Truth, Justice, and the Challenge of Christian Journalism

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer, and I'm joined again by Nate Garontano. I hope I'm getting that right at this point, Nate, but I'm probably not. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about Christian journalism and specifically an event. You know, I've been through a number of these things. I've actually been thinking about Christian journalism and the responsibility that it has to both report on things that might help Christians hold other Christians accountable, but also the way that it has the ability to influence situations such that it comes really close at times, I think, to bearing false testimony. And so there's sort of a razor's edge that I think Christian journalism walks. When it tells the truth, it can be refining and purifying and really helpful to the community. When it gets the truth wrong, and I won't even say that it lies, but when it gets the truth wrong, it has a way of skewing the community toward more of a perversion of justice than to the implementation of justice. And so we're going to be talking a little bit about this today. This is a sort of an interesting topic for Nate and I to handle, but it's prompted by something that happened at NRB and that we saw reported. I was just actually at NRB and National Religious Broadcasters is what it is actually called. I've gone for the last three years. Nate's been a couple of times. And so there was this sort of kerfuffle, we could say, at NRB where a couple of podcasters who my understanding is they run a podcast that sort of addresses some of the scandals and allegations that occur within evangelical institutions. They were in conversation. It doesn't seem like they necessarily, you know, initiated those conversations, but that they were in conversations with people who were in the midst of these allegations and scandals at NRB. And then the podcasters were asked to leave the convention space. The exhibition space is probably the better way to phrase it, where all the different ministries are sort of exhibiting their wares. They were asked to leave that exhibition space the first day and then ultimately on the second day. And so that little thumbnail sketch is about all I'm going to remember about the situation. Nate, do you have any more color commentary to add here? No, it's just, you know, just like anything, I know people want to have something that grabs people's attention. So it's clickbait and it's like, you know, they got walked out off the NRB floor for exposing, you know, some sexual assault charges or whatever. And so that's the first thing that grabbed my attention. And that's when people see that, you know, but it's, I don't think it's the place to break that, you know, like in my personal opinion and the way that it went down. And there's so much missing information. There's not a whole lot on the internet yet because I think it's an active investigation. I think when you skew what you're supposed to be doing and letting law enforcement or the officials that handle that stuff do their thing, I think you kind of have to know your place there and not, not jump the gun. It felt like to me, it was a little premature. Yeah. Yeah. There's a great book. I think the author was Mitchell Stevens and he talks about, I think the title is called Beyond Journalism. And what he talks about is avoiding journalism that tells before it's too soon to tell. And part of me feels like maybe this situation is one of those moments that we're telling before it's too soon to tell that the, the necessity of breaking the story, the rawness of the moment for certain people involved has now prompted comment on what happened. But there hasn't really been a thick understanding given as to what actually happened. And so I've watched as much video as I can find on it. I've, you know, I've listened to the varying perspectives, watched the actual events take place, you know, sort of live on video. And so I don't know that, that I would have watched all, all the video that I saw and heard all the conversation that I heard and said, yeah, this constitutes a story. Right. I think it definitely constituted a perspective, but I'm not sure it constituted a story. It feels like there are a lot of gaps that are being filled in and they're being filled in, in the most negative way possible. Absolutely. And I think there was also some just spinning of narrative in regard of like assumptions made that, you know, this one entity has a lot of cloud at NRB. So they were able to get these other people removed because of that. Like, are we upset if somebody is a victim of sexual assault? Absolutely. If it's a child, even more so. Like, we're obviously not saying that this is okay, but I don't know that it was the time or place to do that and to lump NRB as a whole. We've been there and there's a lot of amazing ministries that go every year and they rely on that space and that opportunity to kind of spread resource network and, you know, do the things that they do. I think it was a little unfair to call out NRB like that saying, you know, what they said. So that, that was another thing that kind of just rubbed me the wrong way. I was like, especially since we don't really know, I don't know that that's the way to break something like this when I couldn't find anywhere else on the internet. Yeah, I couldn't either. And I think there's a sense in which what I want to say is we have a problem when ministries and the leaders of those ministries are inappropriate. And that doesn't just include, you know, sexual misconduct. It can include financial misconduct. It can include a whole pantheon of, of moral problems, right? These are things that are detrimental to the body of Christ that defame the name of the Lord. You know, as Paul talks about numerous times as a letter of Peter, you know, the name of the Lord is reviled. The teachings of the church are reviled by these acts by leaders and organizations that simply don't align with the gospel that are, that are out of whack. That is a real problem and that requires real accountability. And so this conversation isn't about, hey, Christian journalism is demonic or, or