The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 23 – Lucas Miles

Episode 23: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show, Dr. Jeff interviews Lucas Miles, an ordained pastor of 20 years who has produced nationally released movies and authored a new book on the Christian Left. Miles discusses his multi-faceted career approach, which he attributes to growing up with the belief that you can do more than one thing and describes his work ethic as operating in “grace plus hustle mode.”

The conversation centers heavily on Miles’ book, The Christian Left, where he argues that progressive Christianity has created what he calls a “Frankenstein faith” by replacing traditional Christian doctrine with ideologies focused on diversity, acceptance, and social justice. Miles warns that this movement represents a fundamental departure from orthodox Christianity and advocates for churches to maintain biblical worldviews even when addressing political topics.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everybody. It’s Dr. Jeff. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. In this show, I interview thought leaders who demonstrate that worldview changes everything. These are people who are in the arena right now.

And our guest today is in the arena. His name is Lucas Miles. He has been an ordained pastor for 20 years. He has produced several nationally released movies. He’s on media interviews all of the time, and he has a new book that’s going to come up a lot in our conversation. Very timely topic on the Christian Left. Please welcome Lucas Miles to the Dr. Jeff Show. Lucas Miles, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Lucas Miles (00:44):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:45):
I’m really glad to have you on the show. We’ve done an interview together on Newsmax before, and I came away from that, told my assistant, he is so articulate. I just felt like I was fumbling around the whole time, but what you said was so good on that show.

Lucas Miles (01:00):
I always feel like I’m fumbling around on those things. Oh, that is funny.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:04):
Yeah, you’ll only get 90 seconds to make your point the first time.

Lucas Miles (01:07):
And you never know what they’re going to ask you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:08):
You never know what they’re going to ask. So somehow you have to just comment on something totally random in 90 seconds, and then you get a 15-second follow-up so you can reinforce your thoughts. But I’m glad you’re doing a lot of news shows right now. You’re doing a ton of them and you’ve got a lot going on. You’re a pastor of a church. You’ve produced films, you’ve directed films, you host a show. I’ve been on the Church Boys show with you before. That was hysterical.

And then you’re the author of a book now too. You’ve got that banner right behind you, and I asked you to move it into the scene to be sure that people could see because that book is going to be really, really important to the people who are watching and listening to this show right now. But before we dive into all of that, I really would like for you to give us some insight into, and you’re an incredible high achiever who’s been successful in a lot of different areas. What on earth set you on a career path like that?

Lucas Miles (02:07):
I just grew up with a belief that you can do more than one thing. And I don’t know where I got that for sure, but I think that it’s something that somehow my parents have really instilled in my other siblings as well. We’re all kind of wired that way. I have an older brother and a younger sister, and they’re both very successful. And for me, I sort of stumbled into a lot of these other avenues.

I grew up, at a pretty young age, felt a call into ministry. Actually, I was a freshman in high school where I really felt like the Lord spoke to me and told me I was going to go into ministry. And I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, my only vision of that at the time was to be like a junior high and high school youth pastor. And sort of began just a track towards studying philosophy and religion, going to ministry school and these things.

(02:59):
And the Lord sort of bounced me around through that journey. I didn’t realize I would be doing everything that I’m doing today, but it’s been really incredible. There was a girl that was at our church pretty early on as we planted a church. My wife and I started a church at 24. I’m still pastoring that church. It’s been 17 years, which is a pretty good longevity in the world to be at one church as a pastor. I’m pretty proud of that and certainly couldn’t do it without my wife, Krissy.

And we kind of stumbled into the entertainment industry. There was a girl that was on American Idol second season that was there for a little bit. We helped her on her music career, kind of the faith side of the music world. Kind of started dabbling with some feature film stuff, produced a couple music videos.

(03:44):
And before I knew it, I owned my own production company. We now have a team of about six of us and I have crews going out doing commercial work as well as feature film work, which is really a lot of fun. And I kind of call it my tint making. It’s really just a total front to fund my ministry and allow me to do things for Jesus that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to do if I was having to foot the bill myself all the time.

As one pastor said, “Go ye therefore” is expensive. And so we’ve really tried to leverage our gifts and talents in some of these other realms for the sake of the ministry and to really produce content and resources for pastors and Christians and leaders all around the globe.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:30):
My wife, Stephanie, met you and Krissy at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference and really enjoyed that. Just thought that was a great conversation. But I know a lot of people who are watching and listening right now will want me to ask this question. How do you find the time in a day to do all of the things that you do?

