When I say “conservative Christianity” I’m broadly referring to Christians who share two characteristics: (1) a commitment to sound doctrine and (2) a commitment to Christian obedience. In a normal world, we would describe all Christians this way, but alas, we do not live in a normal world. Many who consider themselves Christian do not care much about such things. I’m speaking to my own tribe here, and in my view, this is a significant blind spot.

So what am I talking about? The besetting sin of conservative Christianity is a weak conscience. A weak conscience leads to purity spiraling—an endless ratcheting of standards where everyone is trying to be holier than everyone else—which causes enormous harm in our churches.

How a Weak Conscience is Formed

Conservative churches take doctrine and obedience seriously, that much we’ve already established, and those are good things. But if we’re not careful, these very commitments can make us rigid, which brings us one step closer to being straight up legalistic. That’s an easy trap to fall into, because everyone is convinced their beliefs are biblical, and thus the ethical conclusions we draw from our biblical convictions take on greater moral force.

From an outsider’s perspective, the man with a weak conscience appears to have great zeal for the Lord. But ironically, his apparent zeal for Christ might actually indicate a weakness in his faith, because beneath his strongly held opinions is the fear that he isn’t spiritual enough, and thus he compensates by becoming dogmatic about issues of lesser importance.

Spiritually insecure believers can often develop quirky convictions as a way to justify themselves before God. It’s a timeless temptation. Some Christians will measure their spiritual maturity by the number of strong opinions they hold, and then to use those opinions as a way to distinguish themselves from others. They regard their scrupulosity about a wide range of issues as a sign of greater commitment to Christ, when it is actually a fig leaf to cover their deep seated fear that they aren’t doing enough to please God.

This is obvious on the internet, where an endless stream of fads and micro-controversies cycle through every week. The internet rewards such controversies. But it can happen in the church too, when people develop a subtle spiritual pecking order based on their views about secondary matters.

This is the same species of pride that afflicted the Pharisees, who developed rigid, man-made rules and imposed them on others to feel more righteous about themselves. This is what Paul was talking about in Romans 14 when he addressed what he called “weaker brother” who held many strong opinions about how believers should behave in the grey areas of the Christian life.

The stronger brother in Paul’s framework, is the one who is fully confident in the grace and love of Christ. He doesn’t doubt his status as a child of God and rests secure in the gospel. Because of that security, he enjoys his freedom in Christ without anxiety. He can hold his convictions with an open hand, not feeling any need to recruit everyone to his point of view, even though he’s personally convinced they’re wrong.

Three Characteristics of the Weaker Brother

The stronger brother has opinions—even strong ones. But he doesn’t need other people to agree with him in order to feel okay about his standing before God. The man who is “weak in faith” (Rom 14:1) is also a true believer, but he is less spiritually mature. There are three things to notice about him.

(1) First, his spiritual immaturity is due to a weakness of faith. This isn’t primarily about intellectual doubts, it’s more of a spiritual insecurity that makes him less confident in the love of God. He believes in Jesus, but he doubts God’s grace in his own life. That insecurity has to go somewhere, and it usually goes into rule-keeping.

(2) Second, his weakness of faith shows up as an overly scrupulous conscience. He’s developed a long list of rules that God never actually prescribed. He thinks God requires things of him that God doesn’t require, which makes him uptight. He feels guilty about things that aren’t sins, but they feel like sins to him because his conscience is weak. His instinct to obey Christ in all things is good, but that keeps him from enjoying the freedom Christ purchased for him. He’s so focused on avoiding bad things that he can’t enjoy good things, fearing they might be bad. He approaches his spirituality with an “err-on-the-side-of-caution” attitude.

(3) Third, he can become divisive, because he makes his personal scruples the standard for everyone else. Since his conscience makes him more rigid in more areas, he claims the moral high ground with an air of spiritual authority. We’ve all known people like this, and we may even be this way ourselves. When we have a strong conviction about something, it’s natural to feel a little superior to others who don’t have that same belief. And sometimes, the people with the most convictions seem most wise. Someone else might think, “he’s obviously thought this through and even has Bible verses to back it up. He must be right about this, and now I feel guilty.”

The specific issue Paul was addressing in Romans 14 was meat that had been offered to pagan idols and then sold in the market. The weaker brother believed eating this meat was a form of idolatry. His conscience was sensitive about it, probably because it reminded him of his life prior to becoming a Christian when he participated in such idolatry himself. So he wants nothing to do with anything that reminds him of his former sins.

The stronger brother, however, isn’t troubled by it. For him, it’s just meat, and there’s nothing wrong with eating it. Give thanks to God and have steak for dinner.

Interestingly, Paul doesn’t correct the weaker brother for this error, because the weaker brother is abstaining as an act of worship (though God did not require him to do so). Paul wants to honor his conscience, even when it is more scrupulous than it needs to be. But Paul draws the line at allowing the weaker brother to establish policy for everyone. The moment he says, “eating this meat is a sin and no one should eat it,” he’s gone too far.

Challenges for Application

It’s important to realize that “weaker brother” and “stronger brother” aren’t fixed categories of personhood. You might be the stronger brother on one issue and the weaker brother on a different one. It’s not as though people in the Roman church were walking around with name tags that said “Hi, I’m Bob, I’m the weaker brother.”

So the challenge of applying this teaching is twofold. First, (1) we must recognize which ethical issues we encounter as Christians are truly matters of conscience and which issues are clear moral commands. For example, sexual immorality isn’t a grey area, it’s a clear, moral command. The man who rebukes someone else for sexual sin isn’t being a weaker brother, he’s being a faithful brother.

We live in an age of moral decay, where hard hearted people are eager to cast off all restraints. They want no king to rule over them so everyone can do what is right in their own eyes. Conservative Christians rightly want to resist this trend, which means we want to raise standards of living wherever we can. But since we also live in an age of increasing fragmentation, there is little consensus about how to do it. So from our desire to see order restored to our society, conservative Christians will be tempted to make their particular set of standards the rule for everyone, and thus unnecessarily bind the consciences of others.

Second, (2) we must recognize where we are personally tempted to be the weaker brother. There are areas of my own life where I have seen the tendency to be the weaker brother, and so I have made a point to be careful to not bind the consciences of others. This is especially important since I’m a pastor, which means I need to steward my influence more carefully.

Churches that take doctrine and obedience seriously will always attract people with a weak conscience, because that culture of seriousness feels like home to them. Their scrupulousness feels like it belongs in a place that cares about getting things right. And it does belong—but it also needs to be identified and addressed, because it will tear a church apart if it’s left unchecked.

Six Principles for Preserving Unity

Paul’s driving interest in addressing the weaker brother is to preserve unity in the church regarding matters of conscience. I’ve identified the following five principles for dealing with these issues.

(1) First, the stronger brother must not despise the weaker brother. Romans 14:3 says, “let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains.” Suppose you’re at a men’s night at your church and some guys decide to smoke cigars and drink bourbon. Now, suppose someone approaches those men and says, “you shouldn’t smoke that, your body is a temple! You shouldn’t drink that, you might get drunk!”

How do you think those men will feel? Most likely, they’ll find it quite annoying. So Paul says, don’t despise that guy, even though he’s being judgmental about an area that’s a matter of conscience. Yes, he’s got scruples that trouble his conscience, but don’t despise him. Rather, you should “welcome him” (Rom 14:1). He’s a brother in Christ, after all.

(2) Second, the weaker brother must not judge the stronger brother. Romans 14:3 says, “let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.” This exhortation is for the more scrupulous man. Your personal judgment doesn’t get to override God’s judgment. God has welcomed him, and that’s all that matters. You might be offended at his choices, but it’s not your place to litigate his convictions on gray areas.

(3) Third, weaker brothers don’t realize they’re the weaker brother. This is the irony that makes the problem difficult to address. Weaker brothers always think they are just being biblical. They think their scruples are a sign of their spiritual maturity. This is why Paul says, “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions” (Rom 14:1). In other words, the weaker brother should be welcomed in the church, but he should not be allowed to let his opinions about everything dictate policy for everyone else. He doesn’t think of them as opinions—in his mind, these are convictions. If you don’t do it his way, you are in sin. That’s why these people can be dangerous if they aren’t corrected.

A man once visited our church a few times with a strong conviction that churches should only sing Psalms. His reasoning was that we should sing the Bible’s own words, and modern worship music is too sentimental and weak. I don’t disagree with his point about much of modern worship music, but there are lots of great modern worship songs that are powerful and edifying if you know where to look. Besides, the scriptures tell us to sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Col 3:16). Nevertheless, he held his view with the air of a man delivering a moral correction. His way is the right way, and our church was in the wrong because we don’t do it his way. For the weaker brother, his opinions aren’t matters of conscience, they are matters of obedience or disobedience. To him, they are sins, and as such, they are morally urgent.

Personally, I don’t have a problem if that’s what he prefers, but I do have a problem when a visitor wants to set policy for our church. It was evident he was a divisive man, and divisive people always think they’re right. He didn’t stay long.

(4) Fourth, the Holy Spirit is in charge of each person’s sanctification, so we can trust his work in other people. Paul writes: “It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Rom 14:4). There’s enormous freedom in this. You don’t have to convince everyone else to agree with you, because they don’t answer to you, they answer to God. Even if they’re wrong about something, you can relax, knowing we’re not the Holy Spirit.

Further, Paul says “he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” In other words, God cares more about their sanctification than you do, and God has the power to ensure their perseverance.

(5) Fifth, every Christian should obey his or her own conscience. You should follow your own conscience, and you must also leave room for other people to follow theirs. Your have freedom in Christ, but your freedom stops at requiring other people to do it the same way you do.

Paul says, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). Personally, I find that statement astonishing. Even though the weaker brother is wrong about his view of eating the meat, Paul doesn’t tell the church to correct him! Rather, Paul is fine with him continuing to hold his view, provided he doesn’t bind other peoples’ consciences with his view.

(6) Sixth, Romans 14:6 gives us a rule of thumb that can govern how we view the various decisions we make about matters of conscience. It reads, “The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.” Thus, if Christians can act with heartfelt devotion to God and give thanks for what they do, there is room for people to have differences of opinion. Here’s a few examples of what I mean.

• One person thinks Halloween is a demonic celebration of witchcraft and evil, but another person thinks it’s just kids in costumes eating candy. As long as they are both obeying their consciences as an act of devotion to God, there’s room for unity in their disagreement.

• One family thinks a wife and mother should never be employed outside the home. Another family thinks her first priority is her home, but it’s lawful to have a job if needed. As long as they are both obeying their consciences as an act of devotion to God, there’s room for unity in their disagreement.

• One man thinks Christians should never carry financial debt because it’s a form of slavery. Another man thinks reasonable debts are lawful as long as he can afford the payments. As long as both are obeying their consciences before God, there’s room for both.

• One man thinks churches must serve wine for communion since that’s what Jesus used. Another man thinks using grape juice is a reasonable substitute that honors the spirit of the sacrament while accommodating those who may be recovering from addiction. As long as both are obeying their consciences before God, there’s room for both.

• One family believes homeschooling is a requirement of all Christian families. Another family believes there are other valid options they can utilize as long as their children are given proper Christian instruction in their home and church. As long as they are both obeying their consciences as an act of devotion to God, there’s room for unity in their disagreement.

I had an experience with this last example recently. At a pastors’ and wives’ conference my wife and I attended recently, a woman shared a prayer request during the ladies’ prayer time. The request was about a family in her church that had decided not to homeschool their children. In her mind, this was a clear sin issue of such gravity that church discipline was on the table.

From what I’ve seen, many Christian families make their conviction about homeschooling a conscience-binding law on every Christian family, even though scripture does not require it. Scripture does require every family to educate their children in the Lord, but it does not prescribe a particular method for doing so. That’s a matter of conscience. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Further, both sets of parents will stand or fall before their own master, and God is committed to making sure they stand.

Unity, Not Uniformity

As stated previously, Paul’s interest in addressing these matters of conscience is to preserve the unity of the church, and in our day, the church is being torn apart by people who insist on rigid uniformity on secondary matters. The lesson of Romans 14 is that we must pursue unity, not uniformity.

You may hold strong opinions without imposing them on others. When it comes to the grey areas of Christian living, Scripture gives us permission to let other people be wrong. And chances are, you’re probably wrong about some things too. God is able to make you stand as well.

As I said at the beginning, the besetting sin of conservative Christianity is a weak conscience. Churches that take doctrine and obedience seriously will always be vulnerable to this temptation. The antidote is simple and wonderfully freeing: trust God, believe the gospel, and relax. God is doing a work in each of our lives. Some of us are more mature, some less. All of us need grace. God is committed to making sure every true Christian is faithfully preserved until the last day. The more we rest secure in those truths, the more we can enjoy our freedom in Christ — and the more unity we’ll have in our churches.

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I’m very excited to get this book out and to hopefully engage in productive conversation about how Christians can once again become a powerful force for good in our society.

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“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology.”

Those are the words of Abigail Martinez, a devout Christian widow in California, who watched the state take her daughter away when she refused to affirm her daughter’s transgender identity. Her daughter, Yaeli, was struggling with depression and her sexuality, so a school psychologist recommended she join the school’s LGBT club (without Abigail’s knowledge or consent). When Abigail discovered what was happening, she refused to affirm her daughter’s transition, so the state removed her from her home.

Activists told Martinez to hold a funeral for her daughter and celebrate the adoption of a “son.” They told her she’d never see Yaeli again if she kept talking about God.

Not long after this, Yaeli killed herself.

When Martinez later testified before Congress, she said her daughter’s death was a murder. Gender ideology killed her.

Now, ask yourself a question. How many Christian leaders and churches have been outspoken about the dangers of gender ideology? How many pastors will boldly and unflinchingly denounce homosexuality, gay “marriage,” transgenderism, and the whole array of LGBT sins? Even though there is a growing movement of courageous pastors speaking out, the reality is, over the last 20 years or so, many of them have been silent.

I’m a pastor. Over more than 20 years in ministry, I’ve watched a theology take root in American evangelicalism that trains Christians to be silent in the face of all kinds of cultural tyranny. It’s a theology that says the church is at her best when she’s losing. It says we should not seek cultural influence because that would only corrupt us. Further, it says we should not seek political power because that’s beneath us. Our only public duty is to do evangelism, because eternal destinies are all that really matters. The culture war is just a distraction.

I call this loser theology, and it has done great damage to the modern church. Further, it harms society by causing Christians to disengage as the greatest conscience-shaping force in our culture.

Loser theology is promoted by prominent advocates, though that’s not what they call it. Russell Moore, one of the most influential evangelical voices of the last decade and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, wrote in his 2015 book that “the Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall.” He argued the church is most faithful when she exists as a “persecuted minority,” never a “moral majority.” He says Christians are better witnesses as cultural losers rather than winners.

That may sound humble, but it isn’t. It’s simply waving the white flag of surrender to cultural powers who will eagerly destroy us if given the chance. This theology is custom-built to explain away defeat after defeat, training a generation of Christians to lose and feel good about it. Loser theology regards retreat as a virtue.

When loser theology is a dominant motif of modern evangelicalism, what do you think will happen? We don’t have to guess. The same year Moore’s book came out (2015), the Supreme Court invented a right to “gay marriage” in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision. In the six years that followed, public support for gay marriage skyrocketed to 70 percent. During that same period, LGBTQ identification among Gen Z nearly doubled.

Let that sink in. Roughly one-fifth of an entire generation of children who were seduced into sexual perversion in the immediate aftermath of Obergefell. The culture didn’t just suddenly change its mind. Rather, people changed their minds because powerful people signaled this was the new morality.

And where was the church? She was largely silent because many Christians believed we should just focus on soul-winning rather than culture-warring. Thus, LGBT activism marched on, unopposed.

None of this happened because the culture simply changed its mind. Rather, it happened because the church had abandoned its post as the most powerful conscience-shaping institution in the world.

Obergefell has already done its damage, and it will be very difficult to get that toothpaste back in the tube. In the wake of Obergefell, Christian parents are now losing custody battles over their kids’ gender identities because their churches never gave them a theological framework for resistance, only permission to suffer and lose. And when the church loses her spine, the sheep are left without protection.

Other battles are ongoing and have yet to be settled where Christians need to assert a strong, prophetic voice. As Islam is already taking Europe hostage, its footprint in America continues to expand. Is it too late? Will we lose this battle also? We certainly will if the church is convinced that our only job is to ignore the culture and just do evangelism. And if we lose the culture, we will be ruled by a jihadist religious system that has no scruples against wielding power to crush its enemies. That’s what Islam is. It’s a system of domination with a religious veneer. They will not simply coexist with us if we let them win.

So, should we let them win so we can be losers for Jesus? If so, how else might we choose to lose? How about family courts, school boards, and city councils? The pattern repeats across every civic institution because the best people to hold the line have been taught for two generations that line-holding is somebody else’s job.

Here’s the part that should bother you most, whether you’re a churchgoer or not. This isn’t happening because Christians are cowards. They’re not. It’s happening because many of them have been discipled to regard passivity as a form of holiness. They’ve been trained to think losing is “the way of the cross” because “Jesus calls us to be weak.”

These statements sound pious, but they profoundly misunderstand scripture. Yes, when we are weak, he is strong, but scripture never commands us to pursue weakness as an end in itself.

I’ve sat across from men and women in my office who suppress every instinct toward leadership and strength because they’ve absorbed the idea that ambition is sin and confidence is pride. I’ve watched churches refuse to speak plainly about cultural evil because plain speech might be regarded as unkind. This is no accident. It was discipled into people, one sermon at a time.

In short, some Christians are afraid of winning because we’ve been conditioned to believe power can only be used for evil purposes, never as a force for good. That’s not true. To be sure, scripture is full of warnings about the corrupting potential of power, but Jesus also promises to give his people power, and he expects us to wield it righteously (Acts 1:8).

Further, there’s a difference between refusing to worship power and refusing to use it at all. The same Christ who died on a cross now reigns at the right hand of the Father, and scripture says every knee will bow to Him — kings and nations included. That’s not a losing vision. The men and women who built the church that shaped Western civilization understood this. They didn’t do it by convincing themselves that losing was the point.

If you’ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to contesting anything, or why every act of Christian courage gets treated with more suspicion than every act of Christian retreat, that’s not your imagination, nor is it biblical faithfulness. It’s loser theology. It’s a theology of defeat that’s presented as humility. And it’s long past time we reject it and step into the arena where we belong.

My latest book, “Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth” is currently available for pre-order.

It ships August 4th from Canon Press and August 18th from Amazon.

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Years ago, when I first became a pastor, I went to a church planting bootcamp sponsored by Acts 29 (a church planting network I was part of at the time). One of my favorite sessions was about eldership. The man who led the session discussed what the elder’s calling is, how to identify and raise up new elders, and how to examine their character. It was an excellent and helpful presentation.

Shortly after the conference, however, I found out something about the man who taught that session.

He was an adulterer.

He abandoned his wife and children and ran off with another woman, leaving his church devastated and scrambling to find a new pastor. As far as I know, he’s now abandoned the faith entirely.

I wish I could say that his story was unusual, but it’s not. It feels like every few months somebody I respected and looked up to—someone who’s books I read and ministry I followed—has some kind of moral failure. Of course, nobody who goes into pastoral ministry expects that to happen to them. And most of us tell ourselves it won’t, because we’re not the kind of man that that happens to.

But brothers, you are exactly the kind of man that could happen to.

Why? Because you’re human. And because you’ve got a target on your back. That doesn’t mean the devil sneaks into your heart and forces you to act against your will. No, it happens through small compromises and micro-concessions that push you down a dark path. And it typically happens very slowly.

The Scriptures identify a key factor that both sustains a fruitful ministry and prevents pastoral shipwreck. It’s the same factor in both cases. Paul calls it a “good conscience.”

The Aim of Our Charge

In 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul gives Timothy what amounts to a thesis statement for the entire letter: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

Notice that there are three qualifiers that define the kind of love Paul is talking about:

1. A “sincere faith” means you are a legitimate believer. You are converted, regenerate, filled with the Holy Spirit.

2. A “pure heart” means you are in ministry for the right reasons. You love God, you love his people, and you want to shepherd souls and build them up

3. A “good conscience” means your inner life is clear. You are not burdened by unconfessed sin or driven by nagging guilt you’re trying to manage.

All three of these things are important, but from my experience, the conscience is the most neglected of the three. At a recent Founder’s Ministry conference where I gave the talk this essay is based on, several men approached me afterward to tell me, “I’d never heard a discussion about the conscience like this before.” And yet, it’s so important that Paul included in the “aim of [his] charge.”

Actually, Paul has a lot to say about the conscience. It shows up repeatedly throughout the book of 1 Timothy. Every time it appears, it is connected to either the health or the destruction of a man’s ministry. In Acts 24:16, Paul said, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” When Paul listed qualifications for deacons in 1 Timothy 3:9, he required that they “must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.”

In other words, a good conscience isn’t a luxury, it is a precondition for effective ministry. So what is the conscience?

What is the Conscience?

The conscience is the faculty of the mind and soul that tells you whether what you are doing is right or wrong. It an inner sense that tells you the moral quality of a given action. Put another way, it’s your moral compass.

This is important because we don’t go through life pulling up Bible verses for every decision we make. You know the Word of God, and as you simmer in it, it informs your moral compass so that in a given situation you can make a moral decision quickly. For example, when your conscience is working properly, you won’t tell a lie even when you’re tempted to do so because you intuitively know it’s wrong. You don’t need to look it up, you just know it.

A conscience can be called “good” when it meets two basic criteria:

1. First, your inner moral compass is properly calibrated by the Word of God. In other words, your sense of right and wrong is not calibrated by your feelings, or culture, or your wife, or by Instagram. The things you believe to be good actually correspond with what Scripture says is good.

2. Second, your outer behavior aligns with what your conscience tells you. In other words, you know what is right, and then you do it (cf James 4:17).

When both conditions are met, you’re better equipped for ministry. You can love people well, preach with authority, correct sin with integrity, and shepherd souls without the constant drag of hypocrisy nagging you from the inside.

How a Conscience Goes Bad

The conscience can also become bad, and when it does, it can kill your ministry and shipwreck your faith.

Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:6, “Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.” People who ruin their ministries begin by swerving from the things Paul just mentioned the verse before: a pure heart, a good conscience, a sincere faith. Kind of like a moral car accident—first you swerve, then you crash.

A bad conscience refers to a damaged moral compass. When this happens, your perception of right and wrong is broken. Isaiah 5:20 warns about this, saying, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” A man with a bad conscience may end up doing bad things and not feel guilty about it because his inner sense of right and wrong has been damaged.

When your conscience is healthy, the guilt triggered by the conscience functions as a gift of God. It’s like a warning light on your spiritual dashboard. When you feel guilty, you are prompted to examine yourself. Perhaps you realize you’d done something wrong and can correct it. Perhaps you were harsh with someone or dishonest about something and you bring it to the Lord in repentance. When that happens, that’s the system working as God designed it.

But if you ignore those warning lights, they eventually grow dim. The feelings of guilt start to fade, and eventually, you can’t hear the voice of the Spirit at all. Nevertheless, you’re still preaching, still running staff meetings, still counseling and doing weddings and funerals, all the while your internal monitoring system has gone dark.

That’s the scary part. Your soul is malfunctioning in some way but you can’t tell because the warning light on your spiritual dashboard isn’t working. If a man has damaged his conscience through pornography, he may fail to recognize that he’s also gotten too friendly and flirty with a woman on his staff. If a man has damaged his conscience by telling little “white lies” here and there (there’s no such thing as a “white” lie, by the way), he may not feel any guilt when he starts telling bigger lies to cover his tracks.

He builds a little castle around his soul and keeps a handful of secret sins locked up in the lower dungeon, free from visibility and accountability.

Calibrating the Conscience

Throughout our lives, every Christian is constantly calibrating our consciences in one of two directions, either for better or worse.

We can improve our consciences in two simple ways.

First, we inform the conscience through the study of Scripture, which is further sharpened in fellowship with other believers. That’s like a spiritual firmware upgrade. Your moral reasoning improves with biblical wisdom and experience.

Second, we strengthen the conscience by obeying it. This means we live according to what we believe is right, which reinforces the truth.

I grew up in Appalachia where my grandfather and great grandfather were both independent baptist preachers. They were also teetotalers. At the time, my conscience was calibrated to believe drinking alcohol was a sin.

While I was in college, a family from church asked me to house-sit for them while they went on vacation. He said, “make yourself at home, let the dogs out, help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.” So that’s what I did. But when I opened the fridge, what I found there scandalized me. He had a case of beer in there, left out in the open, like some kind of evil, drunken sociopath.

I thought he was a Christian! How could he dare drink this poison devil juice? (A young woman I knew made a practice of going to Kroger and praying over the beer cases that it would make people sick.)

