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Russell Moore (Ph.D.) is back on the podcast to speak on “convictional kindness” and how to apply it in a divisive culture. The conversation draws from 2 Timothy 2 where the apostle Paul instructs Christians to “be kind to everyone” and to “correct opponents with gentleness.” Can Paul’s instruction to Christians work in our own time when we face hostility? And what factors influence our ability to embody kindness that leads to change, especially during times when we enter into disagreement on hot social issues such as transgenderism, abortion, race, or immigration? Today’s episode is a collaborative effort. Scott Rae, co-host of the Think Biblically podcast, joins Tim for this discussion with Dr. Russell Moore.

Transcript

Scott Rae: What does it look like to hold your deepest convictions, but to do so with kindness? How do we do this in a polarized culture in which your opponents sometimes think you are evil, and at times, figuratively speaking, want to bash your head in? How do we go about demonstrating convictional kindness in controversial subjects like race, immigration, abortion, and gender?

Join us today as we explore these questions with our guest, Dr. Russell Moore, who's the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. This is a joint podcast with my colleague and co-host Tim Muehlhoff with the Winsome Conviction Project. I'm your host, Scott Rae, representing the Think Biblically podcast.

Tim Muehlhoff: It is great to be here with you. Thank you so much for taking time. We love the stuff that you're doing at the Winsome Conviction Project. Your book Onward has been really helpful to us.

Russell Moore: Oh, well thank you. It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Tim Muehlhoff: So let's jump right in. We just got a chance, the Winsome Conviction Project, to get back from Capitol Hill where we got a chance to speak in the Pentagon to some leadership, and we had massive pushback on Winsomeness, that the time for Winsomeness really is gone. Exactly what Scott said, when they're attacking you on social media, when they're threatening your families, when the argument culture is in full bloom, you're talking convictional kindness. So can you explain, just for our listeners, a little bit of what convictional kindness is and how do you apply it in a political context?

Russell Moore: Well, it's always interesting when people say kindness with conviction works in a neutral culture, but it doesn't work in a hostile culture because behind that is the assumption that Jesus was delivering the Sermon on the Mount in Mayberry. You don't get a much more hostile culture than a Roman empire crucifying all dissidents. And nonetheless, Jesus gave us not just instructions for how to engage and to relate, but also a way that he is himself embodying, which I think part of the problem is, we're in a cultural moment where a frantic lack of confidence manifests itself as a constant attack mode. In the same way that when Jesus is being arrested, Simon Peter is the one flailing around with the sword in a way that actually isn't doing anything constructive. And there's a way of sort of performatively being outraged that is cathartic for the person expressing it, and also can get applause from the people in one's own tribe, but doesn't actually persuade and change. And if that's what we're seeking, then frantic outrage doesn't do that.

Tim Muehlhoff: Can I give you, one follow up question that we get all the time is right out of the gates is Jesus overturning the tables, that he did exhibit righteous anger and he threw tables around. That doesn't sound very much like kindness or winsomeness.

Russell Moore: Within the structures of the people of God. So what the Apostle Paul is saying in First Corinthians five, it's those on the inside, that I judge not the outside world. Which is, of course, exactly the way that Jesus relates to the outside world. There's greater accountability for those who are representing the name of God. And what we tend to do is to reverse that. And so we're very kind of muted with whoever is on the inside of whatever group that we have, and then very strident toward those who are on the outside without those levels of accountability. And I think the other thing is if you notice in the gospels you have, usually, first of all, when anyone references Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers, it's always best to sort of slowly back out of the room because this is usually somebody trying to find justification in the same way that usually when somebody quotes, judge not, lest you be judged, aren't actually trying to do an exegesis of the gospel of Matthew. They're trying to justify something.

But you notice that in those very few moments of anger or anguish in the life of Jesus, they are always occurring at moments that seem to be completely unpredictable. No one else is alarmed. So in the temple with the fig tree that's not yielding fruit, and the disciples are saying, why are you upset about this, when the disciples are asleep and he's in anguish in the garden. But in all of those moments where everyone else is freaking out, Jesus is preternaturally calm in all of those situations. And why? Standing before Pilate, he has the confidence that he knows you actually cannot do anything to me. I'm not threatened by you, I'm instead on mission with my Father. And that sort of confidence leads in that direction. You really know who you're actually combating. And if we're actually not wrestling with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in the heaven places, then how are they combated and they're combated with the word of God and with the fruit of the spirit as it manifests.

So for us to come back and say, well, the fruit of the spirit, that doesn't work, the way of Jesus doesn't work, it never did on those terms. Instead, Jesus comes in and redefines what it means to work, what it means to win.

