No Reason To Hide Interview Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

The America of our forefathers is no more. Moral decadence, crime, and outright treason are bringing this nation to the brink of extinction, and the modern church has not stopped this relentless march toward the abyss. Today, what believers should do as foundations crumble all around us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. With Larry McCarthy, here is Pastor Lutzer to discuss his new book, No Reason to Hide, Standing for Christ in a Collapsing Culture. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer.

Welcome to a special edition of Running to Win. Today I have in the studio one of our pastors here at the Moody Church, Larry McCarthy, and he and I are going to be interacting on a new book I've written entitled No Reason to Hide, Standing for Christ in a Collapsing Culture. One of the reasons I wrote this book is to identify those pressure points that the Church of Jesus Christ is facing today in the midst of our collapsing culture. And so Larry and I are going to be interacting on this. I trust that it will be very beneficial to all who are listening. Now today, we're actually going to be covering chapters 1, 2, and 3 of this book. We're going to be discussing the purpose of the book. We'll also be talking about the cultural demonization that is taking place in our own culture.

And then we're going to even talk about the greatest lie, which is our nation's most cherished delusion. So I hope you stay with us. Larry, great to have you here today in the studio. Larry McCarthy Thank you.

You know, as always, it's so good to see you. But I have to confess, I'm confused. Lecturer, traveler, preaching, conferences, and now yet another book.

Where do you find the time? No, I don't even want to know the answer to that. Why this book and why now? Larry Page Why this book and why now? I wrote this book because as I look at the culture, I see various issues that Christians have to face.

And they have to ask themselves the question, how do I relate in the midst of this? Representing Jesus Christ well, gospel-centered to be sure, but nonetheless discovering that we cannot avoid what is happening around us. So that really is the purpose of the book. And that's why it includes such things as cultural demonization, the politicalization of sexuality, issues of race, and so forth. And our desire here is to guide people to have a biblical world view and help them navigate, Larry, what has become a very, very difficult culture. Larry Page Implied in that is that as a Christian, then, I can't avoid these political discussions. Is that what you're suggesting?

Lecturer Larry, I've given a lot of thought to this. And you know, throughout the years, there are many pastors who say we have to avoid politics. Well, as you well know, I have never endorsed a political candidate or a political party. I'm opposed to that for numerous reasons. But there's no way that we can avoid political issues. Abortion is a political issue. The whole issue on the trans movement, you know, where young people today come and say to their parents, I think I'm trans, that's become political.

So you have men who are competing in women's sports because they say we are trans men. You have laws regarding education, even the right of parents to have some say into their children's education has become a political issue. So Larry, if those who are listening think that politics isn't important, ask the people in Germany during the Nazi era. Is politics important? Go to North Korea. Is politics important?

China? Politics is very important. In fact, I remember being in Washington DC and a congressman said to us as Christians, he said, you expect us to enact righteous legislation here in Washington, but how can we do it unless you send us people who love righteousness?

Yes, yes. So the point to be made is that the church today is being very challenged on a number of different fronts. For example, I mean certainly you're telling us we can't hide. We need to be involved in the political discussion. But what other challenges do you see? Well, we're going to be talking about issues that have to do with race.

We're going to be talking about that next time. I want to just say a further word about the position of the church today and that is churches have to face the issue. Are they going to be complicit with the culture, giving the culture everything that they want? Are they going to be complacent, living in a bubble, pretending that the culture isn't collapsing?

Or are they going to be courageous? And you know Larry, before we go on to questions of collective demonization, which is really chapter 2, before we do that, I have to say this. I make the point that evil never retreats on its own. It only retreats when confronted by a more superior force. And Larry, what could that force be, except the Church of Jesus Christ worshipping Christ who is above all principalities and all powers. So what we need to do is to recognize that God has called the church to stand against the collapsing culture. Boy, what a great perspective. Evil just won't evaporate.

It needs a force to push against it and I think that is probably a much needed word that we need today. It won't just go away. You know, because of the fact that we are limited in time, Larry, I'm going to ask actually that we go to chapter 2. Yeah. Chapter 2 has to do with collective demonization. Larry, you've read this book. Help us understand or what was your reaction to this chapter where I was talking about what is happening in the culture, what is happening in business and in education? A couple of thoughts I guess come to mind. First of all, this issue of demonization and that is the way that it is stifling free speech or stifling opinion that if in any way you're at odds with what the culture is saying, one, you're either crazy or you're going to be marginalized or you're going to be punished.

And so that I think encourages people to duck, as you use this term, to hide, so to speak, because I can't speak out. I might lose my job. I might lose favor. I won't be popular.

