^{February 20, 2025}

Dr. Voddie Baucham SPEAKS UP About Trump, Wokeism, Growing Up Fatherless

Inside This Episode

How does the son of a Buddhist, teenage single mother growing up in South Central Los Angeles become one of the most compelling conservative Christian voices in the world today? Dr. Voddie Baucham is a prolific author, pastor, and speaker who takes an academic and analytical approach to dismantling many of the culture's worst ideas, from wokeism and critical race theory to the pro-choice movement and trans ideology. In this interview, Voddie also opens up about growing up fatherless, his incredible conversion to Christianity, and he answers the question: “Should Christians support President Trump?”

Learn more about Dr. Baucham ➜ https://www.voddiebaucham.org/ 

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Transcript

Eric Huffman: How does the son of a Buddhist teenage single mother growing up in South Central Los Angeles become one of the most compelling conservative Christian voices in the world today?

Dr. Voddie Baucham is a prolific author, pastor, and speaker who takes an academic and analytical approach to dismantling many of our culture's worst ideas from wokeism and critical race theory to the pro-choice movement and trans ideology.

Dr. Voddie Baucham, it's an honor to welcome you to Maybe God Podcast.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

Eric Huffman: Well, thank you. It's great to have you. We spent the morning together at The Story Church where you preached a couple of times. How are you feeling?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Feeling good, man.

Eric Huffman: Good.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Warmed up.

Eric Huffman: So yeah, I bet. I mean, it's been a long day already, and I'm just grateful for the time you're willing to give us so that everybody can get to know you. I mean, I've been a fanboy for some time now, admittedly. Not everybody might know you and your work as well as I do. Just tell us a little bit about your upbringing, like the early days of Voddie Baucham growing up in LA and what that was like.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Well, I was an only child. I have a sister who is 14 years younger. So I was raised as an only child. Then I have a brother who's 20 years younger.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes. It was very interesting. It was just me and my mom for the most part. I grew up in a time when Los Angeles wasn't the safest place. Not that it is now. But everybody's heard about the grips and the bloods and the crack wars and all that other stuff.

When I got old enough to find a little trouble, my mother shipped me out. I went and spent a year and a half living with her oldest brother, my uncle, who was a retired drill instructor in the Marine Corps.

Eric Huffman: How old were you?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I was about 12. I was about 11 or 12. It was life-altering.

Eric Huffman: Yeah?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. It was life-altering. It was great.

Eric Huffman: So for your mom to send you off, where was it?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Well, she moved. We moved together.

Eric Huffman: She came with you?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. We left. Okay. We left.

Eric Huffman: Okay. You must have been in some serious trouble or potential trouble.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It was just a rough place to grow up. It was a rough place to raise a son as a single mother.

Eric Huffman: What was so eye-opening about having this man in your life?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That there was a man in the house, right? I didn't have that. I didn't know that. I didn't see that. I've often told the story of these two brothers. We lived in this big housing project. And in the middle of it, there was this long field. And... I don't know. I mean, as a boy, it seemed like definitely had to be a whole football field.

As I was older, I went back and I'm like, "No, not quite. This is a long field." But it screamed football field. And so when we'd go, we'd play football. And these two boys came and played with us.

I remember them for two reasons. Number one, because they're from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we thought they said Antarctica. We were like, "We didn't know there were people there, let alone Black people." And they were like, "No, no, no, Ann Arbor." Almost a skull, but not quite.

Two, I remember that after the game, we all kind of found our way back to their apartment. I wouldn't have said it then, but now I'll say what was intriguing was their father lived with them. And none of our fathers lived with us. We didn't know people whose father lived with them.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: So living with my uncle and having him there in the house, that in and of itself was unique and powerful. Then the fact that this guy had done 22 years in the Marine Corps and two tours in Vietnam, and he had worked with canines and he had done scuba diving and all this kind of stuff. I was like living with GI Joe.

He taught me how to hunt and fish and shoot and everything else. He taught me how to train dogs, which was... I mean, it was unbelievable for a city boy like me to be in an environment and a situation like that. I mean, my world was just turned upside down.

Eric Huffman: Right. How did you change? How did your character change during that time? How were you different coming out of that than you were going in?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That's an interesting question. I don't know. I know that was more respectful.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I know that I was more disciplined. I know that those things became more significant parts of my life. I think, looking back on it, I guess I also had a different perspective, a different orientation, something different to think about. I saw marriage, you know?

Eric Huffman: I mean, I know now, I mean, your life has become what it is and you've become who you are. And one of your, in my opinion, most powerful sort of talks or things to talk about that I hear you address a lot is fatherhood. And hearing that, it makes it even more interesting to me to hear your perspective because you experienced growing up without a father and then suddenly you experienced a glimpse of what it's like to have a father. So having seen both sides of it and been affected by both sides of it, you have a pretty unique perspective.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You know, what really hit me was when our daughter was born, our first child was born. I remember she was right here in Houston, you know, she was born here in Houston. I was a student at Rice University and it was my junior year. Bridget and I got married the summer between my sophomore and junior year. We had our first baby in 10 months. So here comes Jasmine. I remember holding her and just weeping.

