is what it is. But
23:24
let's start generically, because I want to dive into some specifics from the book.
23:29
But let's let you got that in your opinion, Tim, what is the most nefarious thing about the growing
23:36
ubiquity of the deconstruction movement? Yeah, this is this is a good question, man,
23:43
just because there's a number of things. But one of the kind of things that we saw in particular
23:48
was people using the term and kind of it becoming like a bait and switch like, Hey, all we're doing
23:56
is questioning, you know, and you Christians got a problem with questioning. And all we look,
24:02
we have just some doubts that and this is the part that we had to tease apart because we're
24:09
not against questions. We're not against even doubts. Like there is a way to doubt properly.
24:15
We see John the Baptist, you know, we talk about this in the book. John the Baptist asked Jesus,
24:20
are you the guy? Are you the one or should we look for someone else, right? Talk about like a doubt
24:26
that he has, you know, and so, and then Jesus doesn't shame him for it. He actually tells his
24:31
disciples, there's no one greater than John the Baptist, you know. So there's no problem here with
24:36
doubt and questioning. Deconstruction is different. It's different. And so I think it's really,
24:43
it's nefarious is a good word. When you got guys like Derek Webb,
24:49
who used to be like lead singer, Cayman's call, big name in the Christian music industry,
24:54
and he goes on Twitter and he says, look it. Deconstructing is just like reforming, you know,
25:00
Semper Reframanda. Yeah. What's that always reforming? Well, I actually did some digging on that.
25:06
And the clay that that's phrase Semper Reframanda is actually Latin from a larger phrase,
25:13
which is Ecclesia Reframanda Semper Reframanda, Secundum Verbi Day. Now, what does that mean?
25:19
You know, go to Google Translate here and we'll find out it's the church is reformed and always
25:25
being reformed or always reforming. Here's the important part, Secundum Verbi Day, according to
25:31
the word of God. Is that what Derek Webb's doing? Of course not. Is that what these guys who have
25:36
TikTok channels are doing? Is that what starting like, there's full blown Instagram accounts and
25:42
their whole job is to ridicule, mock, criticize anything to do with evangelical Christianity. Okay.
25:51
And that includes not just like the wacky stuff, because there is wacky stuff in evangelical Christianity.
25:56
And it's not just the abusive stuff, because there is abuse. We're not denying any of that.
26:00
But it's like core doctrines, like Jesus being the only way. How about the doctrine of final
26:06
judgment? Hell. How about the doctrine of, you know, the inspiration of scripture? All that's
26:12
getting thrown under the bus too. So this is like, this is why it's very, it's nefarious.
26:18
It's insidious. It's like these guys, I think, know what they're doing. They lump it all together
26:23
and they say, yeah, this is why we're out of here. And they're encouraging people to go with them.
26:27
This is not like, I'm just deconstructing my faith. No, some of these people are deconstruction
26:32
coaches. I know you heard that right. Okay. Deconstruction coaches. What is that? That is someone who's
26:38
going to help you walk away from your faith. And that's, I mean, and I know the deconstruction,
26:44
no, no, we're not. We're helping you deconstruct. That may lead you towards, no, they don't want
26:48
you in evangelical Christianity. That's the one place that's off limits. You can go anywhere.
26:53
We call it an explosion in the book. You can go anywhere except for where you started.
26:59
And that is what we would call historic Christianity. Right. And as y'all talk about it in the book,
27:03
you talk about it in the sense of it's a not so secret agenda. Kind of like remember that phrase,
27:07
theology, whenever Disney was like injecting LGBTQ stuff in your kids program and get you still go
27:12
to Disneyland and you still have your Disney plus subscription. What's wrong with you parents?
27:15
But I'm going to read this quote here from you guys. One of the main concerns with the deconstruction
27:19
explosion is the obvious agenda to deconvert evangelicals. There are countless platforms
27:24
dedicated to providing a place to welcome Christians into the process of deconstruction.
27:28
These are promoted as safe spaces. But in many cases, they are carefully orchestrated to foster
27:33
an environment of doubt and unbelief. You're absolutely right. None of these deconstruction
27:38
is the proponents of deconstruction, Tim. None of them actually want you to end up as an evangelical.
27:43
None of them will actually want you to end up going to a church where the Bible is preach
27:47
expository and exegetically. They want you at best to end up at a left wing liberal church
27:54
or a Ted talky church where there's no depth to anything. But also there's two in another way,
28:00
there's no end goal. And I'll even kind of think this way and I'll go to the quote here in y'all's
28:04
book. And y'all were talking about the three things about deconstruction. Number one, deconstruction
28:09
is not about getting your theology, right? Number two, there is no end goal or destination to the
28:14
deconstruction process. There is just a never ending skepticism of your view. And number three,
28:19
there is no external authority to tell you what your view should look like. You are the ultimate
28:25
authority that goes back to y'all's definition where people are like, what do you mean by postmodernism?
28:30
That, that right there, your truth, standpoint of epistemology, secret knowledge, Gnosticism,
28:36
all kind of wrapped up into the switches brew of nonsense. So talk to me a little bit about this,
28:40
this no end goal thing because we just got to be saying, well, there is an end goal and it's
28:44
deconstruction getting away from the faith. But in the same sentence, it's like, yeah,
28:49
there really isn't an end goal. They want you in this infinity loop of questioning things and
28:54
never actually landing where the Bible says you should. So go with that.