Scott Rae: That's great. So Russell, let's be really clear about what you mean by convictional kindness. So define what you mean and then tell us a little bit what do you not mean by that term?

Russell Moore: Well, convictional kindness would be Second Timothy two in which the Apostle Paul's talking to Timothy about how to engage with people not talking about a withdrawal from engagement. He says exhort, rebuke, all of those things, but to do so with gentleness. And why, because it's the way of Jesus that actually sees the people with whom we're interacting as being people in need of rescue rather than as people to be obliterated. So Paul's constantly coming in and saying, there's an unseen drama behind the drama. And part of the problem we have as Christians is we become really Darwinistic in the way that we see relationships between people. And so much of it is about firing adrenal glands and just sort of expressing what it is that I am feeling rather than saying, okay, if someone actually is, just like I was, in bondage to the world, the flesh and the devil, then what I need to do is to confront them with Jesus. And so that's going to mean sometimes arguing, but it's arguing in a very different kind of way and the way that Jesus does.

He's finding people, asking questions, and kind of going around their defenses so that they actually are confronted with what it is that he's saying.

Scott Rae: Let me follow up.

Russell Moore: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Rae: One of the things I think Arthur Brooks has been so helpful with is he saying, at the extremes, which are only about 10% each of the population, at the extremes, we either appease our friends or we attack our enemies, but the 80% in the middle, this persuadable middle, those are the ones who are watching both how we deal with our friends for hypocrisy sake and how we deal with our enemies. So it seems like the redefinition of what makes it work is designed around who's the audience, and it seems like in the way we have dealt with our friends and our enemies or our opponents on the margins, we've neglected the 80% in the middle who I think are watching us a lot more carefully than we often give ourselves credit for.

Russell Moore: Yeah. Well, I would take that even a little bit further and say we've also not dealt well with the people on the margins because of the way that people actually change. Very few people change at the end of a 20-minute argument, much less-

Scott Rae: People don't respond well to being attacked?

Russell Moore: They don't. Shocker. They don't respond well to ... Those sorts of change in any of our lives, if we think about any of the things, whether small or big, that any of us have changed our minds about, almost none of those things were the result of at the end of losing an argument saying, you're right, I'm an idiot. Instead, what happens, something embeds, we may be arguing against it and we're in our mind thinking, I don't know if I'm right here. And we sort of carry that around and sometimes very slowly it works its way through or we find ourselves in a crisis and we think, who I know who actually has been able to see this well, and it's the prodigal son. A famine comes, he responds and goes back to the father's house. So a lot of it comes down to a view of change that really is just about YouTube videos. It's not how people actually converse or change.

Tim Muehlhoff: A great example of that, I teach a class on persuasion here at Biola University is that Antony Flew, the CS Lewis of atheism, who eventually came around to believing in the God of Aristotle. But when you get the backstory, it happened over years and years and years in conversations with some of our finest apologists over a Christmas dinner. One time he was here in the States and had nowhere to go for Christmas and an apologist invited him over for Christmas dinner. So it's that slow relational plus putting in the classic proofs of God's existence that over time that happened.

I would love to pick one thing up that you said that I loved about your book, Onward, in your chapter on convictional kindness. You mentioned spiritual battle. It's actually a pretty heavy theme of that chapter, and here's a great quote from the book. "We don't oppose demons. If we don't oppose demons, we demonize opponents." So have you received any pushback from bringing in spiritual battle of people saying, oh, come on, let's not open that door because that could go sideways. Why feel so strongly about bringing in the spiritual battle component?

Russell Moore: Because I think that usually, for one thing, spiritual warfare, for lack of a better word, is a major theme of both Old and New Testaments. Jesus is referencing this constantly. When the strong man is bound, then his house may be plundered. And I think part of the problem is, often when we hear spiritual warfare language used in our context, it means exactly the opposite. What it means is this person that I'm opposing is the devil that I'm coming after. So you have this language that can dehumanize people either by making them less than human, people are rats or parasites or something. We've seen that all through history. Or they're pictured as diabolical, irredeemable sorts of presences. A Christian view of reality understands there actually are diabolical, irredeemable presences, but those aren't human beings. That's not our mission field. And so if we have that understanding and then you come in and say, okay, what is the fundamental problem that all of us have?

The fundamental problem is that the human race is not divided into the good people and the bad people. The human race is we are all created image bearers who are fallen and all of us are in need of grace and reconciliation. So fundamentally, that's where we're ultimately going. Not just I need you to externally conform to the way I would have you to do it, but I'm here as an ambassador of reconciliation wanting to see the grace that I've received, for you to have that too. That changes the way that you see a person. And it also changes the way that I think sometimes we give up on people. And not just people that we're sort of arguing with in coffee shops or in debates, but even people in our own lives.

