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Is our culture confusing kindness with truth? In this episode, we tackle a tough question: Has the desire to be loving caused us to abandon truth? Kirk and James explore how compassion can sometimes be weaponized to silence truth, and why Scripture calls believers to speak the truth in love, not choose one over the other. If truth is the engine and love is the way we deliver it, how should Christians respond to today’s cultural pressure to stay silent? This dangerous conversation challenges us to stand boldly for truth while reflecting the grace of Christ.
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Change only happens when you speak what is true and we have the truth on our side.
So speak boldly, change the culture, infiltrate what needs to be infiltrated,
and reform what needs to be reformed so that the earth may look more like heaven for the next generation.
Today we're asking the question, is being kind killing truth?
Is our desire to be loving actually a form of betrayal?
That's what we're going to be talking about today.
Before we get started, make sure to like, subscribe, hit the notification bell,
share, and notified so you never miss an episode.
Dad, another dangerous conversation.
James, you're getting us into a really great territory.
And I love that you picked up on this, the weaponizing of kindness,
turning out to be a betrayal of our own friends and family because we're afraid to tell the truth.
Before we dive into this, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor ADF Alliance Defending
Freedom. These guys are awesome. This is a group of lawyers nationwide that works pro bono,
giving free advice and representation when conservatives and Christians are being shut down and
persecuted, fired, and all kinds of things. I want to tell you all about them in just a little bit.
But James, what made you think of this topic for a dangerous conversation?
Well, I think this is something that I've noticed over the past couple of years,
especially when I moved here out south where there's this form of southern hospitality and kindness.
And I've even noticed this in the broader culture when it comes to
like love is love and we should be compassionate and accepting of all people, regardless of where you
come from or what you believe. And I feel as though that is almost seeped into the church a little bit.
Yeah, what you're saying resonates with me too, because as followers of Christ, we ought to be
leading the way with kindness and compassion. And I know that so many people have been
dogging on the church as being judgmental, being legalistic and all that. And so we seem to be
sort of rebounding and wanting to learn lessons in kindness. And then we're taking our cues from
the progressive left who come up with signs in rainbow colors that say love is love. And no
person is illegal and science is real. And the climate alarmist stuff. And if you really care
about people, you'll wear a mask and you'll stay six feet apart. And you go, wait a second.
This is now turning into manipulation and control, particularly of the family of faith.
And now compassion has been weaponized. Yeah. And I think the same terms that you used in the
church could be someone who says, well, everyone's a sinner or someone who says come as you are
or somebody who says, who am I to judge? Those are kind of the phrases that are used in the church
that actually have a correlation to kind of what the progressive movement says. Yeah. Of
everything's kind of okay. Right. Who are you to judge? It can dilute truth in the process.
Boy, this is so important. And it's hard because truth and kindness should go hand in hand.
Right? I mean, Jesus was full of truth and he was full of grace. We've got to have both,
right? But what's how do we balance those things? Well, I pulled a couple of verses on both
sides and I just want to reference those. But Ephesians 432 says, be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ has forgiven you. So that's one. So it's
be tenderhearted, be kind, forgive each other. Another one is Colossians 312. It says, put on then
compassion to heart's kindness, humility, weakness, and patience. Proverbs 151, it says,
a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. And in Galatians,
kindness is literally one of the fruits of the spirits. Yeah. That's right. So everyone agrees
kindness is key. Yes, but kindness does not mean abandoning truth. And that's what I feel we should
emphasize in this episode. And there's one verse for me that speaks to this very directly.
Good. And I think it's a very misinterpreted verse or maybe looked oververse. And it is
Ephesians 415 where it talks about speaking the truth in love. It's to speak the truth in love.
Yeah. The emphasis and the command of that verse is to speak the truth. The way you deliver the
truth is in a loving way. Right. But the commandment is for you, a Christian, for you a believer,
for you who has the truth on your side to speak it boldly. Yes. And in that do it also lovingly.