28:57
Yeah, so I just posted a video a couple of days ago on kind of responding to a couple of the
29:04
thought leaders in the deconstruction movement. One of them is called the naked pastor. Now,
29:07
don't Google naked pastor. Okay, I'm just saying, but that's not a good thing to Google. But he
29:14
has a, an Instagram account, over 100,000 people follow him just on that one platform. Of course,
29:19
it's on TikTok. One of the videos he made is he basically says, don't reconstruct into a
29:28
new theology. And then he tells you why, because if you reconstruct a new theology, well, you're
29:33
just going to have to deconstruct that theology. So just deconstruct. So what he says, just live
29:38
in the deconstruction kind of world. And so that is a never ending skepticism. This is something
29:44
actually Paul warns about in, I think it's Second Timothy, where he says, look, there are people
29:51
that you should avoid. And they're always learning, they're always seeking knowledge,
29:55
or they're always learning, but never able to arrive at the truth. Never able to arrive at the
30:01
truth. And, and so we see this all over the place where Joe Lumen, for example, another kind of big
30:07
name on, on Twitter, Joe Lumen says, look, deconstruction is, is, is a process that, frankly, there's
30:16
no white right way to do it. And there's no right place to land. Some people land in atheism,
30:21
some people agnostism, progressive Christianity, whatever. But then as you just point out, it's
30:26
kind of hip, it's kind of a hypocrisy, hypocritical, because they don't want you to land. There's
30:32
something wrong about being an evangelical Christian. Okay, that is the one place that
30:37
you're not supposed to land, even though, so they're kind of like talking out of both sides of their
30:41
mouth. This is what's going on. So this is a huge thing as Christians are not so secret agenda,
30:48
is we want you to have a stronger faith. We want you to stand firm in the things that you have been
30:54
taught, and to contend earnestly for the faith. These are like, this is scriptural. Okay. And so
30:59
they have their agenda. And of course, yeah, don't ever arrive at anything. Just always. And by the
31:05
way, that's like Derrida. That's that is very postmodern. That is when it comes to reading Derrida,
31:11
the postmodern French philosopher talked about reading a text. And you just like never really
31:17
arrive at any objective meeting because there is no objective meeting in the text. In the same way,
31:23
you never arrive at any theological point of view, religious point of view. Why? Because there is no
31:30
true objective meaning. It's always at the end of the day, so whatever makes me feel good. So,
31:36
and this is the big confusion. I mean, and Carl Truman talks about this. When you when you put
31:42
religion into the realm of subjective opinion, then of course, it's just true for you, but not
31:48
true for me. You know, that kind of thing. It's ice cream. What's your favorite flavor? Chocolate
31:53
vanilla? You know, that kind of thing. Well, and you get points for questioning. So, I was thinking
31:57
as you were talking about from, you know, what if you woman the documentary when Matt Wells was
32:01
sitting down with that University of Tennessee professor. And at some point, you can see the
32:04
professor, the guy with the kind of blonde hair on the side and all that. I remember.
32:08
Pinches at one point, he thinks he's smart, even though he's a moron, but he thinks he's smart. He
32:12
goes, well, what do you think about that? And it's like, dummy, you're the one being interviewed.
32:17
Like this isn't this isn't a conversation. This is an interview. You had to give your answers.
32:22
And it's because they think you get points for questioning. But I want to read because I want to
32:26
get into some of this, you know, Derrida, you know, postmodernism thought, but I want to read this
32:30
quote from the book that'll help us get into it. As we'll see from many in the ex-vangelical community,
32:35
evangelical is perceived to be synonymous with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and the
32:40
political support of Donald Trump. And then a little bit later, you talk about the five characteristics
32:44
of what ex-vangelicals are leaving behind, according to Blake Chastain, who actually came up with the
32:50
term ex-vangelical. So it's these five things, a little reading of the Bible, a belief that women
32:55
are to be submissive to men, a belief in the sanctity of heterosexuality and heteronormativity,
33:00
and a rejection of homosexuality as sinful, the assumption that the American way of life is best,
33:06
an identification and partnership with political and social conservatism. So I guess my question
33:11
here is, essentially, what this is, is it's leftism, it's progressivism, it's postmodernism,
33:17
it's workism, it's cultural Marxism. So why should we fight deconstruction in a spiritual way
33:25
when this seems to just be a political cultural movement, if that makes sense?
33:29
Yeah, that's a good question. And you're right about that. It's not a coincidence that a lot of
33:36
these people who go into deconstruction end up in that deconstruction hashtag, into the echo chamber,
33:41
they vote a certain way. And they're a part of, and their political system, look at, when your
33:47
religious beliefs are just like a matter of personal preference or whatever, and you're no longer,
33:52
or you just get rid of your religious beliefs altogether, or you think you do, you end up just
33:57
having that same kind of religious fervor for something else, and for a lot of them, it's politics.