But over time, I began to realize my conscience on this issue was mis-calibrated. How can alcohol be a sin when Jesus turned water into wine? Through further study of scripture I learned to distinguish the sin of drunkenness from the moderate use and enjoyment of alcohol. It took a while for my emotions to catch up, because it still felt like a sin even though I realized it wasn’t. But at least I understood that my feelings aren’t in charge. My conscience was being recalibrated by the word of God.

Your conscience can be damaged when you sin against it, even if the issue in question isn’t actually a sin. If I had popped open a beer in that man’s house, it would have been sin for me to do so, not because drinking a beer is a sin, but because I would be sinning against what I believed to be right. It is bad for your soul to do what you think is evil even if you’re wrong about the fact that it’s evil (cf Rom 14-15:7, esp 14:14).

So, when we sin against conscience, we create a moral contradiction within our souls that must be resolved. If you do not repent, you will soothe your conscience by telling yourself it wasn’t wrong after all. You’ll make excuses to justify it. This is what Paul calls a “seared conscience.”

A seared conscience signals to your soul that the behavior in question is really not a big deal. Every time you indulge this pattern, your conscience adjusts to it and feels a little less guilty about it. The next time you face the same situation, it gets even easier to do it. You feel less and less guilty until the guilt no longer registers at all.

These micro-adjustments add up to a trajectory, which is a slow drift towards greater and greater moral compromises.

When Your Conscience Finds a New Law

There’s one more wrinkle I want to point out about when a conscience goes bad. A bad conscience doesn’t shut off entirely. We are moral creatures, after all, and our conscience will still send moral signals to our souls even if it’s wrong. When your conscience is damaged in one area, it often adjusts by finding a new law to obey. Very often, these are manmade laws that make us feel righteous because we can actually keep them.

In other words, a bad conscience may substitute God’s law with a homemade standard conditioned by your own preferences and personality.

I’ve noticed that some pastors who disqualify themselves for ministry have a reputation for being quite scrupulous about trivial matters. Their glaring character flaws are paired with strange convictions about relatively minor issues that have become hobby horses.

There’s a reason for this. He soothes his wounded conscience by hyper-focusing on an area of his life where he feels he’s doing well. For example, a man who is hiding sexual sin may become very conscientious about eating healthy foods. His fixation on a secondary matter distracts his conscience from the sexual sin he’s keeping unconfessed and buried.

This is what Paul says in 1 Tim 4:1-3 when he describes those who “depart from the faith.” He describes them as false teachers whose “consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving.” In other words, in Paul’s example, the man with a seared conscience suddenly develops bizarre scruples about singleness (“forbidding marriage”) and food (“abstinence from foods”).

That’s worth paying attention to, because some Christians have a bad habit of majoring on the minors. This is especially common online. Men who do this have “wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim 1:6-7).

It is not uncommon for a young man to suddenly get interested in postmillennialism and start pontificating about Christianity and politics while his own life is riddled with sin and falling apart. It’s easier to have convictions about politicians should do in Washington, DC than to fight and kill sin in your own heart. A bad conscience will do that to a man.

Thus, a bad conscience doesn’t mean you abandon all sense of morality. It often means you substitute God’s law for your own and impose that one on others ruthlessly. It’s why modern social justice warriors are as self-righteous as any Pharisee in Jesus’ day. Their conscience isn’t dead, it’s been recalibrated to a different standard, and they enforce that standard on everybody.

This is why John Calvin once said, “a bad conscience is the mother of all heresies.” He was not being sensational.

He meant that theological errors don’t usually begin as intellectual mistakes, they often begin as moral compromises that are later justified by doctrinal adjustments.

Quite often, heresy is simply a belief system one develops to justify his own sins. It’s no accident that this teaching features prominently in the pastoral epistles, because pastors, teachers, and ministry leaders are the ones in the best position to commit this error.

What I’ve described so far is how a conscience goes bad. What I haven’t described yet is what it looks like along the way. There are four identifiable and catching them early is the difference between repentance and shipwreck. I’ll address those in a follow up essay.

“Loser Theology” Updates

Pre-orders for my latest book, “Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth,” are off to the races. I’ve heard from a number of people who seem genuinely excited to read it and engage with the argument of the book.

Some people take offense at the title, which was to be expected. I address this directly in chapter one of the book. It reads:

I use the term because it’s a theology that advocates for losing as the way to be faithful to God. Loser Theology can refer to theological perspectives and movements that emphasize passivity, retreat, and defeat, often conflating suffering and loss with humility. In other words, the Loser Theology label is not about petty name calling, but about calling Christians to break free from the prison of Loser Theology that’s holding them captive.

The first chapter of the book is available to read now for free at losertheology.com.

I was recently interviewed by Jon Harris about Loser Theology on his Conversations that Matter podcast. Jon is a man for whom I have much respect.

I was also interviewed by John and Stacy Whited on the Flyover Conservatives podcast. I had a great time getting to know them. Great conversation! (I look really angry in the thumbnail photo haha)

https://rumble.com/v7cderc-the-flyover-conservatives-show.html

Finally, I’ll share a few more endorsements from Canon Press’s marketing email.

On the one side, a generation of evangelical Christians have been taught that the Bible requires them to give unqualified support for the nation of Israel, politically, financially, and militarily. They do this because they believe Israel is God’s chosen people. In order to stand with God, you must also stand with Israel. Period. Any criticism of Israel is the same as antisemitism. This view has been so thoroughly absorbed into American evangelical culture that many Christians can’t even tell you where it came from. It’s a theological reflex that they can’t explain or defend biblically, apart from perhaps a couple of proof texts.

On the other side, a growing number of Christians, many of them reacting directly to the first group, have swung hard in the opposite direction. They’ve discovered that the theological case for Christian Zionism is biblically weaker than they were told, and they’ve watched evangelical leaders embarrass themselves by fawning over and pandering to Israeli foreign policy interests. They’ve read things about how much the Jews control media, finance, and pop culture in harmful ways, and they are eager to oppose them for it.

In some cases, this frustration with “the Jews” has driven them to what can only be described as hatred for them en masse. The popular label for this is “antisemitism.” Personally, I don’t like that label because it’s a liberal coded word used to smear anyone who dares criticize Israel at all. Nevertheless, I’ll use it in this article for the sake of simplicity. There really are people out there who hate the Jews and “antisemitism” is a simple way to describe them.

What I find striking is that an overreaction to the first ditch tends to drive people into the second. In other words, when you build a pro-Israel theology on a weak foundation, and then people discover that, they often feel like the wool has been pulled over their eyes. When people feel theologically betrayed, they often run hard in the opposite direction. I think we’re seeing that happening in our day.

How Scripture Addresses the Issue

People on both sides cite scripture to support their views. Ironically, however, scripture rules out both views.

In Romans 9-11, for example, Paul is not writing a foreign policy manual. He is not telling Gentile Christians to write checks to the Israeli government or vote for politicians who promise to defend Israel. He is also not dismissing the Jewish people as just another ethnic group with no particular significance in God’s redemptive purposes. He is doing something more careful and more interesting than either of those things.

Scripture consistently forbids the sin of partiality, whether it be against or in favor of someone. James 2:9 says, “but if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (cf 2:1, Rom 2:11).

Christian Zionism is the sin of partiality in favor of the Jews, extending it outward to encompass the entire national entity. In Romans 9, Paul’s anguish over the Jews was not regarding the nation of Israel as we know it today, but of the Jews as his “kinsmen according to the flesh.” He was talking about people who share a common ancestry and religion.

Antisemitism is partiality against the Jews, whether it be towards individual Jews or the nation of Israel. Same principle, opposite posture, also wicked. We must not show contempt for people based on a group they belong to without respect to their individual actions.

In either case, partiality is forbidden. It is a sin.

Ironically, as people begin to realize “Christian Zionism” is an unbiblical position foisted upon them, largely under the influence of dispensational theology, and as they begin to notice instances where Jews truly have done very evil things, they suddenly feel justified ascribing wickedness to Jews as a whole, showing unnecessary contempt for people who don’t deserve such unfair characterization. Thus, as people abandon the Christian Zionism of the dispensationalists, the pendulum swings hard in the other direction and people end up in the ditch of antisemitism, showing partiality against them instead.

A Surprising Biblical Reversal

Another key text is Romans 9-11. To understand that text, you have to feel the weight of the Jew/Gentile reversal that is key to Paul’s argument. It is one of the most stunning plot twists in all of Scripture.

In the Old Testament, God’s people were the Jews who descended from Abraham. The Gentiles were outside the covenant. By definition, they were pagans and unbelievers. Thus, Israel occupied a position of extraordinary blessing and privilege. God gave them the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, and the promises (Rom 9:4). Everything God was doing in redemptive history, he was doing through them.

By the time Paul wrote Romans, the picture had completely flipped. The Jews had largely rejected their Messiah while the Gentiles were more receptive to the gospel. The Jews who rejected their Messiah now found themselves in the position the Gentiles once occupied: outside the covenant, cut off from the promises, and under God’s judgment. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this. Further, Gentile Christians, who previously would have been considered “dogs” and pagans, had now inherited everything that once belonged to Israel (see Paul’s olive tree illustration in Rom 11:17-24, cf Jer 11:16, Ps 52:8, John 15:2).

You’re Living in a House You Didn’t Build

Now, think about what we Gentile Christians have inherited: the Old Testament scriptures, the covenants, the promises, the law, the worship, and even the very concept of the one true God. Further, we Gentiles can now claim Abraham as our spiritual father, though we are not physically descended from him. Abraham is the father of everyone who believes. He’s now our spiritual great-great-great-grandfather, while his own physical descendants are now considered outsiders to the covenant. Every promise that sustains us as Christians came first to the Jewish people. We are reading their mail, worshiping their God, and claiming their patriarch as our own.

Think of it this way. Imagine you’re away on a long trip, and someone moves into your home, settles in, and invokes squatter’s rights. They’re not just living in your house, they’re claiming your home as their own.

Now, imagine further that they claim the family photos on your wall as their family. They say, “that’s my mom and dad, that’s my wedding, those are my kids” in those pictures. They claim all your vacation memories, the food in the refrigerator, the car in the garage. All of it. That’s what it’s like for Gentile Christians to have inherited the promises of Abraham. We didn’t build this spiritual house, yet we’re living in it.

If that happened to you, you would feel something. Probably a mix of indignation, outrage, and grief. That feeling is what Paul is deliberately trying to provoke in the Jewish people. He wants them to feel the weight of what they lost by rejecting their Messiah. By his reasoning, that sense of jealousy might be what brings some of them back. “Inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles,” he writes in Rom 11:13, “I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.” In other words, they can come back home if they simply repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s the dynamic Paul is describing. Now, what is his point to the Gentiles in all this? Paul’s message to Gentile Christians is to not take for granted how incredibly blessed we are to granted in to the cultivated olive tree of God. It’s as thought Paul is telling us, “this isn’t the spiritual house your Gentile ancestors built. They were pagans. You have been invited to live here and claim the promises originally given to the Jewish people because they rejected their Messiah. It’s yours now only because God has graciously given it to you, not because you earned it. Don’t be arrogant about that fact.”

In Romans 11:18, Paul says, “it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.” The wild olive shoot doesn’t get to look down with arrogance on the cultivated tree.

The Part Where Things Get More Complicated

Now, the biggest challenge is not so much the doctrine presented here, but the application of it in our day. Here’s what I mean.

We should not automatically assume the Jews of our day are exactly the same as the Jews in Paul’s day without serious theological reflection. It matters that we get this right because it’s so easy to see the word “Israel” in our Bibles and assume it means the same thing as the modern nation state led by Bibi Netanyahu. Not so.

Paul’s affection for his kinsmen rested on two foundations. First, Paul had genuine genealogical connection to them. This was his own blood and family. He was from the tribe of Benjamin, and every Jew of his day could trace their tribal ancestry back to Abraham. The careful maintenance of genealogical records was central to Jewish identity because Abraham’s bloodline was theologically significant.

Modern Jewish identity, by contrast, is primarily ethnic and cultural. There are no genealogical records linking contemporary Jewish people to Abraham’s specific line. This doesn’t mean there’s no connection, it just means the connection cannot be verified the way it could in Paul’s day.

Second, and more importantly, Paul could say the Jews of his day had a genuine zeal for God. Romans 10:2 plainly says, “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” In other words, they believed in the God of Israel and were seeking righteousness. And for the most part, they rejected Jesus out of ignorance, not contempt. Their zeal was “not according to knowledge.” Jesus said something similar when he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Paul’s grief was the grief of a man watching his devout family members miss the very thing their whole religion pointed toward.

I point this out to highlight the fact that what we know as modern Judaism is quite different from ancient Judaism of the New Testament. By most estimates, 60 to 80% of contemporary Jewish people do not significantly observe Jewish religious practice. For the majority of modern Jews, Jewish identity is not primarily religious, it is more ethnic and cultural. For the most part, modern Jews don’t worship the God of Abraham or follow the Torah at all. Many (if not most) of them are secular atheists who happen to share an ethnic heritage.

Further, modern Jewish identity, as it has developed through Rabbinic Judaism, shaped substantially by the Talmud, is not characterized by an ignorant zeal for God. Rather, they are quite informed about who Jesus is. Modern Talmudic Judaism is primarily characterized by an explicit and informed rejection and contempt for Jesus Christ. The Jews of Paul’s day didn’t know what or who they were rejecting. That doesn’t excuse them, but it is a notable difference between them and the Jews of today. Modern Judaism, as it is codified in the Talmud, knows exactly who Jesus was and regards him with disdain.

Simply put, the religious profile of ancient Jews is very different from modern Jews. Paul wept over the lostness of ancient Jews because they sought after God but didn’t recognize his Son. I doubt Paul would weep over modern, Talmudic Judaism the way he wept over the ignorant zeal of his kinsmen.

That said, none of this means Gentile Christians should be hostile towards the Jews without respect for their individual beliefs or behaviors. I point this out so we can be more careful about which Romans 11 promises we attach to which people.

Avoiding the Two Ditches

So, back to the two ditches, and what it means in our day.

The Christian Zionism ditch assumes Romans 11 requires political support for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. This view has dominated American evangelicalism for decades, largely through the influence of dispensational theology, and it has made evangelical Christians easy to manipulate.

The modern nation of Israel understands this aspect of evangelical theology very well, and finds it quite useful. It is not a secret that Israel invests significant resources in cultivating evangelical Christian support.

In January 2026, the Washington Spectator reported on an organization called “Show Faith By Works,” backed by the Israeli government (!), that offered evangelical pastors all-expenses-paid trips to Israel to equip them to become “ambassadors for Israel” in their churches and communities. This is not an isolated example. It reflects a broader and well-documented strategy.

The Southern Baptist Convention has also passed resolutions condemning antisemitism repeatedly — in 1873, 1972, 1981, 2003, 2024, and again in 2026. The fact that they keep having to pass them should tell us something. The 2026 resolution denounced conspiracy theories about Jewish control of media and finance, reaffirmed love for the Jewish people, and called for bold gospel witness. All of that is fine as far as it goes. But what no SBC resolution has ever done is ask whether the dispensational theology that dominates the convention, the theology that taught a generation of Southern Baptists that the Jews are God's chosen people and that supporting Israel is a biblical mandate, is itself the unstable foundation that keeps producing the backlash they keep condemning. They keep treating the second ditch without questioning whether the first ditch is what's pushing people into it.

Remember, Romans 11 is not about foreign policy, it simply exhorts Gentile Christians to not be arrogant towards the Jews. It says maintain humility about your position as a wild olive shoot grafted into a tree you did not plant. None of that translates into a requirement to support any particular nation’s foreign policy. The only concrete obligation the book of Romans places on Gentile Christians toward Jewish people is to share the gospel with them, which is the same obligation we have toward every other lost people group (cf Rom 10:14-21).

The antisemitism ditch assumes the Jews are a uniquely wicked people since they rejected and crucified Jesus Christ. As people realize that Christians have been poorly taught a Christian Zionist position, and that this doctrinal position has been exploited to manipulate people into supporting a foreign government even at the expense of our own people, they get radicalized and end up in the antisemitism ditch.

The path from “I was told I had a theological obligation to support Israel” to “the Jews are uniquely destructive and I’m angry about it” is pretty short, and a lot of people are walking it right now. Again, we should not overlook or excuse the sins committed by Jewish people, but it is also unjust to falsely accuse them of sins they didn’t actually commit.

In short, Christians do not owe Israel uncritical political support. We are not obligated to show deference to any particular Israeli government or policy. Whether or not America supports Israel politically should be determined by what is in America’s national interests, not determined by an unbiblical, misguided, and easily-exploited theological doctrine.

As Christians, we should maintain a posture of genuine humility and gratitude, acknowledging that we are the wild olive branch that inherited Jewish blessings, promises, scriptures, and worship. We now claim a Jewish patriarch as our own and are living in a spiritual house we did not build.

Conclusion

God has been doing something in history that few would have anticipated. He used the Jewish people to bring the Messiah into the world. He allowed their rejection of their Messiah to open the door for the Gentile nations to come in, from which he is gathering a people from every tribe and tongue. And he has promised that before it is all over, large numbers of Jewish people will receive their Messiah by faith and be grafted back into their own olive tree.

Our job is not to manage that process through foreign policy. Our job is to simply to proclaim the gospel to everyone, Jews included, and leave the results with the God whose ways are unsearchable and whose gifts and calling are irrevocable.

So, don’t be arrogant toward the branches. Also, don’t let anyone tell you that humility requires you to write them a check.

Loser Theology Pre-Orders are Live!

My new book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth, is now available for preorder from Canon Press, shipping August 4th.

My friend Josh Daws said “This is the book I wish I’d been handed as a younger man.” Here’s his full endorsement:

You can read the first chapter for FREE at www.losertheology.com.

Also, pre-orders from Canon press will ship two weeks earlier than pre-orders from Amazon. Canon ships Aug 4th, Amazon ships Aug 18th.

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In answer, I proposed four lessons that the SBC Reformers need to learn: 1) Gain more institutional support; 2) Build better coalitions; 3) Master SBC politics; and 4) Make more emotional appeals.

In Part One, which you can read here, I covered the first two lessons on the need for more institutional support (which, Lord willing, we will be receiving from both Willy Rice and Albert Mohler) and building better coalitions (which will involve humility and courage across the different camps in the SBC Conservative Reformers family).

This two-part entry is, in many ways, a continuation of my post-Dallas 2025 and pre-Orlando 2026 analyses and uses terminology that I explain and define in those articles. You can find the first one here, “The Status Quo Convention: Six Takeaways from Dallas,” in which I first used the taxonomy of “Platform, Loyalists, Reformers, and Normies” to break down the four major groups in the SBC. And you can read my pre-Orlando commentary here, “SBC Orlando Isn’t Dallas. It’s Nashville 2.0,” in which I predicted that changes championed by the Reformers were finally coming this year.

By God’s grace, they did. But the work is far from over. The Truth & Unity Amendment still has to be ratified in Indianapolis. We need to elect Willy Rice for a second year, and then someone in his same vein for the next two years after that, and beyond. We need to get Reformers placed on critical committees in the SBC, including Convention operations and trustee boards, among other roles. We still have other major issues that need to be debated and won, particularly on increased financial transparency and entity accountability.

SBC Reformers need to learn to assume the center and strive to govern. So, in Part Two, I now turn my attention to why Reformers need to get better at SBC politics on the ground at the Convention and learn to make more appeals to the hearts of those “in the room.”

#3: Reformers Need to Master SBC Politics

Conservatives have better arguments. Our positions are more doctrinally sound, more logically coherent, and more biblically grounded. And for a long time, we have assumed that would be enough.

Some of us assume this is all we need to win the day. But it doesn’t work that way.

My next two points concern how the SBC actually works.

Reformers assume people will be persuaded by biblical arguments and rational logic. I’ve learned the hard way that this isn’t always the case. In SBC life, we assume we simply need to persuade people that a given amendment is biblical and correct, and people will vote accordingly. Again, not true.

Oftentimes, people aren’t persuaded of a position and then vote for it. Rather, they are persuaded by a position because it’s the one everyone voted for. That’s a subtle but important difference. People are complicated. We’re not always rational. That’s why it’s important that we master the art of politics, because that’s how decisions are made at this kind of scale. And the decisions made at the convention end up having a persuasive power of their own.

Put simply, denominational politics isn’t a distraction from the real work of ministry. It is a load-bearing aspect of real ministry.

We don’t need to tell the “left wing” of the Convention this because they already know it. It’s why they’re so good at it. It’s the Reformers who need to learn it.

Many of us are too averse to politics because it feels dirty. Strategizing about votes, campaigning for issues, and planning a convention ground game don’t feel very spiritual, and we’re in this because of our spiritual convictions. So we do what’s comfortable: making arguments, articulating positions, and exegeting scripture, while our opponents have mastered Robert’s Rules, chair committees, and run rings around us politically. We avoid getting in the weeds of convention floor procedure, lining up support months in advance, and thinking about who nominates whom and what they will say, because none of that feels like trusting God.

But those who oppose us figured out years ago that those things are essential for victory. The left wing of the convention has a nose for power. Even though their arguments are paper-thin, they win anyway because they know how to play the game. That is why they have had disproportionate influence.

But things felt different this year, and I can give you two examples.

First–and I have no insider knowledge of what I’m about to say–Willy Rice appeared to have a brilliant campaign strategy. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but if it was, this was a model of what good politics looks like on our side. The convention was in Florida, so it’s plausible that he picked this year to make his run, being on his home turf. He also happened to have a preaching slot at the pastor’s conference, where he delivered a fantastic message on the need for reform in light of the scriptures.

In the run-up to the Convention, I’ve heard he met with many associational leaders, state leaders, and ordinary pastors. He listened to them and heard their concerns. He made a personal connection with people who were within a reasonable driving distance of Orlando. He showed up to forums and answered questions, even from hostile audiences. In other words, he spent months campaigning across Florida and beyond, articulating his vision for reform, explaining what he wanted to do and why, and running it like a real political campaign. By the time messengers arrived in Orlando, there was already a base of supporters who knew their vote and were telling others.

In the weeks prior to the Convention, I heard him say he hadn’t yet decided who he would ask to nominate him. That was a smart move to keep everyone guessing. When the time for nominations arrived, pastor Adrian Taylor of Springhill Church in Gainesville, FL, gave a powerful speech, striking precisely the right tone. That was no accident. Willy picked the right man for that moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if many fence-sitters made up their mind right then and there. To me, Rice seemed like a man who knew what he was doing and was on a righteous mission to see it through. He ended up being, as Baptist News Global’s headline indicated, the first reform candidate to win the SBC presidency in 35 years.

A second example is the “good politics” that took place on the Convention floor. I arrived at the Convention early Wednesday morning, hoping to secure one of the eleven microphone spots so I could speak in favor of the Truth & Unity amendment. When I arrived, however, just after the doors opened and the cavernous room was still mostly empty, I realized that every microphone was already taken, two messengers deep at each. My heart sank, thinking opponents of the amendment showed up to control the mics, condemn the amendment, and doom the effort. I went to the mics anyway and struck up a conversation with the messengers. I found out they were there to speak in favor of the T&U amendment, and they had friendlies at all the mics. I was thrilled.

The messenger in front of me was holding what appeared to be a dossier with a cover sheet that said “SBC 2026.” I watched him open it up and read over his speech. I assume all the messengers at all the microphones, which would be at least 22 of them, had similar notes. That’s a solid ground game. I was third in line. A man came up behind me to speak against it, making him fourth in line. He was hostile to the amendment. Neither of us had a chance to speak.

When the time came for people to speak from the floor, Mohler spoke in favor; another messenger spoke against; then Colin Smothers gave a wonderful speech in favor and called the question. I’ve since seen people complain about shutting down debate, but Smothers merely utilized the system we’re in. It was smart politics, and we won the vote. More of this, please. This is what we need to replicate and build on.

#4: Reformers Need to Make More Emotional Appeals

Finally, Reformers need to realize that emotions win votes. Arguments inform people, but emotions move them. We can lament the fact, but it remains a fact.

I can give you two examples of this from Orlando.

First, during the debate over holding a future convention in Anaheim, one messenger made a case against meeting in Anaheim, CA, arguing that it would give liberals an advantage and that we shouldn’t hand it to them. He is factually correct, but he lost the room at that moment. That kind of argument plays well amongst the Reformers, but it didn’t translate well on the Convention floor. Why? Because at the Convention, people respond to emotions, and positivity is the preferred vibe in the SBC. I think people probably thought it sounded combative because it was framed in a somewhat divisive way. The messenger wasn’t wrong in his argument, but an emotional appeal would have been more persuasive.

At that moment, I think a more persuasive argument would have been to point out the significant drop in attendance the last time we met in Anaheim. We had 15,726 messengers in Nashville in 2021, but that dropped to 8,133 the following year in Anaheim–we dropped by almost half! A negative message is “don’t let them have the advantage!” A positive message is “let’s make sure our people can show up.” I don’t know if that would have persuaded the room, but a positive framing could have made a difference.

