Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I got an

email this morning from a listener who wanted to know what he should do to the

objection from his pastor that his tone is wrong when he talks about social justice and

tries to bring some discernment maybe correction certainly concern to bear on that

topic with his pastor and I don't know all the specifics of the situation I can't I'm not in the situation but I do know in general this is a

an objection that is thrown out there a lot and it's very useful and I don't know about this

specific situation but in situations I do know more about it is it is a very

convenient way to neutralize opposition because you don't have to deal with any arguments.

You don't have to actually get into the truth and see if there's merits into what more conservative

theological critics are saying about a certain topic, whether it's social justice or another

topic, all you have to do is accuse them of having the wrong tone. In our

postmodern world that is very attractive. I mean everything seems to be

about style and optics and

fashion and very little has to do with actual truth, objective truth. Someone

can actually communicate something a truth in a very wrong way with the wrong attitude.

You can even preach the gospel from false motives, from bad motives, but it doesn't take away from the truth of the message that's being communicated and oftentimes in our day

and age unfortunately even if someone doesn't have a bad motive isn't using a negative

tone or a harsh tone,

they can still be accused of that.

And then for whatever reason, those who accuse the person of that

don't actually have to deal with the real objections.

And I've seen this play over and over and over. there is a professor at a Southern Baptist former professor at a

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