34:04
And that's why they're so adamant about a certain kind of platform. So man, I think that there's
34:13
a sense in which, of course, as Christians, when it comes to politics, we don't just leave politics
34:19
aside, because our moral point of view is going to inform how we vote, absolutely. But at the end
34:26
of the day, as Christians, man, our hope is in any political system, our hope is in Jesus Christ,
34:33
and our hope is in. And so we need to understand who Jesus is, and what he taught, and what the
34:40
word of God teaches. And this is the part that's being pushed aside, rejected, ignored, that kind
34:46
of thing. So man, I think your politics flows downstream from your theology. And that's why we
34:54
think, man, theology is like the most important thing that we could be talking about. Well,
35:00
I actually want to ask you about that, Tim, because there's a quote from the book that says, "For
35:02
Christians, politics will flow downstream from theology," to which I would say, not really. I mean,
35:09
there are self-described Christians that openly and proudly, Tim, vote for political candidates
35:15
that are pro-abortion, pro-cutting off the genitalia of children, gender-confused children,
35:21
anti-pants, rights, et cetera, et cetera. And for ex-vangelicals, it literally is the exact opposite.
35:27
Their politics is upstream and forms their theology. I think the time of theology for
35:34
conservatives, for conservatives, Christians, the times for theology kind of molding everything
35:39
else, I think that's behind us. Like, I obviously disagree with that because you wanted to be
35:44
wrote that in the book. But what do you have to say to that? Yeah, in response, I would just say,
35:49
even though they may not have a theology that you just gave an example, say a Christian who's
35:57
pro-choice. Let's just use that as an example. They certainly have a theological commitment,
36:02
I think, and a moral point of view that is informing their policy. And so, these are like,
36:08
I mean, and you could call this religious beliefs, you can call it your worldview.
36:12
But ultimately, on the day, there are some fundamental beliefs. If you have a fundamental belief
36:17
that every human being is made in the image of God, then, of course, there's going to be
36:23
ramifications from that. But if you don't believe that, and I guess this isn't a theological belief,
36:32
and so maybe you're right about, I'm not in total disagreement, we could be mistaken on this,
36:38
but some of your scientific point of view. So, there are some Christians who don't believe
36:42
a human, the unborn, is a human being. And so, that is obviously going to inform their pro-life
36:51
or pro-choice views. So, I actually think, you know, if you're consistent, if you are consistent
36:59
with the Orthodox Christian theological point of view, it should inform. And this is why, by the way,
37:06
slavery was ended. And the first is slave trade and then slavery. It was theological,
37:13
it was a correct, I should say, theological point of view. Now, whether Christians who were
37:18
trying to use the Bible to advocate for slavery, absolutely. Those Christians were wrong.
37:23
Of course. So, they were, again, they were using their theology to try to back up their
37:28
political leanings or whatever, and to justify. And so, I think that maybe a qualification there,
37:35
a proper, correct understanding of scripture and theology should inform all these kinds of
37:45
decisions that policymakers are involved in. Because let's face it, every single time there is a
37:51
political law, there's any kind of policy or law, put it forward, it should be
37:55
informed by some kind of morality and that morality should be informed by your worldview.
38:00
And of course, if you're just a relativist or whatever, then you're just going to make up,
38:04
you know, whatever policies might make right or whatever. Whatever makes you feel good.
38:10
And that's, I think, where we're at. I think they're just trying to make policy now that
38:15
is informed by a worldview that is so self-centered, that is even relativistic.
38:22
Well, the issue that we run into is there's a gigantic difference between objective truth
38:27
and subjective opinions. And so, when someone says, well, according to me,
38:31
one-celled zygote is not a human being. It's like, well, that objectively is incorrect.
38:36
That is false. Because the only place in the universe where DNA sprouts out of nowhere
38:41
is when a one-celled sperm cell meets a one-celled egg cell and creates a one-celled zygote. And in
38:45
that exact moment, cell division is taking place, increase in size taking place, nutrition is being
38:51
processed. You know, we call that life. If we found a one-celled zygote on Mars, people would be,
38:55
you know, stripping over themselves to say we found like one Mars. But the same person's like,
39:00
well, that's just not my opinion. Well, guess what? This isn't ice cream. This isn't, in my opinion,
39:03
vanilla is better than chocolate, because there's no objective truth there, even if the majority
39:07
of people agree with you on that. And so that's the, that's the big issue that we have here. But part
39:12
of, part of something that's kind of like, you know, swirling the drain on this whole thing,
39:16
is I feel like Christians, when they listen to these postmodern Christian folks, these deconstructionists,
39:22
they don't believe them whenever they outright say where they've gotten their ideologies.
39:27
I'm specifically talking about someone like Kristin Kobed's Dumei or Dumei's, whatever her
39:32
stupid name is. The reason why I'm so mad every time I hear that, hear that name is because
39:35
Justin Briarley booked an interview or a debate between me and her about her book,
39:39
Jesus and John Wayne, which is like a repository for all stupid things ever in the universe was
39:44
smashed into one book. And so later on, it was released that she did an interview with Justin
39:50
on a debate. I reached out to Justin, I was like, what happened? And he goes, well, whenever she found
39:54
out that she was going to be debating you, she pulled out. So Justin booked me with another
39:59
Christian feminist who found out she was going to be debating me. And then she pulled out as well.
40:03
So I've got a debate with a Christian feminist coming at some point in this in this world. And
40:09
you know, I'm just kind of waiting on that time to come. But I want to read a quote from the book,
40:13
because this kind of gives you an idea about where someone like Dumei comes from. For example,
40:19
when asked on Twitter how one can best analyze power and cultural systems. So as to not be held
40:24
captive by them, Kristin Dumei responded, I should have a better answer. But for me,
40:29
it wasn't one source, but years spent reading social and cultural histories, histories of gender,
40:34
Foucault, Gramsci, Adorno, Habermas, learning to be curious about how the world works.