A second example came from Benjamin Cole. I don’t know him personally, but he clearly knows how to use emotional appeals at just the right time. Toward the end of the morning session, as the room grew tired and ready for lunch, he walked to the microphone and argued that the Executive Committee was overburdened with too many task forces. He said they had too many assignments and too little capacity to do them well. He invoked Exodus, in which Pharaoh forced the Israelites to make more bricks with less straw. He delivered it powerfully. It was a compelling, biblical image, and he won over the room in three minutes.

He moved to dismiss the task forces, then immediately called the question. His motion passed easily, erasing all the work we’d just completed that morning.

I sat there, stunned. It happened so fast that half the room didn’t fully understand what had just happened. That is the power of a well-timed, emotional argument delivered to an exhausted room. Benjamin Cole knew what he was doing.

What This Means for Indianapolis

So, what now? Between now and Indianapolis, opponents of the Truth & Unity Amendment will make their case. Some of it will be deliberately misleading. Some will dust off Rick Warren’s old fear-mongering playbook that reformers are trying to prevent women from sharing the gospel at all. It’s nonsense, but fear is an emotion that moves people. Many uncertain messengers will feel its pull.

What can we do? Of course, between now and then, we need to make our biblical case relentlessly. We need to use scripture, logic, and sound reasoning. However, as discussed above, when the Convention rolls around, we also need to be politically savvy and speak in an emotional register that moves people. We need stories, not just syllogisms. This is not abstract denominational polity, but an issue that affects real churches and real congregations. And real damage is done when our confessional clarity erodes.

And we also need to identify our allies and build coalitions. The wins in Orlando were real. The Truth & Unity Amendment passed, and Willy Rice is president. We can praise the Lord for these answered prayers. Now, we’ve got one year until Indianapolis, where we can make some of these gains permanent.

The question now is this: Will we use this next year to consolidate, organize, build the coalitions, develop the ground game, and show up in Indianapolis ready to govern?

Or will we go home, declare victory, and repeat the same mistakes that have cost us for a generation?

Loser Theology Preorders are now LIVE!

My new book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth, is now available for preorder from Canon Press. It will ship August 4th. In the image above, you can see a screenshot of the first three endorsements from C. R. Wiley, Katie Faust, and Jon Harris.

Willy Rice, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said:

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It’s time for the Reformers to assume the middle and strive to govern. To do so, we need to learn four lessons.

Two weeks ago, many conservative Southern Baptists went home from Orlando happy. Willy Rice won the presidency with a clear majority. The Truth & Unity Amendment cleared its first hurdle as it heads towards (Lord willing) final passage next year in Indianapolis.

The “Reformers” in the SBC (one of the four groups I outlined in my recap from the 2025 Dallas annual meeting) had something to celebrate, and we should readily acknowledge it.

To briefly reiterate, “Reformer” here is not about “reformed” theology. As I explain, the Reformers in the SBC are “the ones who see the SBC slowly but surely heading over a cliff and are advocating for needed fixes and reforms to our theology, public witness, and internal Convention operations that we believe would revitalize the Convention, defend our Baptist distinctives, and most importantly, honor the Lord.”

But there is an undeniable reality looming on the horizon: the electoral victories in Orlando must translate into institutional victories if we are to see sustained reform and renewal in the SBC. And that requires a different kind of work than most of us Reformers are used to doing.

So over the next year, between now and Indianapolis 2027, I think there are four lessons that the Reformers need to learn and apply to translate our initial victories in Orlando into long-term changes. I’ll discuss the first two (gaining more institutional support and building better coalitions) here in Part One and the second two (mastering SBC politics and making more emotional appeals) in Part Two, which will be published tomorrow.

Let’s get started.

#1: Reformers Need More Institutional Support

Reformers regularly speak out about institutional corruption, and for good reason. Sometimes the institutions really are the problem. But that doesn’t mean the institutions are always the problem. Institutions were originally built to be our most powerful allies, not our enemies.

Take the Law Amendment, for example. Mike Law drove that effort with remarkable tenacity, and he moved the ball down the field on grassroots energy alone. But ultimately, it failed on its second required vote. Why? A significant reason is that he lacked institutional support.

But beyond a lack of support, the Law Amendment also faced massive institutional opposition in its second year. Not only were there not enough vocal, public, institutional supporters among prominent SBC figureheads between the first vote on the Law Amendment in New Orleans in 2023 and the second vote in Indianapolis in 2024, but many SBC leaders (like former SBC president Bart Barber, NAMB president Kevin Ezell, former SBC president JD Greear, etc.) actively worked to undermine and kill the Law Amendment.

Grassroots efforts can make a lot of noise and build a lot of momentum, but when the institutions are actively working against us, grassroots energy alone is rarely enough to carry it across the finish line.

By contrast, the Truth & Unity Amendment seeks to accomplish essentially the same goal as the Law Amendment, but now it has Al Mohler as an institutional champion. He picked up the baton and brought real institutional weight to the table this time. His presidency of SBTS also has coattails. Mohler’s credentialed voice carries more authority at the Convention than that of an ordinary pastor like Mike Law. We may not like it (and, in fact, it’s a real issue, as Sam Webb explains well here), but it’s a fact.

Mohler didn’t just say, “I support this”; he put his name and legacy on the line to see it through. That seems to have made a difference in Orlando, and time will tell if it’s enough to ratify it next year in Indy.

Furthermore, Reformers now have another major institutional champion for the Truth & Unity Amendment in our new SBC president, Willy Rice. In his first post-Annual Meeting press conference, Rice said, “I’ll do everything I can” to help get Mohler’s Truth & Unity Amendment ratified in Indianapolis.

There’s a broader lesson for the Reformers. There’s a certain energy and thrill that come with being in the minority, fighting an uphill battle against a perceived Goliath. We can even become psychologically addicted to being in perpetual opposition mode to the extent that we don’t know what to do with ourselves when we win. Like the dog chasing the car, we get confused when we catch it.

It’s not enough to complain about institutions; we have to work with and within them to make a lasting difference.

Simply put, electoral wins are not self-sustaining. Reformers need to get onto committees, pursue appointments, and begin occupying positions of power inside the system, even knowing we will be minorities on those committees, at least for now. Reformers will need to sit in committee meetings alongside trustees and committee members appointed by J. D. Greear, Bart Barber, and Ed Litton. Reformers need to work alongside men who do not share our convictions until they cycle off, and more reformers can replace them.

Genuine reform takes years of boring, tedious, institutional work, being outnumbered by people who do not share our convictions and goals. We’ve got to be fine with that, and we’ve got to allow time for the influence of Willy Rice’s appointments to take effect. The point is to be in the room, pick smart battles, play the long game, and build toward a day when reform-minded men hold those seats in numbers that really matter.

Regarding the problem of women pastors in the SBC, the credentials committee is where the real action happens. We need more reformers on that committee. They may be outnumbered at first, but they should be there anyway. And that leads me to my next point.

#2: Reformers Need to Build Better Coalitions

“Reform” energy is pure and convictional, and it’s not natural for us to shift into a leadership mode that requires us to establish consensus and build coalitions. We need to fix that.

We must be shrewd, humble, and patient as we hunker down for reform efforts that will likely take a decade to accomplish. Simply put, reformers will need to use different muscles to make our reform efforts permanent within institutions, and that will require more consensus and coalition-building than we’re accustomed to.

From my observation, there are a few formal and informal power centers in the SBC. All of them operate under the same SBC tent, and there’s a great deal of overlap between them. But if you pay attention, you can see where existing coalitions are, understand what motivates each, and determine where new alliances and coalitions can be formed to further our reform efforts.

I like to think of these as mob families. That’s a playful label, not a jab. It’s just a fun way to categorize groups and understand where they are alike or different from one another.

Here are the five families I’ve observed, which break down into three coalitions.

The Status Quo Coalition

The largest and most institutionally entrenched family is the NAMB/SEND Network family, led by Kevin Ezell. In many respects, NAMB/SEND functions more as an independent power center than a true tribe. NAMB is the second-largest SBC entity behind the IMB, but unlike the IMB, it focuses exclusively on the American home front. NAMB is very pragmatic, moderate, and numbers-and growth-oriented. They are not interested in helping “fight for the doctrinal fidelity” of the SBC or supporting any kind of reform and renewal initiatives. It’s no secret that NAMB’s leadership was/is opposed to the Law Amendment and now to Mohler’s Truth & Unity Amendment.

Still, this family is a massive player in Convention life and SBC politics. NAMB, through SEND Network, throws a lot of money around the SBC. Yes, much of it goes toward church planting, but it goes beyond that. They are increasingly partnering with (perhaps taking over?) state conventions; they purchase lots of “swag” for their planters and strategists (quarter zips, anyone?), take them to baseball games, and more. One of NAMB’s significant advantages is the ability to pay for church planters to attend the convention, which matters when you’re trying to count votes.

The second is the “North Carolina Family.” They are also pragmatic and missional centrists. Their geographical anchor is North Carolina, with Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary as the theological hub. Key figures include J. D. Greear, Danny Akin, and Ed Litton. There is significant overlap between the North Carolina family and NAMB/SEND, especially in their approach to the SBC. Pillar Network and Baptist 21 are also close allies — in fact, they’re nearly the same organism, both run through Nate Akin, Danny’s son, who founded B21 and serves as Pillar’s executive director. These guys are broader and more pragmatic, focused on Great Commission language, and they have deep institutional roots.

I labeled these two families as the “status quo coalition” because they work very closely together and largely share the same goals. While I may disagree with those goals from time to time, I think they are a great example of coalitional coordination. Additionally, while the leadership of these coalitions clearly stakes out certain positions in the SBC, they are not a monolith once you dip below the leadership level. I’m sure some NAMB church planters and Pillar pastors voted for Willy Rice and the Truth & Unity Amendment, etc.

The Conservative Reformer Coalition

The third family is the “Louisville Family.” I think of them as theological traditionalists. They are geographically anchored in Louisville, KY, and their theological hub is the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (my alma mater). Key figures include Albert Mohler, Andrew Walker, and Denny Burk. Other institutions in their orbit are Kenwood Baptist Church, Third Avenue Baptist Church, and the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This family has historically been less interested in direct engagement in SBC reform – until this year, when Mohler’s involvement in the Truth & Unity Amendment changed the calculus considerably. When Louisville decides to move on an issue, they bring considerable firepower.

Fourth, there’s what I’d call the Reform and Renewal Family. Even though I’m a graduate of SBTS and consider myself theologically aligned with them, my closest relationships are in the Reform and Renewal Family. As a grassroots effort, we have no geographical center or theological hub. Some of us consider ourselves Calvinists; some do not. People from all of the above families have joined us because we see the same problems and want to work for healthy solutions.

Our oldest and most theologically defined node is Founders Ministries, led by Tom Ascol out of Cape Coral, Florida. Founders has been the tip of the spear for decades in advocating for a more conservative, biblically faithful, and more Baptist SBC.

For a time, the Conservative Baptist Network worked to organize the initial wave of concerned conservative Southern Baptists who realized that the Convention was being steered to the Left. They helped rally the base for Mike Stone in Nashville five years ago and came very close to winning.

The Center for Baptist Leadership, led by William Wolfe, picked up where CBN left off over the last few years (though taking a different approach), focusing intensely on issues and grassroots education and organization in the SBC, first and foremost, rather than endorsing candidates (though they did endorse Willy Rice this year). I think it’s fair to say that the topics that the CBL has staked out as the most pressing issues facing the SBC—lack of courageous leadership, entity mission drift (like at the ERLC), the threat of women pastors, the need for increased transparency and accountability—are the issues that dominate the discussion and drive the debates in the SBC. What happened in Orlando (and in Dallas with the ERLC) is a vindication of our work at CBL in many ways and proof that we are no small or “fringe” group in the SBC.

Other ministries like Christ Over All, led by David Schrock and Stephen Wellum, and independent journalists like Megan Basham and Jon Harris, have also contributed to spotlighting needed reforms in the SBC, informing and activating the grassroots, and serving as a mouthpiece for the average “Billy Baptist” in the pews.

I would also place the rising Florida influence of Willy Rice and Heath Lambert within the broader Reform and Renewal Family. They were able to capitalize on home-state advantage to win the SBC presidency this year, without public support from NAMB or Louisville and in the face of public opposition from B21 and much of the Pillar Network.

Some reformers are SBC insiders who have seen the corruption up close and have joined the reform effort. Most of us, however, are institutional outsiders who simply want to work towards a healthier, more transparent, and fruitful convention. Even though they wear their status as institutional outsiders as a badge of honor, that posture needs to mature.

The Normie Majority Family & Coalition

The fifth family, which is broader and hard to define, is what I’d consider the Normie Majority Family. They stand outside and around both the Status Quo Coalition and the Conservative Reformer Coalition because they are bigger than both. They are a coalition unto themselves.

These are ordinary Southern Baptist churches that don’t pay attention to these power blocks and operate mostly within the structure Southern Baptists have used since our founding. In many ways, each of the other families is jockeying for support from the Normie Majority at each Convention because they need their votes to get anything done. For a spell there, the NAMB and North Carolina Families held strong sway over the Normie Majority.

But with the rising tide of unavoidable issues over the last five years, it appears that the Normie Majority is now siding more with the families within the Conservative Reformer Coalition of Louisville, Florida, and organizations like CBL. It’s important that the Conservative Reformers, and particularly the Reform and Renewal Family, work patiently and carefully to speak to the Normie Majority with appeals that they will both hear and understand.

Next, as we consider coalition-building, it’s worth understanding how power actually operates across all these families.

There are two distinct kinds: (1) institutional power and (2) personal influence.

Institutional power works through endowments, staff, infrastructure, the ability to cut checks, and the ability to make payroll. For example, SBTS, NAMB, IMB, and Guidestone are all wealthy, independent entities. Their presidents are what you might call “made men.” They didn’t earn their influence from a podcast or a following. They hold seats of power that come with real machinery, and they operate above the normal family structure. When Mohler takes action, he moves as both a theological voice and a made man. That combination is rare.

Personal influence is a different kind of soft power, and its weight flows from a man’s own church, reputation, and reach. Men like J. D. Greear, Willy Rice, and Heath Lambert are independent and self-sustaining. No institution made them. But personal influence without institutional backing has limits, which is exactly the lesson of the Law Amendment. Mike Law had plenty of personal influence, but he didn’t have men behind him. That’s a big reason why he lost.

Although all five families share common convictions articulated in the BF&M2000, we don’t always work together. Sometimes, we have genuine differences over theology, polity, and strategy. But sometimes, I suspect, we don’t work together because of old seminary grudges, competing ambitions, and the ordinary friction of personality clashes and accumulated grievances that outlast the issues that caused them. You can have two men who agree on nearly everything the SBC needs to do and still be unable to work together because of a fifteen-year-old beef that never got resolved.

I also don’t want to write off working with actors in the “Status Quo Coalition.” In many respects, Willy Rice was once part of that group, and now he has “changed teams,” so to speak. But I do see more avenues for cooperation between the Louisville Family, the Willy Rice/Heath Lambert Florida Family, and the broader Reform and Renewal Family, led by CBL. This will take some humility, charity, and courage for all parties involved.

For some in the Conservative Reformers Coalition, that means setting aside old grudges. For others, it means being willing to publicly talk to and work with the less institutionally “approved” coalition partners. But all of us need to get better at identifying where we can work together, demonstrating the kind of unity and cooperation Southern Baptists are known for.

We also always have to keep in mind that the goal of greater cooperation is to secure the support of the “Normie Majority” Baptists who attend the Convention, so that the needed reforms can be both achieved and institutionalized.

And not everyone fits neatly into these buckets.

For example, I caught a glimpse of the kind of coalition-building I have in mind on the second day of the convention. Several of us from “Reform and Renewal Family” went to lunch together. There were eleven of us at a pizza place, so we ordered several pies and were going to just split the check. Across the room, another SBC group was finishing up lunch. I recognized pastor Dean Inserra from Twitter. I’d never met him or even interacted with him before, but he knew some of the guys at our table. Frankly, it was a bit of an awkward moment because there had been some online scuffles between him and some of our guys in the past. But since I had no history with him, I introduced myself, and we had a brief, friendly interaction. And that was that.

As we finished our lunch, I asked for the check. The waiter said someone had already paid for our table. I was floored. So I sent Dean a message on Twitter, and sure enough, it was him. That gesture told me something. At the end of the day, we’re still brothers in Christ; we’re still Southern Baptists, and this is a man who does not want to be an enemy. That meant a lot. Buying lunch for eleven people you barely know is not the act of a man looking for a fight. It is the act of a man signaling that he is willing to work together. That kind of bridge-building is exactly what the reform movement needs more of.

Conclusion of Part One

In summary, it’s time for the Reformers to assume the middle and strive to govern. To do so, we both need more institutional support and we need to act like we belong in the institutions—on the boards, as trustees, running critical committees in Convention life, and more. Because we do.

And we need to do better at working together and building coalitions.

Because here’s one thing I’m fully convinced of: If we’re going to win in Indianapolis and institutionalize and sustain those wins over the long haul, we need those in the Conservative Reformer Coalition to put aside personal grievances, ignore moderates who try to control us through tone policing and “acceptable conversation partner” boundary setting that often boxes out some of the best and brightest in SBC life, treat each other with respect, and recognize we all need each other. Specifically, I’m thinking of men from Southern Seminary and Louisville, Founders, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Willy Rice and Heath Lambert, Christ Over All, and the Center for Baptist Leadership.

If we can do these two things, we will be well on our way to securing and furthering what we started in Orlando. But to take it all the way, we will also need to get better at SBC politics and learn to make more emotional appeals, which I will consider in Part Two.

My new book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Won’t Inherit the Earth, is now available for pre-order! SBC President Willy Rice endorsed the book, saying, “The book is fantastic. This is such an important work. I pray God uses this as a prophetic call… Michael Clary’s book is like a trumpet blast to rouse a sleeping giant. Written from the trenches of real pastoral ministry, it offers a spellbinding diagnosis of what went wrong and a prophetic yet pastoral call for correction. The way of the cross is not capitulating to culture as a victim, but confronting principalities and powers with confidence in the power of God and a willingness to pay the cost of victory.”

You can pre-order it here: www.losertheology.com

I received an overwhelmingly positive response to my preorder announcement on X.

Steve Deace reposted it and said, “Holy Moses that’s the best title/subtitle of a book I’ve seen this year, including my own.”

My friend Michael Foster also reposted it and wrote a warm endorsement, saying,

Michael and I go way back, almost 20 years now… There is not a shock-jock bone in Michael’s body. He comes to his conclusions as a careful man with a shepherd’s heart. Loser Theology is quite the title. It definitely gets your attention, and that’s what good titles are supposed to do. I know how lazy critics can be, and I think some will latch onto the title in our age of bombast and over-the-top rhetoric. But that is not this book, because that is not this man.

This is a careful dissection of the theology that so many of us have been frustrated by, theology that arose from decades of compromise and biblically fallacious thinking. I think this is a book you should order because Michael has carefully considered the world around him, put names to things you’ve experienced but perhaps haven’t been able to identify, and shown what Scripture actually calls the disciples of Jesus to. Pre-order it today.

One Commenter on X Just Proved My Whole Thesis

Predictably, a few commenters jumped in with pietistic responses. A guy named Luke took exception with the title, saying, “Loser theology is the ultimate and correct theology and the direct and truest Gospel of our Lord. We are called to be weak.”

I suspect many people will agree with Luke’s take, which will be the most common objection to my argument. The problem with Loser Theology isn’t that it affirms things that are blatantly false, the problem is that it over-focuses on the Bible’s teaching about suffering and weakness, regarding it as the “correct theology” and the “truest Gospel of our Lord” and “we are called to be weak.”

If Luke is correct, then I wonder how he applies it? Are Christians called to be always weak, all the time, and in every way? Is he in sin if he works out at the gym? If someone is threatening his wife, will he step in to defend her? Or will he simply tell her, “sweetheart, there’s nothing I can do. Jesus calls me to be weak”? When he goes to the voting booth, does he hope his preferred candidate will win?

Luke’s comment is “exhibit A” of loser theology, which has conditioned Christians to feel guilty for standing up for ourselves and asserting the Lordship of Christ over all of life. If Luke chooses to live this way, that’s a discipleship issue. But when loser theology is adopted at a large scale, evangelical Christians face a massive existential crisis.

Bible believing Christians end up somehow thinking it is our spiritual duty to be subject to tyrants. We end up believing the more faithful path is being doormats for Jesus. We end up allowing pagans to step on us—and then we go to heaven. We’re watching this play out before our eyes as our society continues its moral decline while Christians sit on the sidelines, praying our prayers of lament, but doing nothing to oppose it.

In my book, I make the case for why Luke’s way of thinking can sound good and holy but be ultimately wrong. In fact, I wrote recently about 2 Corinthians 12, where Jesus says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” But “weakness” isn’t the only word in Paul’s vocabulary. Also, “weakness” doesn’t mean what Luke thinks it means, since scripture also commands us to “stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor 16:13). In fact, the scriptures have a lot to say about Christian strength.

So, if you are interested in understanding why Christians aren’t called to be losers, and if you’d like to understand how Christians can wield power righteously for the glory of God, then “Loser Theology” is the book for you. Canon Press has actually put the first chapter of the book on the pre-order site to read for free, so you can get a feel for the argument and what the book is about.

Pre-Order Loser Theology

Why Pre-Order the Book Now?

You might be thinking, “I’ll order the book once it comes out.” That makes sense, but there’s a reason why publishers do pre-orders, and you can help me out if you’d be willing to pre-order it. Let me explain.

We’ve got about a six week pre-order window. All those pre-orders will count towards the first week’s book sales, and a strong first week is critical for reaching the broadest audience. Basically, when all pre-order sales get counted during the first week of a book’s release, it gives it a bigger splash in the market, generating buzz, and helps the book land on “popular new release” lists, which generate further sales.

I want this book to perform well in the market because I’m convinced this is an urgently needed message that merits serious consideration. I’m praying that this book will provoke a broad conversation in the evangelical world about what it means for Christians to faithfully represent Christ from a position of courage, clarity, strength, and even (righteous) power. This isn’t a book primarily about politics, but if the book’s warnings and exhortations are heeded, it will have a political effect.

All that to say, pre-orders lead to a strong opening week, and a strong opening week will push the book’s argument deeper into the evangelical conversation. That’s what I’m praying for.

So, if you’re willing, pre-order Loser Theology today!

Pre-Order Loser Theology today!

That’s all background for what I’m about to say.

Last week, he called me out of the blue because he was faced with a difficult decision. One of his friends had just become a Christian and posted on LinkedIn about her baptism (see screenshots).

She wasn’t accustomed to making Linked In posts about Jesus, feeling as though it might be unprofessional. She wondered openly if she should keep her posts secular. But she was excited about her new life in Christ and wanted to share it.

That’s when Da chimed in with a comment on her post that there is no such thing as a purely neutral, “secular” culture. He pointed out that many companies are promoting cultural sins such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and fornication during pride month. If companies can promote those morally regressive “values,” then certainly this woman should not be embarrassed to talk about her Christian faith in public. He was simply encouraging her to be bold for Christ.

WIthin minutes, he got a message from HR. He was called to a meeting with the HR rep and the CEO where he was told he needed to take his comment on her post down immediately. Feeling put on the spot, he said he’d needed to think it over first. He asked, “what if I do not take it down?”

They said, “you have one hour to take it down or lose your job.” So he took a walk outside to gather his thoughts and pray. He spoke to his wife about it, and she told him the man she married was a man of courage, and she would stand by him. He also sought counsel from some men in our church.

Finally, he made his decision. He would not take his comment down. So they fired him. Right there, on the spot. No sooner had the call ended that his laptop was locked and he was unable to access it at all.

This whole episode is tragically ironic, given the fact that he’d moved here from China to get away from these sorts of draconian practices. But that’s the way it is with the LGBTQ regime. If you do not comply and bow the knee to their gods you will be severely punished.

In short, a good man was fired from his job for refusing to cave. He took a stand and paid a price for it. His former employers didn’t care that he’s a responsible, hard working man with a family to provide for. They didn’t care that his wife is eight months pregnant.

None of that matters. Their ideology is everything. They will crush anyone who opposes it.

I asked Da’s permission to tell his story, promising to keep him anonymous. But he responded, “Actually I think using my real name maybe better. A story becomes a lot more real with a name. I want to take a stand for it and encourage others.”

Da took a stand. You can too.

If God has already determined that the elect are going to be saved and the reprobate are going to be lost, then the whole enterprise of missions and evangelism seems pointless at best and theatrical at worst.

The question is understandable, but the scripture does not allow this conclusion. In fact, not only is this a false conclusion, but the opposite is true. Calvinism does not undermine evangelism, it is 94 octane, premium fuel for evangelism.