Lucas Miles (04:52):
I don’t sleep much. I mean, that’s part of it. And probably as a result, my wife doesn’t sleep much either. She would sleep fine if I wasn’t up at all hours. Look, there’s a rhythm to, I think, being able to operate at what I call kind of this grace plus hustle mode. And it is hard work. It is a drive. It is all of those things, but there’s a grace on it too. I really feel like God’s given me the energy to do this.

And it doesn’t mean I don’t need a break or that I don’t take time to relax. I mean, we’re taking a vacation here in a couple weeks to Florida to unplug for a little bit, but I’ll probably have my laptop with me and it’ll be cranking out a couple pages on a new book I’m working on. And so, I always think of the story where Jesus’ disciples come to him and they say, “Teacher, eat something.”

(05:46):
“You haven’t had anything for a while.” And he goes, “I have food to eat that you know nothing of.” And they’re kind of all looking around going like, “Who gave him a cliff bar when we weren’t looking?” And that’s sort of like just how I want to operate. I don’t want to leave anything on the table. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and feel like I just kind of mailed the bin. I would rather really give it my all.

Paul talks about being poured out like a drink offering. And I think about that a lot. And I don’t want to leave this earth early, but I’ve got stuff to do and if, and I’ve looked at my age and how many years that I might estimate that I could have left if things go well. And I got a lot of stuff to cram in. So I’m busy. I think we all should kind of have that mindset as much as we can.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:33):
Do you remember a moment or key moments where that grace plus hustle mindset really ingrained itself in you?

Lucas Miles (06:45):
There was an early mentor that I had. I actually had met him on a Christian television show. He was a guest host and just a very impactful figure in my life, especially at that time. And he was a guy who was doing, he was working in Hollywood, he was pastoring, he was doing all these different things. And I pulled him aside and I said, “Hey, I know that like you’re a busy guy, you’re doing all this stuff.”

And he was talking about like, had clients that were paying him to do coaching and stuff with him and everything else. And I go, “I don’t know what it costs to do a session with you, but I would love to make that happen. Y’all rub my pennies together for a while.” And I didn’t have much at that time. And he goes, “Just do this. Buy a ticket to LA, come out and see me and let’s just talk.” I did that for almost five years in a row, once a month.

(07:38):
He never charged me. I paid for a plane ticket to fly to LA. He did an event in LA once a month. I would go to the event, he’d introduce me to people, and then he would meet with me for about two to three hours the next day. And we did this for almost probably four or five years regularly, and it was rare that I missed a month.

And I mean, I look back at the investment personally into that, the airfare, the hotel, the Ubers and the rental cars and all those things. And sometimes people will come to you, and I’m sure you’ve had this before, and it’s like they’re looking for that fast track of like, “Can you just accelerate me to the end or whatever?” And they don’t see the investment, the relational equity that you’ve built, the time that you spent, the money that you spent to kind of make some of those connections and really get discipled.

(08:29):
For me, I was learning. I was learning from somebody who was doing a lot of things and he was pastoring celebrities, he was preaching in churches, he was doing mission work to Africa, he was producing content. And I saw this and I thought, “This is the kind of person I want to just sit under for a while and learn.” And I don’t think we do enough of that in today’s society. I don’t know if there was a moment where it just clicked, but I just got in proximity long enough with him that he just kind of left some residue on me is what I would call it. And it forever impacted my life.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:07):
People call it mentoring, they call it coaching. I have never had a business or a ministry that I have started or been involved with where I didn’t have somebody coaching me, but I had to ask, right?

Lucas Miles (09:19):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:19):
There’s wisdom in having many counselors, Proverbs says. Proverbs also says, “If it costs everything you have, get instruction.”

Lucas Miles (09:28):
Yep. And look, I did that. I spent everything I had to do that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:32):
You literally did it.

Lucas Miles (09:33):
And sure, there were people looking at me. My dad’s a financial planner. There’s probably people on the outside going, “Look, this is foolish. You should be investing this in your 401k or your 403 if you’re a pastor.” And look, I could make arguments for that, but I really believe that if I wouldn’t have invested those years in my own development, that was better than, for me, it was better than any education I’d had previously, and it was probably cheaper than some of the college that I had.

And so I just think that you mentioned this idea of mentors and many counselors. I have a mentor for everything. I have a mentor for business, I have a mentor for marriage, I have a mentor for the film world, I have a mentor for ministry and PR and academic topics. And so I don’t think you’re going to find everything in one mentor, but through this diversification of relationships, and you’re right, you have to ask.