Yes. So it's two commandments in one. Truth is the content of the command. And love is the way
the command is delivered. I love this. I love this. This is so good. This is such an important
distinction. We cannot mute truth and we cannot forget love. Exactly. And the command isn't
just be loving to others and abandon the truth. Because if you get rid of the truth,
what you are doing is actually not loving. You have to have them both coincide in the same thing.
And I would say the first priority is to speak the truth to them. And then you do so in a loving
way as commanded. That's right. And I think a lot of times, us as Christians and other people as
well, put a lot of emphasis on the love because we think of verses in the Bible that say,
don't point out the spec in somebody else's eye before you take the log out of your own. And we
take that and say, oh, that means we as Christians shouldn't judge. We should kind of be accepting
of all people. We're all sinners. We're all kind of wicked at heart and everybody has all
and everybody is loved by God equally. Therefore, we should kind of emphasize the love. And if we can
add truth in later on, great. But it's the relationship that we're focused on, not necessarily the
principle of the truth. And I think that that can be very dangerous, actually, if we lead with love
instead of truth. Because then you can lovingly lead someone down a false path that is actually
destructive for them. Hey, I want to introduce you to 17-year-old Adelaide Cross. She was forced to
compete against a male athlete who was allowed to play on the girls team. She lost out on opportunities
and was even mocked on the field by this young man. And then it got worse. She endured vulgar,
sexual comments and abuse where I'm not even going to repeat from this male athlete. So she decided
to change in a separate girls bathroom because he was allowed to change in the girls locker room.
So Adelaide shared her story with a lion's defending freedom and praised God alongside the
attorney general of West Virginia. ADF took a case to protect girls like her all the way to the
Supreme Court. A decision could come down any day and we pray that girls like Adelaide will win.
She has courageously stood up for the truth that we read about in Genesis 1, male and female.
He created them. All right, ADF is asking everyone to take a moment today. Go to join adf.com
slashkurt and send Adelaide a quick message of encouragement. Let her know she's not alone
in this fight. Let's do that. Join adf.com slashkurt or text Kirk to 83848 to send her an encouraging
message or send her a Bible verse and thank Adelaide for bravely standing for the truth.
You know the picture that I'm seeing in my mind right now James is like is like so much of the
progressive broader culture and the church is jumping on board this train. It's a picture of
the love train with the with the caboose containing some truth at the rear end and it's just sort of
like going wherever the love train wants to take it. But almost like it's not the important part.
Whereas what you're saying is no no no there is an engine that is driving the train and it is
the truth. It is not sappy feelings. It's not spineless sentimentality. It's not the love train.
It is the engine of truth that is driving the glory train of God and all the cars in the train
are characterized by love. Yeah, and a good question you can ask yourself and I've asked myself is
when I go to a church are they putting the priority on being loving to the congregants making
them feel good or are they putting the priority on speaking the truth of the word above just making
other people feel good. Yeah, like you said if you're not speaking the truth you're making people
feel good is not necessarily loving them. In fact it is betraying them as you said earlier
if you're making them feel good while you're lying to them while or while you're making them
comfortable in their deception or while you may be even just staying silent in that while you're
not addressing the actual issue at hand if you're just being silent you could actually be harming them
just because you're only loving to them and affirming of them you're actually neglecting
your job which is to tell them the truth about the situation or to tell them the truth about
the sin that they're committing but I think this comes from the broader concept of a lot of
Christians are scared of being called judgmental. Yeah, and I think there's danger in that because
you can go very quickly into legalism which is very judgmental of others it's almost putting you
on a pedestal above others but if you go to the opposite side of the spectrum and you go to
lovey-dovey everyone's and everything is part of everybody's story and you don't really have to
call it out because God's in control at the end that also has major major consequences if you
emphasize the love more than the truth so it's somewhere in between and I think also the concept
of Christians not judging others is misunderstood. I think that Christians are called
to judge one another and to hold each other accountable to the truth of God. There's a couple
of verses that I want to talk about and one is Galatians 6-1 it says if anyone is caught in any
transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness so that is
correction based upon your judgment of the situation in a gentle way to restore that person.
