The goddess of our age is beckoning us to open the door for all manner of vices. In the name of affirmation, empathy, and toleration of churches with female pastors, we are being manipulated to believe decisive, clear, courageous, and mature reaffirmation of the Baptist Faith & Message is “dismissive” of women. Adopting the Amendment in June 2024 allows Southern Baptists to address the theological, anthropological, and ecclesiological problem of female pastors decisively, for the good of all in our denomination.

Joe Rigney has written a most timely and needed book: Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World. In this short, precise, and punchy offering, Rigney provides a sort of prescription regarding his diagnosis of “untethered empathy”(see here and here) and its awful effects on broader culture and evangelicalism.
My conclusion upon reading this book? Buy a handful of copies, keep one for yourself, and give the others to those in your immediate circle. We live in a rather unserious and incoherent world, and the sober-minded, glad-hearted, Christ-settled posture Rigney calls us to is just what the Good Doctor ordered for the fever of anxiety gripping our age.
In this article, I will take Rigney’s insights and apply them directly to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Rigney is self-admittedly building off the work of Edwin Friedman,[1] and highlights his five features of cultural breakdown. I will demonstrate how there is evidence of each of these features present in current SBC debates (particularly as it relates to our response to abuse and female pastors), and then offer a path forward for a sober-minded, stable, and ready response (and not reaction!) in Indianapolis at the SBC annual meeting this June. The value of Rigney’s work is that it helps readers like me, who may be mystified as to why professing conservative and complementarian influences in the SBC take a “complementarianism for me but not for thee” approach to adopting the Law Amendment. In other words, Rigney diagnoses the cultural pathologies which undergird a resistance to a robust confessionalism, namely, the effeminacy of untethered empathy.
The last couple of years, conservatives within the SBC have (rightly) warned of a “liberal drift.” But the big takeaway from Rigney’s book as I think about my denomination is that it is more accurate to say we in the SBC are being emotionally steered. Drift is a passive term that removes culpability or at least blames the leftward movement on passivity at the helm. It is more accurate to say that the SBC has allowed those who hate her to take the helm indirectly by emotional blackmail through God’s people tasked with leading the denomination. For more on this, see Mark Coppenger’s offering to this month’s Christ Over All theme.
How to Respond to Empathetic Drunkards
Rigney puts his finger on one of the more troubling trends within evangelicalism today. And that is how the world relies on professing Christians to get drunk on worldiness’s disordered passions and as a result, pressure fellow believers to pursue worldly ends (41–43). The world, the flesh, and the Devil are counting on Christians to forsake sober-mindedness, and this unholy trinity can then use these Christians to manipulate other believers. (On this point, Rigney’s exposition of Galatians 2 and Paul’s confrontation of Peter is brilliant, 81–84.)
What is true of groups can also play out on the individual level. Someone who is a conduit of emotions often becomes even more self-righteous than the original emoter. To give an example: Pastor Billy kindly exhorts one of his church members, Sally, to not lead a women’s Bible study using a prosperity preacher’s curriculum. Sally weeps profusely to another member, Larry, about pastor Billy’s “heavy-handedness” and “doctrinal hair-splitting.” Larry gets angry and resolves to publicly confront his pastor—all the while not realizing that he has been emotionally steered into the role of a lackey for worldliness. Rigney explains the dynamics at play in the parable, “Sometimes one person’s sadness elicits sadness in others. But other times, sadness in one person may draw out anger in another (either at them or at the third party who is responsible for their pain) . . . Untethered empathy puts other people’s passions in the driver’s seat” (43).
Rigney unpacks the two ways in which the world will attempt to steer believers through name-calling: “ugly labels for true things, and ugly labels for false things” (40). The former tactic is whenever the world labels Christians “bigoted” for something along the lines of affirming there are two genders, believing 2+2=4, or daring to suggest God calls men to be the head of the church and home.
The latter tactic is when the world calls believers an ugly term, “Misrepresenting our beliefs and then slap[ping] an ugly label on their misrepresentation” (41). This latter category is particularly significant, because by it the world exploits the (good) Christian desire to shine bright for the gospel. After all, it may seem kind of hard to shine bright when your reputation is tarnished. However, here we must remember that “the Pharisees called Jesus a drunkard and a glutton (which he wasn’t)” (41). The world (and worldly “Christians”) rely heavily on the notion that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”—believing that controversy surrounding an individual always points to that individual’s sin. But Christians can take heart, there was a lot of smoke around Christ, and He has overcome the world. The source of the smoke around His ministry was from the pit of hell, not Him, and so Rigney calls us to ensure that (like Jesus) we live above reproach, rendering such slander baseless (1 Pet. 3:16; 4:4). I think this concept is worth the price of Rigney’s book, because this is precisely how the SBC has been steered in dangerous doctrinal and cultural directions over the last decade or so. Rigney rightly calls for Christians to not be moved by ugly labels, but stabilized by God’s word.