And what it was, it wasn't just, oh, I'm overjoyed that I have a baby girl. It was just all of a sudden when I held her, I thought there's nothing in this world that could compel me to abandon this girl. Immediately after that, I thought, why would my father have abandoned me?

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Like, how could that happen? You know? And I felt that loss in a very deep emotional way. Just from being in that moment, you know?

Eric Huffman: I’m sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And having that weight, you know, the weight of a father saying, man, this is my baby. I've got a job. I've got a duty. I've got a responsibility. Up until that point, I really didn't have any idea of how impactful growing up without my father had been.

Eric Huffman: It's interesting. I can only imagine at first the feelings probably must have been some like just incredulity or like, how could he? Maybe resentment. But over time, I feel like I could imagine those feelings shifting more to like pity for him because he missed out.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Big time. Big time. Later on, the Lord gave me a relationship with my father, which was wonderful. My mother came to faith within six months to a year after I did. My father, a little later on. And the Lord gave me the privilege of really discipling my father when he came to faith.

Eric Huffman: I did not know that.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. And we grew incredibly close. My father was a big man, larger than me, had a big personality. He was the kind of guy... he walked into a room, space reorganized itself around him. People just love to be around him. I see a lot of that in myself as well.

He was a professional football player at one point. Then after all that was over, he battled with addiction. And for many years, you know, that was his struggle. Then the Lord brought him out of it. Then the Lord saved him. It was like God, you know, gave him back. It was great to have that opportunity and to be able to disciple him.

Then after about six months that the Lord gave us of just this wonderful, incredible relationship, the Lord took him. Back in 2006. He was 55 years old. And just suddenly was gone. But I'm grateful for that season that we had.

Eric Huffman: How different it could have been without that. Wow. What a blessing that was to have that opportunity to disciple him and walk in the Lord and get to know him some before he was gone. Wow. I didn't know that about your story. I feel like I've followed you as close as anybody can from a distance.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's not something I really had talked about. But...

Eric Huffman: It adds more layers to the... I mean, my appreciation for your witness about fatherhood and your clarity about the problem, the crisis really of father absence in our culture, in the West, in the world probably, but particularly in the West. And you've talked about, you know, the numbers being what they are in the African-American community and everybody wants to blame, you know, racism or inequalities on it.

And so much of it goes back to fatherlessness. And it's not just the fathers should be taken care of who suffer. It's fathers who are not being fathers that suffer too, because as you say, that's what we're made for. That's how God designs us.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: There's four things, four P words. I'm going to butcher it. So-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You got it. Come on.

Eric Huffman: All right. So protector, provider. I got it. Protector, provider, prophet, and priest.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes.

Eric Huffman: Talk about that a little bit so everybody hears it.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Just think about it this way. Think about prophet, priest, and king, right? These are Christ's offices. Funny as I say that, there'll always be somebody out there, some feminist out there, you know, who's like, how dare you? You know, you're talking about men and they're the Jesus-

Eric Huffman: It's the kingdom, not the kingdom.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You know, they're the Jesus. And I'm just like, no, no, no. Ephesians 5, that's the role that we play. We love our wives like Christ loved the church. Christ, that prophet, priest, and king. And as a prophet represents God before His people, a priest represents his people before God. And put those two together, that's the spiritual leader, right?

The one who's the intercessor and the one who is the discipler, right? And the provider, right? He sees that his people have all that they need in order to survive and to thrive. And then the protector puts himself between his people and anything that would do them harm. In a nutshell, that's what we're called to do and to be as men and as fathers.

Now, if that's the case, then it's not hard to think about the harm that can be done and that is done when the one who's designed to be the prophet, priest, provider, and protector is absent or derelict in his duties. We have a good God and He is a father to the fatherless, but we'd be naive to think that that just doesn't matter and that that absence would be inconsequential.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And I think the evidence is overwhelming.

Eric Huffman: And I've heard you say also, it's bad for the guys that don't step up because men are not made to live for ourselves.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No.

Eric Huffman: That's the alternative to living for others, wives, children, neighbors, city, whatever we're called to live and serve selflessly and give our lives away for the sake of others. That's in our DNA. It's God-given. And when we don't, what happens? Well, we've seen it in our culture, right? So, culture tried to cancel masculinity, oversimplifying, but the feminist movements and all of that tried to have their way with masculinity and just branded as toxic.

And then you had this toxic form of masculinity introduced, in my opinion, by the likes of Andrew Tate and those guys who present a new form of masculinity that sounds good to men's ears because it's adjacent to our true nature, you know? But it's a bastardized version. It undersells it really.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking about that when you said, you've got these men who are designed for something, but they're not living that way. Isn't it interesting that so many of them spend countless hours by themselves or with a group of other guys playing video games, wherein they are fighting battles?

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Because it's in them, right? So they find artificial ways to go and be a hero, artificial ways to go and stand in the gap, artificial ways to go and stand against evil because they're not doing it in the authentic way that God created them to do it.