Sometimes we'll say, I don't know what more I can say to my mom or to my brother or whoever it is because I've said everything there is to be said, which assumes that the way that gospel reaches people is through an irrefutable argument that knocks them over, when what really happens is same thing that happened with any of us. Second Corinthians four, a light comes on, we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so that breaks, Paul says, the power of the God of this age. And I think sometimes we can retreat to a kind of anti-supernaturalism that really does, even though we don't recognize that we're doing this, it really does just reduce people down to sense reactions and neurons firing or into tribal groups at war with each other.

Scott Rae: I would hate to default to a Christian version of rationalism in that regard. So is this sort of what you mean when you say that kindness is a weapon in spiritual warfare?

Russell Moore: Yeah, because what's happening when you are exhibiting kindness, and by kindness I don't mean politeness. What I mean by kindness is you're actively willing the good of the person in front of you. You really would like to ... One of the problems, and I find this myself in my most fallen moments, sometimes it would almost be a disappointment if whoever it is that we don't like were to get something right. It would almost be a-

Scott Rae: Sort of Jonah with the Ninevites.

Russell Moore: Yes. We love to catch them in this. But to actually be able to imagine this person flourishing in God's way, that changes the way that we see that. But also enables us to understand, I have certain things that I've been given to say and that I'm carrying with the authority to carry it. There are all kinds of other things though that I'm not seeing necessarily correctly, and I need to constantly be checking those things. Sometimes even what are the motives of the people with whom I'm talking? Jesus knows immediately what's in the heart of a person, we don't. And sometimes the more that someone is arguing and sometimes even the more hostile the person is, it's precisely because they're afraid that their position is not holding up. And so if we take that as personal insult, so, oh, well, you're saying that I'm stupid and I'm evil, which means I'm going to ... We're not really doing the ambassadorial sort of work necessary in Second Corinthians five.

Tim Muehlhoff: And then Romans, Paul says, when those who hate you, the opposition, clearly they're the opposition. But when they're hungry, when they're in need, we need to minister to them rather than go on the offensive because they're in a weakened state. Now let's go after them. Paul says, no, no, no, let's absolutely go. So can that lead me into an issue that's become a prominent one is the transgendered community. Which, if pure research is correct, about 40% attempted or actual suicide rates. Suicidal ideation is a common factor within the trans community. If we do view them that way, that these are people that are fundamentally hurting and parents of trans kids that are honestly worried about the mental safety of my children and why not let them play a sport that they would prefer to play. Does that change how we relate to the trans community knowing that while we have differences, it's a hurting community?

Russell Moore: It helps us to be able to differentiate between the ideas we're debating and the people who hold those ideas. And so to have a Christian understanding of this is what it means to be created male and female, do not accept gender ideologies of various kinds. So we can debate those ideas and we can step back and say, we're dealing with human beings created in the image of God often who are in a great deal of pain. And we can both stand with conviction on the ideas that we hold. We can have a view of what ultimately is in the best interest of flourishing for those people and have a sense of compassion for the human beings we see in front of us, even if they don't ever agree with us.

Scott Rae: That's such a good insight because I think this helps us understand that these are not just issues to be debated for a lot of people, these are really deeply personal sort of life-altering things that have come about in a person's life. And I think it's tragic, I think, when those scenarios, when we win an argument and lose the person at the same time. And I actually think we've gotten pretty good at that.

And one of the reasons that I think there is such passion about issues like transgender and abortion, other things that we'll talk about, is that so many of our brothers and sisters, I think correctly see positions on these as entailments of faithfulness to Jesus. And I think this is why so often we are so heavy on convictions and light on winsomeness and light on kindness because we are so intent, I think and understandably so, on being faith faithful to Jesus with the positions that we hold because we see those as these follow necessarily from being faithful to Him.

Russell Moore: Well, and sometimes I think we're not faithful at either, because if you think of, for instance-

Scott Rae: I had a feeling you were going to say that.

Russell Moore: If you think of, for instance, take abortion, I'm very committed and concerned about abortion as a violent act. But several years ago I heard a woman who ran an abortion clinic saying almost none of her patients were pro-choice. She said, my patients, none of them are there arguing that this is just a pregnancy, this is just a clump of cells. She says almost all of the people in the waiting room would be politically or culturally pro-life and would have all of those arguments, but who think, but in this circumstance, I'm in this point of desperation, there's nothing else that I can do. So that means it's beyond just whether or not people can check off the right list, it's about actual faithfulness to Christ, which entails someone at that moment of deep crisis saying, I'm following the way of Jesus. And a community of people who are able to say ... Sometimes you have, one of the things that's the most empowering of the abortion industry would be people who would say, if anybody knew that I'm pregnant, I would be condemned as somebody who has sinned and I would be rejected and put out of that community.