foolish, as I've heard some people say. I don't actually believe that. But I also think, so in addition to, hey, look, this one side, the fact that we have moral failure in the church is a problem and the way we deal with it can be a problem. And so what we want to talk about today is how do we deal with these moral failures? Is it actually helpful? Do I actually need to know, did I actually need to know anything that went on in NRB between these podcasters and this other organization? I believe it was Daystar. I don't recall the name of the podcasters, but I think it was a gentleman from the Unction podcast, if I'm recalling correctly. And so, you know, these two entities are, you know, have whatever tension they have, whoever initiated it, you know, however, all that went down, right? The details are not clear to me. Right. And so there's this tension there. Something happens where the folks from the Unction podcast are asked to leave. They're asked to leave the second day as well. Do I believe that that's the appropriate way to handle the situation? I don't know. I don't know enough of the details about the situation, so I don't really want to weigh in on this situation. What I want to draw attention to is this. Did I ever even need to know that a situation occurred if I don't have enough information after the fact to understand all the dynamics of the situation or a sufficient amount of the dynamics of the situation to make an independent judgment about whether that was appropriate or not? Right. That's sort of where I feel like I'm stuck in. It feels like, you know, on some level, I just wasn't given enough information. All the stuff that I watched, all the, all the things that I saw. If I just listened to those and didn't ask any other questions, I would probably say, oh my gosh, these, these people from this podcast were mistreated and NRB is horrible. Right. But I, I'm not sure that I'm programmed to not ask some additional questions and to want some more information. And so any judgment I make about the situation has to be pretty provisional.

And I think that's sort of where we are. So when I say, when I quote Mitchell Stevens say, you know, there's a journalism that tells before it's too soon to tell, I sort of feel like that's where I'm at with this right now. Yeah. They could have sat with that and waited. You know, it didn't have to break, especially during. It broke like right when NRB was still going on. I believe, you know, the day of, the last day or whatever it happened. And I think just professional tact, like all those things weren't really accounted for. And I always like to look at journalism as sometimes people want to be the first instead of having all the facts together. And so it might have been a little rushed. It might not have been the right time or place to do it. So I agree with what you said about that quote from the journalist quote, because it's not always our place. And the bigger thing is the person that loses the most and if someone, say someone stumbles across that and they see it, number one, they're going to think something about NRB. Number two, they're more than likely going to think, yeah, there's another crazy Christian, you know, it just, it just hurts the kingdom. It hurts the image of Christ and all the people that are there that are not involved in any kind of scandal, that are really doing good ministry. It just, I have a problem with that because if you lump them all in as a whole, any church you look at, any organization I've ever been a part of, there's always going to be issues. Why? Because there's a human variable. There's humans involved in ministry. And so there's always going to be that ability to have these things. I'm not saying it's OK. We certainly should do the right thing and investigate and look and, you know, make sure that that child and the family, everyone is held accountable. But for me, I personally wouldn't want to be in that hot seat. I wouldn't want to have, like, this information and be like, oh, I'm going to drop this on the whole world right now because that's, I don't feel like that's my place. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I think there's, so I think what we have to sort of think through is, number one, how do we deal with these situations? What is the role? And I think this does relate, and I'm hoping to be able to do some episodes on this later on, but I think this does relate to our technological society. Part of what we see in the New Testament, for instance, we do see those who have been demonstrated to be false teachers named in the New Testament. And I think that's a pretty important thing. Paul is writing to Timothy, as a for instance, and in 1 Timothy 1, 19 through 20, he references Hymenaeus and Alexander. These are identified false teachers. They've been preaching a false gospel. And so Paul says, hey Timothy, watch out for these two guys. And he names them by name. He does something very similar with Philatis. Philatis in 2 Timothy 2, 16 through 18, has been saying that the resurrection has already happened. And so Paul is not shy about putting names out there. And while I say he's writing this to Timothy, we, you know, there's an intuitive sense in which the New Testament letters were circulated. And so it isn't as if I think he's only saying this to Timothy or that Paul only thinks that Timothy is the only person who's going to read this. And so what we have is something similar to, you know, maybe like a, what we could say it's like a sex offender list, right? Everybody has the right to know who's in their community who has done these things as a matter of protecting themselves against the crimes that they had previously committed. Right. The challenge of that is that these people have been demonstrated to be doing false teaching. These are not allegations that haven't been investigated. Right. They're not allegations that haven't been settled, is probably the best way to say it. And so there's a sense in which many times what we see reported are allegations. Hey, these allegations have been made against X, Y, or Z company, X, Y, or Z leader, X, Y, or Z organization. The challenge I see with this is that it doesn't