Eric Huffman: And the longer it goes on, I think the deeper the despair becomes. I don't know what the numbers are, but anecdotally, it just seems like depression, anxiety, and suicide among young men is and has been getting worse and worse.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Well, I mean, young couples, because, you know, you had this war on men, this war on masculinity, you have men, you know, not growing up, not wanting to grow up and not being asked to grow up. You have them being told that being masculine, being a man, being a patriarch, the patriarchy, that's evil. And then all of a sudden they do decide to get married and now they don't know what to do. Right? Because if I step up and lead, am I then being the evil patriarchy? If I don't step up and lead, my wife, who was raised as a feminist, has in her heart, a desire for a man who's not passive, a desire for a man who leads, but there's a war within her because of that contradiction.

And then we bring children into it. What are we supposed to do now? And now we have this permissive parenting and all this other stuff where-

Eric Huffman: Gentle parenting.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah, gentle parenting, where everybody's moving away from authority, you know? So we have this, this organization that is the foundation upon which society is built, that has particular duties and particular roles and particular structures and everybody in it is warring against the role that they've been created to play. And it's wreaking havoc.

Eric Huffman: And people say it's what they want, but nobody's really happy with this.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Nobody. Kids are not happy. Mama's not happy. Daddy's not happy. I mean, nobody's happy.

Eric Huffman: Everybody knows something's wrong.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Everybody knows something's wrong. Everybody who's looking in on it knows something's wrong, you know? I was at the airport the other day and there were some gentle parents and everybody in the airport is looking like, Do something. This is not okay. And the parents are embarrassed, you know, but they're committed to the facade, right?

Eric Huffman: Oh yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They're saying the stuff and they're doing the stuff and everybody around them is tiptoeing around the issue as well because we know that this is kind of how it's supposed to be done now. I mean, everybody knows, but nobody says.

Eric Huffman: Well, thank God for men like your uncle who stepped up when he didn't have to, I suppose, and showed you what a man really looks like and modeled that for you at a critical point in your life. So we've talked so far about growing up in LA, son of a Buddhist mother. Is that? I mean, was she practicing?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: Okay. And we talked about this transformation in your early teen years and how that affected you. But we haven't talked about Jesus yet or when He came into your life. When was that?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: My first year at university. I didn't grow up around Christians, Christianity, I didn't grow up around the gospel. When I was coming out of high school, I was a highly recruited college athlete. And I had decided early on that because I had a scholarship coming my way, I wanted to make the most of it. And so I didn't necessarily just want to go to a football school. I wanted the best education money could buy. So my first three visits were to Rice West Point and the Air Force Academy.

Eric Huffman: Dang.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I made one other visit. You get five, I only took four. I made one other visit, I went to New Mexico State University because their strength coach, this guy named Gil Reyes, was legendary. He came on a recruiting visit, the head coach, and Coach Reyes came on the recruiting visit to visit me in high school. I mean, this guy was in several Chuck Norris movies as a martial artist.

Eric Huffman: What?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Their strength program was nationally recognized. Relatively small school. So yeah, I was a fan of Gil Reyes. So I went there to visit as well. But I made a decision to go to the Air Force Academy but my uncle talked me out of it.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Yeah, my uncle talked me out of it.

Eric Huffman: Huh?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: My uncle who I'd lived with and who was my hero, he called and we talked on the phone. Back then they weren't letting guys out of there for your commitment, right? It didn't matter if you had talent. Roger Staubach had to go to the Navy. A lot of people don't realize that.

Eric Huffman: I'd forgotten about it too.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: He had to go to the Navy, man. And then he came back after the Navy. And so he said, "Listen, no, nobody's prouder than me. But if you are thinking about playing football beyond this, I'd hate to see you not be able to do it." So coming from him, that was weighty.

He said, "You're 17 years old. You just told Uncle Sam he can have you till you're 28."

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And he said, "If you, hey, you go, you play ball, you don't end up playing professional football, go get a commission. You'll still get a commission. You can still go serve."

Anyway, after this conversation, I decided that that wasn't where I was going to go. Well, by this time, it's too late. You know, there's national signing day is already, you know, it comes and it goes and everybody's made their scholarship commitments and all this sort of stuff. And so I didn't have anywhere to go except New Mexico state.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: So I went to New Mexico state. And it was crazy. Even when I got there, other guys on the team were like, "How'd you end up here?" Coach Reyes left that year. He was gone to UNLV. So I was never on the campus with him. He was never my strength coach. And I'm like, "What in the world is going on?"

But one day, a guy named Steve Morgan walks into the locker room and shares the gospel with me. In five minutes he realizes, I don't know Jesus from the man in the moon. And came back every day for two and a half, three weeks and answered all my questions. That's how I came to know the Lord.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I was there for that one semester.

