Why Aren't Christians Better People Politics Q&A

ladies and gentlemen you're probably wondering what happened to the intro we've had for more than 10 years here on the I don't have enough Faith to be an atheist podcast when we're trying it without it to give us 30 more seconds of content we're going to dive into some questions here that you have emailed in to hello at Cross examin if you have a question you want to send it in send it to hello at crossexamined.org we try and get to as many as we can we can't get to them all but I have a

couple of great questions that have been sent in uh over the past week or two let me start with the first one this comes from Andrew he says I've listened to much of Dr Turk's work and greatly appreciate the knowledge he shares I'm currently struggling with my wife having deconstructed her faith and walking away from the church we have had many discussions and I think one of the main things we always fall back on or always fall back to is the discussion of hypocrisy of Christians I've seen many of Dr Turk's responses to this question

and I appreciate the guidance however there is one step further in this that I have trouble answering when the question is brought up before I get to the one step further let me point out as as as Dr John Dixon has said that whenever somebody plays Beethoven poorly who do you blame you don't blame Beethoven so when somebody plays Jesus poorly you don't blame Jesus look just because I'm not true and beautiful doesn't mean Jesus isn't true and beautiful we're all Fallen we all need a savior in fact if I was perfect if you were

perfect you wouldn't need Jesus you wouldn't need a savior so we are all to a certain extent Hypocrites because we can't live up to the standard Christ has provided for us just like a normal piano player can't live up to the standard of say Beethoven but that doesn't mean Beethoven is at fault the piano players at fault that doesn't mean Jesus is is at fault we're at fault because we don't live up to the pure Words of Christ and there are other responses in fact we have a video up on our YouTube channel right now

that deals with the hypocrite question I won't go into it any further here let me get back to Andrew's point he said I understand and agree that Christians are hypocrites too and that the church is a place for Sinners not Saints and what he means by that is behavior theologically are Saints if we're Believers because when Jesus sees us or when the father sees us he sees Jesus in our place and so when you become a Christian you're not only forgiven but you're given the righteousness of Christ anyway Andrew goes on to say but I'm

often asked the following okay but doesn't the bible say that when you become a Christian your life should be transformed by Christ if that's the case then why do the vast majority of Christians I look at not appear to be any different from the world in fact a lot of Christians do many bad things and are unloving people and yet I see plenty of other loving people in the world who hold better to Christian values than many Christians I see if Christianity were true I would see the transformation in the life of Believers but I

see no transformation among Christians as a whole that must disprove the fact that Christians are transformed by Christ please help me understand how I can better answer this version of the hypocrisy argument it relates to Christian trans transformation through Christ I can't seem to give great answers on the topic thanks Andrew this is a brilliant question Andrew I think your wife is right to bring it up uh but you know what I think a lot of people who are deconstructing from Christianity bring up issues and they think nobody in 2,000 years of Christianity has addressed

them I remember when uh who was it um John steinard of a Christian rock group became a agnostic at least or left his Christian faith and there was another guy Marty Samson I think from Hill song um they came up with objections to Christianity that Christians have been answering for 2,000 years as if nobody has ever addressed this before like suddenly they here in the 21st century recognize well how can there be a good God with all this evil in the world or how can I believe that that uh there's a true Holy Spirit if

all Christians aren't transformed into the into the likeness of Christ what and and suddenly they lose their faith at least that's the reason they give now I'm not blaming anyone here for this I'm just pointing out that nearly if not all of the objections that you hear to Christianity have been answered by some brilliant mind somewhere in the 2,000 years of the history of the church if not in the Bible itself and in this case CS Lewis has a lot to say on this question why aren't Christians more transformed by Christ and what I'm going

to read is a relatively long section of Mere Christianity on this uh I I can't read it all because it would take too long but I'm gonna I'm going to pick some parts out of uh Mere Christianity here's what Lewis says he says there is a way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical meaning this objection can be quite illogical from the outer World from non-christians they may demand not merely that each man's life should improve if he becomes a Christian they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that

they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps Christian and non-Christian and that all the people in the first Camp the Christian Camp at any given moment should obviously be nicer than all the people in in the second this is unreasonable on several grounds and here's one reason Lewis gives he says in the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that the world does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-christians there are people a great many of them who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who

