Has Compassion Replaced Truth? | The Kirk Cameron Show Ep 119

0:00Change 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

1:02Freedom. 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

2:05leading 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

3:06or 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,

4:09kindness 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

5:14the 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

6:15of 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

7:18to 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

8:21progressive 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

9:25feel 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

10:27lovey-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

11:37will 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

12:37of 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

13:40a 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

14:43that 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

15:52so 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

16:55of 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

18:01and 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

19:02I 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

20:03time 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

21:04police 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

22:06china 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

23:10who 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

24:18and 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

25:22in 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

26:24benefit 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

27:31truth 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

28:34one 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

29:36the 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