Culture Friday: The price of platform

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, July 18th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Before we get underway I think we owe you an update on the June giving drive. It always takes a little bit to get the final tally, because of mail delays, some like to send physical checks. The delays were an even bigger deal this year, because some mailed checks to our old address, which is, as you probably know, gone, and so that complicated things a bit. But I want to report we did make our budget for the year.

Was talking this over with Andrew Belz. He’s one of our major gift officers and Andrew really wanted to grab a mic and thank you personally. Andrew

ANDREW BELZ: Hey, thanks for the opportunity to speak to your great podcast listeners. I’ve got so much to say in gratitude—but to keep it short and make sure I don’t leave out anything important, I wrote it down. So here goes:

Our WORLD donors—we call you our WORLD Movers—you really came through for us over the last several months.

So to each one: THANK YOU.

In October, when Hurricane Helene destroyed our Asheville offices and studios, you rallied! Your response to our short SOS campaign blew us away. You reminded us we’re not alone.

Then in December, many gave again—above and beyond. And that even after the generosity you had already shown in October.

And in June, you brought us over the finish line. Now we feel prepared and strengthened for the year ahead.

So as I say thank you, I hope you can hear a chorus of gratitude from our team: not just my friends and colleagues in development … I mean the whole team … from the business offices to the people behind the microphones here at WORLD.

We all know it’s your giving that makes our work possible, and so for that team, I’m honored to get to say: We couldn’t do this work of Christian journalism without you. So thanks!

EICHER: Andrew, good news! Thanks for your work; this was helpful.

BELZ: Great. Thanks.

BROWN: Alright, it’s Culture Friday and joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy. Good morning, Katie.

KATIE MCCOY: Good morning, Nick and Myrna.

BROWN: Let’s start with the lifestyle influencers Chip and Joanna Gaines. They are what you might call “Christian celebrities” and they’ve created controversy over a new show that features a same-sex couple. Chip offered a pointed defense of that choice—on social media at least.

Here’s how he framed it up: “Talk, ask questions, listen. Maybe even learn,” he wrote. And then, “Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture?”

Chip and Joanna built their platform on a brand of Christian wholesomeness. So for them to lean into LGBTQ rhetoric feels a little like a pivot away from who we understood them to be … or maybe we’re wrong about that and it’s more of an unveiling of long-held views. What do you say, Katie? Departure or reveal?

MCCOY: Oh, Myrna, this has been so disappointing, but not surprising. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this, but the first one is: compromise is so boring. It’s just such a boring narrative of someone who gets all of this ascendancy, builds an empire, has this enormous brand, and then—right at, if you want to say, the height of their success—they do what we could probably call Bud Light-ing themselves. It certainly seems like they’re about to be in that Bud Light territory, where they’ve really forgotten their constituency and the values of the people that helped them build this brand and this empire.

It’s not only disappointing, but it’s more than a little offensive. They know the people that have supported them over the years. And now the people that they really made a lot of material wealth off of—they now seem to scorn and accuse of lacking God’s love. They are platforming what they know is not just offensive but antithetical to Christian values, to the Scriptures. Then they seem to cry foul. A lot of his tweets seem to cry foul and almost play the victim. This is one of the defining issues of our time because of how much compromise there has been. The Bible is clear. Christian teaching and the history of the church are clear, but now, all of a sudden, we live in a society where people believe they are more enlightened than the Bible and that they can judge for themselves what is right and wrong. And now, in the name of God’s love and the name of God’s grace, it looks like they are going the way of so many others in our culture today.

This all reminds me of something that, early in ministry, a very dear friend told me: Jesus doesn’t call us to be famous. He calls us to be faithful. And I’m afraid it looks like Chip and Joanna Gaines—they’ve become very famous—but from the looks of it, they have chosen not to be faithful.

EICHER: Ooh, yeah, I did pick up the strawmanning and the not-so-subtle scorning with comments like, “Love one another, it’s not difficult.” Just misapplying the whole concept.

I want to stay on the subject but make a slight turn, Katie. You and I were texting about this idea this week, as the story was developing. And as it was, remember I said, this capitulation seems really dated … this is “so 2022” … and you made the point that unlike just a few years ago, there’s less cultural pressure. There’s more of a permission structure to say no to the demands of the LGBTQ movement. Say a little more about that.

MCCOY: Yeah, isn’t it interesting—the vibes have shifted and the tides have turned since 2022. I think about on HGTV, there were these brothers—the Benham brothers—and they did lose their show over holding fast to Biblical beliefs. So you juxtapose that with what we’re seeing now with Chip and Joanna Gaines, and it just adds to not only the disappointment but kind of the bewilderment.

Now there is even more outspokenness among Christians to say, “Look, we understand that the world is going to oppose a Biblical sexual ethic. We’re not expecting to be accepted.” And there is that solidarity and community with other believers who are saying, “Here we stand. We are going to stand on Scripture and nothing else.” So it’s so unusual that they would choose now to make this revelation.

I don’t know if this has sort of been what they always believed. I don’t know if it is the familiar story that there are friendships and relationships that they have that, in the name of keeping those friendships and relationships, they’re going to compromise on what God really calls love.