Eric Huffman: I thought you went to Rice.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I did. I did. As soon as after that. Yeah. As soon as after that I went. But I couldn't go after I had decided not to go to Air Force, right? Scholarship commitments and all that are made, so I ended up in Mexico state. But the very next term I'm at Rice, but I needed to be in New Mexico because that's-

Eric Huffman: It's almost like the Lord wanted you where-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: What was it about Steve's approach or what did he say that sort of satisfied some of your...?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I remember a couple of things very vividly. When he realized that I wasn't a Christian, didn't know anything about what he was talking about, one of the questions he asked me was if I believed I'd go to heaven when I died. I said, "Yeah, I believe so." He said, "How sure are you?" It was cocky, you know? 95%. Who wouldn't want me? Yeah, basically. And he goes, "What if I give you the other five?? And it shook me to my core. I was like, "Wait, what?" Is he 95% sure? I'm 100% sure. What if I give you the other five? I remember that just vividly.

Another thing that I remember is, Steve's from Wisconsin originally. He's a big Packers fan and a big Lombardi fan. So he started, I didn't know it at the time, of course, but he started going through four spiritual laws and he realizes going through this that I don't even have hooks to hang my...

Eric Huffman: A little too soon.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You know what I mean? I'm not even there. And so he picks up the Bible and in his best Vince Lombardi impression, he goes, "Voddie, this is a Bible." Remember Lombardi, he says, "Men, this is a football. We're going back to the basics. I'll never forget that. We just started there. We just started with the basics and answering basic questions.

I remember him coming back almost every day and we're dealing with those basic questions. Then after a while, he wasn't just answering my questions, but showing me how to go find answers to my questions as well. So I tell people I was being trained in apologetics before I was converted.

And I remember one day it was Friday, November 13th, 1987, I was waiting for Steve and Steve was late. And I realized I didn't have any more questions. I just laid down on the floor in the locker room and I just prayer something to the effect of "God the thing you did for Steve that he's been telling me you want to do for me, now it's good."

Eric Huffman: Dude. That's so amazing because I mean, you're a D1 athlete. You got probably the whole world is your oyster kind of thing on campus. You could probably have anything you wanted from a flesh point of view. And there's still some itch that none of that could scratch.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Listen, I started my first game as a true freshman and I had 10 catches for 106 yards as a tight end. Not a wide receiver.

Eric Huffman: Dang. Not before they use tight ends like they are.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes. Yeah. And so it was. You're exactly right. You know, it's kind of that, you know, the world is your oyster, but you don't have it all. I remember that vividly. And I also remember vividly that while the whole campus was about... because first of all, people are like, What's this guy? This guy's supposed to be at some school that's competing for a national championship or whatever.

Eric Huffman: And Rice was not.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And he's here at New Mexico state. What is he doing here? And then of course, after the first game, then there's even more buzz. But not with Steve. That never changed the way that he approached me. It never changed his goal, his mission with me. That's another thing that really stood out at me. He didn't want anything from me. He had something for me.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. That's a lesson for us all. In terms of your worldview and assumptions before that, and that was like before and after who are you in terms of how you saw the world and yourself and then the difference Jesus made to change your perspective?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: If you had asked me when it all started, so why Rice West Point Efforts Academy, I wanted to practice international law. I wanted to be a lawyer.

Eric Huffman: I can see that.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That was just a means to an end. If you had asked 17-year-old Voddie, what do you want? 17-year-old Voddie would have said, I want to be the most powerful Black man in the world. That's what 17-year-old Voddie would have told you. And practicing international law was a means to that end.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Right? And so that was the way I saw myself. I always got good grades. I was National Honor Society and all the accolades, all the everything, was running my student government in high school and all that. That's what I wanted. I figured I'd play football, I figured I'd have some time in NFL, but ultimately beyond that, I wanted to go and practice law and maybe get into politics and have some juice, man, have some power.

Eric Huffman: Right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: The Lord got ahold of me and things ended up very differently. I practice a different kind of international law.

Eric Huffman: It's funny how God works, man. His sense of humor is unmatched. That's awesome. Thank you. More recently, a new chapter of your life involved Zambia?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: Moving your family across the ocean to start a university in Zambia. I'm just curious. I know that's a whole nother thing we could talk about for a long time, but I'm curious how that experience shifted or changed your perspective on what's going on in Christianity here in this part of the world, in the West. I think being outside the culture that you were accustomed to and looking at it from afar might give you a different vantage point. What'd you see?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's not like people think. Like most people, I had my complaints about church in the US and what's going on here. I see those things. Interestingly enough, though, living outside of the US made me more grateful for what the Lord is doing here.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes.

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: This is still the center of the Christian universe. This is still the place where, you know, the overwhelming majority of the theological books are being published, where the majority of the theological training is taking place. This is still the place with very significant, healthy churches, unbelievable preachers here who are influencing and impacting the world in amazing ways.

And beyond that, this is still a culture that reflects the fact that it was built on a biblical worldview. And because of that, we have the freest, most prosperous, you know, some of the safest people that the world has ever known. That's still emanating from here. Now, because we're close to it, all we see is the warts.

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: But when you get away from it and when you live in a culture that doesn't have the benefit of it, for me, I began to see how blessed the church in America is.

