Audio only:
In this episode Trent reveals the 4 kinds of Christians you don’t want to be like.
Transcription:
Trent:
There are Christians that make you proud and then there are people who identify as Christian that make you cringe and wish nobody ever knew who they were. But what exactly makes someone a bad Christian? On the one hand, everyone including me is a bad Christian when we sin and fail to imitate Jesus Christ. But today I’m going to describe four types of Christians whose most extreme members cause great harm to the body of Christ. And to do that, I’m going to adapt Wayne Britain IN’S 2001 Political compass, which sorted political views based on your views on economics and authoritarianism. When it comes to Christians, the compass will focus on two issues. First, there’s the spectrum between Christians who try hard to fit into the culture and the Christians who rebel against everything that’s popular. Second, there’s the spectrum between Christians who are overly rigorous and those who are morally lax.
So I’m not going to focus on theological issues like heresy, which certainly makes one a bad Christian, but on these more common errors. So let’s look at the first kind of bad Christian, someone who conforms to what the world wants and is morally laxs. This is your classic cafeteria Christian. They pick and choose doctrines based on what makes them feel comfortable and doesn’t offend non-Christians. As my inner Jeff Foxworthy would say, you might be a cafeteria Christian if the only Bible verse you know is Matthew seven, one Judge not. And you think Jesus was just a first century hippie who preached peace and love. One example of cafeteria Christians would be popular celebrities, people like Chip and Joanna Gaines, who in spite of attending an evangelical denomination, featured a same-sex couple on their TV show and blasted Christians who criticized them as judging first and understanding never. And here’s the two men they picked saying why they were happy to be on their show.
CLIP:
It was this great amazing opportunity to normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families. I was on board with the whole concept of continue to normalize same-sex families.
Trent:
The most common cafeteria Christian is the person who ritualistically shows up at church and thinks being loving and kind just means being nice and inoffensive. The best way to respond to cafeteria Christians is to ask them if they love Jesus and want to be like him, then show them how. Jesus said a lot more than judge not. My favorite passages include where Jesus called the religious authorities whitewashed tombs full of hypocrisy and iniquity, which shows Jesus wasn’t always nice. And where Jesus said remarriage after divorce is adultery, which shows Jesus did not think sexual activity was fine as long as two people supposedly love each other. For more on this, see my episode and what Jesus taught about homosexuality and my episode and how the good person fallacy will send many people to hell links in the description below the second bad type of Christian conforms to society, but also claims to be morally rigorous and faithful to God’s revelation and not a mere cafeteria Christian who ignores it.
These are the progressive Christians and you might be one if you say The Bible’s teaching on welcoming the applies today and requires open borders, but the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality does not apply today. Or you say Christians who want to outlaw abortion are evil culture warriors, but Christians who own guns idolize the Second Amendment. The most extreme progressive Christians are those who openly reject Christian teaching on life and sexuality as can be seen in my dialogue with Brandon Robertson, a self-described gay pastor, my response to Matthew Vines, the author of God and the Gay Christian and my episode critiquing Catholic theologian Emily Reimer Berry for defending abortion as self-care. Texas State representative James Tallarico says that Christians can support abortion because God gave Mary a choice.
CLIP:
You cannot force someone to create. Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings, but that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And to me that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus.
Trent:
Yeah, you can’t force someone to conceive a child, but you can keep that person from dismembering a child who was already created. Many left-wing politicians are also on a spectrum between outspoken, progressive Christians like tall Rico and cafeteria Christians who merely say they can’t impose their personal views. When it comes to issues like abortion, the less extreme progressive Christians like Father James Martin don’t outright say the church is wrong on sins like sodomy. They just create confusion about what the church teaches and make people think the teaching is not important or that it could change in the future. The problem with Christians who love conforming to the world’s expectations is that Jesus made it clear the world will hate us if we are faithful to him. He said, if you are of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
We have to be faithful to Christ, not a popular political program. And to be clear, this can happen on the political right too with people who care more about being a Republican than being a Christian and do things like dehumanize migrants or positively promote in vitro fertilization, both of which I’ve criticized in previous episodes. So those are the extremes for people who focus too much on pleasing the world. St. Paul said, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. However, St. Paul also said, if possible, so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all that means we should adhere to some social norms and commonly accepted beliefs and not rebel against everything that’s of this world, which is a problem with the third group of bad Christians fundamentalists. Now I’m not saying people who hold to the fundamental doctrines of the faith are bad, I’m using the word fundamentalists in its modern context to refer to Christians who demand of the faithful more than God himself requires often when they read scripture or tradition according to their own rigid personal opinions, while progressive and cafeteria Christians heir by allowing what God prohibited like sins, like sodomy, fundamentalist Christians heir by prohibiting what God allowed like the fundamentalists in the movie footloose who wouldn’t let Kevin Bacon kick off his Sunday shoes.