(10:29):
People aren’t just walking around going, “I want to tell you everything I know. ” But if you ask them, look, I’m thrilled when somebody says, “Can I learn from you?” Especially if they’re willing to go, “Can I learn from you? And you don’t have to stop to teach me. I’m just going to keep up with you and hustle alongside of you so that you can teach me as you’re going, because I want to see you in that environment and that mode.” Man, I’ll do that all day long. And I think that’s something we need more of, I think, with this new generation.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:01):
Yeah, that is huge. It is so common in our culture for people to pay a lot of money for schooling and nothing for education, right? So they’re getting their degree, but they haven’t really ever hustled alongside someone who’s really doing something to see what that involves. Wow, that’s good.

Lucas Miles (11:20):
It’s so true. Yeah. I employ quite a few people between our different entities that we have. And this doesn’t mean the college is bad, but I get a lot of people out of college and that’s when their education starts. That’s just preparing them kind of with basic life skills so that they can kind of keep up. And then the real learning starts when they come in the doors and we go, “Okay, this is how we really do it in today’s world.” That’s right. And I think that, I think the message behind all that is, don’t forget to invest in yourself.

(11:59):
And really, what I would say is, I like putting it like this, that a lot of people spend money to develop their craft, but they don’t always spend money or time to develop themselves and we have to do both.

You can be a great singer, a great dancer, you can be a great academic, but if you don’t have the capacity emotionally to go through the challenges, if you don’t have the integrity to walk through the door and show up day after day after day after day, even when it’s hard, you’re not going to make it very far. And that’s why we have a lot of one hit wonders in various industries. They’ve developed their skills, but they didn’t develop their heart and that we have to do both in this world.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:40):
Man, this is such sage advice. So anybody who’s watching or listening right now, if you are in school, don’t forget, obviously there are facts and figures and formulas and things like that you need to learn, but it is about learning to learn. If you are not learning to learn, you need to be thinking about whether you’re in the right place. And teachers don’t often focus on that, right? They’re like, “Okay, I’ve got a curriculum to teach. Here’s all the information I’m going to try to download to you.” Information is not hard to get these days. Learning how to be a good learner is tough.

Lucas Miles (13:17):
Yep, absolutely. And look, I’m sympathetic towards teachers because it’s not necessarily built into their job to do this. This is really beyond the scope of modern education. If we’re talking Plato and Socrates, then this is all sort of inclusive, right? But we don’t have that model very often in today’s world. And so we really compartmentalized the development of character and the training on a topic or the training in a field of expertise. And at one time, those things went hand in hand within the greater scope of education, but it’s not that way in today’s world. And so it puts the onus back on the student to really find that and pursue that themselves.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:04):
That’s a great point. Nothing about real education is passive, is it?

Lucas Miles (14:08):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:09):
You’ve got to be active. Yeah. This is something that taps into a huge passion that we have at Summit Ministries. Obviously, we’re working with young adults. I’m excited that we’re going to actually get you to speak at one of our programs, which is going to be really great. But another passion of ours at Summit Ministries is to help students learn about the worldviews that are influencing the time in which they live. And I wanted to quote something from a Newsmax interview that you did recently. And these are some amazing quotations in this article.

I’m just going to read one to you. You’re talking about the Christian left. That’s the book that is behind you, number one Amazon bestseller. And you said in the interview that a lot of Christians have exchanged the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the Trinity of diversity, acceptance, and social justice. You’re talking about a worldview shift that has taken place, that’s even a shift inside the church, not just in the larger culture. And I’d be curious if you would just unpack that a little bit for us.

Lucas Miles (15:17):
Yeah. I mean, honestly, as a believer, I don’t get that thrown off by what culture does, unless it starts really negatively affecting individuals or forcing itself on individuals like what we see in totalitarianism or socialism or these things. But within a free society, I have kind of this intrinsic belief that people can be free, right? And that doesn’t overly worry me.

I don’t believe that as Christians, we need to become the referee of morality for the entire world, but I do believe that when it comes to those who call themselves Christians, those within the church, that there should be an expectation that they maintain a Christian worldview if they’re going to call themselves Christians.

And so, we’re not here to just kind of issue this blanket judgment against everybody who does not know the Lord about their behavior. I mean, they don’t know the Lord, so of course their behavior is what it is. And our behavior would probably look like that too if we didn’t, except for but the grace of God, right? Yeah.