Eric Huffman: Wow. That's not what I expected you to say.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's not what I expected to find.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's not what I expected to experience. But it absolutely is. In terms of material wealth, you know, we always talk about materialism and things like that, but the most generous Christians in the world in terms of the material wealth that's shared around the world, they're right here. They're right here. It's unbelievable. But because of that, I worry about what further judgment may look like.

So I think we're under judgment now. People say judgment is going to come to America. I think judgment is here. I think when you're murdering thousands of babies every day, I think when you're castrating children in the name of gender ideology, I think when you have Obergefell and same-sex marriage and people lauding that, and you're seeing that even in churches, I think that is judgment, you know?

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Some of the people that we have and have had leading us, I think we are seeing unjudgment. But even in the midst of that, we're seeing churches grow, we're seeing ministers of the gospel who are standing firm and standing tall. And it's just encouraging. And all of that, I just wonder what further judgment could look like if we don't heed.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. It’s not what I expect you to say about being overseas and looking back at the West and the church, but it doesn't take any urgency away. What you shared actually heightens the urgency to cherish and protect what we have and not let any sort of infiltration from the world or the darkness of culture further penetrate the church and take away this precious gift.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: The Protestant Reformation was largely European. Yeah. Think about the golden age that they experienced in continental Europe and then in the United Kingdom and look at where they are today. Right?

Eric Huffman: Exactly.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That's what we don't want to see. We lived in England for a while and it was almost depressing trying to find a church. And today there's no free speech in the United Kingdom. People are being arrested for their tweets. People are going to jail because of tweets. And not bad ones.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You know what I mean?

Eric Huffman: Wild.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. It's really wild.

Eric Huffman: And that goes away when the sort of Christ-centered foundational assumptions go away.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Huffman: So when you look at the state of the church in America, specifically, you've been one of the forerunners in terms of calling out some of the potential threats and real threats going on and infiltrating the church and churches. I think I first came across your work through Fault Lines, your book in... 2020, 2021?

I just found it in the aftermath or tail end of COVID when we had a lot more than COVID going on. We had BLM and a lot of conversations around CRT, critical race theory, and everything. And I stumbled upon your work and I just dove in, you know, headlong into your online work there. But you've been identifying some of these threats. I guess we could sum them up as woke-ism. I think I'm tired of some cultural Marxism.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: I'm a little tired of that term "woke". I think it's overplayed. But I don't know what else to call it. How big of a threat is that sort of mind virus to the church?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's a huge threat. The first time that I really addressed this, the kind of foundational aspect of it was in my first book in 2004. And then in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, I was blogging back then, back when people blogged.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Those were the days.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I wrote a number of pieces about his Marxist roots and those connections and where all that ideology and worldview would lead. And when he was elected, I wrote a piece basically warning that we would have huge problems on the horizon, particularly in the areas of race because of the ideology and worldview. And it's all because of this sort of Gramscian neo-Marxist oppressor-oppressed paradigm worldview that has been making its long march through the institutions since the late 1960s.

So it's not new. It didn't come from nowhere. It's been here for a long time. Even the term "woke". The term "woke", that's a 1960s term, right? You better get woke. And just like it didn't just materialize out of nowhere, it's been there, it's been in institutions of higher learning, particularly in schools of education. That's where the radicals went in the 60s, right? After they stopped bombing buildings, they decided, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, there's another way we can do this. And so schools of education-

Eric Huffman: Especially the seminary-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Journalism. Yeah.

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: ...and political science, and then all of the things that came out of the political science. So when you look at feminist studies, queer studies, you know, all of these other sort of studies, these all come out of that stuff. So they were there and there are a couple of flashpoints that really sort of brought about the sea change. And now it seems like the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. And I'm telling people be happy, but recognize that those people are still there.

Eric Huffman: They're not changing their minds.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They're not changing their minds. They may have a tactical retreat for now, but there's still more administrators than there are students at Harvard.

Eric Huffman: Sure. Are there really?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And these people are all rooted and grounded in this ideology that gave us wokeness.

Eric Huffman: Which is fundamentally Marxist. That's what I've heard you say a lot.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes.

Eric Huffman: I'm not sure to the extent that argument is being accepted by those who hear it. I don't think the world sees the connections between what we call the social justice movement or wokeism or whatever, and the roots of it being Marxist. But that's something you've clearly seen and articulated.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And many others. Me and many others. But we'll see.

Eric Huffman: That was one of the questions I wanted to ask you is given the... I mean, the last three weeks have been wild bro in the US. It's been three weeks, I think, since Trump took office, and I feel like the Christians I talked to are sort of in a hesitant state of mind. Like they want to rejoice and celebrate, but either because they don't want to be seen spiking the football and being mean, or they don't fully trust what's going on and who's at the helm or whatever. They're just sort of hesitant.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Or they were anti-Trump and now they're looking at the things that he's doing, like standing up for kids not being mutilated, standing up for-

Eric Huffman: Women's sports.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Women's sports. Standing up for pro-lifers who have been persecuted under the last administration. They're seeing all these things that are happening that a lot of Christians were saying, This is why it's him and not her. And they're kind of being hesitant because they don't want to say, Oh, that was a good choice. You know what I mean? Because they... whatever. Yeah. Whatever.

