Digital Journalism: Racing to the Lowest Common Denominator

Digital Journalism: Racing to the Lowest Common Denominator

March 20, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: James Spencer

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/20/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

,Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today and as we begin this program today, though constitutionally undeclared by Congress, war, it appears is unfolding in the Middle East. Last night, a major attack against Israel, launched by the Houthis and Yemen, and that with a pledge just restated by our President that as he said, the Houthis barbarians will be completely annihilated, well all-out war, which if that happens, will spread to Iran and beyond, is really at the door. In fact, with the total collapse of the Hamas ceasefire arrangement, according to one Israeli official, he said, military operations will escalate to the point of total war to me, strongly suggesting that what we have seen thus far has been a rather restrained conflict. Now, I share this piece of overriding headline news as I begin today’s program just to recommend that if you did not catch yesterday’s Standing the Gap Today program, we entitled The Israel Fixation, a political dilemma, a prophetical design that you try to do so because we were right on the edge at the cusp of things.

And I think it puts together pieces of what is happening and what we’re witnessing right now and in the days ahead, in the Middle East and frankly beyond. But today we’re going to go a different direction, though in many ways there is a underlying connection I’m glad to have with me today. Again, Dr. James Spencer, currently serving as president of the DL Moody Center, where according to their mission statement, they are dedicated to proclaiming the gospel and helping individuals and organizations to ask and answer the right question so that they can move from where they are to where God wants them to be. And that’s a great one. Now, Dr. Spencer’s also the author of a book entitled Christian Resistance Learning to Defy the World and Follow Christ That Can Be found@amazon.com. Now, Dr. Spencer is as I am and have been for most of my life, involved in communications on a number of levels.

Communications take various forms, spoken, written, graphic. Oral communication can take many forms, for example, such as preaching, teaching, commentary, and analysis of the news and events such as what we’re doing right now. As an example, sometimes communications can be expressed in written forms such as newspapers, the magazines. Increasingly though communications has taken a digital form via social media platforms, the internet generally and increasingly the usage of some type of AI generated graphic, which often accompanies some type of print. But with all forms of public expression, there remains an inherent duty and accountability to some professional and ethical standard. But what happens when the standards and the restraints either externally imposed or voluntarily adopted are say, dumbed down, distorted, redefined, or worse cease to exist? Well, today our conversation on this program and are focus will be primarily centered on one form of communication called journalism. But the principle I think applies to all the title I’ve chosen to frame our discussion is this digital journalism racing to the lowest common denominator. And with that, I welcome into the program right now, Dr. James Spencer. Jim’s, thanks for being here.

James Spencer:

Yeah, thanks for having me again. It’s great to be here.

Sam Rohrer:

James. Sometime ago you communicated a message in print in the form of an article written as a journalist you to, in some respects, I’m going to say other journalist, the article was entitled Beyond the Scandal, rethinking Christian Journalism in an Age of Speed and Spectacle. Interesting title for the sake of defining the terms. So our conversation today will make better sense to our listeners. I’d like for you to define what you mean by journalism first of all, and compare, contrast it to other forms of public communication that I broadly identified in my opening.

James Spencer:

Sure. I would say that journalism is the process of selecting, investigating and then abbreviating or reporting on complex happenings in the world in a way that really condenses the truth about a particular event or set of events without simplifying those events or falsifying them. And so I’m playing with the definition that Alvis Huxley gives of abbreviation age. He talks about abbreviation being a necessary evil, but that the business of the abbreviation is to make sure that as they abbreviate, they’re making it simple enough for people to understand, but not so simple that they make it false For journalists, their process involves selecting the stories that they’re going to report on. They’re going to investigate those stories using various means, including talking to sources, diving into the documents, maybe even going to the place where the event’s happening and sort of bearing witness to it themselves and then abbreviating those complex happenings for a public. So I would say that’s a really specialized way of doing journalism. A lot of the things that I’ve written, including this article Beyond Scandal, I would call it more, I do more opinion pieces

And opinion pieces have some of affinity with journalism. They involve hopefully an informed opinion. So when I wrote that article, I did a deep dive into areas like journalistic practice, the nature and role of accountability, the Bible theology, a number of different areas, but the sources I used were primarily literary sources. Journalists might go in and actually interview eyewitnesses or do an onsite investigation. They’re going to be looking at public documents and doing policy reviews and those kinds of things. And so while I think there’s a common ground between journalism and some of the other sorts of communication we do in the sense that there needs to be a rigor and a robust process for determining what we’re going to communicate, I think journalists really do have a more specialized way of getting at that information that they’re going to communicate and it’s largely differentiated on the sorts of sources they’re utilizing.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that’s excellent. Now let’s make another distinction. You used the term Christian journalism or journalism, which calls itself Christian, however that may be. Define if there’s any difference between what you just described and Christian journalism or journalism that says they are Christian.