still call themselves by that name some of them are clergymen let me stop right here let's leave aside the question of once saved always saved let's not even get into this at this point because this holds regardless of whether it's once saved always saved or not okay I believe one say saved always saved but even uh if that's true there may be people who say they're Christians who never really were saved but let's leave that aside so Lewis is saying here some non-christians are becoming Christians they're in the process and there are some so-called Christians

that are moving away from Christ and they may even be in the church they even they may even be clergymen Lewis goes on there are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so there are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are strongly attracted by him that they are his in as much in a much deeper sense than they understand now let me stop right here when when Lewis says the world does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-christians we need to

make some distinctions here somebody may be a Christian in terms of justification and in that case the world is divided between 100% Christians and 100% non-christians if somebody's Justified that's the second you become a Christian you are saved you are Justified but you haven't been Sanctified so while 100% or the world does consist of 100% Justified and 100% non Justified the world does not consist of 100% Sanctified and 100% non- Sanctified and that's where where the question comes in the question comes in is why aren't these people behaving better well all people are in a

process of sanctification some are moving toward Christ quicker than others some may even be Christians who are moving away from Christ right now they're backsliding so the world is a lot more complicated than here are the Christians and here are the non-christians when it comes to sanctification of course God knows who really is a Christian and who isn't but we don't he also knows who is moving toward Christ and who is moving away from Christ it's not always so obvious to us so this is a Messier situation than simply saying well you know um all

these people who claim to be Christians ought to behaving better than people who who are claim not to be Christians because the people who are claiming to be Christians might not really be secondly they might also if they are be in a lower state of sanctification than others and the people who say they're not Christians may be moving toward Christianity and behaving better and there's another reason they may be be behaving better that Lewis is going to point out out here in a minute now let me interject something that Lewis didn't know in his day

and that is George Bara George Barner the great Christian pollster uh recently came out and said while most Americans most meaning 68% so let's say two-thirds of Americans still consider themselves to be Christians among those self-identified Christians only 6% have a Biblical World viiew which means that among all people in America only 4% have a he goes on to say this less than half of the self-identified Christians can be classified as born again so now you're talking about say 30 33% maybe 34% claim to be born again and uh he says that's defined as believing

that they go to heaven after they die but only because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior now check this out bares says this within the Born Again population just 30% or 33% of the adult population is shockingly uh oh hang on a second within the Born Again population a shockingly small proportion 33% hold a Biblical worldview right so let's unpack that further 30 33% of the adult population in America claim to be born again but only 133% hold a Biblical worldview and among all people in America only 4% hold

a Biblical worldview so despite the fact that 68% claim to be Christians only 4% hold a Biblical worldview and only 40% of pastors have a Biblical worldview so this feeds into Lewis's point when people claim to be Christians and don't behave that way it could be that they're not really Christians they don't have a Biblical worldview now Lewis goes on to say this of course there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together as Barna just pointed out right people claiming to

be Christians but don't really have a Christian worldview they have a uh what we might say is a cafeteria approach to their worldview they'll just take whatever they like and plop them in there and they might say look I'm a Christian because I know I'm not a Muslim and I believe in God anyway Lewis goes on to say this consequently it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-christians in the mass which is what uh Andrew asked maybe his wife asked this when Andrew you said that uh let's see back to

your question he said as I look at the world the vast majority of Christians I look at do not appear to be any different from the world so he's looking at a mass of people here anyway here's what Lewis goes on to say he says when comparing Christians in general I'm sorry I lost my place here it is consequently it is not much use to make judgments about Christians and non-christians in the mass it is some use comparing cats and dogs dogs or even men and women in the mass because their one knows definitely which

is which forget the transgender movement for a second we we do know the difference between a man man and a woman anyway he says also an animal does not turn either slowly or suddenly from a dog into a cat but when we are comparing Christians in general with non-christians in general we are usually not thinking about real people whom we all who we know at all but only about two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers and today we might say the internet or social media if you want to compare the bad

Christian and the good atheist you must think about two real specimens whom you have actually met unless we come down to Brass tax in that way we shall only be wasting time so you got to think about real people not just in the mass because you don't know what the mass really believes but you know the real people you know you can ask them what do you really believe Lewis goes on to say here's the second reason suppose we have come down to Brass tax and are now talking about not about imaginary Christian and imaginary

non-Christian but about two real people in your own neighborhood even then we must be careful to ask the right question if Christianity is true then it ought to follow a that any Christian will be nicer than the same person would be if he were not a Christian and B that any man who becomes a Christian will be nicer than he was before now this is a critical point follow Lewis on this ladies and gentlemen this is critical in other words Lewis is about to say you don't compare a Christian to a non-Christian you compare a

