Bible Translations For Everyone
Author and Pastor Tim Wildsmith joins Michael to discuss his newest book, Bible Translations For Everyone.
People have to recognize that we weren’t looking for a culture war. We’re in a culture war because the culture has come to us. And so I looked around and saw the various issues people were facing. And there’s no way that we can avoid it. You know, some pastors say that we have to avoid politics. However, you can’t do that because everything today is political. I want to show that evil never retreats on its own; it only retreats when confronted by a more powerful force. That force is the church. I wrote the book to recapture the church because we are not called to win but to stand. And as I look at society today, I see that often, we are not standing.
No Reason to Hide deals with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion issues. But it works against us rather than for us in our churches. It causes division by opposing reconciliation. I have a chapter on propaganda because we live in an era of propaganda. Propaganda aims to control people’s view of reality so that despite a mountain of evidence, they do not change their minds. So I deal with all those kinds of issues because I want Christians to be able to think Biblically about a culture that we don’t want but one that has been thrust upon us.
If a church goes to the point where they are willing to accept multiple genders, then we are in very deep trouble because that is demonic. I heard it pointed out the other day that there is an instance in the New Testament where Jesus encountered a man with multiple pronouns. Jesus asked in Mark 5, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘We are legion. There are many of us.’ I’m sure that no one had that in mind when the New Testament was written, but it was an interesting application.
I point out in the book that love can be evil. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they didn’t stop loving; they just started to love pleasure, money, and themselves. The Bible says that love rejoices in the truth. And Jesus says that to love Him is to keep His commandments. The word love today encapsulates anything people want to do, even if it’s contrary to the truth of Scripture.
The churches that think they are doing a favor to people by accepting pronouns or same-sex relationships need to understand that they are violating Scripture. I see in the church that there is a separation coming from those believers who will stand strong no matter what versus those willing to compromise for the sake of the culture.
Regarding multiple pronouns, we’re not doing people a favor if we support or become accomplices to their addictions or confusion. And if people say, ‘Well, that’s my truth.’ The answer is, ‘Oh? Well, my truth is that I’m calling you the way you were born.’ The question is, are we, as Christians, willing to take the consequences?
The point that I am making is God does not love everyone unconditionally. God loves the elect unconditionally, as He says in John 17. He states that thou hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. But the idea that God unconditionally loves everyone, implying that He unconditionally approves of my behavior, is false. For example, there are a number of passages in the Psalms and elsewhere where it says very clearly, ‘God is angry with the wicked every day.’
I believe that for those who accept Christ as Savior, God loves them differently because He sees them in Christ. But this idea that God loves people unconditionally is inaccurate. About two years ago, the Atlantic had an article entitled, ‘Nearer My God to Me.’ The article said that God is becoming more liberal. He’s beginning to tolerate things that He condemned in the Old Testament. This was a British writer, and she pointed out that methodists in Britain, after ‘prayerful consideration,’ decided that they would approve of same-sex relationships.
Throughout history, the lie of Eden (you shall be like God) has been lived out in various experiences. Russo said that humans have to follow their nature, and whatever their nature is, is good. They would be happy if they were unchained from civilization, society, and culture.
Throughout history, you have people like Karl Marx, who believed that the only reason people commit crimes is because of oppression. Take away the oppression, and the crimes will go away. He very much wanted to destroy the family. Lenin said that the family is a unit of oppression. Men oppress their wives, and parents oppress their children. They take them to church, which makes God the ‘ultimate oppressor.’
In our society today, the deification of man causes us to question the truth. You have such a thing as my truth and your truth because we have become the truth. We no longer hold to Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Our society wants us to learn to live by lies. Parents need to guide their children in understanding that self-perception is not reality. Karl Marx’s view of human nature is seen everywhere today.
I want every person to understand this culture. We’re living in a culture where we no longer have arguments and counterarguments. We are being run by ideology. Ideas do not have to work for them to survive; they only have to sound good. For example, if you say children in a two-parent family do much better than a one-parent family, as many studies show, you won’t be met by counterarguments. You’ll be told that you’re a white supremacist.