exactly follow the processes laid out in scripture. And I'm not talking about Matthew 18. Matthew 18, I think, has been skewed and misused in many different ways. In my estimation, Matthew 18 is a very believer-to-believer sort of situation. There's actually a textual variant in Matthew 18, the inclusion of against you. There's a phrase, you know, if a person has committed a sin against you, that against you is the textual variant. It's included in some texts that we see. It's not included in another text. Right. But I think the vast majority of evidence suggests that the against you should still be in there. And so when I read Matthew 18, what I'm saying is, OK, these are sins that have committed against me. And this is a process that I am to follow for personal offenses that have been done against me specifically. So I don't know that I see Matthew 18 as being the best text to really apply into these kinds of situations. But what I would say is Deuteronomy 19, probably the lesser known Deuteronomy 19, right, is a great place to go. Because what we see in Deuteronomy 19 is we see a couple of things. Number one, we see that people are not to be convicted based on the evidence of one witness alone. There need to be two or three witnesses so that it's plain that this person has been doing an action that is against the covenant law. And it's a clear cut case. That's the idea of the two to three witnesses. And there's accountability there when you have other people. That's right, that there's a shared story that we all saw this person do this. And I would say that part of this has to avoid converging interests. So we see many false witnesses, for instance, come and testify against Jesus at his crucifixion. We see a group of false witnesses come against Stephen in Acts 6. And so when we're looking at this two or three witnesses, it isn't just two or three witnesses who have gotten together, gotten their stories straight and decided this is what happened. It's two or three witnesses who are coming at this from a more, we might say, an objective place, although I trust people will sort of nuance that appropriately. But they're coming at it from different perspectives and saying, no, this actually happened. There's not a shared interest other than, look, the community needs to have justice. We need to practice accountability. And this actually happened. So that's part of what Deuteronomy 19 addresses. But then the other aspect of what Deuteronomy 19 addresses is that when there is only one witness, and that witness is usually referred to as a violent witness or a false witness, we would call it. A violent witness is someone who has an edge to them. They're coming after someone for a purpose other than justice. And when it's a single witness, they're almost assumed to be a false witness. We might say that they're, and by what do I mean by that is this. I shouldn't just leave that out there. Their solo opinion isn't weighted any higher than the opinion of the person who is being accused. Right. And so just because someone is accused doesn't mean that we think differently about them when there's only one witness. Right. And that one witness then comes before with the one who is accused. They come before the priests and the judges who represent the Lord in this case, and they adjudicate the case. They look at the evidence. What's interesting about Deuteronomy 19 that I think we really do need to consider as we're thinking about, you know, the allegations that we make against people within Christian media and in public is that if the person who had

Who has done this, or who is, if the person who is accused of doing something is proven innocent, the one who accused them is given the punishment that they were seeking for the person that they accused. Yeah, that'll stop some people from going too quick. Well, and I think that's the point. I mean, that is the point in Deuteronomy 19 is, whatever happens, whether this guy is proven innocent or whether he's proven guilty, we're going to now punish these people in the eyes of the community. We're going to allow the community to hear it because what we want is a deterrent. We want people to recognize that justice is being done, and that because justice is being done, doing injustice will not pay. Right. We may have a deep sense of justice that involves, hey, look, I have this. Leaders who are doing inappropriate things shouldn't get away with it. 100%. I agree with that. Yeah, totally. Organizations who are doing inappropriate things shouldn't get away with it. 100%. We need stronger accountability from governing boards, from elders, from you name it. We need stronger accountability in the body of Christ. What we don't need is what I would call pseudo-accountability within the body of Christ. When it lends to what they're trying to do or not, you can't manipulate that. If you're going to be all in on one side, you've got to be all in on both sides. You've got to be aimed at truth, aimed at justice, no matter what. Regardless, yeah. I really like the piece that you just wrote about systemic sin where you reference Philippians 2, 5-7. Those who suffer under certain structural arrangements may be tempted to neglect serving God until their circumstances change. One thing that stuck out to me from this is they, I think, had some offenses towards NRB and some of the other entities before this. And I think as human beings, human nature, of course, that's going to cloud because we're not perfect like God. We're going to have a judgmental viewpoint or lens that we're looking through at the beginning of this anyway. And then even further, 1 Corinthians where it says systemic sin tempts all of us to conform to the structure of this world rather than to the image of Christ. If we were looking really for justice and being against injustice, all the other things that we have from prior careers, prior career positions, those things wouldn't come into a factor. And NRB, honestly, wouldn't even be a factor of it. It would just be going after the potential aspect of somebody doing something completely inappropriate to a child. And that's what we should be frustrated about. I don't know that all the other stuff even needs to be in there, especially this soon and this early when we don't have all the facts and there's so many holes. So not to jump back and forth, but I was just saying I wanted to throw that in there because that was what I was thinking earlier and I pulled up the article that you wrote. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I mean, I think we've, we have an interesting notion of complicity. We tend to think that, this often comes up in critical theory or liberation theologies and those kinds of things, where essentially what we say is that we are complicit in the structural sins that are surrounding us. And so, you know, Nate, if you're, if you're a part of this podcast and you see me doing evil things and you just continue going on with it, you may very well be complicit in that. Right. Especially if you're not saying anything to me. Yeah. And that's where the part of Matthew would come into play. I would come to you personally first. Right. On a one-on-one, you know, where it's a very small organization and the closer I think it gets to personal relationships, the easier this is actually to work out. Totally. But when we're looking at it from the perspective of organizations and we're saying an organization is complicit now for the sins of another organization because they're allowing them to exhibit in their exhibit space when they have allegations against them. These are areas where I think we need to admit that there is some level of gray area. And so I think the litmus test of this is just to say this, let's say, let's just say this organization, let's, let's use a different organization. Let's say NRB kicks, kicks useful to God out. Right. They say, I'm sorry, useful to God. You have allegations of some sort of malfeasance against you. And so you're out. You can't come to NRB anymore. But let's say those allegations aren't true. Let's say they're demonstrated that they're not true. Let's say they're proven that they're not true. Is anyone calling for for NRB to be held accountable for the disassociation and damage that might occur if they were to jettison an organization based on allegations that are proven not to be true? Yeah. I don't know that I've ever heard of that happening. Yeah. Very rarely. Right. Journalism's involved because people just want to get their first and make the big splash. Right. And so, I mean, I think, yeah, we could apply that to Christian journalism. It's difficult for me to believe that Christian journalism doesn't make mistakes. And so on a human level, we can say, and I think I actually would say, hey, listen, everybody makes mistakes. Right. Everybody, you know, there can be a misconstruing of facts. There can be a misunderstanding of information. There can be, you know, problems here and there. And ultimately, the court of public opinion really isn't a court. That's a metaphor. And so, you know, these allegations aren't official, but they do do damage to an organization. And to people, for sure. Yeah. Right. And so I think we have to be careful with it, but I don't think it raises to the level that we're seeing in a Deuteronomy 19. Right. Because it's not an official court. Right. It's not an official proceeding. You're not actually giving, you know, sort of sanctioned testimony in a formal setting. Right. At the same time, I have to say that there is a symmetry between these situations where testimony given in public, presumed to be true and representing that another organization or individual has done X, Y, or Z. When it's proven that they haven't done that, very seldom have I ever seen anything happen to a journalist. Yeah. They want to hold people accountable, but they don't always want to on the back end, like you're saying, I don't think I've seen that either. They don't always want to come back and be like, I got that wrong, or let me release a statement saying I shouldn't have done that, apologizing to those people. Because at the end of the day, James, we talked about this a little bit off camera and I wasn't trying to interject in the middle of your sentence there. But, you know, I think there's a cultural shift that's been happening for some time where people see something and then they don't tend to go and look or wait for the rest of the details to come out. They see something once and they just buy for it and say, well, I saw this, so there's got to be some truth to it. And that's the unfortunate thing, but it's human nature now within, you know, because how fast stuff is coming out in a couple weeks, there's going to be more stuff happening and this will be old news. But did we do a disservice without knowing all the facts? And I think a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people are just going to take something and, oh, I saw this on the internet, so there's got to be some truth to it. And I think that's a cultural shift that's kind of dangerous where people can just make assumptions off of one thing seeing and not really know what the truth is. We've kind of lost our ability to really want to seek the truth and wait and have that discernment. Because if it was us, if it, like, if it was someone in your family or someone you knew really closely, you'd be frustrated if this happened. We don't know the, but, you know, so these family members, these friends, but other people in their organizations, they're probably frustrated on both sides. You know, people get, people get, carry the offense of others because they're close to someone on both sides of this. And so, but I, I have to keep coming back to the fact that it hurts the kingdom and the image of Christ at the end of the day, because humans get involved and I don't, we just don't do it right all the time. So. Yeah. And I mean, again, I think at this point, it's, it's important to say two things. Number one, it's important to reiterate, it isn't that we're saying that the people who report on these things are damaging the reputation of Jesus. The act itself is damaging the reputation of Jesus. Totally. And so I think it's a both and in certain cases, not in all cases. Right. But in certain cases, it's not just that something bad happens. It's also the way that we report something bad happening.