Nick, you brought up his tweet about how he said, “It’s not difficult,” and I think that might be one of the biggest things that we could push back on. It is difficult. It’s very difficult to die to your desire for acceptance and approval by the world. That is unbelievably difficult. Jesus calls it taking up our cross and following him. He calls it being hated by the world. “Woe to you,” he says, “when all people praise and think well of you,” because that’s how they treated the false prophets. In fact, he told us that we would be despised.

It might be simple—it’s not complicated to love other people—but it is very difficult when loving them looks like telling them what they don’t want to hear, in the name of confronting them with the truth that will set them free: being reconciled to their Creator and repenting and turning to Christ. That’s difficult. The easy thing is to just say, “Oh, we have a new hermeneutic. We have a new way of interpreting these Bible verses that the church has accepted for 2,000 years.” That’s the easy way. The difficult way is to stand on what is true, in the name of serving and representing God.

EICHER: Let’s turn to immigration. One of the major features of the big spending bill signed into law this month was a significant increase in funding to beef up immigration enforcement. Of course, it’s also led to a new wave of sometimes violent protest.

I thought Andrew Walker’s piece at WORLD Opinions was timely. He’d returned from an overseas trip with some fresh thinking on what the Bible says about borders. He titled the piece “Borders are Biblical” … pointing to Acts chapter 17 … about God having determined the boundaries of our dwelling places. He makes the argument that national boundaries are not a modern invention, but a creational good. They’re meant to uphold justice, support the rule of law, and preserve cultural distinctiveness.

But others cite Old Testament commands to welcome the foreigner and remember Israel’s sojourner status. Where do you land on all this, Katie?

MCCOY: Well, like a lot of things that we glean from the Old Testament, we have to make sure that we are interpreting it in context. So first of all, let’s take a moment and note how so often we hear these Old Testament verses when we’re talking about immigration, but that same book of the Bible—whether it’s Leviticus or Deuteronomy—has very stern punishment for things like sexual sin. And we certainly don’t hear some of those same people quoting those Bible verses and talking about those Bible verses as patterns for how we should organize society. But when it comes to immigration, all of a sudden, people are scholars and experts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Let’s look at the context of ancient Israel, especially in Deuteronomy. Here’s what I want listeners to know: It is a staggering amount of grace that God gave to foreigners among his people. It is nothing short of beautiful. Israel welcomed people from other nations with this humanitarian spirit that was absolutely unknown in the ancient Near East. They gave dignity to other people, no matter what their ethnicity, no matter what language they spoke, no matter their socioeconomic status. So if you were impoverished, if you were disadvantaged, there were legal protections that God put in place. And he did that because ancient Israel was supposed to be like, “Hey, this is Exhibit A of what it looks like to live under the law of God—the good, righteous, and just law of God.”

But here’s something that people often forget about these laws, Nick: For Israel to treat foreigners with compassion, they had to know who they are. Now, let that sink in when we’re talking about some of our modern conversations related to immigration. It’s baked into the law. It’s assumed. They knew who was living among them. And people who were foreigners or resident aliens—they also assimilated into Israelite culture. They certainly weren’t free to worship pagan gods. There were limits to these liberties.

Even as there were these huge nationwide celebrations that would benefit foreigners—there would be offerings made that the priests would share with the foreigners—they were included into even Israel’s celebrations. However, there was still a difference. There were certain privileges that were reserved economically for Israelites with other Israelites. Not to mention—here’s the big one—it was a theocracy, meaning it was a government ruled by God. Israel was a theocracy in this time in history to be God’s missionaries to the pagan nations. They were his missionaries not only in their care for the poor and how they treated the foreigner but also in their holiness and their moral purity.

So we can’t just cherry-pick these verses in the Pentateuch and then claim that it harmonizes with a specific social policy. This is not the kind of point-for-point correlation to support partisan ideas. We can glean principles, and we should glean principles and wisdom from them. We should understand that the God of justice has the right to define what justice and dignity for every human being looks like. But we can’t say that these verses support one side of the partisan aisle on immigration policy.

BROWN: Well, before we let you go, Katie, would you reflect with us on the death of Pastor John MacArthur? Of course MacArthur died this week at age 86. He pastored Grace Community Church in California for more than half a century. He founded The Master’s Seminary. He wrote nearly 400 books. He taught the Bible verse by verse on Grace to You radio. MacArthur took strong public stands … never fearing controversy … took on those he considered to be false teachers … and more recently defied Covid restrictions and kept his church open. Would you share a thought on the legacy of John MacArthur?

MCCOY: Well, we certainly lost a giant earlier this week—not only in his pastoral ministry but all the things that he wrote. He was certainly a man of courage, and he leaves quite a legacy. I can tell you, when I was a young Christian, I happened to find this little booklet on assurance of salvation, and I will never forget reading it. It soothed my soul in a way that few things did, just reading the very logical, Biblically grounded assurance of salvation. I have carried that with me, used it in my ministry in talking to other people. That’s just one little booklet, and I’m just one little person that John MacArthur influenced in his multi-decade ministry. I’m sure there are many people whose lives and ministries were influenced by him as well.

BROWN: Author and speaker Katie McCoy, I’m glad to catch up with you … and we’ll do it again next week, too.

MCCOY: Sounds good. See you then!

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