It is significant to note how those who get drunk on other’s passions claim the moral high ground as they revile others. Oftentimes, those emotionally steering the SBC are fully convinced they are playing the role of hero, when in reality they are recklessly pressuring or endangering the entire denomination by projecting the guilt of one or some onto the whole body. Unsurprisingly, this tactic also carries with it the added benefit of raising their own stock as an “ally” in the eyes of the world’s disordered notion of justice. After all, “the world is watching” (if you ask empathetic drunkards in our midst). Instead, I would encourage myself and fellow SBC messengers to live coram deo—before the face of God. God is watching, and we ought prostrate ourselves before Him rather than preen before the world (Isa. 8:12–13).
So, what are Christians to do when emotional drunkards weaponize empathy to steer us? Rigney answers with the following strategy: (1) Take responsibility for your emotions. (2) Grow in self-awareness, and pay attention to what particular passions manipulate you. (3) Calibrate your standards by the word of God. (4) Increase your own tolerance for emotional pain and distress. (5) Be willing to be called ugly names. (6) Ensure the slanders are actually false. (7) Do not repay slander for slander. (8) Root all resistance to emotional sabotage in a sincere desire to please God (46–50).
Emotional Sabotage and the SBC
With the basic thesis of Rigney’s book in place, I will now turn to specific ways the SBC is being emotionally steered, and how we ought to respond in keeping with Rigney’s strategy above. As I mentioned earlier, I will do this in conjunction with Friedman’s five features of cultural breakdown Rigney cites. Features one and two (Reactivity and Herding) will be used to analyze how the SBC has reacted to sexual abuse, while three through five (Blame-Displacement, Quick-fix mentality, and Failure of nerve) provide moral clarity for dealing with the issue of female pastors and the proposed Law Amendment.
The SBC and Abuse
Friedman’s first two features of cultural breakdown (highlighted by Rigney) are as follows:
(1) Reactivity: “An unending cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another . . . Whether over-reactive and hysterical or passive-aggressive and checked-out, the common thread is that passions of the members govern and dictate both the mood of the body and its direction” (19).
(2) Herding: “A process where togetherness triumphs over individuality and everyone adapts to the least mature members of the community…The goal becomes ‘peace’ at all costs, otherwise known as appeasement . . . leaders . . . are expected to take responsibility not only for their own actions, but for the (re)actions of others. Disruptions by the immature will be accommodated; anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold” (19–20).
These features of chronic anxiety are best seen in the SBC reaction to abuse. Regarding Reactivity, Mark Coppenger says the hard but necessary truth regarding the unfounded inflation of abuse cases in the SBC being wielded to move the convention to overreaction against our own polity. He writes, “We’ve been assured that the list [of sexual abusers] ‘only scratches the surface’ or is ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ . . . What we ‘extremists’ [an ugly label for false things] are saying is that the problem is not so great as to [emotionally] sabotage our polity, expose ourselves gratuitously to litigation, and divert untold millions of missions/ministry dollars in search of a cure for our dubious affliction.” We are being manipulated to believe there is a full-blown systemic abuse crisis in SBC churches, and this trojan horse has and is being used to emotionally steer some to act against SBC polity without warrant.
As Josh Abbotoy and Jon Whitehead point out, “[P]olitical operatives and demagogues are trying to steer the Convention away from Baptist solutions.” This is a prime example of what Rigney exposes when he says, “The world frequently counts on this (good) Christian impulse in order to steer Christians by means of other Christians . . . Such pressure is frequently harder to resist, since it comes, not from the unbelieving world directly, but from the world through God’s people” (41). Whitehead shows receipts for how this is currently happening in the SBC, citing a noted advocate and SBC critic who says, “If the SBC winds up needing to sell nearly all its assets for the sake of providing reparations and restitution to those it has so grievously harmed, then this would be for the good.”
Southern Baptist pastor Heath Lambert has written a tremendously insightful series of essays entitled “Four Facts about Sexual Abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.” Each essay is worth reading (which is why I share each of them below). As one reads through them, it becomes apparent that the kind of sobriety Lambert displays is precisely what Rigney calls us to. Lambert is clear-headed, stable, and ready to act, able to separate friend from foe and to respond to this difficult topic with the kind of joy that flows from someone who is approved before the Lord.
Seriously, take a few minutes to look through each of his essays.