(16:29):
But when you look at what’s happening within the church today, we have this rise of what I’ve called the Christian left or progressive Christianity. The New York Times called it an ascendant liberal Christianity that has risen up, that has begun to pull the church further and further into progressive thought. And it’s interesting, both progressivism and Christianity really speak to man on a journey, a progressing, if you will.

But the difference is Christianity has a destination in mind, and that destination is Christ. It’s to be conformed into the image of Christ, but just the progressive mindset in general is, progress for progress’ sake, and that is a very different thing. There is no destination in mind. And so, and I go to a lot of reasons why they hold that view, but at the end of the day, it’s just a different view than what Christianity is.

(17:29):
The problem is we’ve had Christians that have begun to embrace that and have tried to tie in a lot of progressive ideology with Christianity, creating this sort of amalgamation, this Frankenstein faith, and that has created, I think, a lot of confusion in the church. And I’ve started saying this recently, I don’t know if everybody will agree, I think we are on the brink of a wider chasm within Christianity today than what we had during the Protestant Reformation between these two groups. And I don’t know where that’s going to go yet, but it’s something I’m very much keeping my eyes on.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:08):
I hadn’t planned to ask this question, but it does occur to me as I think back through history that Christians have often in history tried to accommodate the culture, sometimes subsuming it, like taking Winter Solstice and saying, “That’s when we’re going to celebrate the birth of Christ.” So you’re actually taking it over. But when people look at words like diversity, acceptance, social justice, I’m not sure, I mean, I think people have a generally positive view. Yeah, what’s wrong with diversity, acceptance, and social justice? But what you’re saying in your book is that these are code words for an agenda, and I’d love for you to tell us a little about that.

Lucas Miles (18:51):
Yeah, and I’ll be unpacking this even further in some future works that I’m doing, and actually one of my sessions at Summit is on this topic. And I touch on this in the Christian left, and I think that there’s room to even expound further, is this, what we’re seeing within progressive Christianity is not a new thing. It started arguably as far back as the 1700s and kind of the more formal sense that we see it today with really the birth of some early Christian socialists and this idea of this thing called biblical criticism.

And biblical criticism was basically a way of viewing scripture where these secular philosophers and to some degree, humanists would look at scripture and begin to strip out. They believed it was a book that needed to be dealt with. It was, obviously, it’s the greatest literary work of civilization, so you have to deal with it if you’re an intelligent person.

(19:56):
You can’t just shrug it off. All the talk today of, “Oh, the Bible translations, you can’t trust them.” Anytime you hear somebody say that, you just know right away they have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to any sort of academic study of scripture. And so these brilliant people, people like Hagel and Kant and to some degree, even Marx, Darwin, et cetera, these guys, they knew they had to deal with the Bible. They couldn’t just ignore it.

And so this discipline developed called biblical criticism where philosophers would begin to look at the Bible, stripping all these elements of anything that seemed unbelievable to them, anything supernatural, turning water into wine, the virgin birth, the resurrection from the dead, the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully man. And they began just to strip this away and they were left with sort of a, what I would call a portrait of Jesus that became known as the historic Christ.

(20:52):
And you see some writers write about this today, Bart Urman is one, Richard Rohr will sometimes mention this idea. And if I were just to go on the street and ask a Christian, “Do you believe in the historic Christ?” Everybody’s going to go, “Of course I do. “That sounds very like, yes, he’s a real person, but that’s not what they meant when they said the historic Jesus. They meant this idea of we believe this is the true picture of Jesus that history would reveal once you strip away the mythology that they perceived that was the supernatural accounts in scripture.

And so what it really developed into was really a secondary form of Christianity where Jesus was the champion of the state, more so than the savior of the world. And this is the Jesus that was grabbed ahold of by Hagel. This was the Jesus who was a champion for the state himself.

(21:49):
This was the Jesus who was sort of leveraged by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to act as sort of propaganda for a version of Christianity that the third right called Posetivus Christen to him was the German word, positive Christianity would be the translation where they had a view of Christianity that was basically like to be a good Christian means you do everything according to the state and the church is subservient to the state and you carry this out and you always agree with Hitler and all these sorts of things.

I mean, it was basically, as Eric Metaxas says, they were replacing the Bible with Meinkoff and the cross with the Swastika. And so that is a more extreme version, right? But today we have this creeping in. I mean, I’m downtown South Bend, we’re a red state in Indiana, blue county, and within about four or five blocks, I know of probably at least five churches that are flying a Marxist BLM flag and a rainbow flag above their crosses right now on their steeples.