That's right. So that is Christians judging others rightly. How can we... I get it. Some people
will take that verse and use it like a hammer to whack everybody else over the head going God calls
me to judge God see God right and I'm just trying to restore you and they have sort of this prideful
glee about correcting everybody else nobody wants to be around that guy right however you can't
make the error on the other side and say well I'm never going to point out anything even though
it's true and it's destroying relationships and it's dishonoring God I think it's not even so much
like somewhere in the middle I think it's both it's not either or it's both and it's like two
wings to the plane if you cut one if you cut the truth off the plane crashes if you cut love off
the plane crashes and I think that's what people want to see in us is someone who can do what you
said earlier speak the truth in love. In Matthew 7 Jesus has discernment on the mount and he talks
about before you judge others before you point out the spec in someone else's eye take the log out
of your own eye think a lot of Christians look at that and they say oh that means we shouldn't judge
but I think what it's speaking to is don't be a hypocrite if you have a log in your own eye if you
have hidden sin if you have all of these ways that you're acting that are actually sinful don't go
pointing out all the sin and everybody else fix yourself that you may be able to become whole
so you can help somebody else become whole yeah but fix yourself first yeah but that doesn't mean
that we don't call out what is evil and we don't call out what is wrong in other people's lives
we have to we have to but first we have to do that to ourselves that's right man James this is
exactly right this is exact right if we could get this right the world would be such a different
place I think that people would just become they would come running into the church going I want
that to happen to me I want to be you guys you're always speaking the truth you don't tell lies
you don't take bribes you don't cave under political and financial pressure right you're not like
a politicians you're not like the the lame religious hypocrites who always seem to say one thing
but do something else and they're changing their opinion as the political winds change we hate
that you guys tell the truth and you do it with kindness and compassion even if it makes you
unpopular and man that's respectable you know I was recently in Washington DC and I was listening
to the keynote speaker who was Ali Beth Stucky and she wrote a book called toxic empathy I believe
is the name and she was pointing out the fact that the most loving thing that we can do is to tell
people the truth if we don't say the truth we're actually committing hate speech hate speech is when
we're lying and deceiving people with things that aren't the truth you say well what if what if
it's a gender thing and you're speaking the truth and love like you're a boy you're not a girl
that's that's like you're denying their identity you're you're you're acting like uh you know
that they don't exist and that's hate speech no that's actually love speech when I'm speaking the
truth in love otherwise I'm contributing to your your problem and that would be actually hate speech
but she pointed out the fact that love and compassion has been turned around and used as a weapon
particularly with religious people to make them feel bad and guilty and say you're right I'm a
bad Christian Swaldo what you say which means I'm going to approve of all of these ungodly unholy
practices and let my children become victims of that which is completely terrible and awful
and that's that's why I think we we loved Charlie Kirk so much is because he always told the truth
he would always speak the truth and he would speak it with respectfulness and with kindness
yes and I also think that's part of the way that people who are secular try to
keep the church weak which is by promoting a type of Christianity that is so palatable that is
so loving that is so kind that Christians will actually fall back on to just being kind rather
than taking action in the face of tyranny in the face of wickedness in the face of
trying to have your children in schools be taught that a boy can become a girl and a girl can
become a boy and they try to disguise it by saying you're being judgmental if you disagree
and look at the person's heart rather than the truth of the issue man this is so important James
so many people are falling victim to this and I want to be aware of I want to read the room and
understand what's going on culturally and I certainly don't want to be known as a judgmental
racist homophobic xenophobic any phobic whatever and and the truth is those names are wrong because
I'm not afraid of any of those things but it can be tricky to understand what is the the balance
of speaking the truth and loving people when you have all of these false prophets speaking to you
about what it means to be a good Christian and they themselves are fake and phony but even the
words that you just said all the phobics that are out there xenophobic and homophobic and transphobic
and all of in fat phobic whatever you want to call it all of those things I completely reject
those ideas and I think that's part of the strategy in which they're trying to implement