Abuse Is a Real Problem, but Is Not What We Were Told
Not Everyone Offering Help Is Our Friend
The Southern Baptist Convention Is a Powerful Force for Good
We Must Have Solutions That Understand the Way Our Convention Works.

The responses to Lambert’s essays on X only illustrate the type of baseless charges that will be thrown at those who take a stand against appeasement. Just as Rigney reminds us when he speaks of Herding above: “anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold.”
In the last essay, Lambert provides a clarion call to messengers heading into Indy:
It is important to know that the difference between the acceptance or rejection of any proposal has nothing to do with anyone’s commitment to ending abuse. The only people who like abuse are abusers. The difference between a proposal’s acceptance or rejection is how faithfully the proposal honors our cooperative partnership in the convention.
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Written by Scott R. Swain |
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
In describing the true light’s reception by believers, the prologue picks up a theme already introduced in John 1:3 and elaborated more fully throughout the Gospel, namely, the indivisible operation of the persons of the Trinity. The believing reception of the Word, resulting in the reception from the Word of “the right to become children of God,” is a reception effected by God (through the Spirit: Jn 3:5-6, 8): “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12-13). 

Brandon Smith’s most recent book, The Trinity in the Canon: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Proposal (B&H Academic), offers fifteen chapters on a variety of topics related to the Trinity and the Bible written by a gifted group of biblical scholars and theologians. I was delighted to contribute the chapter on the Gospel of John. Below is an excerpt on John’s Prologue, which is posted with permission of the publisher.
The Being of the Word (Jn 1:1–2)

