Speaking Biblical Truth Into Social Issues With Dr. Voddie Baucham – People in the Christian community are falling prey to the deceptive ideas being promoted in our culture. Dr. Voddie Baucham joins us today to talk about how to speak biblical truth into these social issues and more!

Air Date: 07/26/2021

Guest: Dr. Voddie Bauchum

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

Listen:

Download: Click Here

Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks so much for joining us today on WallBuilders Live. Be sure to visit our website as well wallbuilderslive.com. My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And I am honored to be here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian, and our founder at WallBuilders, and has a wealth of information at the website wallbuilders.com. Go check it out today. Tim Barton is with us, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You need to book him to speak. Now that things are opening up, get this guy in your church in front of your community, in front of your organization, and you will learn an absolute ton.

David and Tim, later in the program, Voddie Baucham, I love Pastor Voddie Baucham, we try to get him to speak to Patriot Academy as often as possible. Of course, he’s running a Bible school over in Africa now. But not only does he have the best beard on the planet, just a wealth of wisdom. And Tim, I’m so jealous, you got to interview him face to face at NRB. That had to be pretty cool.

Tim:

It was very fun. Yeah. One of the things I learned along the way is also he’s a pretty high ranking jujitsu competitor. And so…

Rick:

I did not know that.

Tim:

I didn’t either. It was super interesting. We started talking a little bit of jujitsu, which I am in fairly new into, but man, I love the sport. And I’m really enjoyed a lot in the midst of, you know, we talk a lot about doing handgun training and defensive training. And we talk a lot about Front Sight.

And one of the things that I discovered along the way in doing a lot of defensive training was some scenarios is up close quarters, and sometimes you don’t always have time to reach your firearm and somebody has hands on. What do you do? And actually, some of our military friends, some of our special forces friends, they said, you know what, a really good way to learn some basic kind of hand-to-hand is go jujitsu. So I started this, and so then come to find out Voddie Baucham is this like, amazing tournament winning competitor jujitsu guy. He’s a big guy as well. But man, so many things I now love about this guy, not the least of which being jujitsu. But he certainly is a pastor who in the midst of a squishy culture for the last many years.

David:

Wait a minute, a pastor who’s a champion in jujitsu? And so well, there’s not many pastors who would do this. He is a Texan. So this is what we expect more Texas pastors, right? I mean, just well, okay.

Tim:

Oh, well, no, you know, actually, there’s probably a very small number.

David:

But he is a Texan and he’s got a great perspective. And Rick, you’ve said before, you’ve used him a number of years and training biblical worldview. So he really does have a great perspective.

Rick:

Well, now wait, I thought for sure you all would tell the story of John Wise at this point?

Tim:

Well, yeah. So historically, there would be some really funny examples from American history. That’s a great point. But one of the things I was going to get to is when you look at where the culture has been in America, and how squishy the culture has been in America for so long, it’s interesting to see someone like Voddie Baucham, who has been speaking with such moral clarity, where I mean, really leaving no doubt about his position on the issue, but more importantly not his position, biblical positions on the issue.

And this was several years ago when people started talking about different social justice issues. And I remember he came out and there was a long talk on YouTube, where he got into the difference between social justice and biblical justice. And really guys, so many times, when we have not seen very many pastors standing up and speaking with more clarity on the major issues, Voddie Baucham has been one of those pastors who has been very consistent about speaking biblical truth into these social issues.

Rick:

Alright, Tim, well, let’s take a quick break, when we come back, Pastor Voddie Baucham with Tim Barton at the National Religious Broadcasters convention. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICA’S HISTORY

This is David Barton, with another moment from America’s history. In the case Lee versus Weissman, the Supreme Court ruled that for an adult to mention the word God at a public graduation constituted both psychological and religious coercion against the students. Here consider the actions of William Samuel Johnson, a signer of the Constitution and one of America’s leading educators who served as the first president of Columbia College. At his graduation exercises, William Samuel Johnson declared to the students, “You this day have received a public education. The purpose we’re up had been to qualify you better to serve your Creator and your country. Your first great duties you’re sensible are those you owe to heaven, to your Creator, and Redeemer.”