40:43
So if you're keeping score at home, Foucault, communist, Gramsci, the father of meal Marxism,
40:49
Adorno, a leader of the Frankfurt School, Habermas, a proponent of critical social theory.
40:55
And yet Christians, well-meaning Christians, otherwise known as underheaded, softheaded
40:59
Christians, will read things by people like Dumei and think to themselves, gosh, this really
41:04
makes a lot of sense. It's because they're worshiping at the altar of pragmatism and not worshiping
41:08
at the altar of the Word of God. And it creates this issue to where the devil who prowls around
41:14
like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour, he's also incredibly cunning. He's sprinkling
41:21
a little bit of sugar on top of a pile of nonsense. I talked recently about the Enneagram,
41:27
all of the basis of the Enneagram and how we got it in modernity has no connection to biblical
41:33
Christianity whatsoever. But dumb Christians are like, Oh, but it works. But it seems to do well.
41:38
I have a better relationship with my husband. I have a better relationship with my boss,
41:41
because the powdered sugar on the top of diarrhea, and they're just taking it down. And so I guess
41:46
my issue is, is why do Christians, why are we so gullible when we listen to these people that seem
41:51
smart and sound smart, even though they're telling us, look, we're getting our ideology from non-Christian
41:55
sources? Yeah, it's really good and well articulated. And I was going to say, yeah, don't hold anything
42:01
back here. You know, tell me what you really think. You know, and I think that I think the problem
42:07
is it goes back to what we're just talking about, subjective truth versus objective truth, ice cream
42:12
claims versus what I like to call insulin claims, you know, it doesn't matter if you like insulin
42:17
or believe it works, you know, if you're a type one juvenile diabetic, you need it to survive. This
42:21
is like, this has massive consequences if you don't take insulin. And so when you don't have,
42:28
when you don't have truth, when it comes to religion, if there is no truth objectively,
42:33
when it comes to religious beliefs or theological convictions, theological beliefs,
42:38
then what you're left with is just whatever works for you, or, or whatever makes you feel good.
42:45
And that's why I mean a lot of Christians, I go, I travel to churches and I talk to churches
42:51
and youth groups. And we often do what I call the truth test. Okay. And what I do is I say,
42:57
I make claims and I say, I want you to tell me if this claim is ice cream or insulin,
43:01
what kind of claim is it? I say, Coke tastes better than Pepsi. And they'll say ice cream,
43:06
you know, it's preference. Yeah, Coke zero has fewer calories than Coke. Okay, that's insulin.
43:11
Okay, good. So far so good. But then things get, they get a little bit confused when I get to,
43:17
say, abortion is wrong. And then all of a sudden, it's like, uh, and then I hear ice cream majority,
43:26
say ice cream, there might be one kid who says insulin. And that's because they have
43:31
relative ice. Now, if I change it to slavery is wrong, or murder is wrong, are they going to yell
43:36
ice cream? Now they're like, Oh, wait a second. I, I don't want to say that's ice cream. That's
43:43
insulin. Yeah. But those are the same kind of claims. They're both moral claims. They're about
43:47
right and wrong. And then you get to religious claims. And I'll say something like Jesus is the
43:52
only way, or all have fallen short of the glory of God, or something like that. And again, ice cream.
44:01
This is what happens. If you have a culture that is just swimming in this kind of postmodern
44:07
relativism, it makes sense that our churches are going to be impacted by it. And you're going to
44:12
have people who wear the label Christian, who now can't think critically about any of this stuff.
44:18
And they think, well, you know what, man, I love this teacher because he just tells me he makes
44:23
me feel good. And I'm not going to the church that says I'm a sinner or talks about people who
44:28
don't believe who might go to hell as a judgment for their sin. I'm not going there. Again,
44:33
it's the whole what's going on behind the scenes. It's this stuff has all become subjective preference
44:41
claims. Francis Schafer, you know, almost prophetically talked about this back like 40 years ago, maybe
44:48
longer, 50 years ago, he was talking about, man, we need to get truth right. And if we don't get
44:55
truth right, everything the dominoes are going to start falling. And that's and we're kind of living
45:01
right now in in the consequences, the aftermath of all this when we're living through second Timothy
45:07
for where we want to have our ears tickled and we don't want to be challenged by anything. And that
45:11
has a lot to do with parenting and how your parents would would not let you be challenged. They would
45:15
let you cry. They wouldn't let you pick yourself up off the pavement after you fell down. And then
45:19
you get these adults that also don't want to be challenged. And what their bosses to tell them how
45:24
nice they are and how wonderful it is that they even decided to show up to work today as opposed to
45:28
well, we have standards here and you need to meet them. But the overall idea here, Tim, is that
45:33
Christians are not equipped for this fight. Because I mean, my skin was crawling as you're
45:39
describing this ice cream insulin thing, because to be able to equivocate somehow on the issue of
45:45
abortion and to not be able to see it, it's because we're living downstream of culture. We're living
45:51
downstream of the law, because for 50 years, the law of the land was, yeah, sure, kill your baby.