That can be a problem. Now, it can also be that nothing bad happened and it's reported as if something bad happened. Also a bad reputation. And so when we look at Christian journalism, we shouldn't think of it in terms of the prophets, right? I've heard certain Christian journalists, you know, they liken themselves to what Luke does in the beginning of his gospel where he talks about investigating these things thoroughly and, you know, sort of writing a reasonable account that we may believe. And I think there is a vast difference between what the sort of research that Luke did in writing his gospel and an impromptu blog post, podcast, or, you know, video on YouTube that has clearly not had enough time to do any particular investigation to really look at a situation thoroughly. I don't think, you know, Luke just saw the resurrection on the back of a napkin and ended up writing his gospel. I mean, this was a true research project that takes time. And so this urgency that we're feeling at this point to put out content can be a real detriment to the church and its pursuit of truth. And I really want to phrase, like, I'll emphasize it can be. It doesn't have to be. It can be. And so as Christians, so this brings me to my second point. In 1 Timothy 5, 20 and following, part of what Paul instructs Timothy to do, you know, he tells him, hey, on the basis of two and three witnesses, you know, rebuke these people in public so that everyone may fear. That's sort of 19 and 20. And then in 21 and following, he goes on to say and encourage Timothy, hey, look, don't be quick to lay hands on people. Don't be quick to authorize people for ministry and endorse people in ministry. Don't be quick to do that. Let their deeds emerge over time. And I find that advice so fascinating, right? That we shouldn't, you know, Paul is basically telling Timothy, hey, let some of this stuff marinate. He basically says that good deeds will become conspicuous and that bad deeds, even though some of them may be slower to emerge out of someone's life, they will become conspicuous as well. And so don't just automatically be like, I anoint this person. This person is now off for ministry. Paul's really telling Timothy, be careful who you endorse. Be careful who you side with. Be careful who you align with. Make sure you know their fruit. Make sure you know their fruit. We are not doing that now. Right. And I would say that's not just, you know, a Christian journalist report that's put out too soon and hasn't really had time to, in my estimation, think through all of the things that you'd want to think through. But I would also say that we're doing this with mass media ministries, right? And as I wrote in Think and Christian, you know, we're mistaking popularity for wisdom. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The more people somebody can attract, the more we think that they've got something to say. That is not always the case. Or the more views, the more you see something over and over again on the internet, that doesn't mean it's necessarily the right perspective or the right angle. That's right. And I mean, it's sort of, I mean, I think I should just be honest. It's easy for somebody like, you know, for me to say that because we don't get a lot of views. We don't get, you know, we don't get the millions and millions of views on these videos that other people do. And so it can kind of seem like, well, of course you feel that way, James, because you're not getting any views. But I think the reality of it is that it's just, it's true. It's the truth is not always popular and what's popular is not always true. And so we have to like listen to Paul's advice here to Timothy and really understand what Paul is telling him to do. It's be careful who you endorse. And I think if we're going to solve the problems that we have in the church today, part of what we have to do is we have to take a big old step back and ask ourselves, have we really been careful about who we're endorsing? Have we really been careful about these nationally televised or broadcasting preachers? Have we really been careful about it? Or have we just said, this person is a fantastic preacher and teacher and I'm going to support him or her. When we know nothing about their life, we know nothing about who they are. There's no checks on their character. They can do whatever it is that they want. We've seen multiple instances where that seems to have played out. We just covered it with Paula White in an episode not too long ago. We just covered it with Paula White. I mean, I can go back to, you know, I was, I was living in Chicago when the whole James McDonald scenario went down, you know, Mark Driscoll, you know, and the, the fall of Mars Hill or whatever that podcast was that was put out last year. I mean, I just think there are a lot of these, these areas where we're seeing really good Christian journalism in some respects. We're actually seeing the truth come to light on some of these things. But then there are other areas like this report from NRB that just feels very anemic. It feels like a reach, right? And I'm not talking about Daystar. I'm not talking about the situation with Daystar. I didn't even look at that. So it may very well be that those allegations against Daystar are, are end up being true, right? But what I'm saying is when I watched what was put out about NRB, I'm not seeing the scandal that was reported. Right. I'm just not seeing it. And so I wonder then why it's there. Yeah. And what's the motivation behind it? Yeah, for sure. And if you listen, you