Founding Father William Samuel Johnson believed that a public graduation was an appropriate setting to remind students of the duties which they owed God. For more information on God’s hand in American history, contact WallBuilders at 1808REBUILD.

NATIONAL RELIGIOUS BROADCASTERS

Tim:

Welcome back. We’re here with, to me, a very special guest, Dr. Voddie Baucham, who for our audience, Doctor, you need probably no introduction, because we’ve encouraged people, actually, they’ll see Some of the things that you have done with videos, specifically there’s teaching I’m thinking of where you got into talking about biblical justice and how a lot of times in Christianity, there’s a lot of things that are being promoted that are not necessarily biblical positions, although it might feel unseen biblical on areas. But I also want to talk about more specifically now, you have a book “Fault Lines” that is out, where you are trying to point some things out to the Christian community, and help guide us. So first of all, if you would tell us maybe a little bit about your book, what led you to getting into that?

Voddie:

Yeah, you know, first, I want to say that I really appreciate the work that WallBuilders has been doing for years. I know, I’m not alone in saying that I’m really, really grateful for that whole that that you fill.

Tim:

Thank you.

Voddie:

But secondly, in terms of the book, this is something that I’ve been talking about for a long time. And sometimes there are books that you want to write. And this was a book that I felt like I had to write. Because in this space, as far as books that are taking on this topic from this perspective, I just didn’t see anything out there. And so I saw there are people in the church falling prey to this ideology, saying things that sounded like critical race theory, intersectionality, critical social justice, even people who may not have even understood that. And so I just really felt like there needed to be a voice crying out against these things in order to, number one, confront those who are holding to these ideologies, but number two, to educate those who may not have been aware of what these things were about.

Tim:

Right. One of the things I’ve appreciated for so long about your ministry is how you get into apologetics. You have done such a good job helping equip the church to think biblically. And of course, on very theologically important issues, where I grew up as a lover of CS Lewis, “Mere Christianity” was a book that I loved. And so loving apologetics in general, then your ministry has been so helpful with the apologetics.

One of the things I think you’ve done so well, and this is where your book now is doing that. As you mentioned, you were a voice where there needed to be a voice, and there really weren’t many good voices speaking out on this. Is the cultural apologetic, thinking through, what is the biblical position we should have on some of these current cultural issues? And so if we can, I’d love to get into and talk about some of the content of the book, where you deal with some of the modern issues, whether it be social justice, or the different topics we’re sitting, and right now we have Christians from all over the US that are listening to us. As Christians, what should we be thinking? And how should we respond to these things we’re hearing your culture?

Voddie:

Yeah, we need to recognize that words matter, right. Ideas have consequences. And so on the one hand, I want to say that is very important, it’s very good that as believers, we are always ready. We stand ready to go to war against injustice, right. We stand ready to partner with those who are in need, and those who are oppressed. And we’re looking to obey our Lord who calls us to minister to the poor, and the widow and the orphan. That’s good. But we need to understand that there are ways that we do that that are biblical, and there are ways that we’re being encouraged to do that, that or not.

And part of the problem is that we’re defining these things in the wrong way. And so rather than the widow, the orphan and the poor, now we’re having things framed in terms of the non-white, right? That’s not what the Bible is talking about. When the Bible talks about the widow and the orphan and the poor, it means the widow, the orphan and the poor, right, not the non-white. And so we have ideas now that are taking this Marxist oppressor oppressed framework, and are saying, here is the oppressor because of his ethnicity being white, and here are the oppressed. These are the individuals who are the non-white or whatever. And then applying this biblical mandate toward the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the oppressed to people based on their ethnicity or their sexual identity or whatever else. It’s a slick sleight of hand. But it’s one that unfortunately is gaining traction. So we need to understand the terminology, we need to see the rules of the game and recognize when we’re being duped.

Tim:

Well, I think it’s important too, as Christian Americans, we live in a very different kind of culture. Because I know right now, you’re also, I think the Dean at the School of Theology at African Christian University. And so, Africa looks very different in many situations than America does. And I know in America, we can get very comfortable in our Christianity. We have so many blessings, that it’s easy for us at times to, unfortunately, in a very non-biblical position to not pay attention to the widow or the orphan, where James says, this is pure and undefiled religion. We don’t always do a good job.