People aren't going to like me. And so – but to see this as a trend that is going through our entire culture was really quite illuminating. You've summarized it so well. I make two points in this chapter that are really, really important.

It used to be, for example, if you had a PhD in chemistry, as a Christian, you could teach in any university as long as you were a good teacher and competent in your field. But today, if you apply, I'm told you are asked questions like this. Are you comfortable with multiple pronouns? What about the LGBTQ plus community?

Are you on board? Let me give you an example. Last summer, Rebecca and I had breakfast with an attorney and she was representing two women in a store. It was actually a chain store who were asked to wear a Black Lives Matter insignia on their lapel, but also a rainbow signifying their agreement and their solidarity with the LGBTQ plus community. And they said no.

Twenty years of working there, but both were fired. My point is simply this, that the time has come in America where it isn't enough to simply do a job with integrity and faithfulness unless you buy into all of the things that are around us in our culture. And that's what happened actually in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, merit was not based on competency.

It was based on whether or not you with loud enthusiasm agreed with the Soviet system. And that's what happens today. I'm thinking, for example, it's just coming to mind of a dentist friend of mine who had to take an exam. He'd been a dentist for many, many years, but he had to take a course in implicit bias or we could say microaggressions. Now, he had treated all of his patients with equality, whether they were LGBTQ, whether they were Muslim, and yet now he's told it is not enough to simply treat everyone equally. You have to buy into the cultural narrative that is being promoted.

And if you don't, you actually could be fired or you could be fined. I want to be really clear here. The gray area where people used to be able to meander comfortably has now collapsed down to this razor's edge. And it seems like you're suggesting you can't straddle the fence. You've got to get on one side of these things or the other. You know, in Chapter 1, I point out that it used to be in America where you could live in what I call or what has been called the mushy middle. Those days are over. Oh, my. That's why the title of this book is No Reason to Hide Because You Can't Hide. Yes.

You have to declare yourself. You can't be in that mushy middle anymore. So we have all those illustrations, and I could give a lot more. But there's a second way that the Soviets promoted their view, and that is they fused the Pravda, which in Russia means truth. The media was a spokesperson for the leftist agenda. And here's where we get to the cancel culture, for example. As a matter of fact, I won't go into detail, but a message that I preached a couple of months ago was actually banned on Facebook and YouTube. Congratulations.

Congratulations, yeah. It's because of the cancel culture, which says that you have to promote the cultural narrative. If you speak against it, you will be vilified.

You will be canceled. Now, this is unique because, Larry, you and I know that liberals have always prided themselves in freedom of speech and that you could have more than one point of view being presented. But here again, we come to Marxism. See, Marxism says that if we have freedom of speech, the capitalists, the oppressors will always win. Therefore, what we have to do is to shut down freedom of speech and it's time for the oppressed to speak. So that's one of the reasons why in our universities today, if you are a conservative, you are not allowed to speak. It is time for the minority, for the oppressed to speak, and they are the ones now that have freedom of expression. So we've come to the point where you can be canceled if you have a different view of the vaccines, if you have a different view of the trans movement, if you have a different view of even the economy, you can be canceled. And that of course is exactly what Marxism did in the Soviet Union.

Certainly it has done it in China and that's why it is so important for us to recognize that we are in a new day, aren't we, Larry? Larry, we absolutely are. But you raise a couple of points in the book and one I think has to just be underscored throughout this discussion is that unity does not require that we agree about everything.

And we're especially going to be emphasizing that in the next program of running to win because we're going to be talking about race and we're not avoiding any of the difficult issues in this discussion. You're not hiding. I'm not hiding. And the reason is because I want us to think biblically. I want us to respect one another even if we have these differences. But you know, Larry, time is running along and we have to get to chapter three. The greatest lie, the big lie.

That is America's most cherished delusion. Tell us more. Larry, it actually begins of course in Genesis chapter three where the serpent said to Eve, you shall be like God. Not gods, plural.

The word is Elohim. You shall be like God knowing good and evil. The greatest lie is to take the authority of the Scriptures and the authority of God and to place it within human beings so that we have autonomy, totally independent thought and we can define who we ourselves are based on that. Now in this chapter, what I do is I talk for example about the lie of Karl Marx. Karl Marx didn't not believe in God. Karl Marx hated God. I quote a poem that he wrote where he said I shall be equal with the Creator. So in other words, what he was trying to do is to say I'm taking the place of God.