The best place to see this dynamic at work is Romans 9-10. Romans 9 lays out the doctrine of election in straightforward, plain terms. Romans 10 explains the necessity of evangelism to bring about the conversion of the elect. In other words, Calvinism and evangelism fit together like a hand in a glove.

From man’s perspective, salvation is simple: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (v13). Simply put, salvation isn’t “out there” somewhere, high up some mountain where you have to seek it out like a hidden treasure. No, salvation is a simple as believing the message of the gospel, wherever it goes. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (v8).

The substance of every conversion story is the same. Someone believed in their heart that Jesus died for their sins and rose from the dead, and they confessed him as Lord. Believe the gospel. That’s it. Faith plus nothing equals everything.

Even though Paul taught in Romans 9 that God alone determines everyone’s ultimate destiny, Romans 10 teaches that God works through human means to bring this about. The logic of the missionary mandate goes like this: if salvation happens simply by someone believing and calling on the name of Christ, then they will need to hear about Christ in order to call on him, and someone will have to preach Christ in order for someone to hear about him.

Thus, preaching is not optional. Preaching is structurally necessary for anyone to be saved. Paul works through this chain in Romans 10:14-15: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”

In Paul’s day, news traveled by heralds. A man was literally “sent” into the public square to announce important events. A town waiting to hear news from a distant battle or something would crowd around the herald to hear the news. If he said “I have good news,” everyone would feel immediate relief. He was bringing a “gospel” to them: good news. And people would delight to hear it and bless the man who’s feet carried him to that city to announce it.

That’s what gospel proclamation is. The gospel is the good news that God sent his Son into the world, that he died in our place, that he rose from the grave having conquered sin and death, that victory has been accomplished and the celebration has begun. And further, all anyone needs to do to share in that victory is receive it by faith. It is the best news that has ever been announced. And it will only reach people if someone announces it.

This means, every Christian is a herald. One way or another, we have all been sent. The non-Christians in your life will only become Christians if someone shares the gospel with them. God works through means, and evangelism is the means he has sovereignly appointed for saving the lost.

What Calvinism Does for the Evangelist

This is where the sovereignty of God becomes practically relevant to the task of evangelism rather than an obstacle to it.

If you believe that your friend’s eternal destiny ultimately rests in his or her own decision, and that he or she just needs to be convinced by the right arguments or techniques to make that decision, then you’ll feel as though the outcome depends on whether you can make the gospel compelling enough. You will feel enormous pressure every time you share your faith to say it just right. And if they don’t believe in Christ, you might feel as though it’s your fault for not presenting it compellingly enough.

That pressure does something to people. It makes them overly pragmatic. I’ve seen this many times and I’ve watched how much harm it can do. The evangelist feels unnecessary pressure to save the other person, which is something only God can do. And quite often, they end up watering down the gospel and eliminating Jesus’ call of discipleship that requires us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. They’re tempted to downplay the cost of discipleship to make it easier for people to make the right decision, but in so doing, they’ve robbed the gospel of its clarity and power. Basically, pragmatism produces easy-believism kind of evangelism, which leads to false converts.

They think they’re saved because they “made a decision” one time, but their life isn’t changed. If the goal is to get people to make a decision, then anything that produces a decision looks like success. I’ve been in ministry long enough to see how frequently emotional manipulation is used as an evangelistic strategy. I’ve seen social pressure, bait-and-switch programming, entertainment-driven worship services designed to lower resistance, and similar strategies justified under the banner of “reaching the lost.” And since it works on a human level by producing “decisions,” we’re reluctant to question it.

People say things like, “look at what God is doing! We’re reaching the lost! Look at how many souls are saved!” But are they actually being converted? In many cases, no, they’re not. They have been emotionally manipulated and spiritually coddled because their ears have been tickled.

These tactics are some of the most destructive trends in modern American Christianity. Churches abandoned genuine worship on the Lord’s Day and turned Sunday morning into an evangelistic crusade, where the entire service calibrated to the sensibilities of unbelievers. Fancy production values, carefully engineered emotional environments, altar calls staged with volunteers standing simultaneously to create a bandwagon effect, all designed to manufacture a decision.

These strategies have been around for a while. Charles Finney pioneered these methods about two hundred years ago, and he is the grandfather of everything wrong with modern revivalism. The result is a massive population of false converts. These are people who think they’re Christians because they responded to an emotional stimulus but whose lives show no evidence of genuine regeneration. Meanwhile, the true sheep in the pews are being deprived of spiritual food from God’s word because their pastors, drunk on church growth gimmicks, are focused on goat farming.

The doctrines of grace are the antidote to this. Not because Calvinists are smarter or more virtuous, but because the doctrine itself clarifies the division of labor between the evangelist and the Holy Spirit.

Our job as evangelists is to faithfully preach the gospel. That’s it. We may use tools of persuasion and apologetics, but that’s not the same as decisioneering and manipulation.

The Holy Spirit’s job is to use human preaching to accomplish the supernatural work of awakening dead hearts. I cannot change anyone’s heart. I don’t have that power. Neither do you. The only one who can take a spiritually dead person and make him alive is God. And that means the pressure is off me to manufacture a result. My responsibility is simply to to be faithful with the message.

This simplification is liberating. It means the power is in the message itself, not in my methods. The gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Dressing it up or watering it down is the same as being ashamed of it. We can simply preach the unvarnished gospel without softening it to make it more palatable because God’s word will accomplish what God intends it to accomplish. It means I can be patient with hard-hearted people because sometimes it takes a long time for a seed to germinate. And it means I can be confident — genuinely confident — that God can save anyone I share the gospel with, because salvation is entirely his work, not mine.

You don’t have to be a Calvinist to care about missions. But it is simply false to say that Calvinism undermines evangelism. Calvinism places our confidence where it belongs. God alone has the power to save, and he uses our simple and faithful preaching as the means to do so.

Personal Updates and Media Appearances

Loser Theology: Why the Weak Won’t Inherit the Earth

My next book published by Canon Press is on the final stretch of publication. Pictured below is the cover for the Advanced Reader Copies being sent out for endorsements and book reviews. So far, I’ve received endorsements from Willy Rice, Katie Faust, Auron Macintyre, Andy Naselli, Jon Harris, Joe Holland, and Brad Andrews.

To give you an idea, see below for the most recent endorsement I got back from my friend, Josh Daws. I’m told the pre-order site should be made available in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know as soon as that’s up.

Conferences

I spoke at two different conferences this month. One was the Church and Family Life Conference in Black Mountain, NC. The other one was a men’s conference in Iowa called “Rugged Christianity.” Both events were a huge blessing and I was honored to be invited.

Media Appearance

I went on Auron Macintyre’s show a couple of weeks ago to discuss the piece I wrote about Vivek Ramaswamy regarding his effort to sycretize his Hindu beliefs with Christianity to court voters.

What Justice Actually Requires

This objection rests on a false assumption that goes like this: if God grants mercy to some people, then he must therefore grant it to all people equally. This is a false assumption. Scripture presents sin as an act of cosmic treason against our Creator, and the only proper response is judgment. It isn’t cruelty, it is the righteous response of a holy God against sin. In other words, God doesn’t owe grace to anyone. No one has any claim on it whatsoever.

If God owed anyone grace, then grace ceases to be grace. If I owe someone $100, I would be wrong to wrap it up and give it to them as a gift. It’s not a gift, it’s a debt. Grace is the same way. Grace, by definition, is something that can only be given and received as a gift. To do otherwise would nullify the gift itself (Rom 11:6).

Since everyone in the entire world has sinned against God (Rom 3:23), God isn’t obligated to show grace to anyone. Judgment is what we deserve. God has never punished an innocent person. He has never withheld grace from someone who deserved it. If anyone is saved at all, it will be by grace — because justice, for any of us, would mean eternal condemnation.

So, the issue here is that some people receive mercy, and other people receive justice. Thus, someone might argue, since God ultimately determines which is which, God has committed an injustice by not showing mercy to everyone.

RC Sproul once made a helpful distinction here between in-justice and non-justice. Injustice is a sin because justice is being denied to someone who deserves it. Non-justice is the gracious act of God to show mercy to people who deserve justice, and the justice for their sins is satisfied in the cross of Christ. The penalty for their sins wasn’t waived, it was paid at Calvary. Thus, God’s justice is fully satisfied, though for some, Christ absorbs the justice of God for them.

This doesn’t explain why God chooses some and not others, but it does answer the objection that God is being unjust (Rom 9:14).

Think of it this way. Suppose ten people are guilty of the same crime and deserve the same sentence. And yet God sovereignly pardons one of them and sentences the other nine. Has anyone been treated unjustly? No. The nine received exactly what they deserved. The one received mercy he didn’t deserve, and the fact that he didn’t deserve it is precisely the reason we can call it grace. The justice for his sin was paid at the cross. No one in this scenario has been treated unjustly. The nine received justice. The one received grace. Those are not the same thing, and the existence of grace does not make justice unfair.

Dead People Can’t Choose Life

At this point someone usually tries to rescue God’s reputation by arguing that the whole arrangement is only just if God leaves the final choice to us. If God gives everyone an equal opportunity and people simply choose or reject him on their own, then the outcome is fair because it reflects human decision rather than divine selection.

The problem is that Scripture doesn’t leave room for this. Every human being is born spiritually dead in sin (Eph 2:1), and dead people cannot choose life, even when it is offered to them.

Consider when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus stood outside the tomb and called Lazarus out, Lazarus had no say in the matter. He was dead. Jesus chose to raise him, Jesus called to him from outside his tomb, and Lazarus came out. Jesus made the choice, not Lazarus.

Further, Lazarus wasn’t the only dead body buried in that cemetery. Yet Jesus walked in and only called out the name of the one he chose, and left the others in their graves. Could anyone say Jesus was being unjust for only choosing to raise Lazarus, and not the others? Of course not. Jesus raised Lazarus because it was his good pleasure to do so as an act of grace towards him. No one in that graveyard deserved to be raised, and the fact that Jesus raised Lazarus highlights both his grace and his sovereign choice, not to mention his power and authority over death. The others remained in their graves, which is exactly what their sins deserved.

It’s the same with salvation. The only reason anyone becomes a Christian is because the Holy Spirit regenerated them, gave them a new heart, and produced faith in them which wasn’t there before. Every Christian is like Lazarus in the sense that we were spiritually dead in our sins. Yet when we heard the gospel message, the Holy Spirit cried into our hearts, “come forth!,” and we believed. Not because we were smarter than those who do not believe, but because God chose us to produce faith in us.

God doesn’t do this for everyone. He does it for those he has chosen. That is what election means. And Paul’s argument is that this is not injustice. Every condemned sinner receives what his sins deserve. The ones who receive mercy receive something they did not deserve, made possible by the blood of Christ.

This is also not merely Paul’s doctrine. Jesus taught it himself. In John 13:18, he said plainly, “I know whom I have chosen.” Election is not a Reformation invention or a Calvinist hobby horse. It runs through the teaching of Jesus. In fact, it is taught in the Old Testament times in the book of Exodus.

Two Examples: Moses and Pharaoh

Paul demonstrates this doctrine from the lives of Pharaoh and Moses. Paul says, “so then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (Rom 9:18).

Moses was not an innocent man. He was a murderer. And yet God chose to show him mercy. The decision, as Paul makes clear by quoting Exodus 33:19, was entirely God’s: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Nobody on earth deserved that mercy. It was God’s sovereign good pleasure to show it. The mercy Moses received came entirely from God’s initiative, not from anything commendable in Moses himself.

Pharaoh is the counterpoint. God raised Pharaoh up to become the most powerful man in the ancient world. That power was itself a gift. And Pharaoh used it to defy God repeatedly, hardening his heart against every sign and every warning Moses brought him.

The phrase, “he hardens whomever he wills” is often misunderstood, because it sounds like God created fresh sin in Pharaoh’s heart, as though he were an innocent man and God put sin there that wasn’t already there. That’s false.

The book of Exodus describes the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in three ways: (1) Pharaoh hardened his own heart, (2) Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and (3) God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. From these descriptions, you can see that Pharaoh was already in active rebellion against God, and God raised him up and used his sin to accomplish God’s purposes. In other words, these are not three separate events describing the same divine action. They describe an escalating sequence in which Pharaoh’s active, deliberate rebellion precedes God’s judicial response.

The doctrine of election does teach that God chooses who will be saved and who will not be saved. But God’s choice in either case is not symmetrical. We should not think of God’s sovereign choice as though he were dealing with an innocent human race, whereby God creates evil in the hearts of the non-elect in order to punish them. God forbid!

Rather, we must assume a fallen, wicked, sinful human race whereby God regenerates the elect and creates faith in them unto salvation, but leaves the wicked to suffer the consequences of their own wickedness. For the elect, God takes action to produce something good in them they didn’t already possess. For the non-elect, God passes over them and does not do the same for them.

We must understand that man is not as sinful as he could be. The only reason why man is not even more wicked than we are is that God, by his common grace, restrains us from what we might otherwise have done. In this way, when God “hardened” the heart of Pharaoh, he was simply removing his hand of restraint that was holding back the wicked darkness that was already at work in his heart. God did not force Pharaoh to sin. God stopped restraining him.

This is the same pattern Paul describes in Romans 1, where God’s judgment on persistent sin is to give people up to even greater sin:

• ^“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves…” (Rom 1:24)

• “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature…” (Rom 1:26)

• “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Rom 1:28).

In each of the cases described in Romans 1, God was not causing people to sin, God was judiciously giving people over to the consequences of their sin, which is more and greater sin.

Therefore, Pharaoh’s hardening was his own doing. But God’s hardening of Pharaoh was not the same as Pharaoh’s self-hardening. God’s hardening was merely the removal of what had been holding Pharaoh back from the full expression of what he already was.

The same principle applies to Judas Iscariot. Jesus did not create fresh betrayal in Judas’s heart. No, Judas was already a thief and a corrupt man. He wanted power and money, and he betrayed Jesus to get them. And yet God used that treacherous act to bring about the redemption of the world. Just as God raised up Pharaoh to bring about a glorious purpose in Exodus, God raised up Judas to bring about the cross of Christ, which has brought salvation to God’s people. What Judas meant for evil, God meant for good.

The Wonder Is That Anyone Is Saved

So, back to the question of God’s justice in election, we can see that justice is exactly what Pharaoh received. Were it not for God’s common grace restraining us, we might have been just as hardened as he. Yet, for his own reasons, it was God’s good pleasure to show mercy to us, electing us, regenerating us, and creating saving faith in our hearts.

God has mercy on whom he has mercy. God has compassion on whom he has compassion. For those who receive this gift, it should humble us like no other doctrine in scripture.

Personally, when I think about it, I can’t get over it. I could have been lost and under God’s judgment. I could have been like Pharaoh, or even worse! The only thing preventing me from being the most vile and despicable man is the sovereign grace of God that sought me, bought me, and made me new.

Since the doctrine of election isn’t easy to understand or embrace, those who believe it can sometimes feel intellectually superior, as though they are smarter than other people who reject it. That is the opposite of what it should produce in us.

The doctrine of election should humble us, because it teaches that there is absolutely nothing in us that makes us more lovely or appealing candidates for election. We’re not smarter, better, more noble or virtuous, or superior to the non-elect in any way. The only difference between us and the non-elect is simply God’s sovereign choice.

I suppose we’ll spend the rest of eternity humbly and gratefully basking in the fact that God chose us, and there won’t be a millisecond in all of eternity where we will boast in ourselves for making the right choice. The wonder is not that some people are damned. The wonder is that any of us are saved. To God be the glory!

If you’d like to hear more on this doctrine, see here for a sermon I preached on it recently.

The Reformers are on the cusp of victory in the SBC. We just need the Absentees to show up and the Normies to join us.

Last year, I wrote a recap of the SBC’s 2025 Annual Meeting in Dallas, arguing that it was largely a “status quo” Convention.

Despite spirited debates on the Law Amendment and women pastors (and a third vote on a constitutional amendment), calls for increased financial transparency from SBC entities, and a major vote on the future of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), when we left Dallas, it looked like not much had changed. Hence, I settled on the description “status quo.”

In retrospect, I would now say that the multi-year, coordinated efforts to force change at the ERLC, one of the most liberal entities in the SBC, over the last decade turned out to be a big win for the Reformers. Just six weeks after a 43% vote in Dallas in favor of abolishing the entity outright, Brent Leatherwood resigned as President of the ERLC, marking the end of the Russell Moore-Brent Leatherwood era of escalating accommodation to liberal (and frankly unbiblical) political priorities being championed at the SBC’s policy outfit.

In that piece—which, based on the feedback I received, seemed to strike a chord with many in the SBC—I cataloged what I believe are the four main groups in the SBC and their respective interests: The Platform, the Loyalists, the Normies, and the Reformers.

At the end of the day, however, we’re all Southern Baptists, and we share core doctrinal commitments and ministry priorities. For this reason, these groups are dynamic. Moving from one group to another isn’t as dramatic as switching political parties. It can be as simple as being exposed to new information, seeing things a little differently, and acting accordingly.

The Four Groups of the SBC: A Refresher

So, who are these four constituencies, and how might things have changed in the last year?

The first group is the Platform. These are the guys on the stage who set the agenda and run the SBC’s bureaucracy. They are the most static of the four constituencies, because they hold official positions in the apparatus. And since there’s a limited number of these positions, they wield enormous influence.

The second group is the Loyalists. They support the platform from their entity-sponsored blogs and messengers from the floor. They are the “platform in waiting”—company men who hope to receive committee appointments or jobs in the bureaucracy. They are (largely) driven less by principle and more by the allure of institutional power. So they make strategic calculations to ingratiate themselves with those higher up the ladder. For example, they will not support necessary reforms, such as the Law Amendment or financial transparency, if it would cost them career advancement opportunities. If you speak with them privately, they’ll say things like, “Brother, I’m totally with you 100% on this issue. But you must understand, I cannot go on record with this right now because Dr. So-and-so opposes it, and I need to stay on his good side. Trust me, once I’m chair of “fill-in-the-blank” committee, we can make some real progress on it.”

But once the platform signals it’s time to address the issue, they’ll suddenly voice their support. In other words, their courage is opportunistic. You can’t count on them to hold the line when the chips are down.

There’s a bit of a stolen valor dynamic at work here. For example, Mike Law took all the arrows fighting an uphill battle for the Law amendment a few years ago. He received little institutional support or vocal endorsement from high-profile leaders. And yet, the issue is too urgent, too clearly biblical, and the opposition’s arguments too clearly compromised for the issue to go away. Everyone knows we have to settle the matter, one way or another. So now we’re seeing more chatter from the institutional leadership class about taking action. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome this, and I’m glad to see it.

I’m simply pointing out a political dynamic that needs to be noticed: Grassroots reform efforts can not be given credit for their victories, lest they become an even more powerful nuisance to the institutional class in the future. That’s how the apparatus works.

The third group is the Normies. “Normie” isn’t intended to be a negative term. It simply refers to ordinary pastors and church people who don’t closely follow SBC politics. As I wrote a year ago, “In an ideal world, the SBC is run so well that all of us are ‘Normies.’ The Normies don’t follow SBC politics or issues closely (and in many ways, who can blame them), so they attend the Convention and vote based on their perception of the room at any given moment. I suspect most of them are laymen and women in their churches who love the Lord and expect to discover whatever they need to know while at the Convention.”

The fourth and final group is the Reformers. I put myself in this group. They are concerned about the direction of the SBC and are trying to bring about needed change. In recent years, the primary issues animating the reformers are the need for clarity about women pastors, the need for greater financial transparency, and corruption in the ERLC.

There’s a fifth constituency we could add, the absentees. I didn’t include them last year because they weren’t there. They are the sleeping giant within the SBC that, if awakened, could accomplish all the reformers’ goals very quickly. But for whatever reason, they are the ones who don’t show up at the Convention, and their absence leaves the door open for the highly motivated and mobilized progressive minority in the Convention to have their way. The Platform’s coalition is relatively small but highly motivated and reliably present. Many of them get paid to be there.

Two Further Observations About the Four Groups

There are two further observations that can be made about these constituencies.

First, the lines of demarcation are more about posture than doctrine. In the old days of American evangelicalism, the dividing lines were clear and specific–Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and so on all knew who we were and why we weren’t in one of the other groups. In the SBC, there were clear doctrinal dividing lines, such as between inerrantists and non-inerrantists in the Conservative Resurgence, or between Arminians and Calvinists.

These days, however, the old dividing lines have been blurring within and even across denominations. Some of this is driven by the ascendency of non-denominational churches, which downplay doctrinal distinctives to attract larger audiences.

I’ll save that analysis for another day, except to make this one observation: the single biggest dividing line in evangelicalism today is the courage to fight for our convictions.

Two Southern Baptist churches a mile apart may both eagerly subscribe to the Baptist Faith & Message, including a stated complementarian position on women pastors. So on the surface, they appear nearly identical. But there is actually a massive difference between them: One church will appease and accommodate feminism and similar DEI initiatives in order to appear winsome to the world and avoid conflict. The other church will boldly oppose such things, even risking a negative reputation in town for doing so.

Both churches hold the exact same doctrinal commitments, but only one will fight for them. This willingness to fight for their historic convictions is driving the “big sort” of evangelicalism, where pugilistic Presbyterians find themselves joining Baptist churches not because they’ve changed their views on baptism but because they’re looking for a church with a spine.

The churches that are unwilling to fight for the convictions they claim to hold often make pious excuses for doing so, such as a concern for mission (“the world is watching!”), or a concern about litigation (as Jeff Iorg warned last year, if the Law amendment passed), or a concern to protect the identity of missionaries serving in hostile countries if form 990-level financial transparency measures were adopted.

Second, constituencies can shift. Since the lines of SBC demarcation are not primarily soteriological as in the old days, people can shift constituencies without changing their doctrinal commitments. In other words, concerns about encroaching feminism and wokeness can lead people to beat their theological swords into denominational plowshares, working together for reform.

These changes can be observed in real time. For example, Willy Rice, who is not a “Five Point Calvinist,” has emerged as the champion for the Reformers, yet some of his most passionate and vocal supporters are Calvinists. Why is this? Because soteriology is no longer the Convention’s most pressing concern. In my view, soteriological debates are peace-time luxuries when the Convention is otherwise healthy and solidly conservative. But those debates must take a backseat when existential problems are plaguing our Convention, threatening to pull the levers of bureaucracy to steer the largest Protestant denomination in the world towards liberalism, even though the majority of the Convention would oppose it if they saw what was happening.

Willy Rice is also interesting because he wasn’t always in the Reformers camp. I’d still consider Rice more of a normie: he’s a faithful pastor who loves Jesus, the word of God, and the church. All the books he’s published throughout his career are the sorts of things Normie pastors care about: walking faithfully with God, church leadership, and parenting. He’s not been an activist by any stretch. And yet, Rice has courageously voiced his growing concerns about the direction of the SBC, and, in so doing, has found himself a leader among the Reformers. Both Arminians and Calvinists in the SBC who see the need for reform look to Rice and think, “He’s our guy.”

Not because he represents everyone’s soteriological position, but because he’s got a spine. He’s a leader who isn’t afraid to fight for the soul of the SBC.

In this way, Rice represents what I hope to become a larger trend. As Normies learn about the games being played behind the scenes in the SBC, the more they realize they can no longer blindly trust the platform. They get “radicalized,” as the kids say, and they move from being a normie to being a reformer.

I previously mentioned the “absentees,” who are the SBC’s sleeping giant. Most of them are probably normies who are focused on their local ministries. Good for them. May the Lord prosper their faithful work. Most likely, many of them aren’t paying attention to the political drama of the SBC, and that’s why they don’t show up to the annual meeting. They’ve got sermons to write, Bible studies to lead, lost people to evangelize, weddings to perform, and pastoral counseling needs.

However, I know firsthand that there are other absentees who aren’t there for a different reason. Frankly, they do follow the political drama, and they’re both disgusted and discouraged. They’re disgusted by the compromise and corruption they’ve seen in the SBC, and it makes them angry. But they feel like there’s nothing they can do about it, since it costs a lot of time and money to attend the annual meeting, and they don’t have the power to make a dent at an annual meeting with over 10,000 messengers in attendance.

If this is you–if you’re discouraged and feel powerless to make a change–you are not powerless. You’re just not in the room. People who stay home don’t get a vote. It’s as simple as that.

Four Ways You Can Fight for Reform

So, to accomplish the needed reforms in the SBC, what can you do? I suggest the following four action steps.

First, mobilize the absentees. Every empty seat in Orlando is a vote for the status quo. Their absence always benefits the platform. The SBC was originally set up to reward the effort it takes to show up. Orlando is a home-field advantage for the reformers. It’s a drivable distance for a significant portion of the SBC, and June is a reasonable time to travel. It’s a lower barrier to entry than even Nashville or Dallas. Every cooperating church receives two messengers. Send them. Only a fraction of the SBC’s potential messengers actually show up. If they were sufficiently informed and showed up, reform efforts could make real progress. Showing up is the #1 way to make a difference.