James Spencer:

I would say the simplest way I think about when I use the word Christian, it requires an allegiance to Christ and a unity with Christ. And so I’m talking about Christians who are doing journalism, but I’m also talking about journalism that sits under the authority of Christ and carries out the aims appropriate for someone that sits under the authority of Christ. Things like the glorification of the trying God, the building up of the body of Christ outdoing one another in honoring, in honoring others. These are things that Christian journalism should have in their minds guiding their practice.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, and with that, James, that’s excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, our theme today is this digital journalism, racing to the lowest common denominator suggesting that there is a problem with where things are today. My special guest, Dr. James Spencer, president of the DL Moody Center. When we come back, we’re going to really identify the problem. Next segment, we’ll move really to the cost of how we got here and then we’ll up with a conclusion. Dr. James Spencer, if you’re just joining me right now, is my guest today. He is the president of the DL Moody Center. They have a website@moodycenter.org, but in the article you made the case that journalist generally, and you define them in the last segment, journalists generally are not doing what they should be doing. And you cite a statement by a fellow named Carl Bernstein, who in 1992, so about 30 some years ago, wrote a book entitled The Idiot Culture.

Interesting there he expressed his pre-internet obviously because that was before the internet, but he expressed his concern then about 33 years ago now, noting the decline of journalism to his words, the lowest common denominator. His concern was that journalists then had already retreated from accepted journalistic standards and were no longer, as he said, serving our readers and viewers, but pandering to them. Then you agreed, and in your article you made this statement, I’ll just read it, he said this, what is happening today unfortunately is that the lowest form of popular culture, lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and the contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives has overrun real journalism. You then extended this concern to Christian journalists now without citing individual or organization names, which you said in that article you would not do and you didn’t do that. You really took the task, so to speak, Christian journalists or journalists who say they’re Christians and you challenged them to a higher professional and moral standard. So let’s talk about that problem. First of all, in simple terms, what is the problem facing journalism generally and what is the problem facing Christian journalism if it indeed it is different?

James Spencer:

Yeah, I think there’s actually a fair degree of overlap between the two. So I would say that we can identify five major problems facing journalism and Christian journalism altogether. The first one is really a shift to news as a commodity. The 24 hour news cycle that came in sometime in the late 1980s, 1990s on cable as well as the ability to provide out of time information via the internet has really put a lot of pressure on journalism. There has to be enough content now to fill up 24 hour cycles, and so that creates a pressure that wasn’t necessarily there before or has increased the pressure that was there before when the newspapers would come out maybe twice a week. I think there’s also a phenomenon of democratization, the sheer amount of information available from a variety of sources that audience can choose from. As the internet has taken off, anyone can write anything and put it out on the internet.

Now it’s not just professional journalism journalists competing with professional journalists, it’s professional journalists competing with anyone that democratization. Also eroded accountability structures, which I would say is the third problem facing journalism. Independent journalists don’t necessarily have an accountability structure that you would’ve associated with, let’s say formal journalism pre 1990s where you’re having editors and fact checkers and the papers actually seem to want to put out right news. Independent journalists can put out innuendo and accusation very quickly and there isn’t really an accountability structure to keep them from doing that. In addition to the accountability structure, and this would be number four, I’d say the economic structures associated with journalism really do prioritize or incentivize speed and clicks. And so the best version of a story for a journalist is the one that people read most frequently, but that may not actually be the most important story for people who are reading it.