Now let's just put all this together and this is too good for me to pass over. I know we have a lot of material to cover but today, the western influence of the enlightenment for example is being taken out of our universities. Everybody is being demoted or canceled except Karl Marx and Karl Marx by the way was a racist but he has given a pass. But nonetheless, what he was saying is that there are two groups. One is the oppressed and then the other group is the oppressors and as far as he was concerned, the nuclear family had to be destroyed because after all men, they oppressed their wives. Parents oppressed their children.

They took them to church. God was the ultimate oppressor. So you had to take away freedom of speech and freedom of religion in order to bring about this wonderful utopian revolution that he believed could happen. So let's hang on to that for a moment Larry.

Let's just think about this. Now let us combine this with Freud as I mentioned in the book. Freud believed that sexual expression and the sexual experience was the highest sense of fulfillment.

I have to speak carefully here for my own benefit so that I say this accurately. If you can think about Freud in this way, Marx said there has to be a revolution. We cannot have freedom of speech. The revolution must transcend all individual rights and freedoms for the ultimate good of the revolution.

Let's combine that now with Freud's view of sexuality. Sexuality in our culture has been politicized because in today's culture, nothing can stand in the way of the sexual revolution. Your individual freedom has to be compromised. You cannot have your religious expression.

Oh, I know you can do this in a church, in a synagogue, perhaps in a mosque, but that's it. It has to stay there because in the broader culture, all that can happen is that this revolution has to take place. Dr. Reagan So I need to ask, is this the harvest of seeds that have been planted over a long period of time or is this just some new evolution of Marxism that we're now experiencing? You say as a result of Freudian theory that sex is the answer to all of life's problems. So sexual freedom will solve every problem over our culture and we certainly see that attitude. But this godhead, this self-worship, is this anything new necessarily or are we just seeing the harvest of seeds planted a long time ago?

Boy, is that ever an excellent question. I would say that the harvest really began when seeds were planted through the infiltration of Marxism into America. And so these seeds were already planted in the 1970s.

But they haven't really grown into a full tree so to speak until now. Now we see the fruit of it all because so often we hear about cultural Marxism. So let me explain. What is cultural Marxism? Cultural Marxism is the view that we can bring about a Marxist society without bloody revolutions like in China and in Russia. We can do it by attacking the culture. So if we attack the culture and its institutions and we, quote, burn down all that exists and by that I mean not necessarily literally a fire but nonetheless to destroy the institutions, then we can bring about Marxism incrementally and people are going to love it because they're going to say to themselves, we now see its benefits. So that's what cultural Marxism is. And out of this grew the whole critical theory. So you have critical race theory of course but you also have queer theory, feminine theory, all of these various studies because they are intended to attack the culture.

And in this way, cultural Marxism, it is believed, will succeed. You know Larry, we're coming to the end of our time. I know that the clock goes all together too quickly and I want to just speak for a moment to all who are listening today and I want to remind you that the book No Reason to Hide can be yours for a donation of any amount. We make these resources available because as you have frequently heard me say, we want to help you make it all the way to the finish line. I also want to mention that when you get your book directly from the Moody Church Media, you'll receive a unique invitation to have a live town hall conference. I'll have the opportunity to respond to your questions.

I also want to emphasize that you should get on the telephone, call your friends, ask them to listen to Running to Win next time because we are going to be talking about race. The issue is going to be diversity, equity and inclusion. Is that really helping us in race relationships?

And perhaps you've been asked this question or you've been told America is illegitimate because after all, the land was stolen from the Indians. How do we respond to those accusations? How do we respond to the racial division that is taking place because one group is being blamed for what is happening to another group? How do we respond as Christians?

We respond respectfully of course but we also have our differences and as we mentioned at the top of this program, even if we don't agree on everything, we as believers still celebrate our unity in Jesus Christ. So we're going to be with you next time. The topic is going to be race, the name of the book, No Reason to Hide. Thank you so much in advance for your contributions because together we are able to make a difference. Running to Win is in 20 different countries in four different languages just because of people like you.

Thank you. Pastor Erwin Lutzer discussing No Reason to Hide, standing for Christ in a collapsing culture. Next time on Running to Win, how diversity, equity and inclusion work against race relations and why critical race theory is tearing apart our schools, cities and families. When we talk about these buzz words of diversity and equity and inclusion, it comes with this compromise of competency and in a way victimhood is now a path to power. I believe and I think you'll agree with me, Larry, that it's possible to believe in individualism, capitalism, democracy and meritocracy without being racist. I agree.

The problem with critical race theory is that it keeps tearing apart what Jesus died to bring together. Yes. Don't miss this crucial second program in a series of four. The book No Reason to Hide will be sent as our gift to you when you give a gift of any amount to support Running to Win. Just call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. Online, go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or write to Running to Win, Moody Church, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.