hear some of it, you know, some of it is in there. It really does. I mean, you know, I think there, there are some aspects of it that I just sit back and I go, well, you know, are the, are there some dynamics in NRB that I don't love? Sure. Right. But that's largely because I'm an outsider to the whole context, right? Like I came to NRB late. I'm not part of legacy media. Podcasting isn't exactly, you know, mainstream, even at NRB. Right. And so I know the people I know. I enjoy the people I know. I interact with the people I know and I kind of leave the rest alone. I don't know NRB. I'm just there. Right. Right. I mean, that's the difference. I would say a lot of people are probably that way. Right. Most of them are that. I mean, there's very probably small group of people that have a different position than that. That's my position too when I've been there. So, right. So I just think overall what we, what we have to do is, and maybe we give a little bit of clarity for folks. I do think we have to consider what accusations are really being made and who's making them. You know, I think we have to understand that we need to ask ourselves at least, are the accusations being made, are they based on confirmed knowledge about sin? As an academic dean, I would tell you that a lot of the decisions that I made, the faculty were not pleased with. These verses we've been discussing, 1 Timothy 5, Deuteronomy 19, and a variety of others that we could have went through. These are not about disagreements about specific decisions. These are about sin. These are about offenses. They're not about strategic calls or even tactical calls. And so when I'm trying to decide what to cut out of the budget, that's not a sin. That's a reality that's a part of my job that I have to do. And it stinks. You have to tell that to your board and to the people above you. But at the end of the day, that's what you've been tasked with. And you have to do the best you can. And so we have to at least ask the question, are some of these accusations pointing to sin? Are they accusing an organization of being sinful? Or are they frustrations that an organization made a bad choice?

that we don't agree with. I think we have to wrestle with that dichotomy. I think the other thing is, and we mentioned this before, you know, are the two or three witnesses that we're hearing these things from, are they, do they have converging interests? In other words, if we were to ask someone who watched all of these things go down, would they say exactly the same thing? Would they be seeing it in the way that the people were involved or actually seeing it? I won't take away from the validity of their perspective, but I do want to say that, you know, when I watch, and just this is a sort of trivial example, but I think it'll drive the point home. I remember the maddest I've ever gotten watching my daughters play lacrosse was a game where the referee seemed to be calling more fouls on my daughter's team than they were on the other team. And I mean, I was feeling angry, and if anyone asked me about that game afterwards, I would have said, I thought the ref was biased. Does that mean the ref was biased? Not at all. It's your perspective, yeah. It's my perspective, and because I'm involved in it and I'm emotionally involved in it, I'm emotionally committed to it, my daughters, I feel like maybe are being a little bit unjustly treated. Yeah, you're kind of close to that when you're there watching. Right, like, I'm not the right person. I may be the right person to say, yeah, I think we ought to check this one out. I am not the right person to evaluate it. And so I think there's just certain layers of this that we have to peel back and ask ourselves, are we asking the right people? Are we asking the right questions? Are we really getting down to central issues? Or are we just allowing people to express a perspective that may or may not be true to reality, even though they believe it sincerely? Yep. And just in the same regard, I think that's one of the most important roles of the DA in a case, whether it's, you know, civil or what have you. They have to sometimes pull people off of a case because they're too close to it. Right. Because our human nature, sometimes we can't make the right decisions or look through the right perspective that we need to just simply because our past experiences or just because of how close it is to us, things that have affected us in other areas of our life or whatever. So I think it's kind of the same way. It's good to have someone neutral that can kind of look from a 30,000 perspective and say, here's all the facts, and I don't really have bias one side or the other. This is what I'm seeing. And they're not so close to it, you know, like you with the lacrosse game. I think we don't have that in our life. Yeah, and I think the other thing we need to do is we need to make sure that we're allowing the appropriate processes to take place in order for there to be an adjudication of the allegations. I think this is one of the bigger problems that I have sometimes with Christian journalism is that they'll announce that an investigation is going to take place. And it's interesting, when I sat on accreditation boards, we would look at schools. And schools would have varying problems going on within them, and we would give recommendations that the schools had to then implement within a certain time period to fix those recommendations. You go from, you could get put on warning, you can get put on probation, but it wasn't until you were putting on