45:55
It's not even really a baby. This trimester thing, which wasn't even real scientifically,
45:59
like it doesn't become something different on at the end of trimester one in the beginning of
46:04
trimester two, it's the same thing the whole way. But we've just been marinating in this which is
46:09
brew of nonsense. And then you have, I think y'all talked about in the book, I don't know if it was
46:12
the Barna study or somewhere else where evangelicals, people that had claimed to be evangelicals,
46:18
they reject core Christian doctrine, that Jesus is the only way to salvation that sin is actually
46:23
a real thing. Christians are biblically illiterate. And I've been very open about a year ago, so this
46:28
would have been 2022. I read 54 books to prepare for podcast interviews. I didn't read that many
46:34
chapters of the Bible. So I was very literate in the words of people, some of which were Christian,
46:38
some of which were not. But I didn't spend that amount of time in the Word of God. And you know why?
46:42
It's because a lot of people don't actually believe it's the Word of God, because if they did, there
46:46
wouldn't be a half inch of dust on top of their Bible that they have to blow off every time they
46:50
end up making it to church when it's convenient. But we also don't get discipleship in church,
46:54
discipleship is not important. What's important is that you come to the concert, you come to the
46:58
TED Talk after an emotional experience, you raise your hand, that church is able to put that in their
47:02
annual report for the year, and then we just move on and try to plan our next concert. And so
47:08
Christians are just ill equipped for this. And for every Tim Barnett and Alisa Childers and John Cooper
47:14
and Greg Cocle and Kyle Thompson out there, there's a whole bunch of people in culture telling them,
47:20
hey, everything's relative, don't worry about it. So I don't even really have a question in there,
47:24
Tim, other than the fact that I lament the fact that so many Christians are just not really ready
47:27
to go for this fight. Well, you did raise, I think, an important thing that we can hit on here. And
47:32
that is that it is hard. Carl Truman makes this point. He's like, it's hard to even define what an
47:38
evangelical is anymore. So you have like, along with the hashtag deconstruction, you're going to
47:45
see the hashtag ex-vangelical. And this is someone saying, this is what I'm leaving, right? And we
47:50
talked a little bit about that a moment ago. Here's the thing, when I talk to someone who says they're
47:55
ex-vangelical, what I want to know is, what do you think an evangelical is? Because oftentimes,
48:00
I mean, this is what the studies show, Ligonier, you know, this study from last year, 2022,
48:05
well, I guess two years ago, it said he they found that 40% of evangelical Christians
48:12
did not believe that Jesus was God. They just thought he was a good teacher. Yeah. I mean,
48:18
hold on a second. I mean, when I read that statistic, I thought, what is that? So you're saying these
48:23
people are identifying as evangelical, but according to like church history, they're not even Christian.
48:30
How can you be an evangelical non-Christian? Because this is a, this is an essential
48:35
doctrine, the deity of Christ. This is not a secondary thing. And this is just one of many
48:40
things they found in this study. And so man, we have done a bad job. It goes back to what you're
48:45
saying with biblical literacy, we are so biblically illiterate. People, I get messages all the time,
48:52
it's, it's frustrating. It's, well, I'm, it, it's, it's sad, but it's also frustrating. When someone
48:58
sends me a meme or a tweet or a TikTok and they say, man, could you, I don't want to say to this,
49:04
could you please respond? And I'm thinking my first, my first thought after reading the challenges,
49:09
you need me to refute this. This is like, and, and again, it's so it's sad and frustrating at the
49:18
same time, because I feel for them, because we as a church have not done a good job training these
49:23
individuals. And so now they're out there in the world surfing on cyber, you know, on the social
49:28
media accounts. And it is like, man, there are challenges one after the other. You watch some of
49:35
these videos and it's like, I get it. I get what people are deconstructing when they have no roots,
49:41
when they have no foundation, because this stuff, the rhetoric is so powerful, but there's no substance
49:48
in much of this stuff. You know, decon, we talked about this one in the book and I, and on other
49:54
videos, this one girl who goes by deconstructing girl or deconstruction girl, she's got this whole
50:00
account. And she says this, the primary doctrine, the central doctrine of Christianity is child
50:06
sacrifice. That's what you got to believe in child sacrifice. And I'm thinking, man, I asked
50:11
my kids that I got three little girls at home, 12, 10, and seven. And my 10 year old's like, wait,
50:17
Jesus, he, he was a full grown man, right? And I said, yeah, yeah, he was like 30 years old, you
50:23
know, it was not. And by the way, he gave his own life. They know that he gave his own life as a
50:30
sacrifice. He was a, he was, he was willing, he wasn't forced. And I mean, just like, so my kids
50:37
know how to refute this, but they're full grown adults who think, yeah, this is so good. In fact,
50:42
the caption of this, of this Instagram post was there's no comebacks to this one. And I'm thinking,
50:47
wow, the confidence behind such a ridiculous claim is just tragic. I mean, that was a train wreck.
50:57
But there's that kind of thing is all over the place. And these deconstructions are patting
51:02
themselves on the back for these lame, ridiculous tweets that they come up with.
51:08
Well, I'm gonna have to go do a heavy bag routine after this conversation, because I'm like furious
51:12
at all this stupidity. But the thing is, is Tim, if we can't deal with the simple objections,
51:16
we'll never be able to deal with the complicated ones. And so one thing that I do is I did a podcast
51:20
that I turned that into a PDF, it's how to engage the top 18 pro abortion arguments. Because if you
51:25
can answer my body, my choice cogently and succinctly and directly, then how are you going to answer
51:31
the question about rape or incest? Like something that's more emotional and has more things charged
51:35
to it. But one of the things about deconstruction is you got a lot of dummies, you got a lot of ignorant
51:41
people that have these big followings on deconstruction, because most of the people or all the people
51:45
in their audience are also dummies. But then you have people that are smart that are in deconstruction.