John’s prologue begins with “three short affirmations” regarding the central subject matter of the Gospel. These affirmations tell us who that central subject matter is, how he is, and what he is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).[1] The threefold repetition of the verb “was” locates the Word on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction, on the side of God’s eternal and unchangeable being as opposed to the creature’s temporal and changeable becoming.[2]
In affirming the Word’s eternal existence (“In the beginning was the Word”), John’s prologue echoes Proverbs 8’s speech regarding divine Wisdom in at least one regard.[3] John identifies the Word not merely as a divine attribute, much less a literary personification. John identifies the Word as an eternally and unchangeably existing “someone,” a “who” and not merely a “what.”[4] “This one,” the prologue tells us, “was in the beginning with God” (Jn 1:2).
In describing the Word’s eternal relation to God (“the Word was toward God”), the prologue suggests why John has chosen the title “Word” instead of “Wisdom” to identify the second person of the Trinity.[5] The Word’s eternal, Godward repose is what qualifies him to perform the divine works of making, saving, and glorifying all things, especially human beings. According to certain ancient conceptions of human psychology, a word faces two directions and fulfills two functions.[6] As “inward logos,” the word remains within a person and grasps what a person knows. The inward word is the mind in the mode of being understood,[7] what Augustine calls “a word in your heart” (cf. Matt 12:35).[8] As “outward logos,” the word expresses and communicates to others what a person knows, making that knowledge common to, shared by others. The outward word is the mind in the mode of being uttered (cf. Matt 12:34).[9] John 1:1-2 identifies the Word as God’s “inward logos,” who eternally sees, hears, and contemplates God and God’s plan for creatures (Jn 3:11, 32; 6:46; 8:26, 38, 40; 15:15). This, in turn, qualifies the Word both to interpret and execute outwardly God’s plan for creatures (Jn 1:3-5, 14, 18; cf. Rev 5:4, 9), which, in the case of human beings chosen, redeemed, and sanctified by the Trinity, ultimately involves coming to share the Word’s own contemplative repose as friends and fellows of God (Jn 1:18; 13:23; 15:15; 17:3, 24; cf. 1 John 1:3). The Word’s eternal relation to God is what ultimately distinguishes him, not only from John the Baptist (Jn 1:5-9), but also from Moses (Jn 1:17), to whom God spoke “face to face” (Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10). “No one has ever seen God”—except the Word who faces God (Jn 1:1; 3:11, 32; 6:46; 8:38; cf. Exod 33:20). Therefore, the Word alone is fully qualified to make the Father known (Jn 1:18; cf. Heb 1:1-4).
John’s prologue not only describes the eternal relation of the Word to God (“the Word was toward God”). It also predicates deity of the Word (“the Word was God”). By itself, such a predication is not necessarily distinctive or unique. Philo of Alexandria calls the Word a “second god.”[10] What distinguishes John’s predication from many Greco-Roman and Jewish descriptions of the Word, is his claim that the Word is uncreated God, and thus divine in the full and supreme sense of the term.[11] Unlike Philo’s Logos or 1 Enoch’s Son of Man, the Johannine Word is not God’s first and supreme creature, through whom God relates to all other creatures.[12] The Johannine Word is one with the uncreated God, existing before and above all other so-called “gods” (Jn 1:15, 30; 3:31; 10:30, 34-36; cf. Pss 8:5; 95:3; 1 Cor 8:4-6). As we will see more fully below, John 1:1’s predication of deity, in the full and supreme sense, to the second person of the Trinity is both comprehensive and structurally significant (Jn 20:28).
One final observation regarding the eternal being of the Word is in order. Though John moves away from identifying the second person of the Trinity as the Word after the prologue, he does not move away from the conceptual framework the prologue has established. Throughout his Gospel, John offers a twofold description of the Son that mirrors the prologue’s twofold description of the Word. In conveying the distinctive nature of the Son’s person and work, John speaks in a variety of ways about the Son’s relation to God (that which distinguishes him from the Father, i.e., his mode of being God); and he speaks in a variety of ways about the Son’s oneness with God (that which he holds in common with the Father, i.e., his being God). In John’s testimony, both patterns of speech are essential to identifying who the Son is and how the Son operates. This twofold pattern of speech, in turn, becomes central to the conceptual framework of later trinitarian theology.[13]

The Agency of the Word (Jn 1:3–5)

The eternal being of the Word determines the nature of his activity in the production of creatures. As we observed above, John 1:1-2 locate the Word on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction, on the side of God’s eternal and unchangeable being, not on the side of the creature’s temporal and changeable becoming. John 1:3 underlines this point by identifying the eternal Word as the creator of all things, the producer of everything that has come to into being: “All things came into being through him, and without him nothing has come into being that has come into being” (Jn 1:3).
In stating that all things came into being “through” him, John identifies the Word who is internal to God’s being as an expression of God’s immediate agency, the divine Word whose utterance brings all things into existence (cf. Jn 5:25; 11:43-44; Rom 4:17; Heb 11:3).[14] To accomplish this identification, John employs the language of “prepositional metaphysics,” which in ancient philosophy was a means of identifying the various “causes” of all things (e.g., efficient, formal, material, final).[15] However, unlike Philo, who identifies the Logos as an “instrumental cause” through which God produces all things,[16] John identifies the Word as a personal mode of God’s immediate agency, in whom God’s own life-and-light-giving power resides (Jn 1:4; 5:26; 6:63).