Other signs you’re a fundamentalist include saying it’s sinful to kiss or even hold hands before marriage. Christians must believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old and all role-playing games or RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are evil. Fundamentalists also obligate what God merely permitted and made optional for believers. For Protestants, this might happen when a pastor says you must tithe 10% of your income to the church, which the Bible never says and the church doesn’t teach for Catholics. This might happen if an influencer says you must pray the rosary every single day to be a good Catholic. In fact, the first heretics were fundamentalist judaizers who said circumcision was obligatory even though it is merely permitted for Christians. One classic example of a fundamentalist would be the late jack chick who’s printed over a billion tracks that describe many innocent things that can send you to hell. He even has a whole track on Dungeons and Dragons that was adapted into a short parody film.
CLIP:
It’s a spiritual warfare that you can’t win without the Lord Jesus. Using RPGs to fight evil will never work because RPGs are evil. Debbie,
Trent:
Just because authentic Christians are ridiculed, it doesn’t follow that everything that is ridiculed is authentic Christianity. And it’s not just Protestants. There are Catholic fundamentalists who bind heavy burdens on the faithful. As I covered in a previous episode, fundamentalists Catholic matics, like most holy family monastery, even think that some stage magic is sinful because magicians must be using demons to perform their illusions.
CLIP:
In this video, I will provide overwhelming evidence that most of the top magicians, whether they know it or not, are possessed and that they are certainly assisted by demons or fallen angels.
Trent:
Now to be clear, it’s not sinful for an individual Christian to save his or her first kiss for marriage or for them to choose to not play dungeons and dragons. The problem of fundamentalism only arises when you say all Christians must follow your personal opinions on issues the Lord has left open for us to discern. Also, consider this viral post on X. Every lifelong Catholic I’ve ever met is like I think we’re supposed to give this food to poor people. And every adult convert is like the Aon of constant noble’s. Epistle on the Pentecost rights of the Eucharist clearly states women shouldn’t have driver’s licenses. One of the dangers of fundamentalism is it can make people think that anyone who’s excited about their faith, like many adult converts, is just an irrational fundamentalist and true believers only promote a bland, inoffensive, cafeteria Christianity. This is why we should remember the words of Pope John the 23rd who said this.
The common saying expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval in essentials, unity in doubtful matters liberty in all things charity. Finally, we have the last group of bad Christians, those who rebel against society’s rules and even God’s rules. So who are these people? I divide them into two groups, the hypocrites and the barbarians. The hypocrite might sound like a puritan in his sermons or his conversations about Christianity and things like sexuality. So he’s anticon conformity in that sense, but he also breaks basic moral rules. Almost everyone agrees about like when he secretly sins by doing something like having an affair. So he is morally lacks on the inside while appearing morally rigorous on the outside. The barbarian, however, doesn’t hide his rebellion. He may be able to flawlessly recite the ene creed and may even condemn modern evils like LGBT ideology.
But he also openly rejects moral truths that Christians and non-Christians generally accept. For example, you might be a barbaric Christian if you think interracial marriage is sinful or disgusting or that some races deserve to be aborted. You say you hate women and praise a man like Elliot Rogers who killed women just for not liking him. And you revile people who disagree with you and use foul abusive language to insult them, even though the Bible says put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul. Talk from your mouth. Some examples of barbaric Christians would be Corey Mahler, a Christian who is excommunicated from his Lutheran denomination for racism as can be seen in a debate where he defended the idea that God cannot sanctify black people as much as white people. And it’s not just white supremacy. Black Hebrew Israelites who use vile insults and say white people are evil, would be another example of barbaric Christians. Any kind of racial, sexual or ethnic supremacy is wrong because as St. Paul says, there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. For more on this, see my previous episode, how being based can send you to hell. And among Catholics, it’s not hard to find clips of Nick Fuentes saying vile things that both the church and secular society would condemn.
CLIP:
Jews are running society. Women need to shut the up. Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It’s that simple.
Trent:
And when I said in a previous episode, I wouldn’t debate people who insulted my wife by calling her a crazy bitch. In other words, people like Nick Fuentes. This was Fuentes response to me and my wife Laura,
CLIP:
Oh my family, you attacked my family. You called my wife a bitch. Well, okay, you’re a bitch. She’s a bitch. You’re a couple of bitches. You and your wife and your whole family are bitches. You got a whole family of whiny lying bitches. Is that better?
Trent:
What would be better is if you submitted yourself to a spiritual director, maybe someone like Father Riper, so you can learn to behave in an actually Christ-like way and not like an overgrown 12-year-old screaming into his Xbox Live headset. And on a personal note, I want to say one reason I love being Catholic is that the church has rigorously presented what is forbidden, permissible, and obligatory in the Christian life through materials like the catechism to help us avoid the errors of moral laxity and rigid fundamentalism. But I’m also grateful for the many Protestants who strike a balance in the areas of moral rigor and help Christians be normal without acting like total normies. So those are the four bad kinds of Christians, and I pray you and I will not fall into one of those errors. And don’t forget to check out our conference where we’ll have over 20 Catholic creators present for you to hang out with in Dallas on April 11th. Register for that now@conferenceoftrent.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.