There’s, unfortunately, not to make us adopt denominational issue, because I don’t mean to do that. But I know there’s some denominations that emphasize certain things more than others. And so there are some churches who do a great job with this. I don’t think all of the American church does. But then in the midst of maybe us at times not recognizing our biblical mandate, there’s also a guilt grievance that’s put on people that saying not just beyond the biblical mandate, that we’re actually being told, maybe manipulated might be the right word, to fall into a different category, where there are some things we should be doing that maybe we’re not doing as good a job of, that should be a challenge, a conviction that we should have as Christians. But we shouldn’t be manipulated to do something that’s not biblical.

Voddie:

Yeah. And I think one of the things that I try to hold into my mind is this, if I’m being motivated by guilt, then I’m wrong. Because you take your guilt to the cross, you take your faith to the streets. And unfortunately, what a lot of people are doing is they’re taking their guilt to the streets. And whatever you’re doing for people out of guilt to assuage your guilt only leads you further away from the cross, which is the only place where your guilt can be assuaged

Tim:

Okay, I want to repeat that, because that was an amazing statement. “You take your guilt to the cross, you take your face to the street.”

Voddie:

Yeah.

Tim:

That is amazing. And it’s very contrary to what we’re seeing today. I think about the parable in Matthew 25, the sheep and the goats, where Jesus calls people to him, right, he divides them in the end, the shepherd separates the sheep and the goats. And one of the things that we’ve tried to communicate is in Scripture, what’s interesting is the way the sheep and the goats were divided is very similar to what MLK talked about in his “I Have a Dream” speech, that he was looking forward to the day when his kids would be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. When you look at Jesus dividing the sheep and the goats, it was based on what they did or did not do. It never mentioned their race, their color, their ethnicity, or their gender, even a sexual preference, although that’s a side note, because we’re not supporting something on-biblical, right.

But what we are promoting today is certainly not the biblical position that we see outlined in the gospels, that we see outlined by Jesus. And it is a motivation by guilt. I’m so impressed you said that, it’s like in my mind right now I’m blown away by that. Because we are seeing Christians being manipulated by guilt and saying, I’m thinking of so many white pastors right now who are trying in their mind to be Christ like. They’re genuinely wanting to do the right thing, but if you’re motivated by guilt, that’s not the message of the cross.

Voddie:

No, it’s not. It’s the opposite of the message of the cross. That’s self-righteousness. That’s self-justification. You know, we don’t do things out of guilt, other than repent, and believe, and then, as believers who are in Christ, we go and exercise that with our neighbors and with the least of these.

Tim:

Do you think there’s a balance where I think about in Peter, where he talked about if you’re persecuted, and it’s for something you’ve done wrong, then don’t count out a blessing, right? You need to change that. But if you’re persecuted for the sake of the gospel, then that is a great thing. Do you think there’s a balance? And maybe what is that balance in America where, where are the areas that you see that maybe as a church, we’ve neglected, areas that we should be correcting? Because certainly, I mean, maybe there’s a reason on some level that we can have an honest conversation about this. There’s certainly things knowing that there is none righteous, no, not one. Certainly, there’s areas we need to correct. But at the same time, we don’t want to walk in guilt. So what do you think of that balances? Where are areas that we need to do a better job as Christians in America? And where are the areas we need to make sure that we’re not being misled, maybe like the Apostle Paul said, by high sounding nonsense philosophies that come from men, not from Christ? Where’s the balance in that?

Voddie:

Yeah, well, the number one area is that I would say, is this area of critical social justice. Again, that’s why it was so important for me to write this book. I see this as really almost a tipping point, you know, if you will, or a fault line, which is the analogy that I use in the book, because this is something that we’re seeing everywhere that we’re hearing every day, and not just in one area, but in multiple areas.

So we tend to think about it in terms of race, but also in terms of people’s sexual preference, also, in terms of people’s citizenship or lack thereof, in terms of the climate, there’s climate justice, and all these other issues, all of them are coming from the same ideology. And that’s why it’s really important that we back up and we look at the ideology underneath all of this.

Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 10, that we destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God, and then we take every thought captive to obey Christ. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of Christians who want to do the last one, and not do the first one, right? Who want to say, well, I’m going to take every thought captive to obey Christ. But because the 11th commandment is thou shalt be nice, I don’t want to go to war with ideologies. But we have to because those ideologies are at war with us and with our God.