Eric Huffman: You feel though, at some level that Christians should feel some relief or excitement in this particular moment?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yes. It is the kindness of God when... the stuff that we were seeing. Children were being given purity blockers, cross-sex hormones. Children were being surgically mutilated in the name of an ideology, you know? And if you've ever listened to the testimony of a detransitioner, it's gut-wrenching.

Eric Huffman: We've had at least one on the Maybe God podcast. Chloe Cole.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. And then the adversary is always calling light darkness; and darkness light; good evil and evil good. In the NIH's own research, there's a piece that I keep on my phone to show people, you know, people who underwent these treatments were 12 times more likely to be suicidal than those who didn't. And what were we told? They need to do it so they won't be suicidal.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. You can have a dead son or a live daughter or whatever.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And so, yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating these things that are happening, nor do I think that we have to not celebrate just in case there are things that are coming that we won't agree with. Of course, there are things that are coming that we won't agree with. Right?

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And that leads me to another thing. There's this mindset that in order for you to befriend someone or promote someone in any way, you have to sign off on everything they say or do, which is just... it's absolutely ridiculous. You don't have to do that.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: We can say, man, that's great. That's great. That's great. Nope. That's bad. Stop that. I mean, we can do that, you know? But instead people are just kinda sitting back and twiddling their thumbs. And I say, no, no, there's no time for that.

Eric Huffman: You think there's any risk to the Christian witness if we're seen as sort of rallying behind a man the world has decided is Satan incarnate, even though the world doesn't believe in Satan. And to be fair, a man whose track record doesn't exactly scream Jesus in the past. I don't know where he's at today. And I don't mean to suggest that I know where his heart's at, but-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: So there is no alternative. Every man that we end up having to rally behind, live under... And when I say rally behind and live under, I mean, this person is the president.

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: He's our president. And so we rallied behind, we live under our president. We respect the office and we hope that this person whether he's our guy or the other guy, somewhere they got lost. Somewhere they got lost. Right?

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Where it's like, Hey, that's not the guy that I wanted, but he's our president. And I hope he does well. I want him to succeed.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. That's not the case anymore.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That's not the case anymore. But it's also so ironic because some of those same people who were worried about him and his past, because of his moral past, they were not concerned at all and didn't want to talk about Kamala Harris's moral past.

Eric Huffman: That didn't even come up.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Didn't even come up.

Eric Huffman: You had to dig to find it.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You didn't really.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Well, you had to be intentional.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I mean, as far as Christians who are just so, you know, no, because this guy, they weren't saying to people on the left, do you know who she is morally?

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They weren't saying that. They were only saying that to people on the right. And there's just this thing that I have. We poke left and punch right. And we do it because we're so afraid of people. We do it because we want people to think that we're kind and want people to think that we're gentle. We do it because we've been deceived into believing that people don't really hate the gospel and they don't really hate Jesus. They just don't like how we present it. Well, read your Bible.

Eric Huffman: Right. Right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They hate the gospel. They hate Jesus. They'll tell you that it's how you present it. And then when you switch how you present it, they won't like that either. And ultimately that puts you all the way back into the corner where they say, no, what we really want is for there to be no gospel.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. For you to be like us.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I don't have time for that. I don't have time for worrying about that. If I'm happy about this, that, or the other, worrying about how people are going to, you know, identify it.

Eric Huffman: Well, I got some bad news for you, Voddie. I don't know if you've heard, but if you support Trump, you ain't Black.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard. I think the last guy said that.

Eric Huffman: That changed the way you feel about yourself?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No, no.

Eric Huffman: I can't believe I brought that up. Anyway, I think the bigger sort of topic or angle on this is Christians who are faithful to the gospel have to grow thicker skin. And that's something I've seen from you that is a witness to me. You're not that much older than me, but I want to be you when I grow up in this sense that you are not constrained by concerns of other's feelings towards you. And yet I've heard you say, it still gets to you sometimes. But you don't want to be the guy everybody loves to hate, but man, your comment sections can be interesting places sometimes.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Yeah. I stay out of them.

Eric Huffman: It's probably for the best.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Yeah. I stay out of them because of the potential influence. Right?

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You spend a lot of time in the comment section and now all of a sudden you're trying to shave off the edges of what you say because of people who say this or that. That the only comment section that matters to me is the people who know and love me, right? My wife, my church, those people who spiritually are in my life. And there are people in my life who will say to me, Hey, maybe not that. And I'm grateful for-

Eric Huffman: Because they have your best interest in their heart.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Yeah. But comment sections, no.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, bro.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No.

Eric Huffman: There's nothing good there.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No. On both sides, right?

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Because the great-

Eric Huffman: The accolades as well.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: The accolades as well. Those are addicting, you know? I try not to.

Eric Huffman: It can be deceptive for sure. What do you think people who do get upset when they hear you talk about women and men or LGBT or BLM, name your acronym, what do you think they hear you saying that you're not really saying?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That's a good one. I don't know that that's the issue. I don't know that people hear me saying the wrong things or hear me saying something that I'm not saying. I think what we've done is we've created caricatures. And we have a caricature of the person who is anti-BLM. And the person who's anti-BLM is the White supremacist, the white nationalist, the racist, this, that. That's the person.