(22:48):
Wow. And so this is not just theoretical, this is happening. And I can tell you, I’ve been traveling like crazy with this book. I’ve done 150 interviews in the last three months, and everywhere I go, I see the same thing, especially in downtown districts where the church has been invaded by progressive ideology, and that ideology is being celebrated above the cross in almost every single instance, both physically as well as metaphorically.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:15):
Lucas, why is this happening? I mean, I’m thinking of our, we have more Christian apologetics resources than ever. We have more books on the truth of the Bible and a biblical worldview than we’ve ever had. There are shows, Johnston Street, Colson Center producing shows every single day on these topics. What’s the disconnect for people who claim to know Jesus?

Lucas Miles (23:41):
So there’s a couple things happening, I think. First off, ideologically, true radical progressives, people that are like, they’re kind of drinking from the Hagel water hose here is they, Hagel had a view, essentially in eschatology. He had an end times view that when mankind stopped having a diversity of thought, basically when there was no more, what he would call a dialectic left, there was no more argument over what is the absolute truth, that that would be sort of the beginning of the end.

And that the final entity to become perfected at that time is once God saw mankind in perfect unison, he would recognize his own perfection and we would basically walk into this perfect sort of utopia, which Mark’s of course turned into this communist utopia and everything else. It’s weird. It’s mystic, it’s goofy, but that’s, I think, what is behind some of the ideological push here on the left is that they’re canceling voices for a reason.

(25:01):
Wokism is a religion because they have to get everybody to say the same thing in order for this utopia to start. And so they’re willing to silence and really destroy any voice that differs with them.That’s the philosophical side. Obviously there’s a lot to probably unpack there and whether or not we have time to do that or not. The other thing that makes this interesting is that really for the first time that I’m aware of, we have millions of dollars being put into trying to convince people against a Christian worldview.

And so as much money and time and energy that’s being spent by conservatives and Christians to really share these things, evangelism to happen and apologetics to happen, there are entities that are putting a lot of money. I just met with a researcher here, this is an extremely high level academic researcher, really revered around the country in their field, and I met with them and they’re sharing some research with me here as we’re sitting down about dollars.

(26:10):
They’ve been tracing organizations’ 990s, and Christian and pseudo Christian organizations that are taking money from atheist groups, leftist groups, socialist groups. And there is a term that some on the left have used, and I’ve seen this used in videos of individuals at conferences where they call Renton Evangelical. And they are putting money into these watered down kind of nominal Christian organizations or left-leaning Christian organizations, and they are just pushing this agenda. And so things like universalism, things like creating fake voter guides that are really fronts for Democratic Party.

And all this sounds like Alex Jones level conspiracy stuff until you really start looking at the research and you realize, no, this is happening. I’ve seen the 990s, I’ve seen the reports. And so it’s really amazing what’s the time that we live in today, there is more of a kind of collective effort to eradicate the gospel I think than ever before, but look, it’s still rising up. It’s still going forth. Even against all of that, I think we’re still seeing movement with the gospel. So I sit here, even though I’m aware of the challenge, encouraged.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:37):
I had never considered before until you mentioned it, the funding aspect. I mean, I know there are organizations that can buy off evangelicals to do everything from support abortion to, you name it, but I’d never really considered that as that, those ideas are out there in the public space. How do you find out this? I mean, how do you personally focus on discerning this kind of information?

Lucas Miles (28:04):
Yeah. I mean, look, it takes a real trained researcher, I think to do this well. I’m not advocating somebody just go find a couple YouTube videos or some article that they read online without really doing their homework. And this is why I’m thankful for people like this. And I will probably be sharing some of this research in the future so that more people can have it. And some of it’s out there. I mean, there’s been very well documented things that have been mentioned before, and I’m not here. I name names in my book. I don’t have to do it on your show, right? Yeah.

But if somebody wants to look at some of this, I mean, there’s been documents of people taking Soros money. There’s been documented cases of people taking other money that’s out there. There’s campaigns, like there’s a campaign called the And campaign, which was really sort of a think tank that was put together by some leftists and kind of democratic operators that were trying to basically present it as like a third option for Christians to help them balance and see problems with each party and realize that they can have free thought.

(29:11):
And when you really start digging in, everybody on the leadership is a leftist or Democrat of some form. They’re all progressive Christians, but it’s using this language on the front end that sounds very kind of ecumenical and nonpartisan. And then as you get into the training more and more, you realize, “Oh, this is all just directed at one side.” And people will go, “Well, here’s the other thing we’re fighting.”

