Ruslan's Bless God Podcast
Have Protestant Christians Been WRONG All Along? @TruthUnites
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Bio: Ruslan KD is a Christian YouTuber of Armenian descent who was a refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan, before moving to the United States as a child. He started his YouTube channel in the mid-2010s, which has since grown into a popular platform for discussing faith, lifestyle, and music. Known for his insightful commentary on Christian living, culture, and personal development, Ruslan has built a community of followers who value his thoughtful approach to contemporary issues. In addition to his YouTube presence, Ruslan is a speaker, author, and advocate for godly ambition, often addressing topics related to leadership, mental health, and the integration of faith in everyday life.
Our mission is to encourage, empower, and inspire people to live a life that Blesses God, in accordance with His word. As the Psalmist proclaims, "Bless God in the great congregation, the Lord, O you who are of Israel's fountain" (Psalm 68:26 ESV), and "Every day will I bless Thee; and I will praise Thy name forever and ever" (Psalm 145:2 KJV). Just as Simeon, after encountering Jesus, "took him up in his arms and blessed God" (Luke 2:28 ESV), we seek to lead others in a life of stewardship, relevant engagement, and practical living that honors and blesses the Lord.
- Duration:
- 1h 12m
- Broadcast on:
- 31 Dec 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
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What would you say some of the close-handed doctrines are? Hills, though. We should die. There's genuine exorcisms, I've had times, some of the most encouraging things that I've ever experienced have been the Holy Spirit doing something that I can't even explain. I don't even have categories or language for. How would you describe an actual Protestant view of communion and what are the distinctions? Because from every conversation I've had with a Catholic... Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I am here with the author of what it means to be Protestant. And I feel like I don't want to say this too much, but you really are one of my favorite Christian creators on the platform. I would not have discovered you had it not been for YouTube. And then I was like, "Oh man, this guy's like an onion. He has like a whole series of books and a ministry, family, background and all sorts of cool stuff." Any further ado, Gavin Orland, what it means to be Protestant, thank you for making this, by the way. I think this is recommended by me to many people. So for folks who don't know who you are, Gavin, give us the condensed background of Gavin Orland. And I want to get into the book. I want to get into some controversial topics. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah, happy to be here. This is fun to talk. Yeah, I run a ministry called Truth Unites, and then I serve as a theologian in residence at a church in the Nashville area in Tennessee, have a family of five kids, yeah, got it into Protestantism, defending Protestantism, never thought I'd be doing that. But just feel a need for that. You know, a lot of people have anxiety about church history and where do they fit in and so forth. I'm trying to serve people in that way. I also have a passion for just general apologetics. I just want to, basically I'm pretty simple. I just want to promote the gospel, you know, any way that I can. But there's a hunger right now for church history. You know, people are really aching for the sense of roots right now, and I think that's a healthy hunger. So a lot of what I'm trying to do is just meet needs and bring food to the hunger. Yeah. You've had some pretty big debates debated, Trent Horn that was moderated by Matt Fratt. And I want to get into some of those because I think there's some, yeah, I think there's a meat there in terms of what you do and why we should have these conversations. In terms of the channel, truth unites, the name to me, I think is indicative of your character and the way you carry yourself in these conversations, though you are you have your theological leanings. You have more of a Calvinistic link, reformed leaning. However, you really are ecumenical in the good sense, right? So you're not dismissing Catholics and, you know, Orthodox folks or non Protestant is not saved and going to hell and you're really coming and having this like very sincere approach to try and get clarity. And I think that's so needed because I think so many times when I sit down with folks who I have relationship with, it's like, you do not say they're going to hell that, right? And you call it, and I want to butcher it, theological triage. Can you unpack that a little bit and just kind of the heart behind that? Yeah. This would be, to me, another one of those areas of just huge need right now. So I think we need a lot of church history right now, just context, roots. But also, so triage is this idea of ranking different doctrines and just explaining not every hill is a hill to die on. And I think, you know, someone could relate to this if they've ever had an experience where they grew up thinking, oh, those kinds of Christians over there, they're the enemy. And then they actually sit down and get to know somebody and they realize, wow, it's really humbling to see Christ is in this other person and I can learn from them. And there's so many issues like that. And so triaging issues is just a way to say not every issue is equally important. But then I think the balance there is just trying to say, it doesn't mean we then become minimalists who don't talk about theology. So, you know, like you said, the approach I take is to try to argue for a view. But I mean, the goal is, and this is tricky, I don't do this perfectly, you know, it's like a never-ending process of learning. But the goal is kindness, humility, listening, relationship, you know, love. People don't feel love from us. You know, I want people, even when we're arguing together, I want them to feel a sense of who Jesus is. Jesus is the most loving person you will ever encounter. I want them to feel that even when we're disagreeing on something. But then at the same time, there are those orthodoxy issues. I mean, there are hills to fight for. And there are, you know, like the central matters. So, yeah, so I have a book on that if some people are interested, it's called Finding the Right Hills to Die On. It's trying to kind of rank these things, you know, what are those first rank issues? What are the second rank? What are the third rank? So forth. Yeah, I think I've heard it described as open-handed doctrine versus close-handed, close-handed as those essentials, open-handed are non-essential, and then there's like convictions and preferences, if you will. What would you say some of the close-handed doctrines are hills though? We should die on. Yeah, yeah. So I put out a video called "What is heresy?" recently, and I gave like five examples. So things like, I would say the Trinity. And I, you know, I get some dialogue with Unitarians at times who don't believe in the Trinity. But I just think, you know, whether you worship Jesus or don't worship Jesus as God, that's a central issue. The resurrection, you know, Jesus did not rise from the dead, our resurrection. I think Paul makes that pretty clear in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus is not risen or faith is futile. One example I give is kind of easy believerism. So your life doesn't need to change, you just say a prayer, everything's good. You don't need to repent of sin, you don't need to follow Jesus. I would say that's a first-strike issue if someone is teaching that. Just because of how that comes up in the New Testament and people, the apostles are condemning this and saying this is false teaching, full-preterism, that's the idea that all, everything's already done. The second coming has already happened, it was a spiritual secret, second coming. That's a problem. That's going to go against like the apostles' creed. And there's a lot more, but those are a couple of examples of like, you know, first-rank issues. I mean, I don't think I know anyone that holds to that. Weird thing is it's growing. It's the time of the internet where these weird things get traction. Yeah, I know like partial-preterism, Doug Wilson will hold to something like that, right, in terms of like some of what we're reading in Matthew 24, some of what we're reading in Revelation has already happened, you know, the 666 is Nero, yada, yada, yada, yada, okay. And I like the conclusions of that post-millennial type of eschatology, but to say it's all happened, everything. Yeah, exactly. That's crazy. Partial, I mean, full disclosure, I'm a partial-preterist myself. You're a post-mill? And Amil. Amil, okay, okay, okay. So pretty similar to what you described there. So that's totally different. I mean, if you think like, you know, who you think the Antichrist is or a great tribulation when that happens, that stuff is, that that's not a hilt to die on, you know, that we can disagree about those things and just work on them. But full-preterism, yeah, because then you just take away all Christian hope, you know, this is as good as it gets. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm never engaged with that, with that position. I don't know anyone that's held up position. So even, I like, I understand someone somewhere probably believes that that's just so dark. It is. Yeah. Yep. It just, like we say, it visiates Christianity. Yeah. It's like, you don't, you can't believe in the Second Coming as a future event anymore. Yeah. Okay. What about spiritual gifts? Prophecy. Are you a continuationist or you a cessationist? Where are you going on? That stuff. I'm a continuationist. Okay. What about the gifts? Don't see that as a hill to die on. I've got lots of cessationist friends, you know, so cessationist just for people watching this. They believe the miraculous spiritual gifts ceased in the past and there's no speaking in tongues and prophecy and healing today. I believe those things are for today, I'm enthusiastic about them. But I see that as, I actually talked about that in my book as a third-rank issue. So maybe I talk about that as a second, I think I actually talk about it as a second rank. I can't even remember anymore. Yeah. Um, continuationist charismatic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Tonk's prophecy charismatic? Yeah. No. Okay. I like this. Yeah. Yeah. This is something people don't always, I don't talk about it. I have one video on this where I try to triage it. Okay. I try to talk through. But in that video, I share my story of how I came to encounter that whole realm. Yeah. And that's a long story. But yeah. Yeah. Now, now I do think there's a lot of abuses of those things too. So my passion is for try to find, again, find the balance of, you know, reject the unhealthy stuff, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's genuine exorcisms. There's, you know, I think God speaks today. I've had times, some of the most encouraging things that I've ever experienced have been the Holy Spirit doing something that I can't even explain. I don't even have categories or language for. But just to encourage anybody watching this, to know the Holy Spirit is the most wonderful thing in your life. There's no peace and joy like that. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's, that's awesome. Um, you. We talk a lot about his Protestants, our view of salvation saved by grace through faith alone. Right. And then I would say two good works. I think that's how Ephesians two, eight and nine read by grace, right now your own doing and then verse 10 is like, and you're created in Christ Jesus. Verse 10, right. So justification, you wouldn't put that as an essential area, meaning that someone can get it wrong on the mode of salvation and still be saved. Is that, is that fair? Okay. So this is a tough one. This is tricky. This gets really nuanced. Yeah. So I would say justification itself is a first rank issue because of Galatians, you know, you got Paul saying the Judaizers, he's like giving an athemus here. So this is serious stuff. Yes. There's parts of justification that it's not the whole doctrine, it's just one understanding of it. And so because there's, you know, someone who just denies justification by faith alone versus some of the nuances that come out of, how do you define the word justification? I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the Roman Catholic Protestant discussion because they believe in initial justification by faith alone and a lot of times Protestants don't realize that. So there's more common ground, I think, between Protestant and Catholic than there is between like Paul and the Judaizers in Galatians. But I also, again, I don't want to minimize the differences with Protestant and Catholic because there's a lot that comes in there. So, yeah, I mean, we kind of need to talk through each thing, you know, so part of justification is that you have imputation, Christ is righteousness imputed to us for Christ. Part of it is how you define the word, you know, St. Augustine. I think St. Augustine was a Christian, but he has a definition of justification as God making us righteous, so not just declaring us righteous, so it's a process. So he says, he just uses that term differently. Some of the differences are about terminology, you know, because we both believe there's Catholic and Protestant, we both believe there's an initial change and declaration of forgiveness, but then we have to grow, but we use different terms to describe that. But I do have concerns about Roman Catholic theology in this area, even though I wouldn't say that they're outside of the kingdom or something like that, but I do think just the lack of assurance of salvation that their view tends to breed, I just think I have pastoral concerns about that. Yeah. And I think that's one of the strengths within the Protestant framework is there's one is a simplicity to the gospel, so if someone is new and asks you, how do I get saved, you can give them a really clear answer of how you get saved, you know, believe, believe faith in Jesus in your Savior, declared righteous because of the work on the cross. And then there's the separate process of negatification. So I think you're right in that there's terminology that is different. In terms of the Eastern Orthodoxy, would you say their view of salvation as similar to Catholicism or different, meaning that they always tell me, we don't know who saved and we don't declare people saved, right? And I'm like, Oh, scripture kind of does, you know, and they say, you are saved, you're being saved, you will be saved. Well, that to me sounds like justification, sanctification, glorification, right? Like, like I'm justified because of the work of Jesus. I still need to cooperate and become holy through the process of sanctification and the Holy Spirit. And then one day I will be in heaven in the new heaven, the new earth in a glorified, new resurrected body that is sinless. And they will just use the same word, safe, safe, safe, safe for all three of those. So are we, how much of this is we're disagreeing over terminology specifically with salvation versus we're, no, no, you're saying that there is contribution. We believe you guys are saying there's contribution to you earning your salvation, you know? Yeah, the terminology is an issue here because they'll say to us, oh, you know, we believe in theosis, we believe we become partakers of the divine nature, we become divine in some sense. We would say, and they a lot of times they'll act like we don't have any conception of that. But in the Protestant tradition, they're, that's not, that basic idea is not something we necessarily reject. I mean, it's right there in second Peter one about our takers in the divine nature. You can find that you find that in the West in Augustine and people like that. I think, again, there's more common ground, but I'm with you that the issue of assurance of salvation comes up because there are differences. And this is one where the passion of my ministry is pretty simple. I just want people to know with, with confidence and freedom and joy. If they have trusted in Christ and they've repented of their sin and the following Christ, their sins are totally forgiven. Yes. They're saved. They also will be saved too. Yeah, we can say that. They're adopted as God's child, they're filled with the Holy Spirit. The banner over their life is Romans eight, one, no condemnation. Period. Yeah. And that, and just there's a freedom that comes with that. It just breeds this confidence and, and I think then properly understood, then that leads to holiness and just seeking Christ more and so forth. And I do think there are aspects to the non Protestant traditions in different ways that unfortunately, I would say disrupt that assurance and that peace, but, you know, we try to be honest about this. We try to kind of talk through the concerns and differences, but we're not anathematizing all of the people over here, but this is a concern, but I just, but a lot of Protestants have the same issue. A lot of Protestants. And there is a lot of easy believism and Protestantism. So we're not, we're not perfect, but I just want people to know you can have assurance. You know, like one of my favorite verses, Romans eight, 16, talks about the Holy Spirit testifies to our spirit so that we know we are children of God. There's so much anxiety right now. I want people to know it's like the most wonderful experience to have the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart saying you are a child of God. And that can happen. You know, it's like, it's this just glorious, I don't have words to describe that experience, but it's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I think of, you know, he made him who knew no sense of be sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. Like I'm like, that's, that's it. You know, like that's, that's what I think of now, tell me how you feel about this. So I think of the character of God being revealed in scripture, Jesus, Jesus is description of the prodigal son. So who is God? What is God like? God is like a father who wants to be reconciled with, with his creation, right? And the prodigal didn't want to even be a son anymore. He just said, I'll just be a servant. And yet God declares him, no, you're still my son. His identity is still that, right? And so that, I mean, that, that parable says a lot about, I might think about the character of God, us, right? And when I think about my own parallel, again, if we're using the father son parallel, I think about my own son. And I think of, yeah, I want obedience out of him, but he's still my son. He's still my son when he's disobedient. He's still my, he's, he can't not be my son anymore. Now he can grow up and go through a bad phase and be a prodigal and leave the house. And right. But he's still my son. That's stuck. He is still my DNA. And that doesn't change that reality. And so instead of having this like religious OCD of sorts of like, am I saved? Am I not saved? I think viewing it through the lens of what is the relationship between a father and a son and a father's heart for a son, even if that son goes through a rebellious phase, that, that is to me a better picture than a, well, we don't know if you're still a son. We don't know if you're saved. We don't know. We hopefully, you know, hopefully you are. We don't know. And I think that to me simplifies and I, and I believe that that directly parallels the words of Jesus. What do you think of, of that framework in terms of God's relationship with, with his people? He, he hopes that all would come to a saving faith, right? Yes. Some people in the reform community will say, well, all means all types of people. You know, I would say, no, I think that's God's heart for all people. Like God's heart is that people would be reconciled on to him. Yes. What do you make of that? I. Board with your boring cardio. Stop peddling that snooze cycle to nowhere's ville and try some cardio that's actually fun, supernatural fitness available on MetaQuest isn't that right, Jane Fonda. Cardio will never be boring again. Sweat to the beat of thousands of chart-topping songs inside stunning virtual landscapes. Bet your stationary bike can't do that. Visit GetSupernatural.com and join the next business revolution. Supernatural VR Fitness only on MetaQuest, 18 for Teen. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. The most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting in crowded waiting rooms, standing in line with the pharmacy, that's painful. Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy remove those painful parts of getting better with things like 24/7 virtual visits and prescriptions delivered to your door. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful. I totally agree with the God-desiring salvation of all and also what you're saying about the way I think of it is the father-son relationship you were talking about. The way I think of it is to distinguish between our status versus our experience. So our status is Romans 5-1, peace with God. We peace with God. That's the status. Romans 8-1 is the banner over our life if we're in Christ, we're united to Christ. So that means we're God's child. The things that can't change in our relationship with God would be his favor for us, his love for us, our adoption as his children, the fact that we're indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Now what can change is he can be displeased with what we do. We can be disciplined by him, we can backslide, we can ruin our lives, we can ruin our ministry, we can sin, but our fatherly, I guess I should say, his status as our father and the relationship that comes from that that can't change. So that helps me a lot to try to distinguish what does change and what doesn't. If you're in Christ, there's some things that just don't change. You can wake up on Tuesday morning and be in a bad place spiritually. I need to repent. You need to pray. Yes. But it doesn't mean you're not a child. Yeah, and my son out of a relationship with a good father wants to be obedient to his father, even though he isn't always obedient to me. And so, and this is, this was honestly hard for me, Gavin, as someone that like, I wasn't super close to my dad, my dad wasn't in my life, single parent home, mom, alcoholic. So this was hard for me to kind of reconcile, but it's from a healthy relationship with a good father, a sensible son will want to be obedient because his identity is secure. And so the logical conclusion is, I want to make my dad proud. I love my dad, right? And so it's like, that is where the works come in for me is, man, Jesus did all this for me. The least I could do is like figure out this issue and repent of this thing and be more consecrated and live a more holy life. Of course, like, of course, I want to be a better Christian, but not because I stopped being a son, but because I, he's done so much for me, of course, I want to do it. And so I think when I think of it that way, that to me, make, is a better framework for sanctification. Yeah. And, and, and the process of conforming than a, man, you better do this. You better do these XYZ because if you don't, you don't know, you may not be a son, you may not make it. You, we don't know if you're saved. It just doesn't seem like it's congruent with the view of what we see in scripture of God's heart for people. 100%. Yeah. The, the motivation that comes from the gospel is not fear. Yes. It's not storm clouds over our head saying, I better, I better obey enough. My sanctification, my growth, better go fast enough five years ago versus today. So that I'm saved. The motivation is love and gratitude. Yes. And people say, people get nervous and they say, but if, if you're emphasizing God's grace so much, if you're emphasizing his fatherly heart for you so much, then people are going to get lazy. They're going to do whatever they want. Now things can go awry into that, but I would say that, you know, this is not how relationships work. This is not how people change. Think of in a marriage relationship, you know, you don't motivate your spouse to change by threatening divorce with them. That's good. You assure them of your love and you pour love upon them. And in the context of that change happens. I think it's the same in our relationship with Christ and he's patient with us along the way. Yeah. He's not knee jerk. Never write God's relationship with the church is that of a relationship with a husband and a wife. And so, yeah, I'm absolutely, I think it's like from the acceptance and the love comes the change in transformation instead of using the change in transformation to prove your love for God, you know, and that to me has made sense. And so like I'm someone and I'm probably where you're, where you are at that. And I think I've heard you talk about this where I hold to eternal security, not in a flippant, easy, believerism, live as you want, but from a, hey, if God actually died for me, of course, I want to live to honor him and glorify him. Now, that doesn't mean I'm saying people can live however they want to. It's the opposite. It's actually, if you are actually transformed by the goodness of Jesus, you will want to conform to his ways. Yeah. John Bunyan was preaching grace to his congregation. This is the guy who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, Great Christian, and people in his church got uncomfortable because he was emphasizing the grace of God so much. He said, if you keep on preaching the grace of God, people will just do whatever they want. And his response was, no, if they understand the grace of God, they'll do whatever he wants. Yeah, that's good. And he was trying to say, when the grace of God really lands upon your heart, when you really realize you're that love, it melts you, you know, it softens you to him. And I think that's where true obedience over the long run starts to come from. But I'm with you too. We do need, there is a place for the law, there is a place for God's discipline, for call to repentance. So I'm not trying to act like this is simple either. Yeah. Well, I also think there's a place to acknowledge that even as someone that's been walking with Jesus, gosh, almost 25 years, that I still have sinned, that I needs to be like crucified. I think people think are like, I come to Jesus and sometimes they're miraculously set free. Sometimes habits and addictions go away, other times you wrestle and you're still fighting and I've wrestled with stuff. But then there's times where say, say those like big, obvious sins are mitigated. I'm not a drunk no more. I'm not an adult or no more. Right. I'm not lusting it. Like say those things. They're still the sins of omission. What about all the things I know I should be doing that I don't do? And then what about my motive sometimes for the good things I do and sometimes that motive is conflicted. What about my thought life? What about my mouth? What about right? And when I think about that, I go, I think I still need the grace of Jesus now more than ever. Yeah, totally. And all of us will get to points in our Christian life where we're honest and we see our sin more clearly as we go and we'll get to points where we're like, wow, is the Lord running out of patience with me? Is he kind of becoming less like the father welcoming the prodigal and more kind of tapping his foot and exasperated with us? And that's where we need to remember the gospel and that Jesus loves us right now. Just as much as when he died for us. And so I would say that as an encouragement to people who if they feel like they're struggling, they're not, God is patient. As long as you keep repenting, I think C.S. Lewis said, no amount of falls will kill you if you keep getting back up and running to your father. And so just keep repenting. God is more patient than we assume. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I think sometimes Christians can kind of become the older brother in the prodigal story where they feel like, because I've worked out all the, your sins just become more sophisticated. You're like, I broke out all the big stuff. And so it's like, now you got these like more sophisticated layer things. And it's like, no, no, we still need the grace of God. So I love that. And I do think that like communicating justification, and in my opinion, justification leading to good sanctification and consecration and holiness is something that is just so, to me, so appealing from the, of the, of the Protestant position is like, I'm accepted, I'm loved, I'm saved, I'm, I'm transformed. I'm born again. And therefore I get to go and live a different life and be the light of the world and the salt of the earth and all these different things. That's beautiful. And sometimes people don't get that, like you either slide into easy believers in which slide into legalism. Yeah. And we can acknowledge, you know, the Protestants, we have our issues with easy believers. I mean, you, that you find that a lot out there and, and at their best, I think the other traditions have something of this as well. That's why we're not trying to anathematize them and say they're out of the kingdom or something like that. Yes. But I think the concerns come in on the particulars, like for example, how mortal sins are understood and how confession works and things like this. And it does. I do think it disrupts assurance of salvation. But just to press this into heart, into the hearts, I have a very pastoral heart, you know, I know people are watching this and they're like, ah, sounds okay, but is it for me? Think of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery and he says, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more, even though the passage is disputed in terms of the manuscripts authentic and so forth. But nonetheless, I would say to everybody watching this, if you're, if you have doubts about this, just I would say, know that Jesus says that to you. When you're ashamed or you're, you're stuck, I don't condemn you, but then he says go and sin no more. Yeah. That, that's a great little encapsulation of it for me, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. Yeah. One of the different things I guess this is loosely connected is I loved your video on communion because this is a distinction that we will have with our Orthodox and Catholic folks and they'll say, you know, you guys have an invalid communion and kind of like little bro me, you know, like it's, yes, I think what they're saying, but you got an invalid communion and yeah, yeah, yeah. And I loved your video on communion because you said we believe in real presence at communion. We don't believe it's just this, you know, remembrance in a symbolic gesture. We believe that there is a real presence there. Where would you say, and maybe that's a high Protestant position versus like a low Protestant position. I don't know, but I've always viewed communion as something serious, something not to play with. I've, I've taken friends to church who weren't Christian and had to tell them not to take communion. Right. So that's something I've never like, Hey, no, don't do that. Like you're, you're not, you're not a follower. You're not a Christian. You, you never professional Jesus. Don't, don't do that. Right. And I think what I've been doing here is we're, we're, we're, we're, how would you describe like an actual Protestant view of communion? And what are the distinctions? Because from every conversation I've had with a Catholic or pro, or Orthodox folks, I feel like our, our view of communion is very similar, if not almost identical. Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's an, I try to be ruthlessly honest and almost sort of objective and descriptive in these conversations. Just try to say, look, let's just acknowledge where Protestants have issues. And one of them is we have divisions within Protestantism about this. You've got, you know, you got different views. And so you've got going back to the reformers, Luther and Vingly have this big blow up over this exact topic. I hold the real presence sounds like you do as well. This means we're really feasting on Christ and the Eucharist. And I would say there are distinctions, um, you know, but one of them, you, you mentioned an invalid communion. That's one of the big ones is for, for the Roman Catholics, for the Eastern Orthodox, they look at us. And this is actually one of my biggest concerns with those churches. They are exclusivistic and that will be teased out in different ways, but in communion is wonderful. They don't think like they would say neither you nor I has ever had communion. And because we're not in the, uh, we're not in a context where there's valid ministry. So that would be one of those areas where I look at that and I say, and I, you know, I address this in the book. I talk about, you know, what do you, what do you say about the church that, that springs up among Muslims who have dreams? This happens a lot. Jesus reveals himself to Muslims in a dream. They become Christians. Okay. A church starts in this community. They don't have any succession of bishops going back. So they don't have it like formal apostolic succession, but they're having the Lord supper. Come on. Are you going to say this is not a valid Eucharist? And I, and we as Protestants would be able with historical consistency to say the church is wherever the gospel is being celebrated in word and sacrament. Yeah. That former Muslim community, other places, it's not about this institutional overhead. This is the Protestant way of looking at things is it's, it's about Jesus and his gospel. Yeah. Wherever Jesus and his gospel is celebrated, you can have a valid Eucharist. So that's one of those issues. And then there are some other issues too. You know, do we call it an unbloody sacrifice? Do we call it is, you know, how do we understand it? This gets very nuanced, but would we have like masses for the dead, for deceased Christians? We wouldn't do that. The way you understand real presence. So we get in all the big terms about this. You know, the Catholics believe in transubstantiation and we could define that Protestants don't believe in that, but we do believe in real presence. And that's, so I just make the simple point of here. Most of the Protestants historically have said we are feasting on Christ. And that's my view. And I would just say it's a mystical encounter that we can't fully explain. And it's something the Holy Spirit does in the moment through the bread and the wine. And it's for those who come in faith. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Well, yeah, I think that to me, when I think about what's happening globally, and I talked to Matt Fratt about this of, you know, folks in Iran, like massive revival in Iran, right? My wife went to China as a English teacher, you know, a decade and a half ago to help spread the gospel and teach people about Jesus, right? And they had someone following her around. You think of places where there's seemingly revival happening or awakening happening. I don't know how you make the argument that God's not in that and those aren't valid churches. When he's showing up in dreams, people are getting saved as profession of faith, as communities being built. And then you think of, well, what was the context of the first 150 years of the church, right? And what, and what did that look like? And I, and I would argue that that probably looked like much similar to what's happening in Iran right now, then it does in a quote unquote, you know, hierarchical Bishop of Rome down down through these priests that are to have this opposolic session or in the Orthodox context, context of, of opposolic discussion. So I go, well, how does that work? Like, how do these folks ever get a valid communion? How does someone in North Korea that gets a Bible smuggled in, gives life to Jesus, ever get communion? Or they just like, oh, you just, you're just never going to get it, you know? And what assurance of salvation do they have? If they're not in the right church, you know? And so I've been, I've been thinking about that. And it seems like where the gospel is going forth, I don't want to take all the, all the credit, it's a Protestant, but it's usually Protestants going in and broadcasting. I think that's what's happening in Iran is that they're sending radio broadcasts into these parts and the people were hearing about, you know, Christianity and Jesus and then they're getting saved and they're getting baptized. And it's remarkable, I don't know how that can work outside of a Protestant context. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. The Protestant view of the church is more organic and spontaneous. Yeah. You know, it's like the book of Acts, people get persecuted, so they go and they preach the word and the church just grows and it's not. And so yeah, like the, the care, we mentioned the charismatic gifts, you know, think of the charismatic movement in the 20th century and the global south. It's just amazing what God has done. And how do you understand that? Now, you know, the, the, the Catholics will have a little more categories for understanding this since Vatican too. And yeah, I don't want to be too annoying to our, our Eastern Orthodox viewers because I think it, it greats. I've done a lot of years. They get really upset with you or me or anyone that, that, that, that pokes a little bit. So God bless them. All right. You know, I'm not, I want to be friends, you know, I respect these people, but I just think their historic view is very exclusivistic. I just think it is. I just think they, you know, I put out my videos on this and I'm, I'm trying to listen to the pushback. You know, I'm trying to listen. Well, okay. What, how are they looking at this? You know, but I'm reading these sentences from their councils that are saying things like if you affirm the philioc way, which is a Western doctrine, they don't affirm, then that's heresy. And you put you outside of the church. There is no, there is no church nor Christian outside the bishop. And then they define the bishop as basically an Eastern Orthodox bishop. So it seems very restrictive and I, that, you know, that's just, that's one of the big concerns we have. Yeah. And historically from my understanding, like the Protestants have always viewed the Catholics and the Orthodox as Christian. We've always extended that to them. But what you're saying in their actual writings, which then you can get into pulling quotes and which quote is valid and which source is valid and which is right. But from the research you've done, it seems like, yes, there, at least historically tends to be more of an exclusive view of the one true church. We are the one true church. And seemingly there, there's not salvation outside the one's church. Even though my Catholic and Orthodox friends today would say, no, you're, we think you're saved. We just think you're in the wrong church. Right. Right. Well, is that a fair assessment? Yeah. Yeah. So, and this is