In other words, where the whole system has sort of skewed over to say the most popular stories are the best stories, which just as you think about that comment, that can’t be the way we think about this. So just because it’s good for the journalist and good for their clicks and good for their website, good for driving traffic doesn’t mean it’s actually good information to put out there. And then I’d say the last one is related to the culture, it’s our cultural tolerances for depth and nuance. We just, I think as a culture, as an audience, have very little tolerance for something that is not black and white. And I think many times the stories that we’re looking at, the happenings that we’re looking at have elements of gray in them that we’re just unwilling to dive into and understand with any depth.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that’s excellent. Okay, so those five, we will probably come back on them. So in reality, let’s describe we can in greater detail what the standards for journalism should be. You’ve defined the problem and you’ve named five of them that are contributing to driving journalism to its lowest common denominator. Now let’s go and talk about what it ought to be and in the next segment we’ll talk about how we got to where we are. But in this article you appropriately emphasized the need for, you mentioned accountability within journalism and Christian journalism, obviously. In your opinion, how should a responsible journalist establish, I’m going to say the hierarchy of accountability. I agree with you. I think that is essential, for instance, is the accountability to the reader foremost, I mean to the reader of the journal, is it the reader? Is it perhaps the company owner that used to do the fact checking that you’re talking about or to the government or perhaps to one’s own self and what they view to be right or to God?

James Spencer:

I think from a Christian perspective, obviously when we’re looking at a Christian journalist, I think the hierarchy of accountability begins and ends with allegiance to God. I think everything needs to flow through that. If we’re talking about journalism more generally, what I would say is I think the best position for journalists more generally is to think of themselves as a public trust that they are being supported by the public, not by, I think the privatization of journalism is problematic because you start to tailor yourself to an audience who’s willing to pay for exactly what you’re providing. I do think a public trust sort of journalism that is supported by public’s funding would be much stronger journalism because at that point, what you’re looking at is a journalism that is aimed at improving the public that they’re writing to. They’re informing that public and they believe that by informing that public, the public is going to improve overall.

But I think from a Christian perspective, yeah, I would say it begins and ends with allegiance to God. And I think from that deep allegiance, journalists are to love their neighbors as themselves, and our neighbors may be part of the body of Christ, they may be members of society as a whole, and that may mean seeking justice or attempting to protect the vulnerable. But I think it also has to mean exercising, restraint and patience, making sure that you can tell the best possible story that can be told. And I think overall, as we’re thinking about accountability, we have to recognize that today there is a fundamental asymmetry and the upside that a journalist who can report on accusations or innuendo is getting, they’re getting all the traffic that they want to those stories, those sort of scandal based stories. But the person who’s being accused, the person who’s having these things set about them is experiencing a massive downside. And so I think there needs to be something from a cultural perspective where we say, journalists, we are going to hold you accountable for telling the truth, and you have to tell the truth in appropriate ways. You can’t just spread misinformation, you can’t just report on accusations. There has to be substance behind what you’re saying.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And that’s why I

James Spencer:

Think until we fix that, it’s going to be a problem.

Sam Rohrer:

And that’s why you’re saying overall for any person, particularly a believer, if the biblical standard of truth and giving an account to God and the standards that go along with that are not put into place, well then you have the kinds of things that we see where there is very little consequence to what happens and people say what they want. We used to have rules, laws in place that actually was limiting slander. You can’t lie about somebody or defame their character or liable you can’t do that. But it seems like that’s pretty much a standard thing. Here’s a question I have for you, move it here now a little bit more to duty. You’ve referred to it earlier on, but I want you to clarify this. In your opinion, what should be the primary purpose for those involved? I’m going to say in public generally, but this particular area of journalism, for instance, the overriding duty, should the duty standard for a Christian journalist be in any way different from that?

I say this because of this. When I was in the house, I was interviewed by people many times when I was in the office. And one time I had somebody actually write something and reported that I said something and that I did not say, and it was a lie. And I went to them, I said, what did you do? I was honest with you. You are not honest with me. What did you do? And he said, well, I didn’t say what you said, but I said what I knew you meant. And that comes down to the interpretation rather reporting. So talk about that duty. What is the duty of the journalist?

James Spencer:

I think the duty of the journalist, and maybe we can sum it up like this, is just from journalism overall, not Christian journalism. I can get to that in a minute. But I think for journalism overall, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to frame out as well as you possibly can, the true, the good and the beautiful. And so even in secular journalism, let’s say, I think there’s a commitment to the truth, there’s a commitment to the good and there’s a commitment to the beautiful. And so in your situation there, even though I think that no journalist can keep from interpreting things, I also think that they have a responsibility that if they are going to interpret it and they have access to you, why not just double check that they have a duty to make sure it’s right and as right as it can possibly be, as opposed to making assumptions just to push a story out the door. And so I think that’s part of the duty is to tell the best possible version of the story that can be told.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And with that, James, we’re going to have to move on into the break. Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Withers, my special guest today is Dr. James Spencer, president of the DL Moody Center. We’re talking about journalism today, as you can tell, and when we come back, we’re going to get into identifying some of the causes for how we got to where we’re, well, we’re midpoint into our program right now. And again, if you just happen to be joining us, our theme today is this digital journalism racing to the lowest common denominator. My guest is Dr. James Spencer, he’s the president of the DL Moody Center. There. I have a website, moody center.org, and we’re discussing at this length here now journalism and an article basically that he wrote, I’m jumping off of that he wrote some time ago, I think you could probably find it on that website, but James, in the last segment, we talked about what the standards for responsible journalism ought to be.