So I see this as really that main area. And from this fountainhead come a lot of other issues that we’re kind of getting wrong or in danger of going astray on because we have not gone to war with this ideology.

Tim:

That is such an interesting thought. You’re right. So often as Christians, we think of walking in love as not being confrontational at times. We forget that Jesus was very confrontational at times. And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is say, that’s not right, and we shouldn’t be doing that. Okay.

So first of all, I want to encourage everybody they need to go with this book, they need to read “Fault Line”, they definitely need to dive into this topic. And just like we talked about before you do such a good job of helping people learn the apologetics as a Christian, what should we think? How do we navigate this? So this is an apologetic tool that we can learn a biblical position. So first of all, where should people go to get this book? And when we get this book and read it, what is your hope that is the takeaway from reading this book?

Voddie:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, just go get it. You know, wherever you go and buy books, support those folks. And if they don’t have this book, let them know that they need to have this book. But the thing I want people to take away from this book is that the Christ is sufficient, that the Scripture is sufficient, that we have everything that we need, because he’s given us everything that we need for life and godliness, right?

And the other thing is that this is an urgent moment. Not that there have never been urgent moments before. Every generation faces their right moment, right? And what we do is when we find out what ours is, then we hear that clarion call, and we answer. And my prayer is that people would answer for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of people who need to hear the truth, and for the sake of people who currently are being led astray, because we love them enough not to allow them to be led astray.

Tim:

I feel so encouraged. I know, right, talking to a pastor, that’s kind of sometimes you expect that you should be encouraged. But for every listener right now, maybe as you’re listening you are sensing that just the peace and presence of God right now is on this man. I’m just telling you right now, as we’re in a room sitting in front of a microphone talking, I am encouraged, challenged and motivated, but just the peace and presence of God emanates off of you.

And I’m saying pastor, I know Dr. there’s probably a lot of titles that I should be calling you by because you are a very well credentialed person as what you’ve done. But I am so honored to be talking with you and encouraged in this conversation. I do want to encourage everybody, you need to go get the book. The full title is “Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe”. Go get this book.

And I’m going to encourage all of you, you need to go. and if you want to have a better equipping in apologetics and the apologetics of some current cultural issues, Voddie, where can they go to hear more of your teachings? What resource, what website would you send them to?

Voddie:

Yeah, they can go to voddiebaucham.org, and that’ll point them in a bunch of different directions, but that’ll get them started.

Tim:

Perfect. And I know I have watched, I think just about everything that you’ve put on YouTube, and I’ve been so blessed and encouraged.

Voddie:

You know, an interesting fact, I’ve never put anything on YouTube. I don’t have a YouTube channel. People come to me all the time, they’re like, yeah, I’ve got your YouTube channel and… I’ve never put anything up there, stuff just continues to show up. I’m grateful that people do.

Tim:

Okay, so voddiebaucham.org is where they need to go. Okay, so yeah…

Voddie:

But if you do go to YouTube, just put my name in there and there’ll be a bunch of stuff from a bunch of good people.

Tim:

Oh, there’s so much good stuff on there. Okay. voddiebaucham.org, you need to get the book “Fault Lines”. Dr. Baucham, thank you so much for taking time to be with us. Thank you for your ministry for what you’re doing to help equip and make a difference. And I would say America but obviously you’re in Africa, so you’re making literally a difference in the body of Christ around the world. Thank you for what you do.

Voddie:

Thank you. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity.

Tim:

We’ll be back in just a minute with David Barton and Rick Green.

AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book, and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America, or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior, because the Bible even tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history, and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. The story of America is not the story of perfect people. But you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out The American Story.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. And that was Tim Barton you real estate to interviewing Pastor Voddie Baucham at NRB. And of course, Voddie is the author of a new book called “Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s… See that’s a hard word I had to take it slow a syllable at a time, “Looming Catastrophe”. Of course, Voddie spoke to this guys for years and really was trying to wake up the church, I mean, no kidding five years ago on this issue, and folks just didn’t want to pay attention to it, and didn’t realize that it had been literally a poison poured into the cracks of the foundation and it was taking root in the church, not just in college campuses around the country. Anyway, great book, read it, folks, “Fault Lines”. And, Tim, what a pleasure to get to interview him.