Second, retain the Reformers. Reform efforts are hard and take time. William Wilberforce worked for reform for 46 years, suffering years of legislative defeats over a twenty-year period before achieving his first victory. The SBC’s work has an eternal impact, and it is worthy of similar dedication and resolve. Further, reformers know too much to go back to business as usual. When they get tired or discouraged, they check out and disengage. Some become absentees and stop showing up. Some leave the Convention altogether.

Third, inform the Normies. The normies are the largest group in the SBC and thus form the single biggest power block. In many ways, they represent what we all want to be: churchmen who’d rather focus on the work of the ministry, not SBC politics. And in my opinion, most normies are pre-reformers who will join the fight once they see enough evidence of corruption. When this happens, one of two outcomes is most likely. They will either (1) join the reformers and fight for change, or (2) they disengage and depart the Convention. I’ve seen this firsthand. People come to the Convention, witness the problems directly, and end up deciding the fight isn’t worth it. Churches that leave the Convention aren’t doing so because we’re too conservative. They’re leaving because they perceive us as becoming too liberal. Or, at least, they perceive we are unwilling to defend our conservative convictions.

The refusal to fight for our convictions is simply functional liberalism. This is different from the theological liberalism of the early twentieth century, which denied the virgin birth and the resurrection, but it has the same effect. Functional liberalism maintains orthodox confessions on paper while refusing to defend them in practice. The functional liberal believes the right things but won’t fight for them. Refusal to fight for our convictions is functionally the same as surrendering them. And the next generation inherits an SBC that says one thing and does another. Theological liberalism kills churches slowly through bad doctrine. Functional liberalism kills them just as surely through failed courage.

Convictionally conservative Baptists want to be in the SBC because we want to cooperate for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission. But if they perceive that our Convention doesn’t have the guts to stand by our convictions, they see little reason to stay in.

Fourth, get ready to do business. There are many motions and resolutions at the annual meeting, but only a handful have real consequences. Resolutions, for example, have no binding authority. They merely express the will of the Convention on a particular matter. This year, three issues stand out that have real teeth: (1) clarity on women pastors, (2) financial transparency, and (3) the election of a new president. In my view, the Center for Baptist Leadership has its finger on the pulse of reform efforts in the SBC, and one can get up to speed by following their essays and podcasts. Regarding the election of a new president, this is the single most important vote we take as a Convention. This year, Willy Rice is the man who has the courage, clarity, and conviction to lead the SBC to a more hopeful and fruitful future.

Conclusion: All It Takes to Win Is to Show Up

Orlando is not Dallas. Dallas was a referendum on whether reform was possible. And look at the ERLC—it is.

Orlando is a referendum on whether Reformers will show up and Normies will be persuaded that it is time for a leader who is willing to admit we have some problems and then do what it takes to solve them.

In fact, I think our meeting in Orlando is shaping up to be very similar to the Nashville Convention in 2021. According to Baptist Press, Nashville’s “2021 SBC Annual Meeting was the largest since 1995.” Baptist Press suggests that “much of that had to do with the location and the involvement of first-time messengers to the convention.” While that’s undoubtedly true (I guess location does matter), we all know that the larger turnout was also issue-driven.

This was the first SBC annual meeting since the disastrous and infamous “Resolution 9” that hoodwinked Baptists into affirming godless Critical Race Theory as a helpful “analytical tool.” It was also the first Convention post-COVID. Other massive political issues were roiling the SBC, driven by the narrative of an “abuse crisis” and Russell Moore’s underhanded political dealings.

Even more, there was an outspoken Reformer running for SBC president that year: Mike Stone.

The Platform pulled out all the stops to stop Stone from winning. Sadly, they prevailed, and Ed Litton defeated Stone by a total of 6,834 votes (52.04 percent) to Stone’s 6,278 (47.81 percent), a difference of just 556 votes.

It doesn’t have to go that way this time. Now, the Reformers know to expect the dirty tricks. Now, more Normies are aware that everything the Reformers have been warning about for five-plus years has proven true. The Reformers aren’t cranks; they’re prophets.

Whether it was Stone vs. Litton, or the recent votes on ratifying the Law Amendment, the difference is razor-thin. The direction of the SBC is being decided by a few hundred votes each year.

This means that the single most important thing you can do before June 9-10 is to plan to send messengers. Not because one messenger changes everything, but because ten thousand reasons to stay home have kept the sleeping giant asleep long enough. Your church has at least two slots. Fill them.

And this means that the single most important vote you will cast in Orlando is for our next SBC president. We are not electing a doctrinal statement — we already have the Baptist Faith & Message for that. We are electing a man with a spine. Willy Rice is that man.

He wasn’t always a Reformer. That’s precisely why he’s the man we need. He doesn’t have a reputation of a man who moves from one battle to the next because he’s addicted to fighting. No, he’s a churchman who understands the times and paid a price for changing his mind in public.

That credibility is worth more than a lifetime of safe positions.

Opponents of the Reformers (the Platform and the Loyalists) often trot out tired old lines, such as, “This is a distraction! Let’s move on from the conflicts and get back to soul winning!” My response is that our cooperation will be less effective at soul-winning if we lack clarity about who we are, how we are led, and how our money is spent. The real crisis in the SBC is the growing number of people who no longer feel confident that the SBC represents their convictions, and giving more money could actually be funding our own demise.

There’s one thing I’m absolutely convinced of: The most powerful and evangelistically effective version of the SBC is one that rediscovers its fighting spirit for the glory of God.

We don’t need to adjust our doctrines–the BF&M is an excellent summary of our shared convictions. We just need to be willing to fight for them, even if it means enduring temporary losses and the departures of those unwilling to do so. God is honored by courage and clarity. These are the very traits we see in the book of Acts, and this is how the SBC can get back on track.

See you in Orlando.

The core argument of my essay is this: Side B Christianity is a deceptive tactic to welcome homosexuality into the church by holding to a traditional position on marriage but otherwise claiming homosexual desires aren’t sinful and adopting a gay identity is lawful for Christians. This view has done great harm to the church by robbing people of the tools needed to fight sexual sin.

However, Allberry has rightly gone on record rejecting the “Side B” view, as a whole, signing the Nashville Statement, and rejecting “gay Christian” as a legitimate, Christian identity. This being the case, he still speaks as though “same sex attraction” is not sinful in itself.

Therefore, I have added this editorial note at the beginning and edited the body of my article to represent his views more accurately. I have also clarified below that Crossway, who has published Allberry, has pushed against Side B Christianity.

It happened again. I take no delight in writing this, but another pastor has been removed from ministry. This time it's different, though, because the sin is the direct result of his theology. Let me explain.

Sam Allberry has been removed from pastoral ministry following what’s been described as an “inappropriate relationship” with a man. Whatever the full details turn out to be, this moment deserves more than just sadness. This was no random, moral failure, but the fruit of a system that refused to acknowledge “same sex attraction” as a dangerous and sinful error, one that particularly aligns with the world’s agenda of normalizing every kind of sexual perversion.

If Allberry were merely an ordinary Christian man who fell into sin, it could be handled with discretion as fits the situation. But Allberry is not an ordinary Christian man. He advocates for the idea that “same sex attraction” is not necessarily sinful in itself.

Allberry was formerly an Anglican pastor, apologist (with Ravi Zacharias ministries, which is a whole other matter), conference speaker, and, until recently, an associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Nashville. Immanuel Church features a who’s who of prominent, left-leaning evangelical leaders, such as Ray Ortlund (founding pastor, pastor Emeritus, and pastor to pastors), Dr. Russell Moore (minister in residence), Dr. Gavin Ortlund (theologian in residence and son of Ray Ortlund), and Barnabas Piper (Assistant Pastor, author, and son of John Piper).

Given his view that “same sex attraction” is not necessarily sinful, Allberry’s actions deserve particular scrutiny, especially since he has authored multiple books seemingly aimed to normalize and promote his unusual way of practicing Christianity. Among his published books include these titles: Is God Anti-Gay?, 7 Myths About Singleness, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies, and Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?.

This view that homosexual desires aren’t sinful in themselves would always have a friendly audience amongst liberals who want to normalize homosexual desires and practices. But it also gained traction in conservative Christian circles because it was promoted beneath a fig leaf of maintaining the orthodox view of marriage as one man and one woman. In other words, their message was, “trust us on all things related to homosexuality because we reject gay marriage!”

This is the same word game that prominent leaders like Preston Sprinkle use to normalize unbiblical ideas about sexuality. Sprinkle was the general editor of the NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible, which promotes “side B” perspective on gay desires and identity. Personally, I find it unfathomable that someone would publish study notes and articles that deny biblical teaching bound together with the pages of scripture itself. They seem to think holding to the traditional view of marriage gives them license to distort biblical anthropology in other areas.

The view that homosexuality isn’t sinful in itself has been gaining prominence over the last 15-30 years or so, particularly in the late 90s. It crystallized under episcopal priest Wesley Hill’s book, Washed and Waiting. This book outlines the contemporary view that “same sex attraction” (SSA) is a persistent, unchosen experience or temptation that does not require repentance in itself. In other words, if a man is sexually attracted to another man, that attraction isn’t a sin to mortify in itself, it only becomes sin when he physically engages in a sexual act with another man. Some advocates of this view use the label “Side B,” which accepts “gay Christian” as a legitimate identity marker. Some big names who hold this view are Greg Johnson, Rachel Gilson, Nate Collins, and Mark Yarhouse. (As stated previously, Allberry does not hold to the full “side B” position regarding gay identity).

Prominent organizations that promote these views include the “Revoice” conference, “Spiritual Friendship” website, “Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender” (founded by Preston Sprinkle), “Living Out” (Sam Allberry’s ministry), and “EQUIP”. This view has also been platformed in popular media outlets such as The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and Christianity Today (CT). CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) has used Preston Sprinkle’s training materials for their staff. In short, this is a large, influential movement promoted by prominent leaders and enjoys solid funding and institutional support.

This is one of the most destructive forces in modern evangelicalism. And the whole godless enterprise needs to be dismantled, brick by brick, and burned to the ground.

To understand the depths of this error, you need to understand three important categories the Bible uses to describe human sexuality: behavior, desire, and identity.

Behavior

The Biblical view of sexual behavior is this: God designed physical intimacy to be enjoyed by a husband and wife within the covenant of marriage. Any sexual act outside that covenant is sin. Paul uses the Greek word “porneia” to describe a very broad category of sexual sin. Basically, porneia can refer to anything that falls outside of God’s prescribed boundary of sexual activity.

Allberry claimed to agree with this, which gave him credibility to speak on these matters to conservative Christian audiences. He affirmed traditional marriage, opposed homosexual sex, and advocated celibacy for Christians who experience “same-sex attraction.”

Behavior was never where he diverged from orthodoxy. The divergence came one level deeper.

Desire

The Bible isn’t merely interested in sexual acts people perform with their body parts. The Bible also addresses the desires that lead to those acts, and humans are morally culpable for those desires. This is where Allberry’s error lives, and where side B does its nastiest damage.

Allberry’s position is that homosexual desire is not itself sinful. They say it’s an orientation, an unchosen and fixed feature of their personhood, making it merely a cross to bear rather than a sin to mortify. The only sin they’ll acknowledge is the behavior, the desires themselves are morally neutral.

According to Wesley Hill, the desires can even be befriended and worn as an identity. He has written that being gay “colors everything” about him, including his friendships, his aesthetic sensibilities, and his emotional life. He doesn’t merely experience same-sex temptation. He is gay, and that gayness is a gift to be stewarded rather than a disorder to be fought.

This is a direct contradiction of Scripture.

The first nine commandments forbid external acts, but the tenth commandment is different. It forbids sinful desires. In Romans 7, Paul explained how the command against coveting was what made him realize just how deep sin truly goes, leading him to exclaim, “wretched man that I am!” (v24).

Specifically, Exodus 20:17 prohibits desiring your neighbor’s wife. While the seventh commandment forbids adultery, the tenth commandment addresses the desires that lead to adultery. They are distinct commands addressing distinct sins. Jesus sharpens this distinction in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

Simply put, the desire to sin is sin. Jesus wasn’t being innovative. He was connecting the seventh commandment to the tenth, which had always been there.

In Romans 1, Paul describes men who were “consumed with passion for one another.” They weren’t merely committing homosexual acts, the desire itself is indicted as sinful. The Greek word here is orexis, which refers to appetite, or raw craving. Paul isn’t describing men who reluctantly fell into behavior they didn’t want. He’s describing men whose desires were disordered and who followed them.

In Galatians 5, porneia, akatharsia, and aselgeia appear together as “works of the flesh,” such as sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. These aren’t just behaviors. They’re the desires from which behaviors flow. In Colossians 3:5, Paul says to put to death “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire.” Passion and evil desire are listed alongside the behaviors, not excused from the list.

Thus, all of our desires, whether we chose them consciously or not, are morally implicated. Our desires are aimed at something, and when we desire something sinful, the morality of the desire is determined by the object of that desire. One cannot say that his or her desire isn’t sinful because it was involuntary. That doesn’t matter. The involuntary nature of a sinful desire doesn’t sanctify it. It means you need grace to fight it, not permission to keep it.

There’s a further distinction worth making here. Some sinful, sexual desires can be worse than others if they are unnatural. In other words, not all sinful sexual desire is the same kind of sin. An engaged couple who sinfully lusts for each other is desiring something that is natural and good but premature. The desire is sinful because they are unmarried, not because the desire itself is unnatural. Paul’s word for this situation: “if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9). Once they get married, their formerly sinful desires are now sanctified by their marriage covenant.

But homosexual desires are different because they’re unnatural. A man who lusts after another man has no place where his desires could find legitimate expression. God would not sanction a sexual union between two men in any context because it is unnatural. Paul addresses this in Romans 1 when he says, “men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (v27). Thus, heterosexual lust is sinful, but can become holy through lawful marriage. Homosexual lust is also sinful, but carries the additional weight of sinning against nature itself.

The pastoral implication here is serious. A man who believes his homosexual desire is not sinful has no reason to fight it. He has every reason to befriend it, explore it, protect it from outside interference. He is in a far more dangerous position than a man who knows his desires are disordered and needs to mortify them. You cannot fight an enemy you’ve been told is a friend. The Side B framework, whatever its intentions, removes the theological ground for the fight. It tells men to carry their desires as a cross rather than kill them as a sin. Those are not the same thing.

Identity

The last stop on this train is side B Christianity, which treats one’s sinful sexual desires as a personal identity.

Side B advocates write about being gay as a core dimension of their personhood. They avoid describing it as a mere temptation, but prefer to describe it as an identity. They argue that a gay identity is appropriate for celibate Christians, that it shapes how they move through the world, how they form friendships, what they notice and feel and love. Once homosexual desire is no longer sinful, there is no theological reason not to embrace it as identity. Once sexual sin becomes an identity, one begins to organize his or her entire life around it.

Scripture has no category for this. The concept of sexual orientation as a fundamental category of personhood is a modern innovation. The word “homosexual” didn’t even exist until modern times. In the 1950s, John Money argued that one’s sexual desires constitute a core part of their identity, drawing on Freudian assumptions about the self. Before that, men who committed homosexual acts were simply men who committed homosexual acts. The idea that committing homosexual acts could become a personal identity is an idea that is about 70 years old. The fact that churches have accepted the idea of “gay Christian” shows just how powerfully worldly ideologies can creep in through this teaching.

Biblically speaking, there are two and only two legitimate sexual identities: male and female. Scripture identifies sinful desires and sinful behaviors, calls them sin, and calls sinners to repentance, forgiveness, and adoption into God’s family as sons and daughters of God. That is the identity on offer. The gospel doesn’t baptize your disordered desires and hand them back as a stable foundation for personhood. It kills them and gives you something far better.

When a person builds their identity on sin, it becomes a prison of their own making. Equating sexual desire with personal identity is a Satanic masterstroke. It convinces people that their sin is essential to their humanity. Repentance stops being a door into the Kingdom of God and becomes a wall that prevents people from entering. If a man believes being gay is essential to his identity, telling him to repent is the same as telling him to stop existing. It’s powerful rhetoric. When pastors adopt the language of “gay identity,” even in if they call for celibacy, they are handing that man the bricks to build his own prison.

There’s a linguistic piece of this worth addressing. The phrase “same-sex attraction” has become standard in many orthodox Christian circles, often out of genuine pastoral concern for people fighting this sin. The intention is good, but the language is not. “Attraction” is a word with positive associations. We typically use the word “attract” to refer to things like beauty, or a future spouse. Importing the word “attraction” into a discussion of sinful desire softens what Scripture teaches and trains us to be afraid of the Bible’s hard, direct words.

People aren’t “same sex attracted.” People have sinful lusts and passions. We need hard words to describe harmful realities we need to be warned against. We don’t say a greedy man is “attracted to money.” We say he’s greedy. We don’t say a liar is “attracted to deceit,” we call him a liar. Plain language is more honest and, in the long run, more merciful.

What this should tell us

Nobody should be happy about what Sam Allberry did, but public figures deserve public scrutiny, especially when the stakes are so high. Allberry is not beyond the reach of grace, but I pray he not only repents of his recently discovered sin, but the worldview and teaching that put him (and countless others with similar temptations) in a dangerous position to begin with.

Simply put, Allberry is reaping what he’s sown, as painful as it is to acknowledge. He spent years telling himself and others that homosexual desire is not sinful. Are we surprised that his ministry was ended by an “inappropriate relationship” with a man? He was navigating with a broken compass. This moral failure was the direct result of his worldview and teaching, and I’m afraid many, many others have already followed him into the same error.

Soft peddling the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality is not compassionate. Christians must never make space to legitimize or normalize gay lust or a gay identity. To do so robs men and women from the biblical teaching they need to identify sin, convincing them they don’t need the Spirit’s power to fight it because there’s nothing wrong with it. God help us. That kind of teaching will only open the door to more people who will struggle with it.

The church needs to say, with clarity and without cruelty, that same-sex desire is sin to be mortified, not an identity to be managed. The grace of God is sufficient for that fight. Peter says we have been given “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and have “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Pet. 1:3-4). We are not controlled by our sinful desires. We have power over them. But we have to name them first. We have to call them what they are.

These arguments are developed further in my book, “God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality.”

According to the Christian ministry leader who hosted our group, this is not a problem for the Hindu faith. Hindus don’t necessarily see themselves as anti-Christian. They don’t reject Christianity by denying Christ directly. Rather, they simply absorb Jesus Christ into their religious pantheon, assigning him to a subordinate status alongside other, higher gods. Hindus may hold Jesus in high regard, even seeing him as a holy man, a prophet, an enlightened guru who taught non-violence and universal love. Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu leader in India who weaponized Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount to recruit Christians to his cause.

I bring this up because a video clip has been circulating of Vivek Ramaswamy on the campaign trail in the Ohio gubernatorial race where he was discussing his faith with a Christian man. This race matters to me because I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, as do many members of my church, and I’m a Christian and a pastor.

He said this:

“In our faith tradition, Jesus Christ is A son of god. I know that is different than saying he’s THE son of God, but that is my view of Jesus Christ… Do we worship [him] in churches? Yes, we do. Is that compatible with our faith? Yes, it is. One true god, in many forms.”

Ramaswamy is an intelligent and successful man. He knows he’ll need the support of conservative Christians to win the governor’s race in Ohio. Ramaswamy uses sophistry to describe his view in terms that Christians are more likely to accept. He doesn’t say, “here’s what we Hindus believe,” he says, “in our faith tradition.” He claims his views of Jesus Christ are “compatible with the Christian faith.”

The ambiguity is doing a lot of work there. He also makes a reference to Hindus worshiping Jesus “in churches.” “Church” is a Christian word. Hindus don’t gather in churches for worship, they go to Hindu temples.

Ramaswamy is deliberately obscuring his true beliefs to appeal to conservative voters who wouldn’t like them if they knew what he truly believed. And he’s campaigning as a conservative Republican whose own worldview would make it difficult if not impossible for him to conserve what conservatives want conserved. His words reveal the Hindu absorption mechanism at work in his campaign. He isn’t articulating the cavernous distinctions between Hinduism and Christianity, he’s blurring the lines in ways that make them seem like negligible, semantic differences.

Christianity simply will not blend with any other faith. It’s a direct violation of the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3). Hinduism is a polytheistic faith that acknowledges at least 33 major gods (some argue Hinduism’s gods range in the millions). Ramaswamy cleverly obscures this fact by claiming to believe in “one true god in many forms,” which sounds closer to monotheism, thus closing the gap between them. But even if one were to grant the point, Hinduism’s cosmology is pantheistic–ultimately, everything is god. The sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, trees, birds, and the device you’re reading this article on is ultimately god. The creation account of Genesis 1 clearly establishes the Creator/creature distinction, where God is supreme and eternal who created a realm that is distinct from him. Pantheism is an ancient error of paganism that God corrected in Moses’ creation account.

Despite Ramaswamy’s attempts to blur and obscure Hinduism’s true beliefs, it is nevertheless a polytheistic religion, and pluralism is the natural worldview it produces. But America was not built as a pluralistic society. It was built as a Christian society, which is what made it arguably the freest and most prosperous nation in history. Even the blessed religious freedom we cherish in America was originally intended as a measure to prevent denominational differences between Christians from becoming violent. The men who wrote these protections into our constitution weren’t envisioning a pluralistic public square so Vishnu worshipers could hold public office. They were thinking about how to navigate a specifically Christian public square that could account for different kinds of legitimate Christians, such as presbyterians, congregationalists, and baptists. It was not an open door for Hindus to cheapen our faith, demote our Lord and savior, and lecture Christians about who Jesus really is.

That’s not to say every one of the founding fathers were born again Christians, because that’s not the case. What I’m saying is that the architects of our government were all operating within a Christian worldview and applying the principles of Christianity to government, even though they may not have personally been regenerate believers. You don’t have to be a regenerate Christian to work within a Christian framework, because many of the founders did just that.

That’s why many are questioning Ramaswamy’s conservative credentials since his worldview rejects the very Christian foundation we need to conserve. Put differently, he may be a conservative regarding the fruits of our Christian society, but he’s trying to replace the foundation that’s holding it together. And a faulty foundation won’t last. Ramaswamy’s vision of America is similar to his vision of Christianity. By his own admission, Christianity can be absorbed into and be ultimately replaced by a foreign religion that can speak the language and ape the outer forms but is running on a completely different operating system. Similarly, his vision of America is one that will absorb the people and place that America is built upon and absorb it into the political version of Hinduism–a pantheon of various ideas held together by a precommitment to pluralism. That’s not the America our founding fathers envisioned. If you replace the root, the fruit cannot survive either.

Thus, Ramaswamy might be a conservative in some sense, but “conservatism” as a political philosophy is only as good as what its conserving. And in his case, he’s only capable of conserving a few policies Republican voters might find favorable, but divorced from the robust, Christian worldview from which they arose in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Ramaswamy doesn’t have any good policy positions. I’d probably agree with him in many areas. My main concern is this: Vivek may sound like a conservative, but we should be more discerning about who is worthy of that label and what it means.

In short, a man whose worldview functionally demotes Jesus Christ while elevating pagan Hindu gods is not equipped to conserve what matters most. We don’t need conservatives who will simply conserve Reagan era policies that didn’t have the teeth to prevent the chaos we’re living in today. We need to go back further. Much further. Ramaswamy may use our words, and even pretend to respect our religion, but he’s not the man who will conserve the root and foundation of everything that made America great, namely, Jesus Christ himself and the application of the Christian faith to civic life.

America needs leaders who hold good policy positions but also know why they’re good policies, not merely that they’re the right policies that make one electable in a red state. What needs conserving in American life is not a matter of lower taxes, smaller government, school choice, or any other policy Republicans would support, it’s more foundational than that. What needs conserving is a way of life built upon a shared commitment to the Lordship of Christ over all things. The policy commitments that arise from that foundational commitment are important, but we are fools if we believe we can conserve good policies without understanding where they came from. Hinduism that’s presented as a friendly alternative to Christianity won’t cut it.

For my purposes here, I’m observing two primary groups. On one side, some hold conspiratorial claims that the Jews hold disproportionate power in our society, which they wield in ways that benefit the nation of Israel more than their own country. Some argue the Jews are deliberately destroying the moral fabric of our society for their own gain. In this space are names like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Ian Carroll.

On the other side is a more Zionist posture, that regards Israel as America’s #1 ally, to whom we should give total allegiance, and to criticize Israel is anti-semitic. In this space are Jewish names like Ben Shapiro, Yoram Hazony, and Mark Levin, and some Catholic names like Christopher Rufo and Rick Lowry. There are also evangelical names in this space, likely influenced by dispensational theology, such as Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Paula White, Robert Jeffress, and Tony Perkins. While dispensational theology is not as prominent as it once was, it still informs evangelicalism’s reflexes, leading people to believe that Christians should support Israel because they’re God’s chosen people.