51:49
And so you mentioned Derek web earlier, well, this is a guy that understands theology. And so the
51:54
same thing I'm reminded of when Jesus was being tempted in the desert, what was he being tempted
51:58
with scripture? But it wasn't being quoted accurately, but it was being quoted, right? There were some
52:04
key portions being, you know, taken out, but if you don't understand scripture, you wouldn't be
52:07
able to refute that. But as I was going through the book, and I asked Lisa the same thing, you know,
52:12
there are different theological, you know, subsets like Calvinism, that I think are potentially
52:20
aiding the construction a little bit, specifically because of the L of tulip limited atonement. So
52:26
I want to read this quote from the book here. This is from Derek Webb, again, as you said,
52:29
the former lead singer of the Christian band, caveman's call, who is now a self described atheist,
52:34
drag queen, weirdo, whatever. So he announced that he had walked away from his faith, and this is
52:39
from the book now, he announced that he had walked away from his faith and produced a solo album he
52:43
described as deeply personal tale of two divorces. The songs are his reflections on his divorce from
52:50
his wife and his divorce from God, his pain is palpable and well articulated. Responding to the
52:55
Calvinist understanding of salvation web had formally believed he writes that there are only
53:00
two options. Either God isn't real or web himself wasn't chosen. He goes on to say he may never find
53:07
out which is true. Either way, my heart is broken. He writes in a haunt in the haunting lyrics. And
53:12
I got to say, I see exactly where he's coming from. I have I have a lot of agreement here,
53:17
because I struggle with some reformed theology and Calvinism specifically limited atonement.
53:22
And I struggle with it in in a very anecdotal sense. And that's with my boys, because I've
53:28
asked a lot of Calvinists this and I can't get a good good answer from them. But it's like,
53:32
if you're a died in the wool Calvinists, then why do you have children? Like, why would you risk
53:37
that? And they're just like, well, the Bible tells us we need to be fruitful and multiply. I'm like,
53:40
yeah, I get that. But what if you have four kids, two of them are elect and two of them or not,
53:46
you literally, because you want to have sex or because you want to do something else, you brought
53:50
two human beings into this world that were damned to hell from the moment they were created.
53:54
Why would you risk that? And so I can see the practicality of his appeal to Calvinism to
54:02
tulip to limited atonement and say, guys, like, I desperately wish I was chosen, but I'm just not.
54:10
And again, I'm not trying to hang deconstruction around the neck of Calvinists,
54:13
because that would be ridiculous. But man, I feel like that does give them firepower. No.
54:19
Yeah, so I am not a Calvinist myself and have concerns with some of the points of Calvinism.
54:25
As you expressed, limited atonement would be one of those. In fact, I got a sermon online where I
54:30
make a case for unlimited atonement. And so I think that there is, I mean, I want to be fair
54:36
to my Calvinists, you know, brothers, and they probably have a, they have a comeback, you know,
54:40
to this particular challenge from web. They would, they probably want to say something like,
54:47
well, he's still making the appeal to you, you know, to come to Christ and you are willfully
54:52
rejecting it. You know, you're hearing the gospel. Now, of course it does, it does, you know, on that
54:57
worldview, that theological view, well, God's the one who's got to do something now in their heart,
55:03
right? Now I, on my theological conviction is that God has done something. He has communicated
55:09
the gospel and there is power in communicating the gospel that the Holy Spirit works through.
55:16
And, and so Derek Webb is fully responsible for rejecting what he has heard. And of course,
55:24
he's going to be judged according to his deeds. And this is going to be a very bad situation for
55:29
Derek Webb, if he does not repent of his sins. And likewise, anyone else who is in deconstruction
55:35
and thinking, well, I'm just going to wait here until God does something in me. Otherwise, you know,
55:41
I'm just going to keep living my life the way I want to live it or something. That is not an excuse.
55:47
And I know my Calvin is friends, again, whether they're inconsistent or consistent on this,
55:51
it's another question, but they would want to say the same thing. They say, Derek Webb,
55:54
you're going to be just as accountable and responsible for what you've done with Christ
55:59
as anybody else. So I, I'm with you. And it's a, it's a broader issue too, because there's,
56:04
you know, there's the word of faith stuff. There's all kinds of theological systems that I don't
56:10
agree with. And I think some of it is not just bad teaching. It's like false teaching. It's,
56:15
it's heretical teaching. And, um, and a lot of deconstructionists, unfortunately kind of grew up
56:21
with that. And they think that's it. You know, so they think if God didn't make me healthy and wealthy,
56:26
well, then he must not exist as if that's God's job to be like a vending machine for us or something.
56:32
But that's what they heard from Copeland or one of these other guys. And it's like, no, you've got
56:37
your theology wrong. And it's causing all kinds of other issues. Get your theology straight first.
56:43
And, uh, and that's, we call that Reformation. We call that Reformation the book. We want people
56:48
too, like the Bereans, man, align your views with what scripture teaches. And we all got to do that.
56:54
I hold some false beliefs. So do you, Kyle, none of us has perfect theology. We are all trying to
56:59
figure this thing out. But the way we do that is not just meditating a room by ourselves. You know,
57:05
whatever, it is going to the revelation that God has given us in his word through his son and so on.