There’s a lot of Christians that believe that the church shouldn’t be involved in politics and I don’t believe the church is or should be political, but the moment that truth is involved and worldviews are involved, the church has to be there and we’re in that conversation. This is the first time period in the history of the world where what happens inside the four walls of the church is for public viewing now.

(30:04):
It wasn’t live streams during Martin Luther. I mean, yes, somebody could read letters or books that they wrote, but you had to really try hard to see what the church was saying. Now, the world has sort of felt this permission to speak into the affairs of the church to say when things are, “Oh, that sounds a little too bigoted, guys. We’ve got to change that.” Or, “That sounds a little too legalistic,” or whatever. And I’m known as a radical grace guy.

So it’s funny that when I start talking about this stuff, people think I’m a fundamentalist because I just believe in orthodoxy. I just believe there’s a thing called Christianity that’s a well established faith. It’s 2,000 years old, has a really extremely well-documented authoritative book that we as believers believe is infallible. And so we can’t just make up what is Christianity today, 2,000 years later, change it all and still call it Christianity.

(30:59):
We can’t do that. And so we can call it something else and I’m for people’s freedom to be able to create their own religion if they want to, if that’s their choice. But as an American, I believe that that’s their liberty that they have, but I’m not for hijacking the faith that I have and calling it something else and deceiving millions of people using a name that I believe belongs to the Lord and belongs to the church itself.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:25):
Yeah. That’s so good. I’m thinking about churches today. And one thing we tell our students at Summit Ministries is we do want politics to be talked about in the church in the same way that we want theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history. If a biblical worldview is true, it applies to everything.

Lucas Miles (31:48):
100%.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:49):
But you can be political without being sectarian.

Lucas Miles (31:52):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:52):
But I think that’s one thing I hear from a lot of people today saying, “Well, the church is too political. It’s right wing. I’m not comfortable with that.” When you’re confronted with something like that, how do you respond?

Lucas Miles (32:07):
Look, I’ve been on the road doing this book tour and it’s a struggle to get churches to bring me in. Political groups, conservative groups. A lot of times I have to host my own meetings because so many churches just don’t want to address this. So I’ll go into a city and pull all my relationships together and people will come to the meeting and we’ll pack it out. And I’d say that no churches have opened their doors for this. Certainly some have, and I’m thankful for that.

But a lot of pastors are afraid of losing, I think, their base. I mean, when Trump got elected in 2016, we lost almost 40% of our church. And I mean, remarkable percentage. And I’m so thankful we made it through. And these were individuals and I wasn’t on the campaign trail with Trump. I didn’t own a Make America Great Again hat.

(33:04):
I wasn’t standing up on stage telling people to vote for Trump. I was just talking about conservative principles and policies and really biblical worldviews, talking about pro- choice versus pro- life, talking about maintaining the integrity of marriage and a biblical view of gender and sexuality and these things. And we had 40% of our church walk out the door. Wow. I’m sure that we’re probably not alone in that. Maybe that’s a higher percentage than most, but I think that we have to face it.

And so many pastors are afraid of losing some of their people, they’re afraid of creating divisions. Look, the first thing I say when I talk about the Christian left is this is not a Republican or Democrat thing. In fact, in my book, I show that there is a way to have more of a left leaning political viewpoint, not to be a leftist, that’s a different thing, but to have a left leaning political viewpoint and still be a Christian.

(34:03):
We used to see more pro-life Democrats than we do today. They’ve all been kind of silenced or they’ve walked away or they’ve been kicked out or locked in a closet someplace and not let out anymore. But this isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing. This is a true thing. And so I think that the moment we realize that the thing that we’re trying to find agreement with is not the Republican Party. I find lots of disagreements with the Republican Party.

The thing I’m trying to help people find agreement with is the word of God. And when we find agreement with the word of God, it will help us discern what party is more closely aligned with that than another. I talked to the Catholic priest who a conservative guy and has kind of made some waves here in South Bend because we’re home of the University of Notre Dame.

(34:51):
It’s one of the most Catholic areas outside of, probably, Boston and the Vatican. And I was talking with this individual and I said, “Just tell me, where are you at on this? How do you process it?” And he goes, “Look, I’ve read the entire party platform of both Republican party as well as the Democratic Party.” He goes, “As a Catholic,” he goes, “I have to commit nine intrinsic sins to sign my name on the party platform, the Democratic Party.” That’s before they even do anything, he said. And he goes, “When I look at the conservative party platform,” he goes, “There’s no immediate sin that it forces me to commit by casting my vote there.”