Christian to how he was before he became a Christian that's what Lewis's point is going to be and he uses a a couple of fictional characters he says Christian Miss baates may have an uner tongue than unbelieving dick ferin that by itself does not tell us whether Christianity works the question is what Miss Bates tongue would be if she were not a Christian and what dicks would be if he became one miss Bates and dick as the result of natural causes and early upbringing have certain temperaments Christianity professes to put both temperaments Under New Management

if they will allow it to be so you have to uh or you have a right to ask or what you have a right to ask is whether the that management if allowed to take over improves the concern everyone knows that what is being managed in dick ferkins case it's much nicer he puts it in quote it's much nicer than what is being managed in Miss bates's case in other words he's talking about we start with certain raw materials and you can't judge two people that start in different places maybe due to their own Constitution

their own upbringing or whatever and say that since they uh are both one is a Christian and one's a non-Christian the Christian should always be ahead of the non-Christian in terms of nice behavior in fact let's use an analogy here um Michael Jordan and I were both born in about the same year we're about the same age but let's let's go back say 30 35 years uh and I wanted to play NBA basketball and I had a great coach to help me well my natural ability on a scale of 1 to 10 to play NBA

basketball is maybe a 1.5 if that maybe a one right I I've got like no skill to play NBA basketball Michael Jordan however was born with an amount of amazing talent that would allow him to play and if he got coaching he could get even better so let's say Michael started out as an eight and I started out as a one well let's say I had a great coach and he could get me to a three and Michael had no coach he's already starting at an eight if you look at both of us you might

say look tur has a coach and he stinks look at look at Jordan over here he's amazing coaches don't matter no you would never say that if you're if you know where we started from you would say Turk just doesn't have the natural ability the natural gifts from God to do this Michael Jordan does he's starting out way ahead of Turk doesn't matter what Turk does with the coach he's never going to make it to Jordan's position and so the way you evaluate whether the Holy Spirit has done any work in somebody is not whether

or not they're better than somebody else the way you evaluated is where they are they better than where they started from and I think if you're honest most people who and by the way it's a sanctification issue again it's not a justification and you can be you could be justified and not have any sanctification yet and you're still in a in in as a bad a POS a position behaviorally behaviorally as if you were never saved so we're talking sanctification now and if somebody is Justified from a one to a three I should say say

Sanctified from a 1 to a three that's the sign of a good coach and in Behavior it might be the sign of the Holy Spirit but Jordan if he gets a coach he goes to a nine or a 10 right but comparing Jordan and Turk makes no sense comparing Jordan to Jordan and Turk to Turk after they both get coaches is how you see whether the coach made any difference now here's what Lou says now don't misunderstand me of course God regards a nasty nature as a bad and deplorable thing and of course he regards

a nice nature as a good thing good like bread or sunshine or water but these are good things which he gives and we receive he created dick sound nerves and good digestion and there's plenty more where they came from we must therefore not be surprised if we find among the Christians some people who are still nasty he says there is even when you come to think it over a reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers than nice ones here's another key Point ladies and gentlemen from Lewis he says

that was what people objected to about Christ during his life on Earth he seemed to attract such awful people that is what people still object to and always will do you not see why Christ said blessed are the poor and how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom and no doubt he primarily meant the economically rich and the economically poor but do not his words also apply to another kind of riches and poverty one of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the

kinds of Happiness money can give and so fail to realize you're in need for God if everything seems to come simply by signing checks you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God now quite plainly natural gifts carry with them a similar danger if you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and good upbringing you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is why drag God into it you may ask a certain level of good contact Good Conduct comes fairly easily to you you are not

one of these wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex alcohol or nervousness or bad temper everyone says you are a nice Chap and between ourselves you agree with them and you quite and you are quite likely to believe dial uh you're quite likely to believe all this niceness is your own doing and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness often people have all these natural kinds of goodness they cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all one day the natural goodness lets them down

and their self-satisfaction is shattered shattered in other words it's hard for those who are rich in this sense to enter the kingdom it is very different for the nasty people the little low timid warp thin-blooded lonely people who are the passionate sensual unbalanced people very difficult for them says Lewis you see where he's going with this I think this is brilliant I think he's spoton he says he goes on to say I hate when I hit my cursor and I lose my place but I'm reading from CS Lewis's uh Mere Christianity uh who is pointing