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There are Christian pastors and leaders who will never address the vital issues of the day, be it abortion, the assault on marriage and family, the violation of children by the trans agenda, and so on. They steer well clear of these issues, just feeding their flocks on happy and pleasant and non-threatening pep talks and feel-good messages. They too will be held to account for this. What they have done is left the walls of a city in ruins, allowing the enemy to get in at will.

Yes, an unusual title, so bear with me – but it is quite biblical. Let me explain. In Ezekiel 13:1-7 we read about how the false prophets are soundly condemned. Sadly, wherever there are prophets, there will be false prophets. The true ones will have to challenge the false ones. The true preachers will have to expose and rebuke the false preachers.
That was true in Ezekiel’s day, and it is true in ours. The Old Testament prophets were inspired by God, while the fakes were self-inspired. They spoke from their own imaginations, and offered people what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear.
While we all prefer good news to bad, if you go to a doctor to learn about a newly discovered cancer found in your body, you want your doc to be honest with you. You want him to level with you. While you hope he says something like, ‘It is benign and we will keep an eye on it,’ you would insist that he tells you the bad news if needed: ‘Yes, it is an aggressive cancer, and we must deal with it immediately.’
In those cases, it really is a matter of life and death, and you want to be given a true word, even if it is unpleasant to hear. In the spiritual realm we also have things that can be a matter of life and death. Simply sharing biblical truth with other persons – telling them that they are sinners heading to lost eternity unless they repent and come to Christ – will enrage many folks, but it is life and death we are dealing with here – even eternally.
The false preacher or teacher will NOT mention sin or hell or judgment to come or the need to repent. Some of the biggest churches in America are known for having preachers just like this. Their refusal to proclaim the whole counsel of God is a grievous sin.
And then there are Christian pastors and leaders who will never address the vital issues of the day, be it abortion, the assault on marriage and family, the violation of children by the trans agenda, and so on. They steer well clear of these issues, just feeding their flocks on happy and pleasant and non-threatening pep talks and feel-good messages. They too will be held to account for this.
What they have done is left the walls of a city in ruins, allowing the enemy to get in at will. They have not repaired the breaches and the city is fully exposed. Such a situation is simply not sustainable. That is how Ezekiel puts it in this portion of scripture. It goes like this:
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel, who are prophesying, and say to those who prophesy from their own hearts: ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’ Thus says the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! Your prophets have been like jackals among ruins, O Israel. You have not gone up into the breaches, or built up a wall for the house of Israel, that it might stand in battle in the day of the Lord. They have seen false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘Declares the Lord,’ when the Lord has not sent them, and yet they expect him to fulfill their word. Have you not seen a false vision and uttered a lying divination, whenever you have said, ‘Declares the Lord,’ although I have not spoken?”
This shows us the seriousness of the false prophets. They put the lives of everyone at risk. Jackals are known for inhabiting ruined and desolate places, tending to themselves. They do not contribute anything of use, but are just scavengers.
Of interest, some translations call them foxes (and Jesus spoke about ravenous wolves among the people). Just today I learned that I have a fox who has moved in under my house. That is no good. I have a small dog and cat and I would like them to live. Now I need to keep them inside until this matter is resolved.
Melbourne, like many Western cities, is really getting to have big problems with a growing and aggressive population of foxes. We have lost a cat or two and a rabbit over the years because of the predatory foxes.
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