So if somebody says anything against BLM that we already know who you are. So we don't have to listen to what you say.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And a lot of people, you know, mistakenly thought that, well, because you're Black, they won't try that with you because you're Black. But we just say absolutely will.

Eric Huffman: Which is interesting.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They absolutely will. Because the problem is not the problem.

Eric Huffman: Right. One of the things you would hear from that side, the secular humanist, Marxist side or whatever is, that only white people can really be racist. Unless they decide you are racist, in which case they'll break their own rule. And I saw that with my wife, who is a woman of color. She's a Hispanic. This was when I was still a progressive, not yet a Christian, but pretending to be a pastor. And she was a pastor too at the time in the Methodist church. But she was always faithful. Like she never had these wild ideas that I used to be under the illusion and deception of. I don't know anybody that loves the Lord like she does.

So they would invite her to conferences and committees because she was a voice that needs to be heard, a strong Latina woman who helps us feel better about ourselves for having her at the table. Until she opened her mouth. At which point she was no longer a voice needed to be heard because they didn't like the thing she was saying about things as simple as like, you know, salvation through Christ alone, or the Bible is totally true.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: So what do you call that, when you want to listen to someone because of their race or ethnicity, because of what you already think, you know about them because of their race or ethnicity, and then when they're not the stereotype of their race or ethnicity, you disqualify them?

Eric Huffman: Selective tokenism?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Racism. It's racism, man. You know? "Black people are this. Come Black person. Affirm that." "No, I don't agree. You're not Black." Next Black person. That's racist, man.

Eric Huffman: That's what I saw in my own progressive circles in the months leading up to my conversion. I think the Lord was preparing me for what He was about to do in my life in the Holy Land when He finally got ahold of me. But I first had to have my old world be broken down because I was so proud of my progressivism. And I thought progressives were the good people and all that. And then what I saw was things like with my wife, but also just what I later came to call the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That's right.

Eric Huffman: And I attributed that to one of my books because I had to figure out where that came from. It came from W. Maybe a speechwriter. Maybe W. But that statement is so true. That's exactly what it is.

We'll appreciate you and have you as a voice that needs to be heard at our table, as long as you don't get out of line. At which point we'll invite you out, you know, because it's not really about diversity.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No.

Eric Huffman: It's really about uniformity that looks diverse, but only in the way it looks.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Superficial diversity.

Eric Huffman: Superficial diversity. And there were all sorts of things like that where, you know, Black people just... they don't know how to get IDs. We can't have voter ID because Black people don't know... They don't have the internet. And I just started hearing this from my White progressive friends. And over time I realized there was a lot lacking.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. I loved Ami Horowitz's video on that. Ami Horowitz is a Jewish filmmaker. He went to Harlem and first he asked some people somewhere else about voter ID and Black people and this, that, and the other. And there's these young people who were saying all those things. You know, it's just harder for them to get IDs and di di di and dah dah dah.

So he's in Harlem and he's like, "Hey, do you have an ID?" You know, asking Black people. "Yeah, I got an ID." "You know how to get an ID?" "Of course, I know how to get an ID." "You can find a DMV." "Yeah, I can find a DMV. It's right around there." "Okay. You got a computer?" "Yeah, I got a computer."

Then he would say, you know, people say that Black people can't do dah dah dah and, you know, that people would be like, Man, that's racist. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Eric Huffman: It really is.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And then we asked for IDs to get into the DNC, right?

Eric Huffman: Yeah. You had the hypocrisy.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You had to have your ID to get into the DNC.

Eric Huffman: It was interesting in your message this morning at The Story Church, you talked about briefly about immigration and your experience as an immigrant and immigrated to Zambia and living as an immigrant, having to have all your documents in order and hearing about, or coming back-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Every two years, man. We had to go with that every two years.

Eric Huffman: And we have this, of course, massive immigration debate happening and the deportations and sort of a return to law and order. And there are soft-hearted progressives who are saying that it's hateful and all of this.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And bigoted.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, the Bible is clear. We got to love immigrants and strangers. But that doesn't mean at the expense of law and order. I think that's something we have to hold in tension. But anyway, I just think this is all very interesting.

Recently I've spoken with Christians overseas who are facing persecution and one of them said, you know, you American Christians just keep talking about these culture war things and you're fighting tooth and nail over two bathrooms or three and we're dying. Do you get a sense ever that maybe we hyper-focus on these issues?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. Because it's all we have. It's all we have to focus on. I don't think it's wrong to focus on those things when it's what we have.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Because if we don't focus on the small things, they become big things.

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And so I hear where people are coming from and I agree wholeheartedly the things that we call persecution and the things that we... you know, we don't get it. Yeah. And we need to get it. But at the same time, we need to fight the battles that are ours to fight.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: We need to fight the things that come up.

Eric Huffman: It doesn't have to be either-or.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You fight the small fire so that it doesn't become a wildfire.