And in reality, the higher standards, even in that of duty and responsibilities, that should be for journalists and for a journalism entity that would profess to be Christians, they ought to be even a higher standard. However, we all know that we’re not seeing what should be the standards that were are no longer the standards that are, so in your article you say this quote, while digital technology may have accelerated the challenges Bernstein, that fellow who wrote the book, idiot, what was it? Idiot Culture or something like that at the beginning that you cited the idiot culture, he said, whereas digital tonology may have accelerated the challenges that Bernstein identified, it did not cause them. The challenges of an analog era came with us into a digital age. Unfortunately, Christian media is not immune to the challenge of journalism more broadly as such, we must ask where and how Christian journalism has stopped serving its audience and began pandering to it.

And that’s what Bernstein said way back in 1992. You want to say, is Christian journalism set up to provide the most complex obtainable version of the truth? Or is it like the rest of journalism privileging speed and quantity instead of thoroughness and quality, ensuring accuracy and context. So in this segment, let’s focus on the cause and how we’ve gotten to where we are because I think what you stated was really well stated. So here’s the issue. What is journalism in this area doing aided by the speed and spectacle as you’re calling it, of digital media platforms today that makes our condition today so serious?

James Spencer:

Well, I think part of it is, we’ve probably talked about algorithms on previous shows, we’ve discussed social media and that kind of thing in the past, Sam, but what I would say is this, the algorithms tend to privilege and decide what is going to pop up first in news feeds, what’s going to come up first in search engines. And increasingly what we’re going to be given as answers through artificial intelligence, and so as people understand what works, what those algorithms are going to pick up, that works back on writers and content creators, even journalists. So that things like the way a piece is titled doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the content of the piece. And there’s actually been studies that show that a negative title on one piece of content will skew people’s perception of the content negatively, where a positive title. And so we’re sitting in this sort of web of technological challenges where the algorithms are very much determining what sort of content we get, and I would also say the frequency with which we get it. And so we have this algorithmic choice, we have speed and we have quantity. All those pieces suggest to me that we are not structuring Christian journalism so that Christian journalism even have the time to do the sort of real hard, robust work that they would need to do in order to write well and display the truth with a robustness and a nuance that I think it deserves.

Sam Rohrer:

I think that’s excellent. I’m looking at something here. We’ve done some programs on AI here and some other things. One of the things that, this is a summation of it, how we looked at it. We said this technology has trained younger generations to expect immediate results. Social media, online shopping, entertainment platforms offer instant rewards and with little effort, this constant access to fast solution, which is exactly what you’re talking about, reduces patience and discourages perseverance. Now, that was in the context of particularly how our younger generations are being impacted by what they read. In this context of journalism, are you finding that the audience, the age of the audience makes a difference in what they’re consuming or basically you were writing the article to the person writing it, but is there any difference in the way the message is written or formed based on, for instance, the age of the audience?

James Spencer:

There probably is. And what I’ll say, just some of the conversations I’ve had with experts in this area, I had a lady on my podcast who looks at some of these things. She actually was really encouraged by the younger generations as opposed to the older generations. She saw the ideological capture and some of these strategies that we’re talking about with media being more severe with older audiences, despite the fact that we really understand how to bridge between the analog and the digital. But with the younger audiences, because this is all they’ve ever grown up with, they’re starting to feel the aware of it sooner. They’re really starting to feel the anemic aspect of this sooner, and they’re starting to try to revert back to old practices that maybe we left behind. They’re not as settled in the digital world oddly as we are. And so I found that to be a really interesting sort of case. I actually think what we may end up seeing is a renaissance of some depth and nuance for younger audiences, even if it’s in a form that’s not written, which would be my preferred medium. We may see it in movies, we may see it in music, we may see it in audio programming. But I do think that there is a sense in which the younger audiences are starting to have a desire for greater depth and nuance.