57:12
So, um, so that's, that's our prescription to all this. Well, but we have to be humble and we have
57:18
to be intellectually honest. And I'm not seeing a whole lot of intellectual honesty. And this is
57:23
certainly from both sides because people, they don't want to be challenged. They want, they don't
57:27
want their viewpoints to be challenged. They want their viewpoints to be reinvigorated. And so I heard
57:31
someone the other day was telling me the story about someone in their life that is kind of more
57:35
on that left wing kind of woker Christianity type thing. And this guy mentioned, you know,
57:39
RC sprawl or some of these other reformed authors and the guy goes, yeah, I tend to avoid some of
57:44
these reform thinkers because he just kind of came up with this like intellectual, you know,
57:49
academic gobbledygook about why he didn't read people that disagreed with his point of view. And
57:54
it's like, how are you going to like further substantiate your position or change your position
57:58
to the right one if you don't actually expose yourself to those other ideologies? And within that,
58:02
everyone's got their particular flavor of theology. But one thing that people are talking about now
58:07
is quote unquote toxic theology, but they're not really defining toxic rights. So I would consider
58:12
that theology of Kenneth Copeland of Andy Stanley of Pope Francis, I would consider a lot of these
58:18
people to have very toxic theology, because it doesn't have a higher authority that they appeal
58:23
to appeal to other than their intellect. And I'm reminded of the muggerage quote, we have,
58:26
you know, educated ourselves into in facility. And that's what these incredibly talented and
58:31
smart communicators like in Andy Stanley, that's why they're so nefarious. It's because when they
58:35
stray away from the Bible, because of their preconceived notions, it becomes very dangerous
58:39
for their flock, which is just looking, you know, in a blind fashion towards their leader. But I'm
58:44
going to read this quote from the book here. From the perspective of deconstructionists,
58:48
there is no false theology to be corrected. There is only toxic theology that needs to be
58:54
deconstructed. Toxic theology is a catch all term being used to describe any doctrine
58:59
one deems as harmful. Now, I have a major problem with people that describe harm in our modern
59:05
moment, because I've heard a lot of people talk about, Oh, church hurt, I'm in the category of
59:10
church hurt. And where my mind goes is, Oh my gosh, they had money, you know, stolen from them by this,
59:16
by this pastor, or the youth pastor held them down and sexually assaulted them. Or, you know,
59:22
the church expelled them and their family for standing on biblical doctrine and truth. But it's
59:27
never that, Tim, it's always, well, I wanted to bring my I'm a dude, and I wanted to bring my
59:32
boyfriend to church, and I wanted them to pat me on the head and tell me how good I was, and how
59:36
homosexuality wasn't the sin, and then they wouldn't let me do that. Now, there is actual church hurt,
59:40
but when we create these catch all categories of church hurt, toxic theology, and yet they're
59:46
not grounded in any type of reality, it becomes this just nonsense of us chasing our tales.
59:52
And that's you got it. It's got to be grounded in reality, right? It's what's true. And so in the
59:57
book, we describe, you know, if you see someone kind of pounding on someone's chest, you may think,
1:00:02
wow, this is toxic. This is horrible. This is wrong. This is harmful. But then you find out that
1:00:07
guy just had a heart attack. And what's happening is chest compressions, because he's doing CPR.
1:00:11
Well, that changes the whole thing, right? Now, and so when you know what's true, that's able to
1:00:17
inform you and form you on what's harmful and what's actually toxic. And so yeah, we're not, we,
1:00:22
we're not saying the church is perfect far from it. There is real church hurt. But like you just said,
1:00:28
man, there is just like everything clumped into this. So hell, if you tell your kids about hell in
1:00:34
this deconstruction community, they'll call that that's toxic. That's child abuse to tell your kid
1:00:39
about hell. Well, hold on a second. I tell my kids not to take the knife and jam it into the
1:00:45
wall socket. Is that is that toxic? Is that powerful? It might scare them. How do I'm protecting?
1:00:51
Yeah, that's right. That's scare tactics. Well, kind. I mean, it's telling them that this is scary.
1:00:56
You could hurt yourself. But that's only because I'm, I'm informing them that there really is a
1:01:02
harm there. And in the same way, we tell people the hell not because we enjoy it, but because
1:01:09
there is a real place and we're warning people. And this is what Jesus did. And so we're following
1:01:14
the teacher. Simple as that truth first, then you figure out what's harmful or toxic. Absolutely.
1:01:21
Well, I see the clock. We're kind of running out of time here. So I need to go ahead and go to the
1:01:24
end. We need to get practical here at the end. So we've done a lot of description. Now we need to
1:01:29
prescribe. There's a person in your life, Tim, or in the listeners life that you suspect or have
1:01:35
confirmed is deconstructing. And no, we don't mean they're trying to find the core tenants of
1:01:40
their faith and make sure that their theology is correct. But we're talking about that infinity
1:01:43
loop that we discussed earlier. What are we to do? What should the church do? What should their
1:01:48
friends and family do? How do we deal with somebody that is in the process of deconstruction?