Tim:

Absolutely. It’s such honor to talk to him. I told him I mean, you know, even I mentioned in the interview that, man, just being there, you could just feel that you were in the presence of somebody who spent a lot of time with God, right. It was a different attitude, and atmosphere there, it was so special to talk to him. And we got to visit for a while after the interview as well and had a lot of fun conversations. And it really was a pleasure to talk to someone who really is trying to help speak biblical truth to a Christian community and culture that is, unfortunately, very confused on what should be some very basic biblical issues.

David:

Yeah, they really are confused on a number of issues. And as you guys were talking to him, and he was talking about how that we’ve got churches that are now getting into critical race theory and intersectionality, etc, and you got pastors and pastors who claimed to have really good hearts for the people and want to do the right thing and try and do the Christian thing, get into doctrines like this, I was reminded of Jesus and Peter.

When Jesus came out with the declaration of what God wanted him to do, this is what God has ordained me for, I’m headed to the cross. And Peter jumped up and said, no, and he rebuked Jesus and said, no, just it can’t be. Lord, it’s not going to be. And Jesus responds to Peter, his disciple, was Satan get behind me. Now, it’s not often you call your disciples, Satan, but he did to his face.

And I thought the reason he did so was really good. Look at either the King James or in the NIV. But if I read the NIV, it says, get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, you don’t have in mind the concerns of God, but you have merely human concerns. And that’s what happens on a lot of these pastors on social justice. They have human concerns, but they don’t have in mind, the mind of God. And so they become stumbling blocks.

And as I was listening to the Voddie, I was going back on this so much stems from Marxism. And I will tell you, frankly, guys, five years ago, when people were talking about Marxism, I said, guys, stop talking about Marxism, because nobody knows what it means today. And when you talk about it, they just think you’re radical and being conspiratorial. Well, I’m not sure they know what it means today yet, but now it’s a big deal. And it’s part of the culture.

And I can’t believe that in five years we went from it being an outside longshot to now being the center of the culture. But the key thing that strikes me with Marxism, that makes it the easiest to understand is you have to have two opposite sides on the field at all times. And those two sides have to be continually fighting. You can’t ever come to an agreement. So you have to have always an oppressor and always the oppressed. You have to have those two, and that’s the only way it can be successful is if you have division and fighting.

I will remind you, Jesus said a house divided cannot stand. And it’s the same thing with the nation. If the house, if you will, of the nation is divided, it will not stand, it will not last. And so Jesus doesn’t want that house divided, but that Marxism does. Marxism says the only way for America to survive is we have to have two groups continually fighting each other. And Jesus says, if you do, it’ll destroy your nation.

So we’re at a point where that biblically, we’re not thinking right when we support intersectionality and we support critical race theory and others. We’re promoting division. We’re promoting making two groups fighting each other. And as Voddie said, you know, if guilt’s motivating you, you’re motivated by the wrong stuff. And we just can’t let that kind of division come into the church, we’ve got to think differently. And Satan wants us to think like the world and we can’t do that in the church.

Rick:

Well, the book “Fault Lines” by Pastor Baucham is a great place to start to get educated on this, as they say, in the book, the ground is moving. I mean, they are literally shifting the entire culture on this. And the church has got to have truth on this and not given to this division that’s happening out there. So get educated on it. In fact, send your kids to Patriot Academy, and they’ll learn from people like Pastor Baucham. I’m not sure if he’s going to make it this year or not, but he was there last year, and previous years. That’s the type of teaching that we give them to prepare them and equip them to be able to fight back in the culture war. You can learn more about that at patrioacademy.com. And get your kids signed up for next summer.

We’re already full for this year, totally full. It’s exciting thing to see. And you should be encouraged, there’s a remnant being raised up in Africa. Oh, it’s just amazing what’s happening over there with this Bible school he’s working with. But we appreciate him coming on the program today and we certainly appreciate you listening today. Be sure to visit our website wallbuilderslive.com, make your donation there today, or check out some of the great resources that you can educate yourself and your friends and your family with. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.