not to say, trying to nuance this a little bit, this is not to say Protestants have never said that they're not Christians. A lot of people at the street level have a view like that today. Yes. Calvin and Luther, the mainstream Protestants, Richard Hooker and the Anglican tradition, I quote from Philip Schaff a lot, the sort of confessional standards of Protestants have not restricted the church to one institution or even to all of Protestantism. They've been able to say there's valid sacraments, there's salvation, there's valid churches. I mean, to take John Calvin, he's got a statement in the institutes where he says, we deny the church, the Roman Catholic church is the church, but there are many true churches within her. So, that's an interesting statement. So, yeah, that is an interesting statement. You got, you got the, the core of it is an institutional exclusivism. They, the, in the medieval tradition, both the Eastern Christians and the Western Christians, they have this division and they're looking at each other saying, you're outside of the one church, you're outside of salvation. And I think those statements are pretty clear. So, yeah, this is a huge area. I mean, this is to me a strength of Protestantism. Now, we got a lot of weaknesses in our, on our side. This is a major strength is we, I would say there's two major strengths to Protestantism. One is this, we don't have an institutional exclusivism. We can see the church is just more organic like we've been saying. The other is we have a more modest claim about what the church can do. We don't believe the church can speak infallibly in the way that the scripture is infallible. So, we can go back to our, these historical episodes and say, where do we need to reform? What was wrong? And the other traditions, God bless them. We can't even meet them halfway when we're trying to do a humanism because they're stuck with these allegedly infallible teachings from councils, from in the Roman Catholic tradition, from papal statements and so forth. And so, you know, that, I see that as an overreach. Yeah. They're overreaching with the authority that they have and you know, so that's a, that's a concern. Yeah. And again, a lot of this you're exploring in the new book, I have kind of one more question and I actually have a patreon question that I'd love to hear your thoughts on. So, so, so this has been one of my, as of recent pushbacks, right, is that there's a big emphasis on tradition. And I think the human heart loves tradition and I don't have a problem with people being into tradition, being into art. I think they do so many things beautifully. But my pushback as of recently has been, well, all traditions at one point were modern. Yeah, someone wrote those songs, right? Someone decided to build the altar that way. Someone decided that their priests are going to dress that way and they're going to wear those hats and they're going to wear the collard. Like someone, that those things didn't come down from heaven, like the tablets did, right? Like someone decided these are the way we're going to do this liturgy that liturgy was once upon a time modern, that liturgy was once upon a time written, right? And they're not these, like, traditions that came down from heaven, they were developed at some point in time. And I think the Catholics seem to be more reasonable in saying, yeah, we've had innovations. I don't know which word they're comfortable with. The Orthodox say, no, it's exactly the same church that's been for 2,000 years. And they actually have a great argument in that, so I grew up oriental Orthodox. So I've actually had a valid communion as a child and I was also born a whole bit. But they would say, see, look, you look at Eastern Orthodox and you look at Oriental Orthodox and we're basically indistinguishable in terms of our practice, right? And I go, okay, great, that's a fair point. But that's given happened in like 460. Where did the, what did those traditions start and I don't think they started with the apostles or the apostles' disciples, right? So polycarb, clement. So what did the actual church look like in the first 150 years, 200 years? Because it seems like a lot of the stuff that I'm seeing those traditions are coming at 200, 300 AD and then even if we say, okay, and they've been exactly the same since 200, 300 AD, that means there's still 150 year backlog of a very different looking church. And we, we, we, we reacted to a video of two Roman rulers writing back and forth to each other saying, oh man, these Christians are weird, they're meeting in homes and they got these slave women deacons who are leading these congregations and like, this is some weird stuff. And this is like 90 AD, 85 AD of home churches, women deacons, this disrupts everything that any of the institutions have laid out as what isn't, isn't appropriate for a local gathering. And I go, I don't think as beautiful as I love your traditions, I don't think that's what we had that what happened post apostles dying. And whenever these things became canonized and the, you know, the first councils and all that kind of stuff. What do you, what do you make of that? And I think, I think I can make an argument of that if I went and dung, I could find sources to kind of articulate some of these positions in terms of the, the fathers and the, you know, the polycarps and those folks. So, so, so what do you, what do you kind of make of that as I kind of laid it out? Yeah. I'm, I'm with you on this and I think there can be naivety when people make a claim of up being the unchanging church. I think there's a lot of naivety about how much the church has changed. No one can really get into church history without seeing how dynamic and developmental so much of church tradition is. And then to criticize our own side, if we, maybe we could say something like tradition should be a teacher, but not a tyrant or something like this. Sure. So it's not a tyrant. That can close us off to the new things that the Holy Spirit is doing today, but it can be a teacher. We can learn from tradition and to criticize our own side, we might, we might have concerns about tyranny at points from tradition, but among not all Protestants, but among a lot of Protestants, we have maybe cast off tradition too much. And so I think humility to just say, well, where can we learn is also good along the way here? Yeah. Well, I also think I like art. I like music. I like the hymns. I like all those different things and I think they're beautiful. I like beautiful art, music, theology, picture, whatever you want to call it, that is awesome and points to Jesus, but to assume that Protestant churches don't have that any longer, to assume that these 2000 year old or 1800 year old or 1500 year old, things that we do, that's the only way to do it. And I go, well, again, those things were once upon a time new someone, someone developed them. They didn't fall from heaven to, or I guess you could say, symbolically, I don't know what their views. But too, like the hymns are beautiful, but the hymns also started as modern. And I've heard the, I would like to hear thoughts on this. I've heard some theories and maybe this is historically accurate that some of the hymns followed melodies of bar songs. Yeah, totally. They were controversial. They were the new thing that people were among Protestants, like Charles Wesley and people like this are writing these beautiful hymns, like Anne Cannon B. I mean, the tradition of hymn writing and Protestantism is a rich tradition. These hymns, they're beautiful, but they were controversial. They were the new thing coming along that people opposed and saw as too radical. Yeah, so it's interesting, you know what, one century's new radical, innovative practice is two centuries later is the traditional thing that we're looking back to and saying it's always been this way. Yeah. Well, which brings me to my point of the church today, writing new songs and we would mock and scoff at like rock and roll church. You guys have screens and lights and haze machines and it's like, yeah, and the church is the most leading and innovative and cutting edge in terms of using technology to create an environment where people can be engaged in a way that perhaps they didn't like pews in the hymns. Perhaps those didn't speak to them and now we're reaching young people. I went to pastor Ed Newton's church, mega church in San Antonio. I spoke at a pastor's day thing and then the evening they opened up the main sanctuary and they had Chandler Moore from average city come and lead worship. And one, their use of technology and environment is next level, the everything, like the way they would even project the images on their screens was incredible because it does art to it, right? And then Chandler's writing, doing some like kind of like CCM worship songs, he sits down in a piano, does hymns, does some more kind of like rock songs, gospel songs. And I'm like, man, this is incredible, like this is beautiful and it's reaching young people that perhaps a hymn wouldn't hit them the same way or Gregorian chant wouldn't hit them the same way and they're crying out to Jesus and they're singing songs of Jesus and I go and I told Chandler, I said, you know, I think about what are the songs people are going to sing 500 years from now? Yeah. What are the songs people are going to sing 1000 years from now? What are going to be the hymns from today that are timeless? And I said, bro, I think it's possible that this could be our little windows into heaven, if you will. You know, like these, these modern rock and roll church, you guys are so casual, it's like, yeah, and what do you think is going to happen 500 years from now? These are going to be viewed as little, little window, you know, I'm using their terminology, you know, and it's, and it's not that we're worshiping the songs of the songwriter, we're seeing that as a way to, to, to experience the presence of God and it doesn't have to be defined to a genre or whereas a time period, right? We're cooler because we're 1800 years old and we're cooler because we're 500 years old, you fill in a blank on which tradition you come from. It's just so weird. And I go, yeah, but it seems like Jesus was pretty modern when he was talking parables. It seems like he really spoke to people in a way that was contextual to their experience in the way he taught or the way Paul taught, you know, so, or like I think act 17, like as your own poets have said, you know, and he's using pagan poets to articulate the gospel. He does it again, all through our first Corinthians, right? You have said stomach for food, food for stomach, but I tell you, right, like, um, it's, so I see this demonstrated in Scripture, but then we scoff at it when it happens in a modern concept. I'm not saying you and I, but I'm saying folks from other traditional or even Protestants that are like, you guys are too modern and you're like, you're incorporating a raps, you're incorporating this element that it's like, no, that's what the church has always done, in my opinion. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The gospel gets contextualized into different cultures and people assume then that, you know, the way it got contextualized 1500 years ago is now just the way it should always be. It's here because again, I think, you know, we've kind of, we've identified this need for Protestants to be humble, to learn, you know, have a historical awareness to learn from the past and so forth. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of looking down on contemporary worship. There's a lot of kind of high-minded, I'm looking down on this is shallow and so forth. It's like a rock concert. I'm like, God is using those events. People are literally getting saved, they're, the demons are getting pushed back because of what God is doing. I mean, there's like gatherings on college, I'm one of the things I'm really interested in is revival. Yeah. You know, what's revival? How do we pray for? I'm praying for, I pray every day for revival right now in the church or just a new wave of the Holy Spirit. I think among college students, God is doing something. On college campuses, students are gathering, worshiping, singing, I've been a part of those times. It's, I can't even convey the beauty of some of the things God does. And so anyway, I guess it's a reminder, you know, let's be careful about what we judge. It's true. I can imagine someone seeing expressions of worship that are very modern and do maybe at times feel shallow. Okay, fine. That can, that can exist out there. But man, we need to be careful not to dismiss a whole expression that maybe represented in context where the Holy Spirit is, is doing something beautiful. Yeah. Amen. Thank you for your opportunity for you to be pastoral and I'll be curious to see your answers to this. I can tell you my answer after. So this is something that came in. It's pretty heavy. So trigger warning. This is our Patreon community and this is a young lady Erica and she says, I'm considering orthodoxy after feeling abandoned by my Protestant church. My husband lost three friends to suicide. Pastor wouldn't meet with him, but made a big deal out of me not serving coffee anymore. And pray, wouldn't pray with me when my mom attempted to decide scolded me in the lobby for asking a question about scripture. The list goes on. I asked myself, why am I coming here? Our altar is a stage. Our music is entertainment. The first thing you see when you walk in a coffee shop and gift shop, I'm longing for reverence and spiritual guidance. What would your advice be? No, I live in a very small town without many options, PS, my husband lost three friends in one year veterans, my mom stabbed herself seven times with a knife when push comes to shove and people need a spiritual haven, some Protestant churches are more interested in looking cool. Obviously you're a Protestant and I know you were raised Orthodox, so you probably wouldn't suggest me switching to Orthodox. How would you suggest handling the situation? Okay, this is a heavy question. I mean, yeah, so I think we just need to start by just acknowledging the pain that this woman has been through and the seriousness of that and just, I think this person has been through tremendous suffering and they need a lot of prayer. They need a lot of encouragement. They need a lot of friends rallying around them. A lot of that is going to be completely irrespective of these deeper theological questions. It sounds like if what's being conveyed here is accurate, it sounds like it's a semi abusive or just abusive situation she's in, if she's getting scolded for, I can't remember all the details she went through in the coffee shop anyway, but the pastor's not meeting with her. I mean, if that stuff is being conveyed accurately, that's very serious. You would call that abuse, spiritual abuse potentially. If the pastor knows all this that's going on, maybe they don't know, maybe they haven't been clear and what's going on, but if the pastor does know this stuff's been happening and is scolding her for not being able to serve as much, would you say that's spiritual abuse? It's what I've seen happen sometimes is, see, I'm also very jealous to defend pastors when they get unfairly criticized if it's like, sometimes there can be two sides to a story and something like this. Who knows what's going on? Yeah, if someone is getting scolded rather than pastored when they're in tremendous, basically trauma, so they're in trauma and they're sort of getting attacked rather than helped. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I mean, that probably would go in there. But again, I didn't need to know the details kind of work through this, but yeah, so that's, but that is totally distinct that, you know, I just did a video on when you should leave your church. And one of the scenarios I work through is something like this. There's lots of times where a church might be orthodox in its theology, but just have abusive leadership where the pastor can be a bully. And in those circumstances, I think the solution isn't going to be to make a major theological shift necessarily unless you have other reasons that are also motivating that I would encourage this person to find a healthy church and not necessarily make a big theological change. I actually think that would complicate their healing process because now they've got to adjust to this massive new tradition as well. I would encourage them to go slow down, gather friends around you who can just love on you, carry you through this and pray for you and so forth. But I would say that that wouldn't be a good reason to leave Protestantism, I don't think because that because the behaviors described there are not representative of all Protestant churches. Sounds like there was a particular situation there. Yeah. That's great. And I said something similar, but I ultimately just said, if you want reverence, like go try a Lutheran church. If you want that, the vibes, go try a Lutheran church. It's very, very similar, or Anglican, or honestly Presbyterian. I mean, there's a lot of people are surprised when they realize how much diversity there is within Protestantism. Yeah, I was in New York with my son and we were staying in Times Square for Father's Day and we walked outside and there was a beautiful Episcopalian church. I thought I walked into a Catholic church, I was like, this is amazing, the art, the statues, like the whole bit. And I was like, this is crazy, you know, and our church meets in an old Episcopalian building. And so there is some of that like stained glass and that, what they would call reverence component to it. And so yeah, that was, that was my advice to her, but yes, it's a bummer. And I, again, to your point, I don't think this is indicative of all Protestant churches. Right. Okay, so you've had some pretty big debates over the years. The most notable one that I can remember off the top was Trent Horn, I think Matt frat moderated that one. You've also had online conversations. I think you talked recently, I think you guys were debating, is it solar scriptora? And then you guys started talking about the second Nicene council, so Orthodox guy. Yeah, that was Father Stephen DeYoung. Yeah. Yeah. I love that conversation. Some people, you know, like Jonathan Peggio, my buddy, Neil, I think, you know, Neil, like, oh, he went, he went straight to the second, you know, the Vatican council. Can I speak to that? I went back and watched the dialogue. Father Stephen was the one who brought up icons. So that was strange to me. I didn't get that response. I mean, maybe I was emphasizing it a lot. Jonathan Peggio was in the comments of set about that. I don't know. I didn't understand at all. I'm like, but yeah, the other thing is the title of that topic was solar scriptora versus holy tradition. Huh. Okay. So we're allowed to talk about tradition. Yes. So I didn't understand that response. I think they seemingly felt like what the consensus seems to be solar scriptora is circular reasoning. Right. And so it's hard to, this is their argument, still in my position, it's hard to defend. So it's only obvious you guys are going to go after the icons and the, you know, and the second Nicene council, yada, yada, yada, yada, what do you, what do you make of that? Because I think solar scriptora, from, as I understand it, scripture is the final authority. I think it's a great way to view all tradition and everything through, right? If scripture is our, is our final authority, then it's not that we throw out councils and throw out traditions. We just go, well, how does