out that people who may start at a better level will appear nicer people than Christians who start at a lower level behaviora from a nature point of view from a nurture point of view and that doesn't disprove that there's no Holy Spirit out there working on them he says uh Le says if these people who are unbalanced these people who need Christ if they make any attempt at goodness at all they learn in double quick time that they need help it is Christ or nothing for them it is taking up the cross and following or

else despair they are lost sheep he came especially to find them they are in one very real and terrible sense the poor he blessed them they are the awful set he goes about with and of course the Pharisees will say as they said from the first if there were anything in Christianity those people would not be Christians Lewis says there is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us if you are not a nice person if virtue comes easily to you bew much is expected from those to whom much is given

that's a a reference to Luke chapter 12 at the Judgment Day for whom much is given much will be required Lewis says if you mistake your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature and if you are contented with simply being nice you are still a rebel and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible your corruption more complicated your bad example more disastrous the devil was an archangel once his natural gifts were as far above yours as your yours are above the chimpanzee but if you are a poor creature

poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of V vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels saddled by no choice of your own with some loome sexual perversion nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends do not despair he knows all about that you are one of the poor whom he blessed he knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive keep on do what you can one day perhaps in another world but perhaps far sooner than that he will fling it on the scrap Peep

and give you a new one and then you may astonish us all not least yourself for you have learned you're driving in a hard School some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last niceness wholesome integrated person ity is an excellent thing we must try by every medical educational economic and political means in our power to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up nice just as we try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat but we must not suppose that even if we

succeed in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls a world of nice people content in their own niceness looking no further turned away from God would be just as desperately in need of Salvation as a miserable world and might even be more even might even be more difficult to save let me stop right here I know what lwis is saying here with regard to niess but I need to say this Jesus wasn't always nice in fact that that's pretty much what got him killed he didn't go around saying love your neighbor all the

time he spoke truth to the powerful people including Kai including the Pharisees including the politicians of his day who were the Pharisees and they wanted him dead just read Matthew chapter 23 in fact we're going to get into this in a future program Jesus wasn't always nice niceness is not the test of Christianity sometimes you have to be firm sometimes you have to shake people up some times you've got to turn over tables in the temple sometimes you got to say your father is the devil as Jesus said in John chapter 8 to the Pharisees

sometimes you have to say you brood of vipers you Hypocrites you strain out a knat and swallow a camel sometimes you need to do that now you have to be advised on when that happens but Jesus wasn't always nice anyway Lewis goes on to say this but perhaps perhaps we have already spent too long on this question if what you want is an argument against Christianity and Andrew the gentleman that asked this question regarding his wife leaving Christianity if you think this is an argument against Christianity that Christians aren't as nice as some non-christians it's

not going to work that's what lwis is saying here if what you want is an argument against Christianity and I well remember how eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say so there's your boasted new man give me the old kind but if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue whether other grounds well Lewis doesn't go into it but I

mean we can talk about the cosmological argument theological argument the fine tuning and the and the design in life we can talk about the moral argument we can of course talk about the evidence from the resurrection and many other reasons to believe that Christianity is indeed true hypocrisy in the church does not defeat those arguments in other words now Lewis really drops the hammer look what he does here again from Mere Christianity he says what can you what can you ever really know of other people's Souls of their Temptations their opportunities their struggles one soul

in the whole creation you do know and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands it's yours if there is a God you are in a sense alone with him you cannot put them off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you may have read in books what will all that chatter and hearsay count will you even be able to remember it when the an athetic fog which we call nature or the real world Fades away and the presence with the capital P the presence in which you

have always stood becomes palpable immediate and unavoidable in other words ladies and gentlemen you can complain about all the evil your Christian neighbors have done but you're going to stand alone before God what are you going to say then well look how bad he was and he claimed to be a Christian not going to work although you may be nice by the world standards all the evil you've done throughout your life will be revealed on Judgment day and you are going to be judged alone now if you have Christ at your side he will take

all of the punishment you deserve that's why he's the only way because nobody else could take your punishment on themselves than an innocent substitute who died in your place and the only one who's done that is Jesus now let's summarize all this and these are not excuses for poor Behavior among Christians but explanations as to why we may not see the the kind of behavior we might expect first of all let's talk about Lewis's first point just briefly to summarize you don't really know who's a Christian and who's not a Christian and you're you're you're

maybe confusing justification and sanctification all Christians if they're true Christians have been Justified but they haven't all been Sanctified they're in process okay that's Point number one point number two is in addition to people being in process they may have a jumble of beliefs as we said only 4% of people in America have a Christian world view how effective is the holy spirit going to be able to work on only 4% of the population maybe they can the holy spirit will work on 4% of the population but the other 96% and a good portion of

them claim to be Christians might not allow the Holy Spirit to do the work that the Holy Spirit wants to do in them I love what DL Moody once said he said I um how did he put it I think he said that I have all of the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit doesn't have all of me because I won't let him I think that's the way he put it so very few people in America have a true Christian worldview third point after how you don't know who's you don't really know who's really a