Who are the Jews?

The Jews persist as a unique people in human history. They are the only people group whose religious identity has a genetic component, yet they are not confined to a single geography. No other ethnic group has maintained a distinct identity over four thousand years without being absorbed by surrounding cultures.

Globally, Jews represent about 0.2% of the world’s population, with a little less than half of them living in Israel and the rest living in a diaspora around the world.

The Jews also tend to thrive wherever they are. In the USA, about 2% of our population is Jewish, yet they represent roughly 1/3 of the four hundred wealthiest Americans. They hold the keys to cultural power, being a strong force in Hollywood, the music industry, banking, technology, the news media, and pornography.

The nation of Israel was founded in 1948 after World War II, and that nation has been at the center of geopolitical conflict ever since. The October 7th Hamas attack, the Gaza war, and American foreign policy debates — none of this is going away.

I’m not in an informed enough position to adjudicate these things, I’m simply reporting on the kinds of discussions unfolding online on a daily basis. Every time these subjects come up, Christians don’t know what to think, because we’ve been given two options: (1) uncritical support for Israel because “they’re God’s chosen people,” or (2) a vague discomfort that we’re not allowed to talk about any of this at all for fear of being labeled anti-semitic.

Paul’s Anguish

Since the Bible doesn’t mention America or China or Russia or Ukraine, Christians of good faith need to apply biblical principles to our understanding of geopolitics. But the Bible does mention Israel by name, and we do have a country on the map by the same name. My aim here is to identify who the Bible is referring to, especially in Romans 9-11, and what it means for us today.

In Romans 9:3, Paul describes feeling a personal anguish over the Jews because they, his “kinsmen according to the flesh,” have largely rejected their Messiah. Paul is speaking specifically of the biological descendants of Abraham, who are “are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (v4). Ultimately, “from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (v5).

God adopted Israel as his own possession. He made a covenant with them, gave them the law, taught them how to worship, and promised to bless them as a people. He established the true faith through them. The genealogies of the Old Testament exist to preserve the Abrahamic bloodline because God’s purpose in choosing the Jewish people was to bring forth the Messiah. It was always about Jesus, even when it didn’t look like it, and the plan took over two millennia to unfold.

And when Christ finally came, they rejected him. Since God made these promises to the Jewish people regarding their Messiah—since God used the Jews to bring salvation to the world yet they did not receive it—Paul anticipates someone’s objection that perhaps “the word of God has failed” (v6). Did God’s word fail regarding the Jews?

Two Israels

Paul’s answer is a resounding “no,” and here’s the reason: there have always been two Israels.

Abraham has two kinds of descendants: (1) children of the flesh and (2) children of the promise. God promised to make Abraham a great nation, but he never promised that every single physical descendant of Abraham would be saved. God also promised that salvation would come through Abraham’s line, but he never promised that every individual in his line would be saved.

So God’s promise includes both a physical seed and a spiritual seed. Christians have been confusing them for a long time. Also, this is not something new, as though Paul is retroactively reading his experience back into the story of Abraham. Rather, Paul is exegeting the passages in Genesis to demonstrate that even within the first few generations of Abraham’s own family this distinction had always been made.

Abraham had two sons. Ishmael was the child of the flesh born to Hagar, and Isaac was the child of the promise born to Sarah. Even though Ishmael was physically Abraham’s son, he did not inherit the promise, because God’s promise was that Sarah would be the mother (not Hagar, Ishmael’s mother).

The same is true in the following generation. Isaac had twin sons. Esau was the child of the flesh, and Jacob was the child of the promise. In this case, both boys had the same mother, and yet, only Isaac was chosen to inherit the promise. God chose Jacob over Esau before either of them had done anything good or bad. The choice was entirely God’s, and it had nothing to do with ethnicity or birthright in the ordinary sense.

Therefore, even within Abraham’s own family, there have always been two Israels: children of the flesh and children of the promise. Throughout the generations of Israel’s history, there was always a larger nation comprised of Abraham’s physical descendants, and a “remnant” within that nation who were true believers.

The New Testament picks up this theme with John the Baptist. When the religious establishment comes to him with their credentials, he tells them: “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8). In other words, faith matters more than blood. God is establishing a faithful people, not merely collecting Abraham’s biological descendants (cf Rom 2:28).

Now that Jesus has come and fulfilled the promise, the nation of Israel as a political and ethnic entity has served its purpose: the preservation of the Messianic line. God’s judgment fell on Israel as a nation in 70 AD when the temple was destroyed, exactly as Jesus predicted. The vehicle had delivered its cargo. Its special status was finished.

The Stunning Reversal

So, here is what Paul’s anguish is actually about: the tragic irony of Jewish unbelief.

The unbelieving Jews of Paul’s day saw themselves as Jacob, the line of promise, but actually they are Esau, mere children of Abraham’s flesh. The unbelieving Jews saw themselves as Isaac, the child of the promise, but actually they are Ishmael, the son of the slave woman (cf Gal 4:21-31).

This is one of the great scandals of the New Testament. The Jews, Abraham’s physical descendants, Paul’s “kinsmen according to the flesh,” saw themselves as God’s chosen people. They regarded the Gentiles as cut off from God. In reality, unbelieving Jews are the ones who were cut off from God, and believing Gentiles have become the true sons of Abraham, children of the promise, and the true Israel of God.

Galatians 6:15-16 explicitly says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.”

Therefore, God’s word has not failed, it was just fulfilled in ways they didn’t expect. True Israel is reckoned according to those share Abraham’s faith (i.e., faith in Christ), not those who merely share Abraham’s DNA.

Thus, God’s purpose of election played out exactly as God intended. He chose Jacob over Esau before either was born. He builds his covenant people not on the basis of ethnicity but on the basis of sovereign grace operating through faith. The promise to Abraham was always bigger than Abraham’s family. It was always aimed at the whole world.

What This Means Practically

This being the case, what does it mean for Christians and Jews in our day? Here are three simple conclusions we can draw.

First, unbelieving Jews have no special covenant standing before God. This cuts against the dispensationalist view which has exerted significant influence in evangelical circles. Dispensationalism holds that ethnic Israel retains a separate covenant status and prophetic future distinct from the Church. That view is wrong. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, and there is no salvation apart from explicit faith in Jesus Christ (Eph 4:5-6). If you have an unbelieving Jewish neighbor or coworker, treat him like any other unbeliever. Be kind, share the gospel, treat him with respect, but do not defer to him or grant him a special status he does not possess. He has rejected his Messiah. That is the most important thing to know about him.

Second, the Bible does not require the United States to support the nation of Israel. This is the same principle as the above point at scale. Many sincere Christians believe America has a divine obligation to stand with Israel because the Jews are God’s chosen people. But that’s simply not true. The only people who can rightly be called God’s chosen people are Christians—we are the true circumcision, the true Jew, the Israel of God. Modern unbelieving Jews have no covenant standing with God. Just because the nation of Israel happens to be called “Israel” and occupied by Jewish people, it has no special status before God. We may choose to support them if doing so serves our national interests, but that is a political calculation, not a theological obligation. No verse of Scripture requires it.

Think of it this way: if the apostle Paul were walking through Tel Aviv today, he would not be talking about Iran or bombs or Bibi Netanyahu or the Gaza strip or foreign policy. He would feel grief in his soul because they are his kinsmen according to the flesh and they have rejected their Messiah. His concern would be for their souls, not their geopolitical interests. He would say, “These people need Jesus.” That is the right Christian posture toward the Jewish people: not political alliance, but evangelistic urgency.

So when you read about “Israel” or “the Jews” in your Bible, do not picture a country on a map. Picture a lost people group, some of whom live in the nation of Israel, and some who are scattered around the world, who need to receive their Messiah.

Third, God does have a future plan for the salvation of the Jewish people through faith in Jesus Christ. Romans 11 does teach that before Christ returns, God will bring about a mass conversion of ethnic Jews. This is a genuine promise and worth taking seriously. But it does not mean that unbelieving Jews currently enjoy a favored status before God apart from faith.

Think of it this way. You might have unbelievers in your life that you care deeply about right now. Further, you don’t realize it, but suppose they are elect and God will one day bring about their faith and conversion to Christ. Even though that unbelieving friend will one day become a Christian, he or she has no covenant standing before God. He is simply an unbeliever who is elect and will become a Christian someday. That’s what Romans 11 is saying. God will bring a large number of Jews to faith in Jesus Christ at some point in the future because he cares for their souls. But that’s not the same thing as assuming those unbelievers have covenant standing before God. And when that day comes, they will not be saved because they are Jews, they will be saved because they have repented of their sins and placed their faith in Jesus Christ.

Reformed Christians hold to the doctrines of grace in our theological systems but end up denying them in practice.

When I was a younger Christian, I struggled with a lot of doubts that hindered my faith and growth. I wondered, “what if Christianity is wrong and the Muslims are right?” Or, “what if the Jews are right, Jesus is an imposter, and I’m a blasphemer for worshiping a mere man?” Or, “what if the atheists are right and I’m just wasting my time and energy?” Or even, “what if Christianity is correct, but I believe the wrong tradition such that my soul is in jeopardy and I’m not truly saved?”

Under all these doubts was the fear that I was deceived, that God didn’t truly love me, and I was damned to hell. Thankfully, the Lord led me to resources to resolve all these questions, and God turned those doubts into a calling. But I still remember the fear, and that fear can still linger in the hearts of Reformed Christians whose good doctrine hasn’t completed the journey from their heads to their hearts.

Christians who feel this way are insecure in the love of God, which leads them to take their eyes off of Jesus, focus on themselves, and start trying to earn God’s approval. A Christian who is insecure in God’s love will be too afraid to attempt anything daring because he or she is afraid of being wrong. So they play it safe. They focus on killing sin, which is a good thing, but they don’t take any risks to build things that might fail. They’re afraid of failure because they doubt God’s love for them.

Some traditions overemphasize the love of God at the expense of his holiness and wrath. They might feel more secure in God’s love, but it’s a warped love that doesn’t fully account for man’s sin. They tend to be more antinomian. They have a false confidence that God just adores them and can’t live without them. We’re right to be critical of those teachings. But that’s not my point. My point is that Reformed theology presents the love of God more fully, and if we believed it more deeply, we’d be more confident to take risks and build great things. Simply put, we can be so introspective and hyper-cautious that we doubt God could ever love us at all, thus making us too insecure to build anything.

God Is For You

Romans 8:31 says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Note that first phrase: “God is for us.” When squishy evangelicals say “God is for you,” it makes Reformed Christians wince a little. Our instinct is to recoil a bit and think, “God is for GOD!” Yes, that’s true, but the two statements are not mutually exclusive. We get theologically technical at precisely the moment Paul is being most pastoral. Perhaps we resist it because we’re insecure in God’s love and verses like this sound too good to be true.

Paul asks the question in a way that answers itself. Reformed Christians don’t want to treat God like a cosmic vending machine, so God’s favor stays largely theoretical. We accept it as a doctrine but then live as if God is managing us from a distance, watching for infractions, one bad season of prayer away from withdrawing his favor.

I’ll admit I do this. I can easily fall into the habit of assuming God’s love for me is proportional to my sanctification. When I do this, I think about myself a lot more than I think about Jesus, which compounds the problem. Being insecure in God’s love makes me more self-focused, introspective, and cautious. I fear I’m being presumptuous of God’s love, so I start trying to prove to him I’m worthy of it.

The insecure Christian obeys God in a vain attempt to gain God’s approval, while the secure Christian obeys God because he’s confident he’s already gained it apart from his effort. The insecure Christian serves God like an employee who’s worried about his job security. The secure Christian serves God like the owner’s son who is fully invested in the family business.

If you’re an insecure Christian, you have a nagging, low-grade fear that God isn’t actually for you. Practically, that fear makes you timid. You don’t attempt bold things for the kingdom because you’re too unsure of your standing to risk getting it wrong. This isn’t a minor pastoral problem.

I notice this especially in the Reformed ecosystem of which I’m a part. Since there’s so much love-love-love talk from squishy evangelicals, we end up overcorrecting. We fully embrace God’s holiness, justice, and sovereignty, but God’s love can sometimes be held at arms length. Or it gets theologized into oblivion until it no longer carries the pastoral weight intended in the New Testament. We end up theologically careful and personally miserable.

What Christ Did at Calvary

Paul said, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). He also said, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).

God is the most supremely valuable being in existence. It follows that he loves what is supremely valuable, namely, himself. This might sound strange to modern ears, but it’s not a character flaw. It would be idolatry for God to love something more than himself, because nothing is more worthy of love than God. The Father’s love for the Son is the most perfect love in the universe. His love is eternal, unbounded, and without diminishment of any kind. God delights in his Son the way nothing else in creation can be delighted in, because nothing else in creation can compare to him.

What did God do? God gave him up. Why? Because he set his covenant love on us from before the foundation of the world and made us the objects of his eternal affection.

Which created a problem. Our sin stood between God and his beloved, and his own righteousness demanded its punishment. He couldn’t simply overlook it, because he loves his own holiness too much for that. So in a real sense, God himself was the obstacle between God and his people. The only way forward was for him to bear the penalty himself.

That’s what the cross was. The blood of Christ was the price God paid to acquire his bride, and he paid it gladly. Hebrews says Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him” (Heb 12:2). They didn’t need to nail him to the cross. His love would have kept him there.

So consider what Paul is arguing. If God was willing to give the most precious thing in existence, at the greatest possible cost, on what grounds would he withhold his favor from you? Paul said, “how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (v32), The cross is the guarantee of God’s continuing generosity towards us.

This means every time you catch yourself thinking God doesn’t love you because money is tight, your prayers went unanswered, or because your prayer life is weak, you need to go back to the hill outside Jerusalem and remember what was decided there. God gave you his Son. What more could he possibly give to prove the point?

Reformed Christians know all of this. We can say it in our sleep. The problem is the distance between knowing it and let it sink so deeply into our bones that we feel it all the time. And when that happens, we become unconquerable.

More than Conquerors

Paul continues, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37). The Greek behind “more than conquerors” is a single word, huper-nikao. You could think of it as “super conquerors.” He’s describing what happens in our lives when we finally apprehend the astounding depths of God’s love.

We’re not merely survivors, white-knuckling our way through life till we get to heaven. No, we become super-conquerors “through him who loved us.” I’m talking about a joyful, victorious posture in your ordinary, Christian life. In other words, the capacity to conquer comes from Christ’s love. Which means the key to living like a conqueror is being more convinced that God is for you.

This is how Spurgeon put it: “Paul was so persuaded that Christ would never leave him that he became a fighter. He went in with all his might against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Some say this doctrine would send us to sleep. It never does. It wakes us up.”

This is what insecure Christianity gets exactly backwards. It assumes confidence in God’s love would render us more passive, as though we’d start taking God for granted. I’d say, anyone who takes God’s love for granted hasn’t fully comprehended it yet.

Paul says in his own testimony that he was beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, stoned, and more. He planted churches in cities that wanted him dead. He wrote his most triumphant theology from a prison in Rome. The security of God’s love didn’t make him passive, it made him dangerous. It can do the same for you. I pray Christians would be more dangerous, like Paul was.

The Christian who is insecure in God’s love is too focused on not sinning that he ends up not building anything. He buries his talent in the ground because he’s afraid of his master’s severity. But the man who is fully confident in God’s love is fearless enough to take risks, knowing that God will love him despite the outcome.

How do we know this? Because John tells us, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). As Paul brought the first half of his letter to the Ephesians to a close, he erupted in a beautiful prayer that they, “being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18).

The Verdict

At the end of Romans 8, Paul ends his argument like a lawyer resting his case. He summons every kind of power one could possibly conceive of and holds it up against the overwhelming power of God’s unfailing love. He says, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v38-39). None of these powers can withstand the power of God’s love.

He opens this statement by saying “I am sure” which doesn’t quite capture the utter certainty of what he’s saying. The original verb is in the perfect tense, indicating a rational, settled, unalterable certainty. It’s a final verdict, not a fleeting feeling.

Paul’s certainty was anchored in his own life experience. He catalogued his various suffering in 2 Cor 11, which included five beatings with 39 lashes, 3 beatings with rods, three shipwrecks, one stoning, and a night adrift at sea, not to mention being constantly hounded by danger, hunger, thirst, and the incessant pressure of anxiety for all the churches (v23-29). Satan threw the kitchen sink at him, but amazingly, Paul’s certainty of God’s love only grew through it.

Just like Paul, we, too are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and already glorified in the mind of God. Not one link in that golden chain is broken because not one of them depends on us.

Reformed Christians have the richest account of this love in all of Christendom. We trace it from before the foundation of the world through the golden chain to the certain glorification that awaits us in eternity. The doctrine is there. It just hasn’t finished the journey from our heads to our hearts.

God is for you. The cross proved it. Don’t doubt it, trust and believe it.

I have a book coming out soon from Canon Press that develops some of the themes highlighted in this essay. It’s about why the church keeps losing, and why so many of our most trusted teachers have convinced us that losing is more faithful. It is the belief that passivity, retreat, and defeat are more Christlike than courage, ambition, and power. The first half diagnoses the problem and the people responsible for it. The second half prescribes the remedy. It describes what it actually looks like to live as more than a conqueror in ordinary Christian life. I wrote this book to help the church break free from this “loser theology” mindset and pursue a life of Christian victory.

I spoke to the publisher last week. An official title and release date are coming soon. They hope to have preorders ready to go in a few weeks and a ship date in early summer. I’ll keep you updated as things progress. Make sure you subscribe now so you don’t miss anything!

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There’s a lot of these in the Sermon on the Mount—sayings of Jesus that depict the “upside-down” realities of God’s kingdom, like “love your enemies” and “blessed are the poor.” I took a whole class on the Sermon on the Mount in seminary. That class ended up being one of my favorites, probably because it appealed to my youth zeal and idealism.

In my years of ministry since that class, I’ve noticed how these upside down kingdom concepts kept showing up in the evangelical world as fortune cookie statements that sound profound but don’t make a lot of sense practically.

Another one of these upside-down statements is in 2 Cor 12:9, where Jesus tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Paul responded to this statement by saying, “therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (v10).

Practically, then, this statement can be misconstrued as a call to actually become weaker, thinking that would create an opportunity for the strength and power of Christ to shine through. A student might think, “if I study for this test, I’m relying on the flesh. So I can not study for the test, giving God the opportunity to be glorified through my weakness.” This is foolish, but it’s the kind of foolishness that Christians can easily convince themselves is actually otherworldly, spiritual wisdom.

For a seminary student, half listening to a lecture and half daydreaming about future ministry, verses like that can stay abstract. It can even feel like a spiritualized excuse for being passive and lazy, thinking “if God is strong when I’m weak, I’ll choose to be weak so God’s power can work in my ministry.”

You might have heard people weaponize this verse against Christian ambition, cultural engagement, or masculine courage. The implication, as it’s usually wielded, is that striving for excellence is suspect. The properly humble Christian should approach life with a pre-commitment to weakness, which is defined as “non-power” or “non-effort.” To be “weak” means to not try very hard, to not assert oneself very much, or to “lead with a limp.” To do otherwise would be putting confidence in the flesh.

This misunderstanding has contributed to producing a generation of Christians who spiritualize their passivity, expecting God to bless their half-hearted efforts because they were appropriately “weak.” That’s not what Paul meant. So, what does this text mean by “weakness?” And what did Paul mean by his response that he would “boast all the more gladly of my weakness?”

What Weakness Actually Means

The “weakness” Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 refers to utter dependence on God for everything. Christ said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5) — which is another way of saying, “you are weak apart from me.” Compared to God, we are weak, and whatever human strength we have is a gift from him.

When Paul said, “therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,” he was not saying he would try to become actually weaker, but to acknowledge he has no strength of his own apart from God. His “boasting” is simply an acknowledgement of God’s power at work in him. Paul knew he could do nothing apart from Christ, so he gave God the glory in everything. And his thorn in the flesh was a divine reminder of this — given precisely because of the extraordinary supernatural revelations he’d experienced.

Thus, “weakness” should not be confused with things like inaction, indiscipline, or ignorance. When we make this mistake, “strength through weakness” becomes a magic wand to wave over incompetence, as if God promises extra blessings to those who don’t try very hard.

This thread of God’s power working through human weakness runs through both of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Here are six observations about strength and weakness that can help clarify what he actually meant.

How Power and Weakness Converge in the Christian Life

First, God is the source of all power. All human strength is on loan from God. In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Paul and Apollos worked hard, but the ultimate result was in God’s hands. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7).

Second, it is a sin to act as if the power comes from us. That’s the sin of boasting. “Boasting” is a recurring theme in Paul’s writing, especially in his letters to the church in Corinth, mentioning it some 37 times in those two letters. “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor 4:7).

This is the heart of the matter. Weakness doesn’t mean non-power. It means reliance on God’s power received as a gift. It means the righteous exercise of human power while always acknowledging God as the divine source. The issue isn’t power vs. non-power, but always giving God the glory for the power that operates within us (1 Cor 10:31).

Third, God’s power usually works through the natural abilities he gives us. God’s power normally operates in our lives in the form of spiritual gifts. Most of the time, spiritual gifts are ordinary abilities sanctified and empowered by the Spirit, such as teaching, helping, serving, exhorting, contributing, giving (1 Cor 12:4–6, Rom 12:6–8).

God distributes these disproportionately. Some people have greater gifts, others have lesser. Regardless, God providentially arranges them such that those with seemingly “weaker” gifts are regarded as vital to the life of the church (1 Cor 12:22). On occasion, God works in extraordinary or miraculous ways to demonstrate clearly that his power is at hand. But the ordinary pattern is sanctified human effort.

Fourth, God may use suffering and affliction to humble us. Paul said he faced afflictions so severe that he despaired of life itself (2 Cor 1:8–9, 6:4–10). That’s what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was about. Without question, Paul was a man of extraordinary gifts, and God afflicted him with a thorn in his flesh to keep him from becoming conceited. But this must not be regarded as a mandate for Christians to justify incompetence or lack of effort by calling it weakness.

Fifth, Paul’s approach in Corinth was contextual, not universal. Corinth’s most glaring sin was boastful arrogance — they were enamored with displays of miraculous power. So Paul chose not to showboat his gifts in their presence because it distracted from his focus on the cross (1 Cor 2:2). His restraint was strategic. His opponents even ridiculed him as a lightweight because of it (2 Cor 10:10).

Sixth, Paul explicitly reserved the right to display power when needed. His weakness, fear, and trembling in Corinth (1 Cor 2:3) were not spiritual absolutes for every believer in every context. Elsewhere Paul says the opposite: “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim 1:7). The restraint in Corinth was a ministry strategy, not a theology of Christian passivity.

Weakness, therefore, does not mean a pre-commitment to non-power. It does not mean God promises extra blessings to those who don’t try very hard.

What does it mean to “boast in our weakness”?

So what does it mean to “boast in our weakness?” First, it doesn’t mean “don’t try very hard so God gets the glory.” Paul says elsewhere, “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Col 3:23-24). A Christian can be disciplined, hard working, and even powerful, yet when he acknowledges God as the animating force behind all his excellent efforts, he is “boasting” in God, not in himself. When we acknowledge God’s power behind every excellent work we do, we are “boasting in our weakness.”

A good example of this can be seen in Proverbs 21:31. It says, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Both sides of the strength/weakness paradox can be seen here. The line, “the horse is made ready for battle,” is where human effort and preparation come in. When men go to battle, they must do their preparations for the battle to succeed. There are various “battles” and challenges we face in our lives, and we have work to do to face them. The second line, “but the victory belongs to the Lord,” is where we boast in our weakness. We can do nothing on our own. Our preparations, planning, hard work, excellence, courage, and follow through—all these things are gifts from God who enables us to do these things. To “boast in our weakness” is to do all these things with all our might, yet acknowledge God’s power at work within us as we do them.

Therefore, the Christian life is not a posture of strategic non-effort waiting for divine compensation. It’s a race. Run it like you intend to win.

This essay expands on material from my forthcoming book with Canon Press, which makes this argument at length and applies it to some specific figures in contemporary evangelicalism who have gotten this badly wrong.

The book is about why the church keeps losing, and why we’ve been taught to feel good about it. The first half diagnoses what I call Loser Theology: the idea that passivity, retreat, and defeat are somehow more Christlike than engagement, courage, and power. The second half is the remedy — what high-agency Christianity actually looks like in practice.

It’s a pastoral book, not a political one. It came out of sitting across from men in my office who had been told by trusted teachers that ambition is pride and power is corruption. I wrote it for them. I'll have a title and release date to share soon. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it!

The section of Isaiah known as the “Isaiah Apocalypse” runs from chapters 24 through 27. It opens with total devastation. Chapter 24 is not subtle. The earth is laid waste, its foundations are shaken, the heavens are undone — it’s judgment on a breathtakingly dreadful scale.