1:01:52
Yeah. So this is really, this is a good question to end on. First thing I'm going to do is pray. Okay,
1:01:58
like, let's not let's not think the sky is falling here. You know, God can do big things. God has
1:02:05
moved in in this world over and over and over again, and he can move in this situation. And so the
1:02:10
first thing I'm going to do is I'm getting on my knees and I'm praying for this individual. Okay,
1:02:14
because they need God. The second thing is I want to go to them and I want to tell them straight up
1:02:18
that I love them. If it's a personal friend or family member, I want them to know, look it,
1:02:24
I love you period. Okay, I love you period. Not but here's all the reasons you're wrong about this
1:02:29
thing. Because frankly, if they're close to me, they know what I think. Okay, I don't keep my
1:02:34
opinions to myself usually. And so they likely know what, you know, so my daughter comes to me. She's
1:02:39
you know, 20, my eldest, when she gets old enough, she comes to me and says, Dad, I'm not a Christian
1:02:43
anymore. Here's why, you know, it's the deconstruction stuff. I'm going to say, I still love you. You're
1:02:48
my daughter, you know, and I'll I would die for you, you know. And then I would want to, I would
1:02:54
want to say, look it, I want to maintain this relationship. And I know that you may not like
1:03:01
what I believe and I don't like what you believe, but I want to do my best to maintain this relationship.
1:03:05
That's going to be my goal as much as that's possible. Now I've talked to lots of people
1:03:10
and they've been told to get lost, you know, from that loved one who's deconstructed. It's just like,
1:03:15
no, we're here's a letter, you know, no contact letter. We're done. That's tragic. That is so sad
1:03:22
just to think about a son or daughter or whoever doing that. So I want to maintain the relationship
1:03:28
as much as possible. So I'm going to still go to the movies with my daughter. I'm still going to
1:03:31
take her out shopping and spend money on her. I'm still going to, you know, take her out for dinner,
1:03:35
whatever. And then I'm going to set boundaries because there's going to be times when I want to
1:03:40
talk about this stuff and and let's just set aside time to do it. So it's not like every time we get
1:03:46
together. First thing is, okay, let's talk about Jesus, you know, we'll set aside time to do that
1:03:51
and we will do that. And that protects me and it also protects her. And then and then finally, you know,
1:04:01
it's because all that stuff, it may not seem like it's working. And so I'm just at the end of the day,
1:04:07
I'm going to just put my hope in God, okay, that the creator of the universe is going to do that,
1:04:12
which is right. This is kind of like Abraham walking with the Lord, you know, looking over Sodom and
1:04:17
tomorrow. Okay, I'm just going to trust you as much as possible. I'm going to trust you. God,
1:04:22
I don't know how you're going to work in this situation or what that look only you know,
1:04:27
but I'm trusting you and and look it, we saw lots of people go through serious trouble in the Bible.
1:04:34
We see Job, we see Peter, you know, denied the Lord three times his his world to mess. And then Jesus
1:04:40
says, you know, comes to him and says, do you love me? You know, three times. And it's like the
1:04:46
relationship restored. And so I'm holding that hope for my loved ones who deconstruct that maybe
1:04:52
they come back to the Lord. And so I would want to, that'd be the last thing, just don't lose hope.
1:04:57
Well, and also I agree, don't lose hope. Control the controllables, right? You can't, you know,
1:05:02
I answered a Q and A question or an AMA question the other day where someone's like, Hey, I'm in a
1:05:06
toxic co parenting situation. What can I do? And I was like, control you, you can't control them,
1:05:10
like, but you can control whether or not you fight with your wife through your daughter,
1:05:14
you can control that. But then I was reminded as you were talking Matthew 1035, this is Jesus for
1:05:19
I've come to set man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter in law
1:05:23
against her mother in law. And so the thing is, is you may find yourself on the opposite side of
1:05:28
the leisure of your kid. This is kind of where Calvinist theology would actually be cold comfort
1:05:32
because it's like, well, maybe they're just not elect, which is heartbreaking. But you know,
1:05:36
if that's what you believe, then you know, what can you do? And so, but I agree, we can't lose
1:05:41
hope. But also we have to understand that this is a process. I'm, this is gonna strike you as
1:05:45
shocking to him. I'm incredibly impatient. Like I want to get to the end as quickly as possible.
1:05:50
I'm binary. I want it done now. I want it done yesterday. And so when someone comes to me,
1:05:55
whether it's a gospel sharing situation or a problem fixing situation, I want to just fix it
1:05:59
now. It's like, why fix it later? But at the same time, I'm all about what Greg Coco has taught me
1:06:05
about putting a rock in someone's shoe. And I just might be that pebble that is chucked in someone's
1:06:10
shoe. I say something, or I give them a Bible, or I just make reference to something that I share
1:06:16
with them that later is watered by somebody else, watered by a different gardener. And guess what?
1:06:21
I may never even know that that person has built their faith back or has come to faith in Christ.
1:06:26
But that's not the point. The point is that they came to the Father, not that I was the one
1:06:31
that was the conduit. So Tim, we have covered a lot of around here today. We have done a lot of
1:06:35
good work here. I really appreciate all your time. But that's all for me. Is there anything else you
1:06:38
want to get off your chest? No, this has been a great discussion. I really appreciate you having
1:06:43
me on Tim Barnett. Thank you for coming on Daunton life of man's podcast. There you go, guys. I hope
1:06:48
you enjoyed our time with Tim Barnett. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience
1:06:52
boost at undaunted life or mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges
1:06:56
spiritual mental and physical resilience to links for you today. I've got a link to where you can
1:07:00
buy your copy of the deconstruction of Christianity. And then also a link to where you can go and check
1:07:04
out Tim's YouTube channel, red pen logic. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.
1:07:09
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five-star review.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual
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