Christian anyway and people are in process they have a jumble of beliefs the third point is is that Christianity tends to attract people who don't often have it all together they know they need a savior they're often not upstanding citizens Pharisees we might say and uh they're not too good to think they don't have a need for a savior they know they know they need a savior they're desperate for a savior but the people who have been born into good circumstances and have a good nature to them generally they may be upstanding good citizens and

because of that many Christians start from a lower point on the scale of niceness than the put together non-Christian as we said before when using the Michael Jordan illustration I mentioned before so if you put someone who's a two on the behavior scale and that person becomes a Christian it becomes a five after accepting Christ we're still going to judge him as worse than the atheist who has always been a seven because the atheist was born in better circumstances so we always need to keep that in in in mind again Lewis's Point here is you

don't compare a Christian to a non-Christian necessarily you compare a Christian to how he was before he became a Christian then you can see the difference in the holy spirit's ability given the permission of the Christian to turn that person transform that person more into the image of Jesus number five is that God's common Grace affects even non-christians as we just mentioned there are people out there who just are naturally gifted in a way that makes them say better citizens whether they're Christians or not that's common Grace is rainfalls on the just and the unjust

another point we need to bring up point six is that the Bible doesn't say you're going to be become perfect when you become a Christian in fact just read Romans chapter 7 Paul is already a Christian and he's still struggling with sanctification what I want to do I don't do what I don't want to do I do who's going to save me from this body of death only Jesus Christ Our Lord so we should expect Christians to struggle just like everybody else and in this culture where more people are discipled by the iPhone than the

Bible you're going to see a lot of struggle and by the way Christians if you're not struggling somewhere with sin you're probably not really serious about struggling with sin you're probably allowing it to take over there should be a continual struggle in some area of your life with sin because we live in a fallen world we still have a sin nature now let's take one last point on this issue and let's go up to 30,000 ft here's a seventh reason that this objection doesn't work we do see the transformative power of Christ when we back

up and look at the big picture of Western civil civilization the greatest moral advances in history were made by Christians whether it's charity helping the poor orphanages hospitals universities eradicating slavery eradicating child sacrifice and gladiatorial death games eradicating child Brides women women is property child prostitution abortion in some areas in fact this is why even non-christians are now saying I like Christian culture that's why people like Richard Dawkins and Tom Holland and Douglas Murray who do not claim to be Christians quite obviously are saying you know I'd much rather have a Christian culture than a

secular culture or an Islamic culture if the transformative power of Christ on the west was not so evident they would never say that so it's a great question Andrew but I think it's misplaced I think for those seven reasons at least you can point back to your wife and say that the argument doesn't work to disprove Christianity I might also add that the charge of hypocrisy presupposes a moral standard and if your wife is now an atheist she has no moral standard by which to judge anything is right or wrong there's nothing wrong with hypocrisy

in fact claiming that hypocrisy is wrong is actually evidence for God because something can't be wrong unless there's a standard of right and there can't be a standard of right unless God exists but great question and go to CS Lewis Mir Christianity I want to say this is chapter eight but I I forgot where I took it from I don't have it in front of me but you'll find it uh it's in the second half of Mere Christianity because he's talking about Christian Behavior I think it might be chapter 8 if I'm not mistaken but