Then chapter 25 opens with praise. Verses 6–9 describe what follows the devastation: a feast, on a mountain, for all peoples, where God himself swallows up death forever. The emotional arc runs from devastation to celebration. That arc should sound familiar, because it’s the same arc of Jesus Christ. The cross was judgment. The resurrection is the party after the war.

But Isaiah isn’t merely describing what happened to Jesus. He’s describing what will happen to everything. The whole created order will follow the same pattern as its Lord — death, then life, judgment, then feast.

Put another way, Isaiah 24–25 is the Easter story of the cosmos.

The feast takes place on a mountain, which Isaiah specifies deliberately. In the Old Testament, mountains are where heaven and earth meet, where God shows up. Abraham nearly offered Isaac on a mountain. Moses received the law on a mountain. The temple was built on a mountain, Jesus was transfigured, crucified, and ascended from mountains. The Bible’s most consequential moments happen at high elevation. That’s not incidental geography — it’s the Bible’s way of saying the boundary between the divine and human is thin up there.

The mountain Isaiah has in mind is Mount Zion, the hill in Jerusalem where the temple stood, established as the setting in 24:23 where the LORD of hosts reigns on Zion immediately before the feast scene begins. But Zion carries far more weight than its coordinates. Isaiah returns to this mountain throughout his book. It is one of the controlling images of his whole prophecy. In chapter 2, at the very beginning, he describes Zion as the highest of all mountains, with nations streaming toward it from every direction. In chapter 65, at the very end, the wolf and lamb graze together and nothing hurts or destroys “in all my holy mountain.” The same image anchors the opening and the closing of the book, and it grows in significance each time it appears. By the time we reach chapter 25, this is not merely a hill in Jerusalem. It is the place where God meets the world, where the whole human story reaches its apex and proper end.

Zion has always held both mercy and judgment in tension. The sacrificial system operated there, which included the entire machinery of sin, guilt, and atonement. Blood was shed constantly at this mountain, precisely because this is where God’s holiness was most concentrated. Yet at the same time, the psalmists sang about Zion as a city that cannot be shaken, a place of refuge where God defeats his enemies and shelters his people. Judgment and salvation have always met on that mountain.

About a quarter mile away stood another hill called Golgotha, the place of the skull, where Jesus was crucified. Close enough that the temple complex was almost certainly visible from the cross. The people who watched Christ die on the cross could see the house of God in the background. Calvary is the place where Zion’s two functions finally and decisively converged — the judgment fell on God’s Son, and the salvation went to everyone who looks at him in faith.

The central verb in Isaiah 25:6–9 is the Hebrew word bala’ — to swallow. God uses it twice. First he swallows up the covering cast over all peoples, the veil of blindness and death that drapes the whole human race without exception. Then, more dramatically, he swallows up death itself, permanently.

Death is the great swallower — Isaiah 5:14 uses the same verb for Sheol, a hungry mouth that takes everything and gives nothing back. The whole world lives under something that devours without limit, that no one escapes, that renders every human achievement temporary and every human joy provisional. God’s answer to that is not to comfort us in the face of death or help us make peace with it. His answer is to out-swallow it. He takes the thing that consumed everything and consumes it. In other words, the predator gets eaten.

Paul knew exactly what Isaiah was doing. When he arrives at the climax of his resurrection argument in 1 Corinthians 15, he quotes Isaiah 25:8 directly — “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” — not as a poetic flourish but as a fulfillment claim. The tomb is empty because Isaiah 25:8 had to come true. John says the same thing in Revelation 21, where the voice from the throne promises that God will wipe away every tear, that death shall be no more, that mourning and crying and pain are finished. That is Isaiah’s feast. The mountain, the veil removed, the tears wiped away, the reproach lifted. John isn’t inventing new imagery. He’s telling his readers that the vision Isaiah saw has arrived.

The feast itself is spread for all peoples and all nations, not just Israel, which was always the point. The God of Israel was never merely the God of one people. He chose a particular people as the means through whom he would reach everyone else, and the mountain that began in chapter 2 with nations streaming toward it ends in chapter 25 with those nations sitting at the table eating the finest food and drinking the best wine. The last verse captures the mood: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.” Nobody at that table will be comparing their spiritual résumés. There is only the recognition that God did what only God could do, and the only appropriate response to that is joy.

That joy has already broken into history. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the down payment on everything Isaiah described — the feast has started, even if the main course is still coming. Every time the church gathers, every baptism, every Lord’s Supper, we are tasting what Isaiah saw. The guests are still arriving. But death has already lost.

Isaiah prophesied it in advance. We are living in it now.

I am a church planter. In 2008, I moved my family to Cincinnati and planted Christ the King Church through the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) Nehemiah Project—a church planting funding initiative tied to Southern Seminary (SBTS). NAMB made my church possible, and I am genuinely grateful for that. My church exists because of NAMB, SBTS, the Nehemiah Project, and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). I was greatly encouraged and fully supported as a church planter during those volatile early years of uncertainty.

This experience has also given me an insider’s perspective for nearly two decades into how the church planting engine works. I’ve seen both incredible fruit and significant carnage. I believe Southern Baptists deserve a clear picture of what their Cooperative Program dollars are actually doing.

Here is my thesis: NAMB has more money than qualified men to spend it on. That single problem, and the institutional pressures it generates, explains much of what has gone wrong with Southern Baptist church planting over the last fifteen years.

The Math Nobody Talks About

Consider what it costs to fund a church planter. When I first started, my support package from the Nehemiah project, my state convention, and local association was about $3,000 per month, plus health insurance, and lasted for over three years. Using rough numbers, that’s an investment of over $108,000 to plant one healthy church. If the numbers were always that straightforward and simple, no one would argue that’s a worthwhile investment to establish an SBC church that could last generations.

Now consider NAMB’s budget. The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering alone generates roughly $70 million annually, representing about half of NAMB’s total budgeted revenue.[1] Add in Cooperative Program (CP) receipts and NAMB is working with approximately $140–150 million per year.[2]

That staggering sum creates an interesting dilemma: what if NAMB has more money to spend than qualified church planters to spend it on? When money accumulates faster than qualified leaders, the pressure to spend it anyway becomes nearly irresistible.

Churches give generously to NAMB under the reasonable assumption that more dollars produce more churches. The logic seems intuitive, but it is wrong. Money cannot manufacture qualified pastors. If you have $10 million earmarked for church planting but no qualified planters to send, that $10 million will not plant a single healthy congregation. The irreplaceable ingredient is a godly, qualified man with the gifts, character, and calling to shepherd a flock. No budget line item substitutes for that. Apart from a work of the Spirit, all the money in the world will not plant one healthy church. Simply put, money can’t buy calling, qualification or gifting.

Another problem is that qualified church planters do not scale on demand. Leadership development is slow, organic, and resistant to institutional acceleration. But money does scale, and when money accumulates and compounds, it creates enormous pressure to justify its existence by being spent. In short, the church planting world has a leadership bottleneck that no amount of money can fix.

And yet, Southern Baptists are eager to fulfill the Great Commission, and we’re convinced that church planting is the best and most faithful way to do it. That presents us with a difficult choice. The first option is to lower the bar for church planters, which means taking risks on men who may not be qualified or ready to plant. This option is more pragmatic. Sometimes the gamble will pay off, and men will rise to the challenge to successfully plant a healthy church. It also enjoys the good optics of reporting to the convention a larger number of churches planted. This option has hidden costs that are rarely talked about: many of these men burn out or disqualify themselves, and their churches fail.

The second option is to maintain a high standard for church planters, which means fewer men will meet it, leading to fewer churches being planted. This option is more faithful, in my view, but the optics aren’t as good. Southern Baptists want their Cooperative Program dollars producing results; no one wants to report declining numbers of churches planted to the convention, even if those few churches have a higher likelihood of success and longevity.

As I will show, it seems NAMB has taken the first option because the money is there and the convention is eager for positive results, but I have seen too much pastoral carnage to look the other way.

The Church Planting Gold Rush

The 2010s were a church planting gold rush in evangelicalism, and NAMB was sitting on the mother lode. The launch of the Send Network, a marketing initiative targeting the top twenty-five urban centers in North America, turned NAMB into the most talked-about name in church planting circles. I once heard someone say, “NAMB will give money to anyone.” You can see that in the table below (and Appendix A) in terms of the sheer number of churches planted along with the actual NAMB expenditures in 2025 dollars.

Bars (left axis): number of new church plants only (excluding campuses, replants, and existing churches that joined the SBC as affiliates). Line (right axis): NAMB total actual expenditure restated to constant 2025 dollars (CPI-U). 2021–2024 denotes years where audited totals include non-operating and investment activity. The 2020 figure revised from 588 to 538 per Scott Barkley (Baptist Press Article, Sept. 2025).

That reputation had consequences. Church planters from a variety of networks began pursuing dual affiliation with the SBC. They did not do this out of any particular theological or ecclesiological loyalty to the convention, but because that’s where they could get funding. NAMB had money to give. These planters would retain their primary network identity while dually affiliating with the SBC, sometimes ditching the SBC as soon as the money ran out. It was, in the parlance of the moment, a NASCAR sponsorship phenomenon: put the logo on the car and collect the check.

The gold rush also created awkward incentive structures within existing churches. For years, the traditional pathway to becoming a senior pastor looked something like this: a young man with gifts and calling would come on staff as a youth pastor or worship pastor, learn under a seasoned elder, develop over time, and eventually rise to senior pastoral responsibility as he matured. It was slow and often frustrating for ambitious young men. But it worked.

The church planting boom short-circuited all of that. Why wait years for an uncertain ministry promotion when you could plant a church today? NAMB and the broader church planting culture promised aspiring young leaders the title of lead pastor immediately, multiple years of guaranteed funding, little accountability to an established eldership, and the adoring accolades of a grateful convention that would celebrate you as a hero doing the tough “trench work” of planting. For a young man eager to be recognized, eager to lead, and eager to prove himself, that is a nearly irresistible offer. And many took it.

Seminaries fed the same machine. Brick and mortar seminaries need tuition revenue to keep the lights on, which creates an institutional incentive to enroll students that are unlikely to be successful in vocational ministry. Their MA or MDiv diploma then functions as a valid credential for church planting assessment. It can be emotionally difficult to tell a man “no” to church planting when he has worked for years and made financial sacrifices to go to seminary to get to that interview, especially when you are sitting on a pile of cash and your annual report to the convention is measured in churches planted. There’s a lot of pressure to advance a man through the pipeline, cut him a check, and pray it works out.

What the Money Actually Buys

I have been on the receiving end of NAMB’s generosity from the beginning. When my wife and I were commissioned through the Nehemiah Project, NAMB flew what appeared to be hundreds of church planters and their spouses, possibly more than a thousand, out to Denver for the ceremony. It was an all expenses paid trip, including hotel rooms, travel, and meals. It was an impressive operation.

At the time, I thought, “they’re going out of their way to make this a special event,” and we appreciated being treated with such kindness. I especially remember one detail in particular—the name badges we all wore had our names engraved on them. That was a nice touch, but I couldn’t help but wonder what those cost to produce, especially in light of the other expenses. I thought perhaps they were willing to indulge a few luxuries to mark such a momentous occasion, but I later noticed NAMB had a way of spending a lot of money on other events as well.

For example, my wife and I were invited to go to the SBC annual convention in New Orleans, all expenses paid, with the expectation that I would sit for a video interview about church planting while we were there. I also went to a training event at NAMB Headquarters in Alpharetta, GA, again, on NAMB’s dime. Attendees were told to choose an item from the merch store to take as a gift. I chose a nice, NAMB jacket. On another occasion, my wife and I were invited to attend an all expenses paid, exclusive fundraiser in New York City with select, high profile pastors who had deep pockets. Our job was to mingle and be the face of urban church planting. I was honored to have been invited and express my appreciation for how NAMB made our ministry possible.

NAMB also blessed church planters in other, unexpected ways. I got an email once telling me to go to the online merch store and choose any item as a gift. This time I picked out a nice, Ogio laptop backpack which I still use to this day, ten years later. I was also notified that NAMB wanted to help church planters establish retirement accounts, so I would be receiving a $1,000 gift deposited into my Guidestone account.

Since we were in one of NAMB’s targeted SEND cities, all the church planter families in my city were treated to an all expenses paid trip to Great Wolf Lodge. At every turn, we were treated like royalty. We went to nice dinners in fancy restaurants and tickets to Cincinnati Reds ballgames. Church planting is a difficult ministry and we were blown away by the generosity shown to us by Southern Baptists through NAMB.

The Carnage

I need to speak plainly here, because the human cost of bad church planting is real and serious. I entered the church planting world in 2008, and in the years since, I’ve witnessed a great deal of carnage. If a zealous church planter isn’t able to build a self-sustaining church after a faithful effort, that’s unfortunate and possibly painful for those involved, but reasonable Christians understand that not every plant will succeed. My concern is for the unacceptably large number of church plants that have failed due to scandal surrounding the church planter. Let me give you some examples.

I visited a NAMB church plant in Cincinnati that first year before we launched ours. The pastor had no theological training. Rather than preaching that week, the pastor played a video of a Steven Furtick sermon, part of a pre-packaged multi-week series that freed him from the burdens of preparing a message. He was well funded and had institutional backing. He resigned after a few years.

Another NAMB church planter in my city of Cincinnati stepped down from ministry because his marriage was falling apart. He and his wife eventually divorced. During this time, he drifted away from orthodoxy and embraced a kind of mystical universalism. It is difficult to calculate the spiritual harm caused by these situations. I counseled with one woman from his church shortly after this happened. She said, “I sat under his preaching. I learned the gospel from him. If he’s a fraud, what do I do with what he taught me?”

One friend of mine planted a NAMB church in Massachusetts. My church financially supported him. When his church plant was unsuccessful, he ended up denying the Christian faith altogether, becoming an outspoken atheist who is hostile to Christ.

And then there is the church planting failure I find most disturbing. A man visited my church one Sunday who said he’d recently moved his family to Cincinnati to plant a church. I’d heard his name from some pastor friends who had red flags about him. He’d been assessed by two different church planting networks and was turned down—but he was approved by NAMB! He formed a core group with a few families and was building momentum. A year or so later, I received word that he shut it all down. Why? He had left his wife, abandoned his children and his church to come out publicly as a practicing homosexual. He now works for a homosexual-affirming congregation in my city.

Most of these churches were planted with NAMB resources and support. Their eventual collapse brought reproach on the name of Christ, not to mention the Southern Baptist Convention. And every soul who joined these churches trusted these pastors to shepherd them. When church plants fail in such devastating ways, the spiritual toll is incalculable to the body of Christ.

This is the cost of lowering the bar. It’s not an abstract statistical failure. It’s real people enduring real harm—these people sat under the preaching of these pastors, submitting to their leadership, and found themselves wounded, disillusioned, and often skeptical of the church for years afterward.

Incentives and Assessments

As stories of church planting problems have begun to circulate more broadly, the goodwill is beginning to fade. The gold rush of the 2000s and 2010s seems to have slowed down, as people experienced firsthand the pain of failed church plants and disqualified pastors.

Given NAMB’s mixed track record, not to mention the spiritual devastation left in its wake, two inevitable questions came to mind. First, how did so many men who crashed out in church planting pass their assessments? And second, given NAMB’s reputation for generosity and easy assessments, what sort of unintentional incentives did that generosity create?

When considered together, these two questions answer themselves. Let me explain. Good church planting assessments should filter out aspiring planters that should not be sent and funded. Assessments are not rubber stamps. They should rigorously verify and discern, as best as possible, whether the candidate truly possesses the gifting and calling to plant. Therefore, in effect, the best assessments lead to fewer churches being planted because the proper filters have been applied.

But given NAMB’s impressive war chest, not to mention its mandate from the convention to plant more churches, the incentives prioritize quantity over quality. NAMB justifies its resource allocation by reporting a high total of churches planted, and no one will raise the alarm if those churches are led by unqualified men. There’s no metric for faithfulness. Churches led by unqualified pastors are all reported the same way.

When rigorous assessments filter out men who aren’t good candidates for planting, fewer churches are planted, leading to a surplus of unspent church planting dollars. That money needs to go somewhere, and NAMB needs to somehow connect those expenditures to church planting.

Perhaps that can explain why NAMB is employing and deploying an army of coaches, strategists, mobilizers, and consultants. It would seem that NAMB has created a monster through easy money and weak assessments, then hired itself to kill it.

Financial Transparency Found Wanting

When pastors’ marriages are failing, their churches are crumbling, and many are disqualifying themselves altogether, it seems NAMB’s response is to deploy additional resources for coaching and consulting. That’s a noble goal, but the lack of transparency in the details about these special NAMB jobs is concerning. One could cynically argue that NAMB created the problem by funding men who were not qualified to plant, then solved the problem by funding men to fix the same problem.

NAMB employs a number of people with ambiguous job titles, such as “mobilizer” or “strategist,” ostensibly to provide on the ground support for church planters. Again, that’s a noble goal, provided they are good at their jobs and provide a real benefit for pastors. At this point, it’s not clear to me that this is the case. What is also unclear is their actual job descriptions and salary ranges. That opacity is itself a problem for an institution funded by the cooperative giving of ordinary Baptist churches.

An example from February 2026 is instructive. Vance Pitman, who served as president of NAMB’s Send Network, stepped down from that role. According to Baptist Press, Pitman announced that he sensed God leading him “into a different season of leadership.” In his new contracted role as “national mobilizer,” he will, per the announcement, continue “encouraging and influencing pastors, planters and ministry partners across North America.” The change, NAMB noted, “allows Pitman to launch a preaching, coaching and consulting ministry.”[3]

Read that carefully. This is a contracted position, meaning he is employed by NAMB, whose output is described as encouragement, influence, and the launch of a personal ministry. That looks like a golden parachute dressed in the language of calling. Of course, this may be perfectly benign. Pitman is a gifted man who has done genuine good. But without financial transparency, we cannot evaluate it. What does it mean to mobilize, encourage, and influence pastors? How is success measured? We cannot know what it costs, how it is justified, or how many similar arrangements exist throughout the organization.

Infantrymen and Special Forces

As stated above, the issue at hand is an asymmetry between money and men. Every pastor is an infantryman for Christ (2 Tim. 2:3-4)—faithful, trained, obedient to orders, willing to sacrifice. Every church planter is a pastor, but not all pastors should be church planters. Church planters are like special forces in the ministry world. They have a very particular assignment: to start a church where one did not exist before, which requires an additional and distinct skill set beyond what it takes to shepherd an existing congregation. Not every faithful pastor is a church planter. Not every gifted young man with seminary training is a church planter. The selection process for special forces in the military is brutal precisely because the stakes are high and the mission is specialized. The selection process for NAMB-funded church planters has, by all appearances, been considerably more accommodating.

Years ago, I was in a meeting of local pastors and an SBC Associational leader called a Director of Missions, where we were discussing church planting goals. Our Director of Missions asked, “How many churches do we want to trust God to plant in the next ten years?” One pastor suggested ten. The next pastor suggested twenty. Not to be outdone, a third suggested fifty. In situations like this, it’s easy to assume the larger the number, the greater the faith. There were only two of us present at that meeting who were actively planting churches and had seen the carnage. We looked at each other in astonishment. Somewhat sheepishly, I raised my hand and suggested, “In the next ten years, I recommend we trust God to plant five healthy churches led by well-qualified pastors.”

That was not the most popular perspective shared that day, but I stand by it. Fewer churches. Better churches. And far less carnage.

What Is NAMB to Do?

I want to be fair here, because there is a real structural bind.

NAMB cannot manufacture qualified men. If the convention is clamoring for more churches and the pipeline of genuinely qualified planters is limited, NAMB faces a genuine dilemma. It can (1) raise the bar, plant fewer churches, and be criticized for underperforming against its mandate, or (2) it can lower the bar, plant more churches, generate impressive-sounding numbers for the annual meeting, and obscure the downstream damage behind the noise of activity.

Over the last fifteen years or so, it has chosen the latter, and the incentives make that choice nearly inevitable. The best way for NAMB to market itself to the convention as a success is to tout the raw number of churches planted. The health of those churches, and of the pastors who lead them, is, as far as the marketing goes, largely irrelevant. As long as nobody is asking hard questions about what happened to the church planted in Cincinnati or Indianapolis or Memphis three, five, or ten years ago, the machine keeps running.

But the machine is not, on net, producing what it claims to produce. Its output is a mixed bag. I know of many outstanding churches NAMB has planted in the last decade and a half. And yet, alongside those successes, there are too many failures, compromises, and disasters to ignore, while only the success stories are presented to the people funding the whole operation.

Conclusion

I am not calling on churches to stop giving to NAMB. I am not dismissing the real good the institution has done. NAMB planted my church. I would not exist as a pastor without it, and for that I will always be grateful.

But the current system is not working. And the case for reform rests on two simple convictions:

• First, NAMB should set a high standard for church planters and refuse to deviate from it. In my view, it is time to reevaluate the “more churches” mantra in favor of a “fewer and better” approach. A smaller number of healthy, thriving, doctrinally sound congregations does more for the kingdom than a larger number of failing, compromised, or simply mediocre ones. The people in those failing churches bear the cost, and they deserve better stewardship from the institution that sent their pastor.

• Second, financial transparency is absolutely essential. An institution operating on $147 million of cooperative giving owes the churches that fund it a full accounting of where that money goes—including staff salaries, consulting arrangements, event costs, and all the rest. Without that transparency, the convention is flying blind. We have enough anecdotal evidence, at this point, to warrant serious concern. A formal audit would either confirm that concern or put it to rest. Either outcome would be valuable.

I’m confident that NAMB is capable of being the world’s premier church planting organization. It already is, in some ways, but only in terms of sheer volume. The day NAMB begins measuring itself by the long-term faithfulness and ecclesiological health of its plants—rather than by the raw count it can report at the annual meeting—is the day it will begin producing something worthy of the investment the convention has entrusted to it.

Until then, the money will keep flowing, the numbers will keep climbing, and somewhere in a city near you, a church planter who should never have been funded will be preaching to a congregation that deserves better.

[1] North American Mission Board, “Southern Baptist giving to Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong offerings surpasses $278 million” NAMB.net, October 13, 2025; North American Mission Board, “The Mission” AnnieArmstrong.com, Accessed March 2026.

[2] For the 2024–2025 fiscal year, NAMB trustees approved a budget of $147 million. See North American Mission Board, “NAMB trustees approve budget, celebrate work of NYC missionaries,” NAMB.net, October 10, 2024.

[3] NAMB Staff, “Pitman Moves to National Mobilizer Role with NAMB’s Send Network,” Baptist Press, February 19, 2026.

Editorial note: This essay is adapted from a talk (audio mp3) my wife gave to a mom’s group in our church with her friend, Suzanne. But these lessons would be profitable for men and women.

Introduction

My friend Suzanne and I have been meaning to talk about friendship for years. Every semester, we’d sit down to plan topics for our women’s group at church, and friendship would come up, and then we’d never actually get around to it. I think we kept putting it off because it’s one of those topics that sounds simple but isn’t. Everybody agrees that friends matter. Nobody really wants to admit how hard it is to make them and keep them.

When we finally did sit down and have the conversation, what came out wasn’t a tidy lesson. It was messy and honest and a little all over the place—which, honestly, is kind of how friendship works in real life. What I want to do here is take the best of what we talked about and lay it out in a way that might be helpful, not just for the women in our church, but for anyone who’s ever felt like they’re the only person in the room who doesn’t have friends. Because I promise you, you’re not.

Why This Matters

This matters because life is going to get hard. There’s going to be a difficult diagnosis, a miscarriage, financial trouble, marriage trouble—you name it. And when that happens, your pastors can only do so much. You need people. You need people in your life that you can turn to when things fall apart.

When someone comes to us going through something hard, the first thing I think is: who are they connected to? What small group are they in? Do those people know what’s going on? Because that’s how the body of Christ is supposed to work. It’s not just showing up on Sunday and worshiping and leaving. We’re supposed to function together, and that only happens through real relationships.

The Lies We Believe About Friendship

One thing Suzanne kept hearing from people was the same story over and over: “I don’t have any friends. I can’t connect.” And what was wild is that she was hearing it from everybody. The person who felt like they had no friends? The person they were envying was saying the exact same thing. Everyone was looking around thinking everyone else had it figured out, and nobody did. If no one initiates because everyone’s waiting for someone else to go first, then nobody’s going first. We just all sit there feeling lonely together.

Suzanne told me about how she used to walk into church events and just sit somewhere and hope someone would talk to her. And then she’d go home and tell her husband, “Nobody talked to me.” And he’d say, “Did you talk to them?” And she’d be like, “Well, no, but they should talk to me because I’m the new person.” I think we’ve all been there. But nobody was making her feel that way. It was all internal.

So here are some of the lies that kept coming up as we talked to people.

“People won’t like me if we make different choices.”