this line up to scripture? And if it lines up to scripture, then yes, and amen to that. And if it doesn't, then we go, I don't know about this one, right? So I think it's great. I don't think it's saying scripture is the only authority scripture. You know, no, like there's other authorities. There's other spiritual authorities even. So anyway, what do you make of like the solar scriptora tradition or debates? Jonathan Peggio and Neil, they're smart and good people. They probably have something that I need to listen to more in their criticisms because if I didn't, what I just said could sound dismissive of what they said, there's probably more to what they're feeling and they probably are on to something that I can consider. So I'm probably just not fully understanding where they're coming from. I like both those guys. I got to know Neil a while back doing a Zoom call with him. But yeah, solar scriptora, what I keep emphasize, I love solar scriptora. I think it's a good and noble doctrine. And what I always emphasize about this is the core of it is really modest. It's basically saying God's speech is of greater authority than anything else. Yes. And because we believe the scripture is the speech of God, it is divinely inspired. But we wouldn't say that of councils. Like you say, we believe that there are real authorities in church history. And down to the level of the local congregation, my pastor is an authority. I can be excommunicated from my church. That's a real authority. I can be barred from the Lord's Supper. So but to say that solar scriptora is modest, it's just saying the scripture is unique. It's at the top of the pyramid. There's nothing like the speech of God. And so we measure everything else under that framework. And these conversations get really complicated. It gets into epistemology or the theory of knowledge. How do we know things? And they got lots of criticisms of us on this front. But I would say the basic core claim to me is it is modest and it is so reasonable. And it's just the healthiest way to envision what is Christianity. Christianity is a divinely revealed religion. It's about God coming into history and speaking. And we believe that we're not saying the scriptures the only time God has ever spoken. So at the burning bush, God spoke to Moses. Okay. But we don't have access to that. We weren't there. The scripture is what is the only divine speech we actually have. And I just think it makes so much sense to measure ourselves by that standard. I think the Protestant affirmation of solar scriptora is true. I think it is good. I think it makes so much sense. It's just a way of saying let's keep Christianity tethered to divine revelation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I refer to myself as a charismatic with a seat belt. So I'm going to go to opposite in the opposite end of the spectrum within certain charismatic circles. Things can get a little wild, you know? And I go, I'm a charismatic with a seat belt and that seat belt is the word of God. Like the word of God is what anchors me. So if we're seeing stuff that's happening in a local church context that seems to be coloring outside the lines of scripture, I'm not okay with that. Regardless on how charismatic I am, I'm not okay with that. You know, so for me, this scripture is the guardrails to go, yeah, I am not okay with nor do I think it's helpful for a super charismatic pastor to come up and say, everybody's speaking songs right now. Yeah. I go, wait a minute. No, first Corinthians 12, first Corinthians 14 seems to be pretty clear. It needs to be an interpreter, you know, if there's an interpreter, they need to not do it. So for me, there's the guardrails of my charismatic biases. Scripture becomes the guardrails. Scripture is the seat belt. Scripture is the parameters. And my opinion is, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but I think we started seeing some of these earlier kind of coloring outside of scripture type things because maybe the scripture wasn't as readily available. Maybe the canon wasn't fully established yet, you know, and so we're seeing folks coloring outside the lines because they just didn't have the access. We have to scripture that's fairly clear on what I would say are the main things and the plain things and the essentials of the faith. What do you make of that? Yeah. I mean, so I've done some videos lately on just the lack of access to scripture that the laity had in a lot of the medieval era, your point here. And I, you know, I kind of went into it wanting to say, you know, check my biases here, but getting into the history of it, I was pretty amazed at just how brutal it was. You know, they're brutal fact here, that's tough to say. There was tremendous persecution against those who sought to translate the scripture into the vernacular language in certain contexts, like in England, you know, like early English Bibles from the followers of John Wickliffe and then William Tyndale and his friends. The backlash was intense, but I think it's true. And I would say, you know, I think Jesus, what Jesus says to the Pharisees is relevant because the Pharisees, here they are, that Jesus speaks of them as sitting on the seat of Moses. So he acknowledges the Pharisees have a real teaching authority. He's not saying the Pharisees, he actually says, do whatever they say. Just don't do what they do. But that's Matthew 23. But in Mark 7, Jesus says, basically the Pharisees have added on human tradition on top of the word of God. And his category for that is it nullifies the word of God. And he says many such things you do. And so I take Jesus there to be basically pushing back against the Pharisees and saying, look, you can't add on to the scripture. The words of God are unique, don't add on human traditions on top and yoke people's consciences to that. And that's what we're trying to do. Like your wonderful point, the pastoral comments about speaking in tongues from 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 14, what we can acknowledge in Protestant contexts, a lot of people do go beyond the scripture. And so that's where having the scripture as our North Star, like Jesus is saying in Mark 7, that's a good thing. That's healthy. It keeps us again. It's simple. It's like God has spoken. We measure ourselves by what he said. That's simple. Amen. What, what did you make of your debates, debate with Trent Horn, what was for some highlights, just kind of some of the debates you have to, you want to keep doing more debates on it. Sometimes debates, like I struggle with wanting to debate Christians, you know, and I just don't think I'm the most equipped for it. I love debating. Atheists. I love debating on, you know, secular podcasts. Like I think there's a utility for that. I press, I don't care to sit down and like pull this church father and, you know, this poly car quote and this and then fight over what the real, you know, because then you will get into like, well, what is, what does this word actually mean? You know, you get to Jordan Peterson. What does it mean? You know? So what, what did you make of those debates? I thought the Trent Horn debate, I thought you did well. Do you want to do more debates? Do you think they're fruitful? What do you make of all that? Yeah. I will do more debate. I love that debate. I want to have good relationships with people in these other traditions. So when I find people that are honorable people, professional people like Trent and Matt, Brad, these are good people. These are good guys. We're on the same team ultimately, I believe. Yes. So I want to keep good relationships with them. I'll keep doing debates. My view on debates is they can play a role and I'll do them, but they're very limited in what they actually accomplish. Okay. That's my view. And the reason for that is when I don't like about debates is people watch them in a performative way. Sure. They're saying who won? And so they're looking for the rhetoric and they're looking for the one-liner and they're looking for the superficial aspects of it and certainly they don't listen to the arguments. And someone might be a better performer. Yeah. Some of them might just be more charismatic and a better performer and they present the information better because there is an art form to debating that if you don't know how to formulate and have charisma or as much charisma as someone like Trent Horn, he is in his bag all the time with debates, you might come off like, "Oh, Gavin's argument was in his good." And he's like, "Well, no, no, no. You're conflating charisma and experience as a debater versus the actual substance of the debate." Yeah. And that's just a... I think that's just part of the culture of debates. Yeah. That's just how people experience them and view them and it's part of human nature to want your side to win. Sure. And so you're looking at it in that way. But I like some things about debates in that they're structured. Yes. I like the intentionality of it. I mean, to me, what I'd be kind of curious about is could we have a structured dialogue and we kind of frame it for people. The goal here isn't to win, but the goal here is to argue and contend for the truth, but it's also to understand and it's structured. So I don't know. There's some negatives to debates, but there's also some negatives to dialogues. Dialogues can get so free and loose that they're not as clear. Yes. So I don't know. But I kind of take an all hands on deck approach, like let's have all these kinds of platforms and then written, like academic work, writing stuff, that's actually a great format to really vet ideas, like a back and forth series of blogs or something like that. I think we need all that to keep working at the truth. Yeah. I think debates for me or dialogue over, I think they work best in person and