on Christians to make the church weaker right it's a false characterization first of all of being
afraid of those things so so a Christian or anybody could say I want secure borders xenophobic
I think marriage is between a man and a woman homophobic someone says I think we should take care
of our bodies so that we're fit they say fat phobic all of those things are to create a social
pressure on you so you cave that coupled with the church that prioritizes compassion and empathy
and love over truth hands all the power over to the people who hate God hate truth and actually
just want to be the ones in control yeah yeah it is so interesting I have found that the
progressives on the left are the ones that don't generally tend to want to have babies they tend
to not love the God who created them and made a way for them to be saved and when they speak of
inclusion and acceptance it certainly doesn't include guys like me because I don't fit their
paradigm and their mold and so I want to be different I want to do what you're saying I want to
be able to speak truth and speak it in love and actually we have a way of knowing what the truth
is they think they're speaking their truth but there is no my truth in their truth there's only one
truth with a capital T of course if you don't believe that that's when you get into trouble yeah and
I I think it is so awesome that we have an example like Jesus to point to when it comes to truth
and love coinciding in one person and if we think of Jesus Jesus showed love and grace and
forgave sins and he did miracles and he ate dinner with the tax collectors and the prostitutes
but he also spoke the truth 100% of the time 100% of the time he said to the Pharisees you
blind guys you whitewash tombs you hypocrites he called out injustice in the day that he was there
for us to hear so that we would follow the example of him Jesus wasn't some passive loving guy who
only talked about loving everybody and loving your enemies he also called out evil adamantly that's
right he did it strongly he didn't cave to the political powers or even the the synagogues in his
time he didn't cave to the pressure from the priests and the elders at that time he fought against
that yeah because he knew that the truth was not what other people said and it wasn't all about
kindness but you had to rebuke what was wrong yeah if you look at Jesus and you compare him to
the kindness police that we see today you you think Jesus needed to take a DEI class
that Jesus needs to get a few pointers from the educators of empathy because he's not doing it right
he's calling them out remember when he called Peter Satan get behind me Satan he railed
on people who hurt children he railed on religious hypocrites who enslaved people and saying
you took the commands of God and you replaced them with the traditions of men you have received
all the rewards you're ever going to get that's not going to win him gold stars with today's tone
police yet he was the most loving man that ever lived yes and I think when we see things in our time
in our age evils that are happening when we see kids that are in public schools being told by their
teachers to not tell their parents and go have a gender affirming care which is essentially blocking
their hormones or cutting off body parts and encouraging them not to tell their parents about it
the response that we should have is Christians is not well if they want that that's good or let's
be loving it is to say hell no we are not going to stand for that we're going to stand up strong
for what is right we're going to protect those that we love because we're commanded to by God
and we're going to stop the evil that's happening right we're going to change culture we're going
to reform it we're not just going to sit passively and allow it to happen for the sake of being kind
but James but James they say that's toxic masculinity you can't just come in like a bowl in a
china shop like that you have to understand that uh these are children too and they need to be
affirmed for who they really are and these are your children who you were commanded to
steward you were commanded to lead up in the way that they should go if you're if you're a parent
who is accepting of your child to cut off body parts I believe that you are not doing your
duty before God if you're somebody who's going along with the gender affirming care for miners
I think you are actually harming people and disguising it in the form of love or compassion
but I think that's something in our current day and age that specific situation along with many more
that is prioritizing love and compassion over truth yeah God made male and female
he didn't make they them let me make a point here I know people close to me who have grandchildren
who have transitioned from a little boy to a little girl and their teenagers now
and they go by their girl name and the grandparents are going along with this and you can understand
because what are you going to do you're going to be cut out iced out by your children and your grandchildren
you're not going to be part of their life if you go back to calling him bill when he wants to be called
Sandra so what do you do as a grandparent or as a parent and you want to be kind you want to be
loving especially if you're a Christian and a follower of Jesus and the problem is because you're
denying the truth that you know because sometimes we believe in the sovereignty of relationships with our