This one is huge, especially for women. There are so many things that can become dividing lines: Do you homeschool? Did you have a home birth or a hospital birth? Are you crunchy or not crunchy? It can go on and on. Guys seem to have an easier time here—they’re like, “We’re both Christians, cool,” and that’s enough. But for a lot of us, the comparison game is relentless.

If you’re someone with strong opinions, that’s fine. But just be careful how you hold those opinions in group settings. You might not realize it, but someone who made a different choice might be hearing your confidence as a judgment on them. And if you’re on the other side—if you tend to feel less-than—understand that a lot of that is coming from inside you, not from the person with the different opinion. We can be friends with people who have made difference choices than us. That’s not a threat. It’s actually a gift.

“Friendship should look like it did in a previous season.”

Many people form deep friendships in college because you’re together 24/7 and you don’t have many responsibilities. Then you graduate, you start over somewhere new, you don’t know anybody. And it takes so much longer to get to know people.

Then you get married and your husband becomes your priority. Then you have little kids and you get together with friends and you can’t string two sentences together because you’re constantly correcting somebody. It’s okay. It’s okay to embrace the fact that life is different now. It’s not going to look exactly like it did, and holding on to that expectation is just setting yourself up for disappointment. If you go in expecting it to feel like college forever, you’re going to be let down. But the friendships you build in these harder seasons? They’re just as real. They just look different.

“My friends have to be in my exact life stage.”

It’s natural to gravitate toward people in the same season. Newlyweds want to hang out with newlyweds, young parents with young parents. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you narrow your focus to the point where the only people who could possibly be your friends are people doing exactly what you’re doing, you’re cutting yourself off from some of the richest relationships out there.

Suzanne told a story about an older woman at her previous church who became one of her closest friends—someone in her seventies. They showed up one day wearing the same shirt, and Suzanne just loved that. This woman cared for her, prayed for her, showed up for her in quiet, steady ways. Meanwhile, Suzanne had been so focused on trying to break into a specific friend group of people her own age that she almost missed the people God was actually putting in her life. Older friends who’d pull her aside after Bible study and say, “I went through that too. I’m praying for you. Can I bring you a meal?”

And younger friends bring something too. They’re not as jaded. They see things with a freshness that can challenge your cynicism. Suzanne said being around younger people reminded her how her own kids might be experiencing the world, and she could ask them questions that actually helped her parenting. The point is: a spectrum of ages in your friendships is not a consolation prize. It’s a gift.

“Friendship should just happen naturally.”

This might be the most common lie, and it creates a vicious cycle. You show up somewhere, nobody talks to you (or you don’t talk to anybody), you go home feeling bad, and then you don’t want to come to the next thing. And it just gets worse. Research out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about three years of consistent engagement to develop what you’d consider a good friendship, and about seven years for someone you’d call a lifelong friend. That’s a long time. Especially when you have little kids and being consistent feels almost impossible.

When my husband Michael and I first got married, there was this group of couples at our church that we really wanted to be friends with. We kept trying to get ourselves invited to stuff, and it just wasn’t happening. And then one Sunday there was this new couple, and we just said, “Hey, you wanna grab lunch?” And they said “yes!”. We ended up spending the whole day together—like eight hours. And from that one invitation, we ended up with a mid sized friend group that would hang out every Sunday from after church till late in the evening. But none of that would have happened if we had just kept wishing the other group would invite us. We had to put in the effort with someone new.

Friendship requires effort. It requires humility. It requires being willing to feel a little awkward. And even then, it’s not always going to be a love connection at first. But you show up, you try, and you trust that God is working in it. Even the idea of a “best friend” can be kind of an unrealistic expectation. God uses all kinds of different people for different things in your life, and I think we’d be a lot happier if we were just thankful for that instead of holding out for one perfect person.

“I don’t have time or energy for friends right now.”

I think a lot of people would honestly say this is true of them. And your capacity might be limited—maybe you don’t have transportation, or you’ve got a bunch of little ones at home, or you’re just exhausted. I get that. But limited capacity is not the same as no capacity. You might need to get creative, but you’re going to really regret it if you just don’t have any people in your world.

For Suzanne, COVID exposed a lot of relational problems in church. People left. Relationships were lost. And she got to a place where she was like, “People are just so much work.” She knew it wasn’t right, but that’s where she was. And then she was reading Paul’s letters and came across the part where he says he’s been “spent” for the people he serves, and he’s glad for it. And she said that just wrecked her. Because we should be willing to be spent for each other. That’s what we’re called to.

If you would honestly say you don’t have time or energy for friends, I’d gently ask: where are you with the Lord right now? What’s going on in your heart? Because I think a lot of times, that statement is covering something deeper. You might be hiding. You might be depressed. You might be protecting yourself from being hurt again. And I get all of that. But I’d encourage you to not stay there.

How to Be a Good Friend

Initiate

Here’s something that really reframed things for me: the Bible doesn’t command us to be loved. It commands us to love. That’s a big difference. I can’t make people love me—God doesn’t command that of me. But He does command me to love other people. So instead of sitting around wishing someone would reach out, just reach out. Text someone. Walk up to someone on Sunday. Say, “Hey, how can I be praying for you this week?” Set up a monthly lunch. If you make the decision once—like, the first Friday of every month we’re getting together—it takes the pressure off of having to remake that decision every time.

And if you’re new somewhere, just remember: most of the people around you probably feel new too. The person you’re hoping will come talk to you? They might be hoping the exact same thing about you. A friend of ours, Lily, is great at this. She’ll just text out of nowhere: “Yo, I’m thinking about you.” And it always seems to come on the hardest days. That kind of thing costs almost nothing and can completely change someone’s day.

Don’t Keep Score

In your marriage or your friendships—don’t keep score. Who texted last? Who initiated last? Who seems to care more? That kind of thinking will poison everything. People have different capacities and different communication styles, and somebody not texting you back right away doesn’t mean they don’t care. I’m terrible at responding to texts. It takes me three days sometimes, or I just completely forget. It doesn’t mean I don’t love the person. I got distracted. I struggle with making decisions. If you’re asking me for a decision over text, that’s especially hard for me. So just—give people grace.

Don’t Be Quick to Take Offense

Oh man, this one. I had a text exchange with someone recently that went completely off the rails. My intention was to encourage this person—like, “Hey, way to go, look at this great thing.” And they took it as me giving them rules. Like I was telling them what to do. They were hurt and offended, and I’m sitting there thinking, can you go back and read those messages in the spirit I intended them? It’s so easy to assume the worst over text. A missing exclamation point suddenly means they’re mad at you. No punctuation at all? They must be furious.

First Corinthians 13 says love “believes all things.” That means believing people are saying what they mean, not looking for the hidden insult. If you have low self-esteem, everything can be filtered through the lens of “people are annoyed by me, I’m a burden.” But that’s not fair to the people around you. An older woman at Suzanne’s previous church told her once: “Don’t worry about what people are thinking, because they’re not.” And honestly, that’s gotten me through some hard times too. Most people are way too busy thinking about themselves to be scrutinizing you.

Point Them Back to Jesus

This is what you want your friends to do for you, and it’s what you should be doing for them. When someone comes to you with all their problems, you don’t just want to be like, “Yeah, that’s terrible.” You want to know your Bible well enough to point out the lies they’re believing, encourage them with truth, and pray for them. You don’t want to be a friend the way the world does friendship. And that means pointing out sin when it’s appropriate, too. Not in a harsh way, but in a “I love you too much to let you stay here” way. That’s what real friendship looks like.

Be Vulnerable

If you want your friendships to go deeper, someone has to go first. Someone has to be the one who gets honest in the small group. Someone has to cry. And it might need to be you. Suzanne said she doesn’t really have a choice—she’s just that person. First day of any group, she’s crying and sharing things. Has she been burned by it? Yes. Has she shared too much at times? Definitely. But way more often, people come up afterward and say, “Thank you for being honest about that. I feel the same way.”

You can be wise about it. You don’t have to share everything with everyone. There’s a time and a place. But don’t let the fear of being burned keep you locked in surface-level relationships forever. The risk is worth it. And confessing your own sin goes hand in hand with this. When you’re honest about your own failures, it gives other people permission to be honest about theirs.

Ask for Feedback and Accountability

This is scary, but it might be the most important thing on this list. If there’s an area you’re insecure about, ask someone you trust: “Is this actually true of me?” A lot of times, what’s been tormenting you turns out to be a lie, and just hearing someone say “No, that’s not you at all” can be incredibly freeing. But sometimes there is something. There might be a blind spot, a habit, something you do that puts people off without you realizing it. Wouldn’t you rather know?

My husband Michael talks about how when he was a student leader in college, the staff sat him down and told him he wasn’t being chosen for a leadership position because he had a pride problem. That was devastating at the time. But years later, he tracked those people down to thank them. They loved him enough to say the hard thing, and it changed his life. Proverbs says the wounds of a friend are faithful. When someone who loves you tells you something hard, receive it. It might hurt for a while. But it’s one of the greatest gifts a friend can give.

Ask Questions

Don’t talk about yourself all the time. I know, that sounds obvious. But Suzanne told a story about realizing one day that she had a really close friend and she didn’t even know the woman’s favorite color or what she’d gone to school for. Because Suzanne had been doing all the talking. When she gets nervous, she just talks. And she’d give someone a second to respond, and if they hesitated, she’d fill the silence with more of herself. She said it’s embarrassing to think back on, but it wasn’t really caring. She had to learn to slow down and be genuinely interested.

Some people were raised in families where asking questions felt nosy. Michael’s mom is like that—in her mind, if you want her to know something, you’ll tell her. And we’re over here thinking, “If you loved us, you’d ask.” We’re all coming from different places. But here’s a practical tip that was actually life-changing for someone I shared it with years ago: when you’re talking to someone, try to ask at least three questions about them. That’s it. Three questions. It sounds small, but it forces you out of just talking about yourself, and people notice. They feel cared for. And that’s a huge part of what love looks like.

Pray for Them

When your friend is going through something hard, you can be there and they can cry on your shoulder, but you can’t really fix it. Taking their needs before the Father is the biggest gift you can give them. And I know prayer can feel like a small thing. People have even said to me, “All you did was pray?” But I’ve seen prayer work too many times to think that.

When Suzanne first came to our church, she was pregnant and the doctor told her she was going to lose the baby. That little girl turned eleven this year. I’ve had moments too—where I’ve been really upset about something, texted a few friends to pray, and the shift in my heart was almost immediate. I could feel it. So pray. Pray for your friends. It’s a bigger deal than we realize.

Examining Ourselves

Check Your Expectations

A lot of the pain we experience in friendship comes down to expectations we didn’t even know we had. It’s the same as marriage—you don’t know what your expectations are until somebody isn’t meeting them. You might be carrying around this unspoken idea that your friend should text back within an hour, or that your spouses should all be best friends, or that you should be getting together weekly. And then when it doesn’t happen, you’re hurt, and you don’t even really know why.

But here’s what I learned. Much of the time when I’d get hurt in a friendship, it turned out to be my own issue—I’d said yes to something I should have said no to, or I had an expectation I’d never communicated and then I was resentful when it wasn’t met. We don’t even voice some of these expectations because deep down we know they’re kind of unreasonable. I don’t respond to every text, but when somebody doesn’t respond to me? Clearly they hate me. We have to check ourselves on this stuff.

Deal with Your Past Hurts

If you’ve lived on this planet, you’ve been hurt by friendship. I think friendship hurts are actually unique—they cut in a different way than romantic heartbreak. Because with a romantic relationship, okay, the attraction faded or it didn’t work out. But when a friend rejects you, it hits at something deeper: you don’t even want to be around me? Suzanne talked about a childhood best friend who lived across the street and one day just called her up and said, “I don’t care. I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.” She said that rocked her world. And those kinds of wounds get carried into every new relationship if they’re not dealt with.

You start seeing rejection where there isn’t any. You pull back before anyone can get close enough to hurt you again. You treat every new friend like they’re the person who wounded you. Recognizing those patterns and asking the Lord for healing is so important. You’re not a victim forever. The hard things you’ve been through have shaped you, but they don’t have to define you. And you don’t want to be eighty years old still blaming your current relationships on something that happened decades ago. Ask God to heal you from whatever makes you insecure, whatever makes you afraid to let people in.

Be Willing to Do the Work

If you consistently struggle to make or keep friends, at some point it’s worth asking someone who loves you: is there something I’m not seeing? There might be nothing. But there might be something—a way you come across, a habit you don’t realize you have. And when someone does tell you something hard, try not to get defensive right away. Ask yourself: am I offended because what they said is wrong, or am I offended because it hurts because they’re right? We’re all blinded to our own faults. Being willing to hear hard things and actually do the work to grow—that’s what maturity looks like. And it’s one of the most hopeful things you can do for your future friendships.

Conclusion

If you feel lonely, here’s my first piece of advice: sign up to do something. Join a small group. Go to the next church event. Volunteer to serve somewhere. I know some people are like, “I hate small talk, I hate initiating, it makes me die inside.” I get it. But you have to find ways to connect, and sometimes that means doing stuff that feels uncomfortable.

And here’s the thing about showing up to the same things over and over: you need that repetition. You have to keep talking to the same people. Some folks will say, “I always just talk to the same people at these things,” like that’s a problem. But that repetition is exactly how friendships are built. You keep showing up, you keep having conversations, and over time, depth comes.

One really practical tip that’s been a game changer for me: when you want to get together with someone, text them with your calendar open. Don’t say, “We should hang out sometime.” That’s never going to happen. Say, “Are you free Friday?” If they’re not, say, “What about the following Tuesday?” Set it up right there. It sounds so simple, but it makes all the difference. The gap between wanting to be friends with someone and actually being friends with them is usually just the willingness to schedule the next step.

God Provides

C. S. Lewis wrote something in The Four Loves that Suzanne found while we were preparing for this talk, and it’s stuck with me. He said that in friendship, we think we’ve chosen our peers. But for a Christian, there are no chances—a “secret master of ceremonies” has been at work. Christ, who told his disciples “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can say the same to every group of Christian friends: “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.”

I love that. Because it means the friendships in your life right now—messy, inconvenient, not what you imagined—they’re not accidents. God has placed specific people in your path for specific reasons. He’s been faithful to provide friends in my life, even when I couldn’t see it at the time. Looking back, I can see why certain people were there in certain seasons, and why some friendships didn’t work out. And I’m grateful.

So take the risk. Send the text. Ask the awkward question. Share the hard thing. Walk up to someone you don’t know and just say hi. It will feel uncomfortable. It will require humility. You might get burned. But on the other side of that discomfort is the kind of friendship that holds you up in your darkest seasons, sharpens you when you’re complacent, and keeps pointing you back to the God who made you to need each other.

But I need to say something before I proceed. This piece is about discerning how propaganda works in Christian circles, not about the video itself.

I’ll say this upfront so it’s crystal clear: This article is not about rushing to Trump’s defense because I voted for him. This article is not about whether or not the clip at the end is racist. This article is not about whether or not Trump should have posted it, or whether the White House should have better quality controls, or whether or not Trump knew what it contained. Finally, this piece is not about Trump’s response to the controversy or whether or not he should have fired whoever supposedly posted it.

This piece is about us. This piece is about how so many Christians and pastors got bullied–once again–into engaging in a virtue-signalling denunciation ritual that communicates unquestioning allegiance to a misleading narrative pushed by the Left.

Slow Down: Scripture, Discernment, and Refusing to be Steered

Let’s start with some scriptural reminders about how to assess “breaking news” and “shocking claims.” First, Proverbs 18:13 teaches us that, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” I’ve done that before. I’ve weighed in prematurely and ended up with egg on my face. Have you?

Exodus 23:2 is even more to the point: “You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice.” In other words, time and truth go hand in hand. Hot takes, not so much.

I first heard about the video because of the outrage it triggered. I hadn’t seen it myself yet, but my initial assumption was that Trump had posted something intentionally provocative. I usually ignore such things. Trump does like to troll people sometimes, so I didn’t give it much thought. But it kept coming up again and again, and I started to wonder if something bigger was afoot.

I wondered, “Did Trump really post a video depicting the Obamas as monkeys?” If so, that would have been politically foolish. What’s the upside? What did he have to gain from doing something that would obviously trigger such a massive backlash?

So I found the original video online and watched it for myself.

Here’s what I saw: a serious video about election integrity, a topic Trump has been talking about ever since 2020. It wasn’t a cartoon. It wasn’t a troll video to make fun of people. It was one minute long and, as I said, the tone was serious throughout.

Since Trump prefers to post on Truth Social, his own social media site, any video posted there must first be recorded from the original source and then reposted there. But as the original video was ending, the algorithm autoloaded another video, which was an AI cartoon depicting the Obamas as monkeys with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” playing in the background. The Obama video had nothing to do with the original video, and it is plain to anyone willing to be honest. Whoever did the screen recording didn’t edit that part out and posted it, unedited.

The most plausible explanation—by far—is that this was an editing or screen-recording error, not an intentional act of racism.

But the propaganda machine doesn’t care about that. Propaganda isn’t interested in truth; it is interested in compelling action, and that’s where this incident is relevant for Christians.

How Emotional Manipulation for the Outrage Machine Works: Denounce First, Truth Later, Apologize Never

I’ve written a couple of pieces about propaganda recently. The first piece is “How Propaganda Works-And Why Christians are Easy Targets.” The second piece is “Christian–Stop Falling for Weaponized Empathy.” Consider this the third entry in that series, where I’m trying to help Christians better discern how we’re being played by propaganda, weaponized empathy, and emotional manipulation.

As I argued in the “How Propaganda Works” piece, propaganda isn’t so much about spreading outright lies; it’s about provoking a particular action, which the individual later justifies with adjusted beliefs. I’ll say that again, because this is important: Propaganda aims to provoke action without reflection. This is the action-first engine of propaganda.

But every engine needs fuel. Propaganda doesn’t give us a new set of values. Propaganda takes our existing values and moral instincts and points them in a particular direction. Don’t miss that–propaganda doesn’t create moral instincts for you. Propaganda takes your existing moral instincts and tells you what you must do with them, always insisting that you ACT NOW!

In other words, propaganda is about compliance, and the moral urgency doesn’t give you time to think or reflect. Its goal is to “move you, hurry you, shame you, flatter you, or frighten you until the actions you take feel like Spirit-led instincts — which you then justify with changed beliefs after the fact.”

The Trump video from last week gave us a textbook example, and Christians walked right into it. Many Christians did not discern the situation properly and got played. How so? Let me show you.

There’s a three-move pattern: (1) Highlight suffering, (2) Create urgency, and (3) Enforce compliance.

Step One: Highlight suffering. In this instance, the video was seen as clear evidence of Trump’s racism, which activated the outrage machine to talk about how much “harm” and “pain” the video caused. When I (and many others) pointed out that it was actually an editing error, not a deliberate act of racism, the responses clearly demonstrated that propaganda was at work. It was obvious because so many were absolutely convinced that the only explanation is that Trump is an unhinged racist and he deliberately posted a video to inflict maximum suffering. Even though that’s not true, it doesn’t matter. Propaganda doesn’t care about what’s true. It only cares to provoke the desired reaction (I’ll get to that in a moment).

Step Two: Create urgency. Urgency is an essential feature of propaganda because you need people to take action on what they perceive as an emergency. No time to think, pray, reflect, or discern, something must be done NOW. Why now? Because people are suffering, and human suffering makes everything an emergency. Refusing to be rushed is not indifference to sin or suffering; it’s obedience to the ninth commandment.

Step Three: Enforce compliance. Another feature of propaganda is that it isn’t centrally controlled. There doesn’t need to be a mastermind behind the curtain pulling the levers to make propaganda work. It’s largely an organic phenomenon that seems to operate on its own. So what do I mean by “enforce compliance?” Nobody sent you a memo telling you what to do, right? And yet, so many people did the very thing propaganda aimed at: they performed a denunciation ritual.

I’ll give you some high-profile examples. First, Russell Moore posted a screenshot of the image of the Obamas looking like monkeys, and said, “Racist. Deranged. Humiliating to our country. The fact that we have decided to pretend to this is normal every day is a moral abomination.”

He didn’t post the entire video, of course, because if he did, it would be more obvious that this was an editing error. No, he only posted a screenshot that would inflict maximum PR damage on Trump.

Second, John Piper chimed in. He reposted Moore’s post, but added this commentary: “One not to be so afraid of sounding “quasi-woke” that one cannot agree with Russell Moore on this.” So, Piper approves of Moore’s assessment that Trump was posting something “racist” and “deranged.”

There’s something interesting about this. John Piper is a “father in the faith” to many and is considered a reasonable, valuable voice on a number of subjects. Piper doesn’t post often on social media.

A few weeks ago, when a worship service at Cities Church in Minneapolis was invaded by a horde of disruptive agitators, Piper said nothing, even though Cities Church was planted by Piper’s own church in the city where he’s ministered for decades. Certainly, if anything would merit Piper’s unique comment and wisdom, it would be this one. But he said nothing.

That’s fine; he does not owe anyone a comment unless he chooses to give it. But it’s at least worth noticing what does and does not prompt public comment from Piper: Not a hostile invasion of a church planted out of his ministry, but a meme video he assumed was racist, even though that’s highly implausible.

A third example, this one from Mike Cosper, from Christianity Today, who posted this: “Let’s be very clear: Donald Trump, who took out a full page ad calling for the summary executions of the Central Park 5, who was the chief profligate of the Obama Birth Certificate conspiracy theory, who made sh**hole countries comments in his first term in the oval… I’m supposed to believe there’s no way he intentionally reposted a racist meme presenting his black predecessor and his wife as apes? Okay folks.”

Cosper is certain Trump posted this intentionally, though in so doing, there’s nothing to gain and everything to lose.

This is the power of propaganda. Upon close inspection, the manipulative outrage offered and demanded by Moore, Piper, and Cosper is unwarranted because the facts clearly point to the video debacle being an editing error, not a deliberate act of sinister racism.

But truth doesn’t matter in this case. What matters is ensuring the whole world knows you denounce it. Why? Because propaganda has told you to.

Propaganda told you the video was racist, sinful, and had caused great pain to many people. Since people are suffering, it’s an emergency, and we need to act as quickly as possible to ease their pain. Therefore, we must perform a denunciation ritual. We must tell the world how evil Trump is, how racist he is, how we’re not like that evil man, who is a moral monster and beyond redemption.

Further, anyone who claims the video is simply an editing error is also an evil person, most likely a racist, who doesn’t care about all the pain and suffering Trump has caused, and we want nothing to do with them.

Sound familiar?

The Real Danger: Christians Forsaking Truth and Becoming Pawns of the Media Outrage Machine

Here’s what concerns me most. It’s not that Christians got this one incident wrong. It’s the pattern that keeps playing out every few weeks. Whenever a new outrage cycle begins, people get worked up and impulsively say and do things before the facts have a chance to come out.

Remember this: every time there’s a politically and emotionally charged news story, the initial reports are almost always wrong. But when we go online and perform a denunciation ritual before all the facts are known, we end up looking foolish. But rather than just admitting it and saying, “Hey, I got that one wrong, I’m sorry,” we double down. We don’t want to give our enemies ammunition to use against us, so we stand by our naive takes and foolish posts, even though we know they were wrong, until we start believing them. Eventually, we lie to ourselves so many times that it gets harder to discern the truth at all.

I’m a pastor, and yes, I’m also a conservative who enthusiastically voted for Trump. But I’m not writing these things to defend Trump. I have no problem criticizing the President if I think it’s needed, and I’ve done so in the past. Allie Beth Stuckey offered helpful remarks on what legitimate criticism vs. weaponized (and suspect) criticism of President Trump looks like (especially from the Big Eva class).

I’m writing because truth matters, and I’m worried that Christians are getting pulled deeper and deeper into the vortex of propaganda, and it’s distorting their ability to see clearly, discern rightly, and obey God according to the truth.

And yes, I’m aware that conservatives fall for propaganda too, which I addressed in my “How Propaganda Works” piece cited above. I’ve seen the same dynamics on the right—selective clips, inflated claims, premature moral outrage. I’ve addressed that elsewhere, and I’m not pretending immunity here. But ultimately, this isn’t a Left-or-Right issue. Discernment is predicated upon a relentless pursuit of the truth, even when truth is inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even damaging to “my side.”

I’ve fallen for propaganda before myself. I’m not immune to manipulation and deception. We’ve all jumped to a false conclusion, posted about it online, and then felt the sting of embarrassment when the facts came out later.

The question is whether we’ll learn from it or keep doing it. The people most easily deceived and propagandized are those who assume they are immune to it. That certainty — that unshakable confidence that your emotional reaction is identical to moral truth — is not discernment. It’s the absence of it.

So, I’ve made it a priority in my own life to follow the truth, difficult as it can be to discern, and follow it wherever it leads. Christians must learn to pause, verify, and refuse to be rushed, especially when outrage feels righteous.