probation that you had to actually, and I think that's the terminology that's correct, at least it was for my accrediting organization, but it wasn't until you were put on probation that you had to announce that publicly. Everything else was handled internally. And you're monitoring the institution, you're watching them make progress, you're understanding the situation, you're trying to get them to act to remedy whatever situation there they need to remedy. And after a certain time period, you say, you just haven't done it. Either you can't do it, wouldn't do it, whatever, but at this point, we have to let the public know. Right. And so I would love to see us do that within the Christian media space. I agree that the Christian media has a great responsibility, and I do think that it can put some pressure on organizations to change when they might not otherwise change. There is something about public pressure that can push organizations in an appropriate fashion. But I would also just say that I think that a lot of times, Christian media tends to be the tail that wags the dog. In other words. That's a good way to look at it. There can be a perception of a problem that isn't actually the problem. Right. You know, it's something, again, to use sort of an analogy, like, I remember when I first hurt my back, I was having a lot of hip pain, and I went into the doctor and the doctor was giving me shots in my hip. Well, it wasn't helping. Right. Because the symptom didn't actually match the core problem. And so, right, it doesn't matter whether, you know, you can resolve a symptom, right? The shots would actually help for a couple days, but it never actually resolved the problem. And so I'm concerned that Christian journalism not Jump to a symptom when there's a bigger underlying problem. Yep. And this is why we see it over and over again because what happens if you just pull the root? If you don't get the, I mean, if you pull a weed, but you don't get the root of it, it's going to come back. And we see this happen over and over and over again. Almost every time a scandal breaks, there's these similarities, you know, and people either trying to get there first and do something or, you know, breaking something that's not completely accurate with, you know, missing some pieces, missing some key parts, components, what have you. I think that's the root of it. And I think there is the lack of accountability. And I think that's our goal in having this whole conversation today. It's not to say who's right or wrong, not to say if this happened or if it didn't, if it was done the right way or not. It's just we have to run it through the biblical perspective of accountability, and that's what's lacking. Right. And I think to your point, Nate, the biblical perspective on accountability doesn't stop with the person who has allegations against them. And this is the interesting part of what we see in Deuteronomy 19. Both the accused and the accuser are going to be subject to accountability. And right now, what I'm afraid that we're building is we're building a system where only the accused is subject to accountability. The accused has all the downside. Now, at times, they may deserve that downside, right? Like, they may have actually done what they're accused of. At other times, they may not deserve that downside. But I would say that any pastor, minister, Christian leader who is accused of certain things is going to carry that stigma with at least a certain portion of the Christian community for a very long time, even if it's demonstrated that they didn't do anything. Right. Whereas the people making those allegations are very seldom experiencing any downside at all. No repercussions, even if it comes back afterwards that they were incorrect. They're already on to the next thing trying to find something else. And that is not the biblical understanding of accountability. Right. And so I think, you know, sort of to land the plane here, I am not against Christian journalism. I really am not. I've been on the wrong end of it from my perspective. Like, I've had negative experiences with Christian journalism, but I've sort of, as I've thought through this whole thing, I do see a place for Christian journalism. I think it's an appropriate expression of and a necessity in this day and age, especially where ministries have expanded the public that they reach. There also needs to be a rebuking and accountability arm that reaches that similar audience. We can't assume a, you know, a local elder board is going to hold accountable a pastor with national or international reach. We just can't. Right. And so there has to be this other wing of Christianity that is doing these things. At the same time, that wing has to fall under the same sort of accountability standards that we would hold any other Christian leader, because functionally, that's what they are. Mm hmm. They're truth tellers in the public space. And so the accountability that they hold is to actually tell the truth in the best and most complex way that they possibly can. Even if it blows back on your organization, your mission. And I think that's why Paul was saying that. And I'm so glad you brought that to this today because it needs to be both sides. That's why we have to use caution and make sure we know the fruit of the people that we're doing it. Now, can somebody hide their sin and fool people? Absolutely. It happens all the time. But he said, be careful who you anoint and who you send out. That's right. Because it will come back on you. It might not always in the people's eyes.