I could be wrong about that let me go to one more question and uh this comes in from from Joy who is trying to set up voter registration table a voter registration table in uh churches of this group that she's leading and I voter guides and she wants to know how do we respond to some of the objections to doing this and here is one of the objections if we allow you to set up a table that will open the door or or or if we allow you to set up a table that will open

the door for others to request setting up a table for whatever they're wanting to do or show okay this is a copout why because the pastor and the elders have to make decisions on what is appropriate and what isn't for a table and they can make that decision I mean to use an analogy if you let one person come into your house does that mean you have to let everyone come into your house no of course not you get to make those decisions and a Christian's Duty as a citizen is to vote biblically and you're

not being partisan when you're setting up a voter registration table to say Hey you ought to be you ought to use the opportunity you have to influence the culture to protect innocent people from Evil to protect our ability to preach and live the go possible and so here is how you get registered to vote and here is where the candidates stand on all these issues in fact we're going to do a series of programs on this as the election gets closer to to help people navigate this uh and one place you can go is I

voter.com I think that's the website in fact it's put out by our friends at the American Family Association I voter.com let me check it right now myself is it I voter guide might be I voter guide yeah it is uh let's see I thought it was I voter guide or I voter.com my internet is really slow right now I'll figure it out here in a minute but it's a place that you can go if you want to see where every candidate stands on the issues and they do a great job I don't think the presidential

stuff will be out for another few weeks but if you go to that website and you just type in your address it'll say here is everybody that you can vote for and here's what they believe so I don't see anything objectional about that the second objection is to separation of church and state well you might say to them uh what do you mean by that how how is this a violation of the separation of church and state to say uh that I want to I want to inform people as to where the candidates stand on

the issues has nothing to do it's a separation church first of all separation church and state not is not in the Constitution and even if it was inform people on where candidates stand and registering them to vote has nothing to do with the separation of church and state when Thomas Jefferson ivoterguide.com thanks orge just told me ivoterguide.com yeah go to ivoterguide.com you'll see it there the separation of church and state was a letter or came from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists uh who were worried that the state was going to

interfere with the church and he said no there's a wall of separation between church and state and what he meant was he didn't the state interfering with the church not that the church couldn't influence the state now it turned out that during covid that was reversed the state interfered with the church telling the church what to do we shouldn't fall for that again ladies and gentlemen but no we're supposed to be engaged and as I say we'll we'll unpack this further in future programs I'm running out of time here but this CH separation of church

and state has nothing to do with it in fact you might want to ask the person how does the separation of church and state even if it exists in the Constitution prevent people who go to church from voting uh it doesn't all right third it will cause division in the church and joy who wrote this in says yes truth has a way of doing this well let me point out that Unity we're supposed to be unified in the truth we should divide when people have wrong Doctrine on essential matters okay and loving your neighbor is

an essential matter and one way you love your neighbor is to make sure laws are put into place to prevent them from being hurt to prevent the government or other people from doing evil to them that's an essential matter that we ought to be engaged in and to say that people are going to be divided if you want to if you want to help prevent evil in your Society then so much for the people that don't want to prevent evil in their society they're not living out the Christian faith the fourth objection that these people

have it's going to jeopardize our 501 C3 status no it's not it has nothing to do with it again telling people where the candidates stand and reg and registering them to vote won't jeopardize your tax exempt status and let me say one other thing by the way are you called to be tax exempt or salt and light is it all about tax exemption with you well if that's what your religion's all about tax exempt status then I I would argue you're not you don't have a right view of Christianity and there's no church I think

there may be one Church in history that ever lost their tax exempt status even the alliance defending freedom for years used to tell pastors to preach overtly political sermons sermons even where they're endorsing candidates and send them to the IRS because they wanted to test the law you know the IRS has never taken that up why because they don't they want to let sleeping dogs lie you can even talk about candidates in your church what will cross the line is for you to saying me as the pastor of this church is telling you you need

to vote for this candidate but you can go right you could say me as the pastor of the church I'm voting for this candidate and here's why but he can't tell you that you have to do so but you can certainly point out the issues and you should be pointing out the issues number four is going to hurt us financially yeah there it is again that's the other objection huh it's all about money huh yeah I why don't you get into another line of business if Christianity is all about money then uh maybe you ought

to do something else Pastor okay you're here to be Salt and Light you're not here to be tax exempt or to make sure that you have enough money now obviously you need money to do ministry but you know what actually has been discovered on this issue in fact Tony Perkins has done the research Arch on this of the family research Council if you start speaking to all the cultural issues out there whether they're political or not there's going to be some people are going to get that are going to get uncomfortable and leave it's going

to happen that's true however many more people are going to show up and they're going to be fully devoted followers of Christ you're not there to amuse the goats you're there to feed and protect the Sheep if there are people that don't like what you're saying and what you're saying is biblical AA L vista baby move on okay sorry we're not here to change our Doctrine so you feel more comfortable that's not what Christianity is about the sixth uh things people bring up is fear the lord told us not to fear Paul told us not

