Truth without love is dangerous. Love without truth is schmaltz.

Steve Brown:
Truth without love is dangerous. Love without truth is schmaltz. Let’s talk about it on, Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life with our host, author, and seminary professor, Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru. He’s just one beggar telling other beggars where he found bread. If you’re hungry for God, the real God behind all the lies, you’ve come to the right place.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re talking about truth and the Holy Spirit. And if you were listening yesterday, I gave a lecture on the difference between presuppositional and evidential apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith. And you say, well, I’m glad I missed that one. No, you should have been here, because evidential apologetics says that God uses the evidence that’s plain everywhere to point to himself. And presuppositional apologetics says that God sometimes just comes. And it has nothing to do with evidence. He draws you to himself, and you know that you know that you know. For years, when I was a pastor, I did a skeptics forum. I may have told you about it. It’s when I invited people who weren’t believers to my study at the church. And I didn’t want to do it in a restaurant, I wanted it to be the church doing this. And I did it mostly because there were so many new Christians in our congregation. And they didn’t have the answers to the questions that their significant other asked them. Their boyfriend would make fun of them. And then would bring up silly and superficial things and questions. And she would say, I don’t, I don’t know? But I know that I was a sinner and now that I’m saved, but I have a pastor and he can answer your questions, and then she would invite him to skeptics forum or vice versa. Some guy would say, look, quit making fun of me. I don’t know anything about anything, but I’ve got a pastor who has answers to your questions. And if you’ll ask him, he’ll be able to tell you. So, they sort of did my daddy’s bigger than your daddy kind of thing in inviting people, and people were shamed into coming to Skeptics Forum. And let me tell you what we did in Skeptics Forum, it was fairly simple. And by the way, we saw a lot of people come to Christ during those times. I would tell them at the opening session, and we generally met one night a week, for two hours and then ended it. I would say, look, we’re going to look at any question you have, we’re going to examine all the subjects, and I’m going to tell you what the Bible says and what Christians believe about those subjects. And if what I tell you is true, it’s the best news you’ve ever heard. And if what I tell you is not true, and you may decide it isn’t, then you will have at least investigated it. So, that’s what we did. We talked about, is there a God? We talked about, what is God like? We talked about the Incarnation. We talked about hell, and we talked about heaven. We talked about, is God cruel? What’s his nature? I mean, every subject you can think of, we talked about. And frankly, I brought into the whole mix philosophy and sociology and works of art and all kinds of, quote, evidential apologetics. I have a late friend, his name is Rusty Anderson, and he’s in heaven now. He graduated from Westminster Seminary, but he never wanted to be a pastor. He just, he just wanted to know more than his pastor. And he was an elder in that church, and he said to me, Steve, would you let me come to Skeptics Forum? And I said, no. And he said, why not? And I said, because when we bring in strangers, they say dumb things. And this is a very difficult ministry. And he said, I’ve got more training than you have, so why don’t you let me go? I’ll be quiet, I promise. So, I let Rusty come to the skeptics Skeptics Forum. And I got ahead of him. He’s not a quiet person, was never a quiet person. But he was really quiet, he never said anything, he just stood there, shook his head, and pretended that everything I said came from Sinai. Until finally, after the third session, Rusty just got frustrated with the whole thing. And this really happened, he slammed his hand, his fist down on my desk, and it was loud. And then he said, Steve, I have got to say something. And he turned to the people in Skeptics Forum, and he said, you’re going to hell. And I went, well, we lost them all, man, that’s going to do it. Rusty said, you’re, you’re going to hell. And then he got emotional, like he was going to cry. And he said, the problem is, I like you a lot. And I don’t want to go to heaven if you can’t go with me. Do you know what happened that evening? It was like revival, that’s what happened. And there was, and it wasn’t science, that hadn’t worked. It wasn’t mathematics, that hadn’t worked. It wasn’t philosophy, that hadn’t worked. It was Rusty Anderson telling them about Jesus. And so, evidential and presuppositional apologetics go together. Okay, we’re going to talk about the Holy Spirit and truth. Let me tell you something you ought to remember. Truth without love is dangerous. Love without truth is schmaltz. You know those Christians who are really uptight and angry. And know they’re right and everybody else is wrong and you feel judgmental. Judged by them, you feel like that you’re a wet, shaggy dog shaking your head at the Miss America pageant. And those kinds of people, let me tell you their problem. Their problem is that maybe they got saved, but they didn’t stay around long enough to be loved. You can’t love until you’ve been loved, and you can only love to the degree to which you have been loved. And truth without love is dangerous, and mean spirited, and judgmental, and condemning. And if you have a streak of that in you, and I do, by the way, what should you do about it? Nothing, except sit there and let Jesus love you, period. But love without truth is nothing but schmaltz. There are people that say, I don’t, I don’t know anything about all that Bible stuff and all that theology. I just know Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Well, that’s true. And that’s a good thing to know. But if that’s all you know, you know nothing. And it will show, and it will embarrass you. And so, it’s important that we get the truth, and that we get the truth in love. And I’m not speaking as an outsider of the human race. I want you to know I’ve been there, and I’ve done that. I’ve told you some of my testimony. I’ve always known that I was going to be a pastor. And the reason God told me when I was a little kid, other kids were going to be firemen and policemen and cowboys and indians, and I was going to be a pastor. And my family was not particularly religious. My mother was a Christian, my dad was a drunk, and we weren’t particular, but some, for some reason early on, I knew that I was going to be what I am to this day, a Christian professional. And I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t get rid of it. I really couldn’t. And then later on, when I was in college, I became the village agnostic. But I still had this thing I couldn’t shake about being a pastor. Now, if you don’t believe in God, you probably ought not be ordained as a pastor. It probably would not be a good idea, but I couldn’t shake it. Ever since I was a little child, I knew that I had been called and that I was going to be a pastor. So, I picked the most liberal, wacko graduate school of theology I could find in America and I went there, because I figured it was possible not to believe all of this, but still be a pastor, and so I went there. And I learned a lot of stuff and it was mostly hurtful. It was not helpful at all, and I knew it when I became a pastor, and then God came. He came in the person of friends who knew, who understood, who could articulate the truth, and they ate my lunch. And that was very important that I learned the truth. But let me tell you what else they did. They loved me deeply and profoundly. Truth without love is dangerous. Love without truth is just pure schmaltz. Hey, it’d be a good thing if you think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. That was Steve Brown continuing to guide us in our exploration of the Holy Spirit. And again, for a deeper dive into the subject, you might want to check out Steve’s book called Follow the Wind. More tomorrow, hope you will join us. So, the Trinity, have we been thinking about it wrong all this time? That’s an audacious question, but it will make more sense once you hear our entertaining and insightful conversation with author Michael Reeves. We recently spoke with him about his modern classic called Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. This is an important topic that so often gets, just kind of pushed aside. So, call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE and we’ll send you that entire conversation on CD for free. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. Or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for the free CD featuring Michael Reeves. And finally, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can now give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone right now and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word or two, doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.