If truth exists, God exists. Because if you have anything objective or absolute, there has to be some basis for that absolutism. Everybody believes in the law of noncontradiction. Reason could not exist unless God created within the human mind the capacity to know that all truth claims are exclusive. If you say, for example, that two plus two is equal to four, there are almost an infinite number of wrong answers to that question. We must understand that the world that says it is so tolerant has become so viscerally intolerant. Ultimately, truth is rooted in God.
First of all, you have to listen to your child. Children often turn away because they become angry with their parents, so they become angry with God. But then, to the best of your ability, you have to help them see that self-perception is not always correct. Many of these children (about 80%) later on, when they become older, realize that they aren’t trans. We also have to help them see the consequences. Somebody who has surgery like that will never become a biological parent because they will have messed up their bodies irreversibly.
Many out there have experienced it and are saying that, but their voices are shouted down because we’re in an era of ideology. We need to help them see that the Biblical doctrine of creation is a plus in their lives, not a minus. If they want to have real fulfillment and a real sense of who they are, we have to get back to the Biblical God and the Biblical creation.
I tried to show here that the social justice issue and DEI are actually working against us and not for us. In the eighties, we worked toward racial reconciliation. We wanted to show the unity of the races because there’s only one race: the human race. There are different ethnicities, and we believe that is best demonstrated in the church. At Moody Church, then and now, we have more than seventy different countries of origin represented. How else can we think about Revelation 5? Critical race theory and DEI say we have to divide based on our skin. The bottom line is that critical race theory keeps tearing apart what Jesus died to bring together.
We cannot avoid the culture; we have to speak to it Biblically. The last chapter has to do with answering the question, What price are we willing to pay for faithfulness? As Americans, we must rethink what suffering for Christ means. We think that if we were all we should be, we’d always have freedom of religion, wealth, and all those other things. That’s not the way it’s been historically.
We must recognize that the church has always been an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism. It has always had a stiff and unrelenting opposition to the culture, even to the point of death. In Matthew 5:11-12 Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in this same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
In conclusion, I want Christians to think not in terms of time but eternity. We must ask, is Christ worth it, or will we contaminate our consciences because we have to keep our job or we don’t want to create any waves? I wrote this book to help people understand that following Christ in all of these cultural issues and being able to answer the world is worth it, no matter the consequences.
Erwin W. Lutzer is Pastor Emeritus of The Moody Church where he served as the Senior Pastor for 36 years. He earned a B.Th. from Winnipeg Bible College, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a M.A. in Philosophy from Loyola University, and an honorary LL.D. from the Simon Greenleaf School of Law.
A clear expositor of the Bible, he is the featured speaker on three radio programs that are heard on more than 1,000 outlets in the United States and around the world: Running to Win—a daily Bible-teaching broadcast; Moody Church Hour—The Moody Church’s Sunday morning worship service; Songs in the Night—an evening program that’s been airing since 1943.
Dr. Lutzer is also an award-winning author of numerous books including: We Will Not Be Silenced, Pandemics Plagues and Natural Disasters, The Church In Babylon, Rescuing The Gospel, He Will Be The Preacher, The Cross In The Shadow Of The Crescent, One Minute After You Die, When A Nation Forgets God, and Christian Bookseller’s Gold Medallion Award winner, Hitler’s Cross. He and his wife Rebecca have co-written the books: Life-Changing Bible Verses You Should Know and Jesus, Lover Of A Woman’s Soul.
His speaking engagements include Bible conferences and seminars, both domestically and internationally, including: Russia, the Republic of Belarus, Germany, Scotland, Guatemala, and Japan. He also leads tours to Israel and the cities of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Dr. Lutzer and Rebecca live in the Chicago area. They have three grown children and eight grandchildren.
No Reason to Hide by Dr. Erwin Lutzer
We Will Not Be Silenced by Dr. Erwin Lutzer
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