kids or with our grandkids that there's nothing more important than that no no no that can't be
your God our God has to be the Lord in heaven and he speaks the truth and tells us to speak the
truth in love is that easy no not in a culture like ours that is so bent so twisted so so torched
and perverted that I think people a couple generations ago would not have been able to even imagine
the difficult situations that were in today but each of us have to wrestle through what God has given
us and speak the truth in love and we've got to find ways ways to do it I agree and I think it's
finding that balance which can be hard especially for me at least because I tend to rely very heavily
on the truth because I think truth has the paramount importance in the situation you can never
really solve the situation you can never really get worked on if you abandon the truth
and then I want to season what I'm saying in love but also get done what's needed to get done yeah
and so it's it's hard to do that sometimes and I've failed many times in my life and spoke too much
truth in a not very loving way and that also leads to problems within my own life and things that I
feel convicted about with that yeah but I think it's really important that we address the issues
in our day there's a quote that Jared Tolkien wrote for Lord of the Rings and it's a quote by Gandalf
and I think it speaks to the importance for us as Christians to speak the truth and to correct
the evil in our time for future generations and I just wanted to read it to you it says it is not
our part to master all the tides of the world but to do what is in us for the help of those years
wherein we are set uprooting evil in the fields that we know so that those who live after may
have clean earth to till what whether they shall have is not ours to rule essentially what he's
saying in that is that it's our responsibility it's our calling to uproot the evils in the fields
that we know in our schools in our colleges in our family in our communities in our nation in our
policies it is our responsibility to uproot the evils in those fields not even for us not for our
benefit but for the generations after us for our kids and our grandkids for our wives and our
families for our communities in our nation that they would have a clean earth to till that they
would be able to weather the storms in their day and they can look to us as examples yes and if we
focus too much on loving rather than uprooting it's just going to be the same earth to till that
we're handing down to the next generation so it's it's uproot the evils in the fields you know
in a loving way so that those after us may flourish so in all of this I don't want to make it seem
like I am kind of just dogging on Christians or saying bad job but I I want to encourage
my generation and say you can be a strong man you can speak the truth you can also speak the
truth and love but don't leave out the truth the truth is necessary for when you speak change
only happens when you speak what is true and we have the truth on our side so speak boldly change
the culture infiltrate what needs to be infiltrated and reform what needs to be reformed so that
the earth may look more like heaven for the next generation here's a passage of scripture that
beautifully encapsulates everything we've been talking about this is in Ephesians chapter 4
verses 25 down through 32 and it says therefore put away lying there speak the truth put away lying
let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another be angry and do
not sin I'm skipping down here and it says be kind to one another tenderhearted forgiving one another
even as God in Christ forgave you see that it's both together it's putting away lying let every
one of you speak the truth with kindness with tenderheartedness and compassion why because that's
what God does and that's how he's loved us if he didn't tell us the truth that we were steeped
in sin needing a savior we never would have repented and turned to him with faith truth is necessary
and he loved us which is what melts our pride and causes us to love him in return hey what if you never
had to face the battles of life by yourself what if there was a place where men true dependable men
locked arms stood for truth pushed each other to grow and lived with integrity oh man world would
change that's red truck men it's not a club it's a brotherhood it's a band of men who know you
strengthen you and call you higher in a world that mocks real masculinity red truck men points us
back to God's blueprint strong in conviction grounded in humility bold encourage and faithful in
the truth husbands fathers young men finding their footing men who are weary of walking solo
there is room at red truck men because when men of honor rise together guess what homes are fortified
community shift generational strength is forged so don't sit on the sidelines step into this calling
as a man step into the brotherhood visit red truck men dot org to learn more and join the movement
hey guys thanks for joining us for this dangerous conversation james yeah thanks for watching
make sure to like subscribe hit the notification bell so you're notified when the next episode comes
out and leave us a question in the comment section below so we can read that on a feature monday
episode have a good day

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