It doesn’t mean that there’s not Republicans that don’t do terrible things and sin and everything else, but he said, “Just philosophically when I look at these things.” I thought that was a very interesting perspective and I wish that more pastors would be bold about this, would stop worrying about their 501 status or their donations and recognize that if we don’t stand up for the gospel now, I think we’re going to have to stand up for the gospel later in ways that we don’t want to.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:51):
Wow. Wow. Let’s talk a little bit more about the book specifically and I think people are going to be intrigued by some of the things that you are talking about in this interview you go into in depth in the book, but how is the book overall being received? And congratulations, it’s number one Amazon bestseller, that’s huge, but how’s the book being received by people who’ve written back to you or corresponded with you about it?

Lucas Miles (36:17):
I was so prepared for so much hate mail. I mean, I spent a year, my wife and I talking about it, and maybe it will still come, but honestly, the thing I hear more than anything else is thank you. It’s the number one thing that somebody says to me. And wherever I go, whenever I talk, I share these things.

I just spoke at a school board last night here in Indiana, one of the largest schools in the state, and it’s just people saying thank you. I think that Christians that still have maintained a biblical worldview, and that number is not what it used to be, have just really been grateful for this work. I’ve had a lot of people say, “You’ve given language to everything I’ve felt for a long time now. You’ve helped me be able to articulate it.” And those kinds of things that keep you going.

(37:12):
There’s been a few negative comments. I’ve had a couple negative reviews on Amazon, but really for the most part, I mean, it’s been very well received. We have endorsements from everybody from Governor Mike Huckabee, pro- life advocate, Abby Johnson, actors Kevin Sorbo, Steven Baldwin, just tons of other names, Benham Brothers, others who have just really stood with me and kind of getting this out there. And I just think there’s a need for this.

(37:43):
You might appreciate this, and I think some of your listeners will too. I’ve compared this a lot to, there was an early church father named Irenaeus and he wrote in 180 AD, he wrote a book called Against Heresies. And in this book, in sort of his introduction to the book, he essentially says that he’s writing this because he saw how the first century church, him writing in the second century, he saw the first century church struggled to refute gnosticism. And he said the reason why they struggled to refute gnosticism is they just didn’t understand it.

And I really have a belief that we’re in a very similar time. I mean, to be honest, the progressive viewpoint and the wokest viewpoint is very gnostic in nature. So I think that’s something that puts us in a similar time as well, but I think that most people don’t understand the doctrines.

(38:37):
They don’t understand liberation theology. They don’t understand something like critical race theory or critical theory in general. And so they can’t always distinguish it when it’s presented to them. They hear it from the pulpit. It just sounds wrong or maybe hits them wrong, but they don’t know why. And I’ve really tried to do with this book, it’s not 600 pages like against heresies is, but I’ve tried to, as best I can, create some understanding of progressivism and progressive Christianity specifically so that people understand to just throw a Bible verse at a progressive Christian and go, “Well, what about this? ” It doesn’t matter, right?

And it’s not to say that you don’t have the right answer with what you’re saying, but they don’t believe that the Bible’s infallible. They don’t believe that the Bible is still relevant in all cases for their lives today. And so you’ve presented some archaic texts from a book that they don’t really hold to be authoritative in their life.

(39:33):
That’s not enough as blasphemous as that sounds for me to even say that for where they’re at right then, they’ve already severed that part of their heart to be able to receive that. We see the same thing. People got really horrified. There was the professor, I think it was at Mercer U that prayed the prayer, “Lord, help me to hate white people.” Wow. And people just were horrified by this.

And if you understand liberation theology, what you understand is that according to James Cohen, the founder of liberation theology, there are two sins that an oppressed person can commit. The first sin is to not realize that they’re oppressed, and the second sin is to be nice to their oppressors.

So here we have this woman who, it seems sacrilegious for her to pray this, but according to her faith, as a liberation theologian, she was actually doing what she perceived to be the devout and pious thing, and that was to ask God to help her from committing a sin that she was committing, which was she liked her friends that were white and she felt guilty for it because according to liberation theology is a sin and she needed help.