to fear fear of what you might want to unpack that a little bit more joy number seven we don't want to become political my answer is why not who said are only atheists qualified to run the country by the way Jesus was involved in politics in fact we're going to unpack this in a future show who did he go after the most the Pharisees what did he say to the Pharisees you've neglected the weightier matters of the law the more important matters of the law this is Matthew 23:23 by the way you're tithing your spices

but you're neglecting Justice mercy and faithfulness you should have practiced the latter without neglecting you should have practiced the former without neglecting the latter you blind guid you strain out a net and swallow a camel so as we're going to point out you have to be involved if you're going to love people and you have to vote on the more important matters of the law these are moral issues sure there are many things Christian can disagree over that are political but there are some things we ought not disagree over like life like gender like sexuality

like religious freedom like security and politics affects your ability to preach the gospel you don't want to become too political political go try and start a church in North Korea see how far you get go try and open a church in Canada and preach the passages that say homosexuality is a sin see how far you get you know the Bible is political in Canada are you not going to talk about the Bible now because it's political just because issues become political and the culture makes them political doesn't mean Christians have to stop talking about them

where do we get this idea that we have no right to influence how we come together and govern ourselves which is what politics is it's how a group of people come together as a community and decide what laws are going to be put in place so we can govern ourselves appropriately why are Christians not going to shouldn't be a part of that where does that come from you've been deceived if you think think you ought not be involved are only atheists qualified to run the country and assuming that that number eight is we want to

be inclusive and make all feel welcome ladies and gentlemen this is the problem with assuming the church is for unbelievers it's not while we want to be welcoming we should not be sacrificing the truth in the name of being welcoming are we attracting these people to Jesus or we attracting to them or we are we trying to attract them with what they want to hear now this shouldn't be a bait and switch and I know a lot of pastors do that they're they're on the attractional model we can't talk about those issues some people get

up and leave what is it going to be bait and switch you want these people to become Christians and then you say oh here's what you really ought to believe and by the way you never tend to get to those issues do you because you're always in the attractional mode you never really preach the truth because there's always somebody in there who might not like it the church is not for Believers we want unbelievers to come but we're not going to change the message for them and this goes to the point of Ephesians 4 where

Paul says that the church is there to equip the Saints to do ministry in other words the people in the pews are supposed to go out and evangelize it's not the pastor's job to evangelize all the non-christians it's the pastor and the staff's job to equip the people in the pews to go do that and yet we've totally abrogated that that we said oh no the pastor's got to do it so we're just going to bring our non-Christian friends well thanks for bringing your non-Christian friends but that's not what church is for church is for

making disciples not making Believers remember Jesus didn't say make Believers he said make disciples now as I say we're going to talk much more about this in future programs but joy that's a great question and I think if you take some of those points and maybe ask some questions of people to see where they're coming from to unpack their objections a little bit more I think you can make some Headway on that issue let me point out by the way that much of the thinking that we bring to this program can be taught if you

know logic and we've got a couple of logic courses coming up train your brain one for adults and one for sixth to eth graders it starts September 9th if you're listening to this after September 9th you can still enroll we're also teaching for high schoolers and college kids why I still don't have enough Faith to be an atheist that also starts on September 9th I'll be your instructor for that in fact I'll also be involved in the uh train your brain course as well so go to cross examin org click on online courses you will

see it there and I want to mention that we've got a lot coming up we need your prayers ladies and gentlemen and your donations because we got a lot coming up this fall we're not only continuing with the kingdom AI project to translate so much of our stuff into these foreign languages but we're also going to colleges and universities it starts next week uh it starts September 5th in Dallas at UT Dallas the next night I will be with my friend Charlie Kirk and Robert Furrow at Calvary Chapel tuon that's the 6th of September and

then on the 9th of September we'll be at Arizona State University in Tempe Arizona for I don't have enough Faith to be an atheist then the following week at Western Carolina University not far from Asheville maybe 45 minutes west of Asheville and then we're going to be at the unshaken conference in Buffalo New York on the 21st that's myself Alisa Childers and Natasha crane all that on the website so check all that out and Lord willing wait a minute jhead you got something else what oh yeah we got the Egypt trip coming up too Egypt

and Saudi Arabia which is happening December 2nd go to the website check all that out we're going to climb the real Mount Si come with me it's going to be great go to the website check it all out and Lord willing I will see you here next week God bless