Well, that's empowering to the people who will come along with what's a false solution.

Scott Rae: That's empowering all the wrong things.

Russell Moore: It's empowering all the wrong things.

Tim Muehlhoff: I love what you just said. The Book of Proverbs says, a word spoken in the right circumstances is ... I don't want miss what you just said. This person is in desperation, emotionally, intellectually, life is overwhelming.

Russell Moore: Right then.

Tim Muehlhoff: For us to step in at that point and hey, let's have a status of the fetus conversation, is somehow, from a communication standpoint, that person can't receive anything because they're overwhelmed. I love what you're saying is let's maybe care for that person and then that can open the door to having other conversations.

Russell Moore: And show a way. Here is a way that you can be cared for and your baby can be cared for, both of you. And both of you matter, and both of you are irreplaceable and precious. And that's one of the reasons why, and I have this conversation with my secular friends often who assume ... When I go into a community and I want to, for instance, get people on board with helping a refugee community there, the first place I will go is to pro-life women who are working in crisis pregnancy or other areas because they're the people who have an understanding of human vulnerability. I'm not talking about the national political action committee, I'm talking about the people on the ground. They have an understanding of human vulnerability. They have an understanding of the image of God, and they are accustomed to not harassing or demonizing the women that they're talking to because they're really trying to find a way to care for both them and their babies. They're accustomed to that at the ground level. And I think many people are surprised by that because they just don't see it.

Scott Rae: I think this is a big change in what we need to make and how we look at this, because I think for a lot of people, we see that it's game over once the woman decides to keep the baby. We're done. And I think your point about the woman being in a desperate condition, that baby's about to be in a very desperate condition too in many cases when the woman correctly decides to keep the child. But I think oftentimes we consider that our job is done once she makes that decision to keep the baby when she may be entering an even more desperate time.

Russell Moore: Yeah. And there are a lot of people who are doing this right who are not only helping that woman to have her baby, but to help her with job training and with childcare and with resources around her, helping her to get out of poverty or to get out of abusive situations. That's happening all the time. People don't know that for precisely the reasons that Jesus tells us not to be trumpeting our deeds. These are the people, they're actively engaged in the work they don't care about who gets the credit. There's something really beautiful about that.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, there is.

Scott Rae: It is frustrating because I do think we have a public relations problem.

Russell Moore: We do.

Scott Rae: Because of all the things that are being done that nobody ever knows about. And God bless those people on the ground who are doing those and who don't want the credit and don't care about that. I wish somebody else would trumpet that for them in ways that might be effective.

Tim Muehlhoff: So we have a segment on the Winsome Commission podcast called Reports from the Front. And these are people who, we think, are doing it right, and so we trumpet them. We just had a guy on our show hired by LA County because they want to reach out to conservative churches because of the foster care crisis, but realize we don't know how to talk to conservative churches. This guy's a pastor and was hired by LA County, and so he goes in and tells them what evangelicals are like and how we would love to partner with you guys, blah, blah, blah. And he had to drop the mic moment during the podcast. He said, "I've learned over four years of doing this, connect then correct."

Scott Rae: That's good.

Tim Muehlhoff: I thought, oh, that's really brilliant. We reverse that.

Russell Moore: Yeah, we do.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I thought, what a beautiful way. And by the way, we often demonize something like LA County thinking, well, they don't like Biola University. Well, he would say, no, there's a lot of people who think foster care is such an important issue. We'll work with conservative churches. Will you work with us? So that's the connection.

Russell Moore: See, and this is exactly the problem. I've found that there are a lot of Christians who assume that their neighbors hate them when their neighbors actually aren't thinking about them at all. And so often I'll be on a very secular university campus dealing with atheist and agnostic students who are brimming with curiosity. What does it mean to be a person who thinks that somebody actually came back from the dead? Those are the questions they're asking. And then I'll meet with Christian students who think, how do I operate in such a hostile secular environment? And I would say, if you had just a little bit less intimidation and a little bit more confidence, you might find out that the people around you, even if they think you're crazy, they actually are very curious about this.

And some of them are kind of Nicodemus-like, wanting to talk about it more behind closed doors. But sometimes I think it's a Christian inferiority complex. Without even thinking about it, we assume, well, secular people around me are smarter and more sophisticated or whatever, and so they're always going to be hostile, and I'm always going to be on the losing end rather than actually being there. And Paul, in the middle of the town square, actually going back and forth, we just give up.

Tim Muehlhoff: And