Sam Rohrer:

That would be a positive thing. And to some degree, what I am reading too as well and sensing James, is that the information overload that is happening generally combined with so much of what even the younger folks are realizing some anyways, not all by any means, but some are sensing the fact that they are being either victimized or they are tools for somebody else because of what they are getting and causing them to back up and question a little bit to that extent, that is a good thing. You mentioned AI in the last couple of minutes. Just talk about that a little bit from the standpoint of how artificial intelligence, which is basically able to put together communication and a lot of even what’s being out there in print appearing to be unquote journalism is being produced by this algorithmically designed entity called ai. To what extent do you think that its speed, its ability to put together research reports in 10 minutes on major subject matters? I mean, it’s an amazing thing. How is that shaping journalism?

James Spencer:

I think what it’s going to end up doing, and this may be a different response that you’ve heard, I would put this in the category of it’s going to depersonalize journalism. Think back to when you’d see an article in a newspaper and you know that someone’s writing that article and that they’re writing it about other people. And it’s a relatively slow and arduous process for all of that to happen. And we were invested in that slow and arduous process because we really wanted to know what was happening with other people and we thought that this was pertinent and necessary. What’s going to end up happening with artificial intelligence is that we are just going to opt for convenience. We are going to become voyeurs essentially, where we just want to look into a world we may not care because you have these artificial intelligence engines.

Well, I use them for various things. I’m not anti ai, but I will say that I think within the context of journalism, that depersonalization is not going to serve us well as humanity once we start commodifying. To the degree that AI commodifies these things, in other words, making it really easy to get something that it used to be very hard to get, I think we’re going to lose the social action, the social interaction that we used to have around these stories that we used to actually care about the people involved, that we used to have skin in the game, so to speak, about what was going on in our world. And it’s just going to be boiled down to simple information. And I think that without that effort put into reading an article, finding an article, diving in, and really digging into a topic that you find interest in, having this amount of information at our fingertips is depersonalizing. It disconnects us from other humans. And I think that is the biggest danger that I see with some of the applications of artificial intelligence.

Sam Rohrer:

That does not surprise me. You said it may surprise me. No, that does not. I have sensed that as well as more, I mean you and I have talked about it on this aspect with young people and cell phone usage or the heavy involvement with technology, the ability to hide, to remain somewhat under the cover, that kind of a thing is really a dehumanizing effort. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s just a thought. We’ll get into that more so on a later program. But just an additional thing to think about. Now I want to come back. I’m trying to conclude the program with like we normally do going through some solutions and that is alright, the standards were once higher, they are now much lower. How can we restore those people? Alright, as we enter our final segment now, I’m going to be going to Dr. James Spencer, my guest, and asking him for his thoughts on right now, how do we go about raising the standards of what once used to be from standpoint of a profession called journalism?

Ladies and gentlemen, that the only profession that’s protected in the constitution is that of the press journalism, the only one that has a constitutional protection. And it was because at one point in time, this function, this profession and what it did was so critical in the presentation of what was, and its analysis and the presentation of those facts that it gained constitutional protective status. But as you and I know that has been altered. Some have been bribed, some have been taught to think differently about what it is they’re supposed to do. It’s a different worldview on operation now. So a lot of things have changed, but we can see the difference in it. And of course, this was the focus of James’ article that he wrote. So James, without a doubt, we have a serious problem in the area of journalism. We’ve been talking about it here, calling attention to it.

You called attention to it generally and specifically to that area of journalism professing to be Christian. In reality though, as I’ve tried to weave in here, the problems that you’ve identified I think are embedded throughout the entirety of our culture, not just in print, but that which is promoted and spoken by our political leaders, sanctioned by our religious leaders. And it’s now seems to be intricately woven within all communications in whatever form with deception being taken to the very highest form by artificial intelligence, as you just talked about it, this non-human entity, but designed by human and who we’ve gotten even AI on their own platform to admit that they have a humanist worldview, that they do not believe in God, they cannot go to God, they cannot identify truth, unchanging truth. They do not believe in sin. So therefore there are some things they cannot say.

When you listen to an AI generated article, it will be skewed because of that, all of these things. But now it’s happening at lightning speed. In your article, you lay out some of your recommendations for correction of this concluding with this statement, and here’s what you said. You said, we need an elevated form of journalism to get it. However, we don’t need to purge the ranks of Christian journalism. Instead, we need to change ourselves and our organizations. And I thought that was interesting. Expand upon that, please. How would you go about, recommend that this change in ourselves, change in our organizations, be realized?