(40:45):
When you understand liberation theology, that gives you a different avenue to be able to speak to these things and address some of the heresy and address some of the fallacies that I think just the typical, what we see a lot of times in conservatives of every Democrats, a demon rat sort of mindsets, doesn’t really do justice for creating a bridge to bring them back to the gospel, if that makes sense.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:10):
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So understanding the world, put yourself temporarily, at least into the mindset of a person who holds a different worldview, realizing that they’re looking at the same world, but they are not seeing the same world that you are seeing. But take us into one of those conversations. So let’s say somebody’s got a colleague at work, they go out for lunch, they’re munching away on their sandwiches, and you start to realize, oh, this person is, this is the Christian left person. This is the leftist person that I have been hearing about from Pastor Lucas Miles and from others. How should they approach that conversation?

Lucas Miles (41:53):
So there’s three principles that I use in almost every situation of life. I actually really kind of pulled these out from the life of David and some proverbs and a little bit of the life of Joseph, but I originally developed these for kind of becoming a person of influence, but they apply in a situation like this. And that is, first of all, stay in proximity.

So when God brings somebody in your life that you really develop a heart for and you want to help minister to them, speak truth to them, lead them, all these things, we stay in proximity to that person. But as we are in proximity, we have to do the second principle and that is we resist the urge to force it because answering questions that somebody is not asking rarely bears fruit. And so, and just kind of cutting them off and correcting them and these things that typically doesn’t get us anywhere.

(42:51):
Now, obviously if the Holy Spirit’s really leading you, but we have to determine when it’s really the Holy Spirit and when it’s just kind of our propensity to be a jerk and sometimes that I think Christians struggle and those lines are blurred. The third thing is what I call advance on all fronts. We always look for opportunities to continue to advance the truth. And so how do we do that? I think the way we see Jesus do that is he seemed to gravitate towards people asking him questions.

And if we live in such a way, maybe it’s you pray before your meal, maybe it’s some story that you’re talking about from your own life and somebody goes, “Tell me more about that,” because you’re talking about your faith or something that happened at your church or something that you believe.

And when you start seeing people ask questions, to stay within the analogy of becoming fishers of men, basically what’s happening is your bobber is moving and they are starting to nibble at the bait that you were putting out there and that’s when it might be time to kind of take that conversation to the next level and really, but I think that taking time to make sure you’re understanding where they come from.

(44:06):
“Hey, I heard you say this, is that something that you hold to? Or how much do you know about liberation theology? It sounds like that’s something that you’re talking about here. Can you help me understand maybe what your viewpoint is on that?” A lot of people are going to go, “I don’t know anything about liberation theology or critical race theory or whatever.” And that gives you an opportunity to say, “Would you be interested in having a conversation?” Or, “I’d love to buy you lunch sometime and talk about this more.”

And I think that we have to look for mass ways to reach people through media and everything else. And that’s of course something I’m very passionate about, but we can’t ignore those really intimate conversations that sometimes are really best had over a cup of coffee or over lunch or sitting by a fire pit in your backyard.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:51):
There’s no substitute for that witness. The same thing that you were talking about with mentoring and getting people to coach you and help you learn to succeed is the same thing you’re doing in those conversations. Man, we have covered a lot of ground. Lucas, thank you so much for being on the Dr. Jeff Show today. This has been fantastic.

Lucas Miles (45:12):
Hey, I appreciate having me on. And if anybody wants to find out more, of course they go to lucasmiles.org and actually any copies of the book that they purchased there, they get an autographed copy from me. We ship those out for my team. So of course they can pick it up on Amazon, et cetera. But if they want an autographed copy, they can head over to lucasmiles.org, but really appreciate you having me on the show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:29):
Thank you. And we’ll put all that in the show notes as well for those who are driving while they’re out running or whatever they’re doing while they’re listening. So grateful for your time today.

Lucas Miles (45:38):
Thank you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:40):
Thank you to Lucas Miles for being on the Dr. Jeff Show today. And thank you for listening and viewing. This show is successful because you are watching, paying attention, sharing it with your friends. You can find more about Lucas Miles on Twitter @LucasMiles. You can also find his book, The Christian Left, wherever books are sold, the kinds of things we talked about today, diversity, social justice, inclusion, all of these sorts of things.

It’s really important to have a biblical worldview of these topics. A secular worldview says, “Hey, it’s just all about power. We evolved through random chance processes and we’re just going to try to win the evolution battle.” But from a biblical worldview, it’s all about reflecting God’s image. We are his image bearers. So I encourage you as you go out this week to live in grace and truth.

Ryan Dobson (46:33):
Hi, everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting Podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17, we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks. I’ve returned every summer for 34 years.

This summer, your student can attend an in-person conference. That’s right, in person. Summit Ministry’s Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 24 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in person with other students learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience and it’s amazing. Change your students’ life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.