In God's eyes, it does. There is two parts to that accountability on both sides, even though journalism or media as a whole is skewed the other way, I totally agree with you. I feel like, and that's why people are so willing to just take that gamble because they don't know what there's going to, they don't think there's going to be that much repercussion or blowback. Yeah, and I agree. I mean, I think if we're gonna, we should probably close this episode out because we've been going for a bit now, but I would just say, I think that when you think about the accountability on both sides of the issue, what you're going to find is that there are going to be some people who are really against Christian media and Christian journalism because their bad deeds have been found out. And so the easiest thing to do is to defame the other side and to say that this group is just a bunch of, you know, horrible people, ambulance chasers, making up things, spreading gossip, whatever. And I, you know, there's part of me that, that sees some of those applications maybe as true occasionally, but I, I think that the overall categorization is just intended to knock down the people who are holding you accountable a notch. At the same time, I think this other side, this Christian journalism side cannot simply justify everything they're doing by saying we're on a quest for justice. Because if justice, if all justice means is we need to hold these other leaders accountable at any cost, the any cost is the problem. Like we all work within the constraints of God's word. We all work underneath his authority or we're supposed to. Whether we recognize it or not, we all do. Right. And so I think at the end of the day, what you, what you see in some, sometimes in Christian journalism is you're seeing an impetus to change the world that isn't necessarily connected to justice. It's connected to personal preference. I don't prefer the way the world is now. It's and I, I don't want to put motivations on people, but some of the things that I've seen, what it makes me think of is the times in my own life where I've said, it's obvious that I am an ear in this situation. I would prefer to be an eye. I would like to change the situation. And I, I just think that sometimes Christian journalism tends toward this idea and they shroud that in the notion of justice. But justice is far more encompassing than I think they're giving it credit for. And so at the end of the day, there just has to be that accountability on both sides. We've got to hold in tension the idea that an accusation isn't necessarily true, that we have to be able to adjudicate it and that the people making the allegations don't necessarily have to be making true allegations. That these could be false allegations and if there's no accountability for those who make false allegations, guess what? They're not going to stop making false allegations. Yeah. And so our, our accountability problem, and this is sort of the gloom and doom part of the podcast, I suppose, our accountability problem is bigger than we think it is, is sort of my takeaway from this latest NRB dust up. Yeah, a hundred percent. Just it reaffirms to me that our accountability problem is bigger than we think it is. And if we don't address it, it's only going to get worse. It's not moving the other direction. And I, That is my, that is my tendency to agree. I think we're, we're so desperate to fill up space with content that we're not as concerned with good content, nuance content, truthful content, sometimes wrong content, but ultimately content that is seeking to grapple with the, the things of God in a faithful way. Yep. I think that's a great way to end it there, man. That's awesome. Uh, I appreciate your input and your perspective as always is very, very helpful because I've been wrestling with this the last couple of days. Like, because, you know, we see it all the time. I'm going to see it probably tonight in somewhere else. Like it's, it's, um, but I'm glad we're having these conversations and I'm glad that we're bringing it back to scripture. I think there's a lack of that and that's what we need to do. Yeah. And hopefully we'll do a couple more episodes on this in the upcoming future. I mean, I'd like to discuss, uh, definitely McLuhan's Marshall McLuhan wrote a book on laws of media and in there he talks about the four laws or media effects. And I think that has a lot of implications for the way that we view the way our Christianity has been mediaized, um, even in the form of podcasts, video, things that we're doing right now. And we need to be thinking through, all of us need to be thinking through, how does the medium change the way we need to interact on the medium? How does the medium become the message? And that was a part of Marshall McLuhan talked about. So hopefully we'll do an episode on that. And then this idea of what does it look like for us to, how bad is ignoring evil? We need to probably talk about that as well. And what are, what are the implications for ignoring evil, especially in an age where we are privy to a lot more than we used to be privy to. And so we can see evil from around the world in a way that we didn't used to be able to see it. Um, so hopefully we'll cover those in, in upcoming episodes. So if you're interested in this topic, stay tuned for those episodes and just keep a lookout for when Nate and I have those discussions. And other than that, we'll we'll call it an episode and uh appreciate you all listening and thanks for tuning into this episode of thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. You know, everybody talks about life after death, but what about life during life? Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here, and on the Greg Laurie Show, we're tackling life's biggest questions like, why am I here? What really matters? And what happens when I die? I'll discuss cultural topics with friends and experts and examine the biblical truth behind everyday issues and even share stories about my own personal spiritual journey. Listen now to the Greg Laurie Show on lifeaudio.com or wherever you get your podcasts.