James Spencer:

Yeah. So my conviction is that many of the Christian journalists that are practicing are responding to the pressures that are put upon them by the systems that we’re using to consume the product that they’re putting out. And that if those pressures weren’t there, they would actually do the job that they’re trained to do. They would actually do a good journalistic job. I think what’s happening is that because we’re not really interested in, and maybe we don’t even have a good concept of what good journalism actually is and what it could do for our communities that we’re unwilling to support it. And so what we’ve got is we’ve got a situation where we’re not being particularly discerning about what we read, which I think we need to be. I think we’re in a situation where we have itching ears playing off second Timothy four, where folks are going to have these itching ears that will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

We are simply just reading materials that are tantalizing to us, that we find sensational and interesting that we maybe have an affinity to that reinforces something about our worldview, but that’s not what journalism should be doing all the time. It should also be challenging us. It should also be pointing us to bigger pieces of reality that we we’re not privy to normally. And so I think that as we change ourselves, as we ask ourselves, look, maybe I’ll slow down. Maybe I won’t listen and watch as much as I do. Maybe I don’t need to know about every topic that’s put out there on the internet and that not every scandal that I need to look at particularly has any real bearing on my life. I want to make sure that I’m not going to become a voyeur, that if I’m reading a story, that I have a passion for it and an interest in it, and I, my personally, am committed to it in some way, shape, or form, even if that’s just praying for the people involved in that story.

So I think those are some of the changes that we have to make for ourselves. Organizationally, I think there does need to be a structural change. I think we’ve got to think about how do we build in the sort of accountability that’s necessary to make sure that false allegations aren’t news stories, that early innuendo aren’t news stories. I mean, I don’t think that serves the Christian community well. I am not at all opposed to reporting on scandals in the Christian Church that are demonstrated scandals. I’m not even opposed to using the journalism to sort of push for justice. I think that’s an appropriate lever. It’s an unfortunate lever, but I think it’s an important lever. What I’m really opposed to though is putting out allegations and stories to early, constantly trying to find the next scandal simply so that we can maintain clicks on our websites. I think that sets us up to become a destructive church as opposed to a church that is interested in construction and really building up the body of Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, what you’re describing there is one of the things that is affecting our broad culture. I’m actually going to be talking to Dr. George Barna on this program tomorrow in talking about the impact, the consequences of a culture of a people, even those who self-identify as Christians, whether they’re individuals or organizations, but actually do not have a biblical worldview. You started the program talking about journalists should point people to Christ. Well, biblical standards, parents with their children should point their children to Christ pastors and the pulpits should point their people to Christ. I discovered when I did further study in scripture when I was in public office that even according to Romans 13 and verse six, those in civil government, their purpose is to lead people to God. Liturgy is what the word in Romans 13, six, actually leader in worship lead people to God. But if a person does not know God, James, it’s pretty hard to lead them there. So we’ve got a fundamental heart problem to begin with then. That’s an individual issue, isn’t it?

James Spencer:

It really is. And I mean, I think that’s sort of where we have to go. I think so much of this we’ve forgotten, and this is sort of a hobby horse of mine, but I think it’s also a really deep biblical truth. I think who we are should be emerging from discipleship, and we tend to treat discipleship as sort of an ancillary thing that the church does. And I think we need to get back to something that is much more convicted about being disciples of Jesus Christ and learning to live under his authority as opposed to assuming that every structure we’ve built, every news story that’s put out, every piece of information we hear automatically fits within the Christian Church simply because a Christian is saying it or simply because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. I think we need to be trained to live under the authority of Christ. It’s not an automatic. And so all of this needs to be emerging out of a deep commitment to discipleship and learning to follow Jesus. And I think once we get back to that point, we’ll find solutions that we never knew we even had the opportunity to find.

Sam Rohrer:

And to that I say amen and amen. I agree. Couldn’t agree with you more than that. Dr. James Spencer, thank you so much for being with me again. His website is moody center.org. You can find more information about him. Ladies and gentlemen, our site, this program, listen to it again. Send it to a friend. Stand in the gap radio.com or on our app, stand in the Gap. Well, the Lord bless all of you who are listening. Take this information, pray about it, think about it, and put it into practice with the Lord.