I think having virtual stuff and remote stuff, I think tends to, it's more likely to go off the rails, versus like if we're in the room, or if we went and grabbed a bite and hung out before, I think they're more likely to, you're humanizing the other side because right here in front of you in the flesh versus like a remote thing. So I think that those tend to not always go well. So speaking of writing, you talked about the writing of the debates, you were brought up in a book recently that was very controversial. And I defended you, I thought you were very misrepresented in the book. You put out a video about it. I can't, gosh, what is it? Meg Basham's book is called Shepherds for Sale. And there were some things that I read because they were like, "You can't talk about this unless you've read the whole book." And I'm like, like, stop it. Like I should be able to look at the quotes and say, "No, this doesn't represent Gavin." So yeah, I wanted to read a big chunk of it, and I was like, "Oh, this is interesting." Like she makes an interesting argument for quote-unquote leftist progressivism, having influence in evangelical circles, and then you're kind of caught in the stray hairs of that and kind of poorly misrepresented. You've responded to her, what do you make of that entire back and forth and kind of in hindsight? It's been a couple of months removed now. And how do you feel about now? Yeah, yeah, I've sort of just moved on from the particulars there. I think I got to a point after I put out my second video where I thought, "I just don't think back and forth." I think you can hit points in a discussion with someone where you realize this is not going to be productive for God's kingdom. Maybe we pause for six months, and then we come back and do that kind of thing. But in the general kind of what it represents, I think one of the things I've put out some videos on this too is I see a resurgent fundamentalism coming up. So I don't disagree with the thesis that there's leftist influence in the church. Certainly I think that, and throughout the culture, we feel this sea change and this pull to the left. I mean, one of the things I said, I did a video on fundamentalism I talked about. Look at the Republican Party 30 years ago versus today. We can feel the slide on various issues, the pro-life issue, stuff like that. I'm pro-life. So that as you come up, you see the change in the culture on that. And so I don't have disagreement with that general worry. But then there's a question of how do we respond to that, sure. And I'm just sincerely concerned about what, so when I say neo-fundamentalism re-emerging, I think basically 100 years ago, same thing's happening. You have this massive trend toward liberalization and people respond, but they kind of just lunge in the opposite direction. And the whole thing of being an evangelical is we were saying, "We can't do that. We have to resist liberalism and avoid some of these other errors in the opposite direction, black and white thinking." Every hill is a hill to die on. Lack of triage. Not so how a church responds to COVID and their policy about master and COVID is like the deity of Christ. It's all just in there together and it's all bundled together. Climate change. Chapter one of that book is about climate change. I just think climate change is the kind of issue intelligent Christians can disagree about, especially in the details. And even just defining, what do we even mean by climate change? You immediately get into seeing, "This is a complicated issue." So my interest is going forward. How do we help encourage Christians to be alert to dangers in both directions? I think a lot of people are afraid right now. I think they're angry right now, understandably. And I think there's a temptation toward a new fundamentalism in that spirit. So slandering other people. I mean, the amount of things that I hear said about other Christians online these days that are not truthful, that's a serious issue. And what I'm trying to say is let's take that seriously as well as liberalism. Let's avoid liberalism. Let's avoid slandering people. We can do both of those things. The lack of triage, treating every hill, we've got to make distinctions. By the standards of some Christians today, I'm going to say this and I hope this comes across right. I think it needs to be said. The historic fundamentalists, like the people 100 years ago who were literally, they called themselves fundamentalists. They founded fundamentalist institutions. They would be shepherds for sale. They would be liberals by some people today. Because I'll give examples. They were older creationists like I am. But I'm called almost, there were seasons in that whole episode where it'd be dozens of time per day, I'd be called a heretic or a wolf for being an older creationist. That's crazy. And I'm like, what, you know, Jay Gresher Mason wrote the book Christianity and liberalism. He's an older creationist. So this is an example of triage. I'm saying we got to make a distinction between the age of the earth and something like, you know, I mentioned the deity of Christ or I'll, you know, I'd put on other ethical issues in there, like the abortion issue. I mean, I feel very strongly about that one. I'm very passionately pro-life. I want to protect the unborn. So there, you know, not every issue is the same. And that's one of the tendencies I see in fundamentalism is every hill is a hill. Anyone to the left of me is a liberal. Yeah, I don't like that. I've been called a liberal in the past. And I'll tell you why in a moment, but I'm like, you can't do that. You can't say just because I disagree with you on this, that therefore I am erasing the liberal, you know, like that's, that's insane. And so I'll tell you what that was in a minute, but do you think there's any precedent towards her argument that progressive, I don't think houses, funds, institutions have intentionally went into the Christianity today's and the people that are influential in our evangelical circles and have intentionally tried to get them to drift more towards liberal positions on something. So I'm not talking like abortion. I'm talking like, like the climate is one. She makes, she makes that argument. I'm talking about the social justice issue, which we could talk about more like, do you think that that, is there any precedent to her argument that that was calculated in central? I'm not saying everyone who she names is necessarily a shepherd for sale, but that there was a concerted effort to say, we're going to go after these folks. We're going to get them to go left. So that way they're not as mainline, right leaning in their politics. Yeah. Okay. So I'll say two things. One is I can't actually speak to that. Okay. So it's not really my wheelhouse. A lot of the other topics in the book, these current issues and how the financial context of certain policy advocacy and that kind of thing, I don't actually know for sure. So I'd be just learning about that with an open heart. The other thing I can say though is to the extent that you do see that, I think we need to be alert to it happening in both directions. So there's money pushing in both directions, and that's one of the concerns again. I mean she writes for the daily wire, there's a lot of money in the right wing. I mean you could argue that that's what helped tip the last election is all the, which I'm like, hey man, Ben Shapiro, like Jerry, like you guys build big, get your bag, build your businesses, but like to act like there isn't a lot of resource being pumped in on the right wing conservative media industrial complex. Yeah. I think it's pretty crazy. It does seem like there's a lack of self-awareness sometimes of just how the pressures are both there. So I'm not even making any specific accusations or comments as much as just, we need to be alert that pressure exists in multiple directions. Yeah, that's good. All right guys, we're going to go over to the Patreon exclusive section of this conversation and have a conversation that's probably a bit, not the most for the public. So meet us over there. In the early years I was very critical of Donald Trump and to the point where I just thought, how can anyone support this? Remember I signed a conversation with someone a couple years ago and they called me a liberal and I said, I put them not a liberal and they were like, well, you're okay with women being pastors. And I said, and that also probably doesn't set us up well for the kind of patient thinking that works that is needed for a lot of these issues, a lot of these issues are complicated. Would there be any issues that maybe you evolved on that you didn't hold to exactly the same way you did five years ago? I mentioned like the Black Lives Matter and please tell me stuff. Yeah, my concerns with Trump go pretty deep. I'm concerned about him in terms of his integrity and his character and those issues and I think those things really matter. And then I'm concerned about it. Bruce Vaughn. [BLANK_AUDIO]
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Bio: Ruslan KD is a Christian YouTuber of Armenian descent who was a refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan, before moving to the United States as a child. He started his YouTube channel in the mid-2010s, which has since grown into a popular platform for discussing faith, lifestyle, and music. Known for his insightful commentary on Christian living, culture, and personal development, Ruslan has built a community of followers who value his thoughtful approach to contemporary issues. In addition to his YouTube presence, Ruslan is a speaker, author, and advocate for godly ambition, often addressing topics related to leadership, mental health, and the integration of faith in everyday life.
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