Eric Huffman: That's a good word. Your most recent book is... as if you weren't catching enough heat already. It's Not Like Being Black. Tell us about that book and why you wrote it.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: You got to read the subtitle, man.

Eric Huffman: I know it's something about how being gay is not the same. I've read the book, but I just can't remember the subtitle.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement. So, no, that's actually a message that I've been doing. It's kind of a lecture that I did, a sermon that I preached and a seminar, you know, developed into all of those things.

Basically, what I'm doing there is I'm tracing this movement toward identifying the homosexuals, the whole LGBTQIA plus whatever as sexual minorities and why people do that and how that worked. And really it goes back to the same kind of-

Eric Huffman: Critical theory.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Critical theory, and the amorphous ideology. I mean, you wonder. So you got L's and the G's, lesbians and gays. Anybody who knows anything about those movements knows historically they do not get along. But at least you can put them on sexuality.

And then the B's, the bisexuals. The bisexuals kind of belie the argument that the L's and G's are making, but that's okay. You put the B's in there. And then you got the T's. Well, the L's and the G's have been saying forever, it's how we're created. It's a hardware issue, right? They're trying to find-

Eric Huffman: Was born this way.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. They're trying to find pheromones. They're trying to find genes. They're trying to find brain. So they're trying to do this stuff to prove that it's the hardware. And then the T's come along and say, the hardware means nothing, you know? And so ideologically they're complete contradiction, but they're all part of the same alphabet soup.

And in the eyes, people were intersex. That's a legitimate-

Eric Huffman: Biological.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Biological endocrinology. That's a condition. And they're like, how are y'all pulling us into this, you know? So the question comes, how do you put all this stuff together? Why do you keep smashing all this stuff together? Well, in the neo-Marxist ideology, if you've ever seen one of these oppression wheels, you have at the center, the oppressive idea, and on the outside, the ones who are oppressed or whatever. And at the end of the day, whether it's, you know, your sexuality, your this, this, whatever, the oppressor is a White male, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, native born, so on and so forth, and eventually you get Christian.

At the end of the day, the worldview of the oppressor, the worldview that creates the oppression is the Christian worldview. It's the white Christian West that creates the oppression, the oppressive worldview. So what unites all of these people in the alphabet, even though they're ideological contradictions of one another, is that they are a rejection of the Christian worldview as it relates to sex and sexuality. Therefore, they are sexual minorities, just like other people are racial minorities.

So when you understand that all of this kind of is an outworking of the same neo-Marxist oppressor, oppressed paradigm, it really brings everything into sharp relief.

Eric Huffman: You're saying it was, on some level, intentional to sort of equalize the standing of LGBTQ plus people with racial minority groups.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: So that they could be lumped in with, or have their own version of the civil rights.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Absolutely. Yeah.

Eric Huffman: And fundamentally we should think of that in a very different category than racial identity?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: But tell me, from a Christian perspective, why that is the case.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: So when you talk about a person's ethnicity, you're talking about an immutable characteristic, and you're talking about something that God absolutely makes for His glory to demonstrate His grandeur and His creation. When you talk about people who are expressing sexual deviance, you're talking about people who take something that God made for His glory and are actually dismantling it and undermining it and destroying it. And the evidence of that, of course, is that it bears no fruit, right?

Eric Huffman: It's hard to argue with that.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It bears no fruit. It's impossible for it to bear fruit. Not to mention the fact that in scripture, it's clearly outlined as sinful and deviant and a bunch of other things.

So when you do that, the only way that you can conflate these things is if you're arguing for a world where the God who created the world and everything in it doesn't exist. If you're arguing for a world where the people who believe in that are the evil purveyors of a worldview that exists just to oppress outsiders, that's the only way that you get there.

So for us as Christians, we submit to the God who made the world and everything in it. We argue that there is but one race, maybe two, the race of the first Adam and the race of the last, and that there are only two sexes and that marriage is between a man and a woman, not because of what we prefer, but because of created order.

That's the main difference. One of us is arguing from something outside of ourselves that is bigger than ourselves that we're submitting to. The other is arguing from something purely subjective and inward that we're calling others to submit to us.

Eric Huffman: Wow. That's well put. It's almost like you just wrote a book about this. I can't believe you found somebody that would publish a book.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Well, yeah. After Fault Lines.

Eric Huffman: Controversial.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah. After Fault Lines, I figured I'd take my shot now. I'll take my shot now. That one did well. Let me take my shot now. But what was really hard was getting people to carry it.

Eric Huffman: Right. Sure. To sell it. It just reminds me of the story you told in the message today about reaching and grabbing your wife. For those that, most of you, probably were not in the story church congregation this morning, but you told a story about hypothetically sort of a story about somebody seeing you mistreating or abusing your wife in public because they saw you reach out and grab her by the arm and yank her back and she screamed. And then, in the story, they come to Bridget, your wife, and say, "I saw what happened. Is everything okay? I saw what Voddie did." And she explains... you can take it from here.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: That I was yanking her out of the street because the car was about to run her over.

Eric Huffman: A car she didn't see coming. She was looking the wrong way.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman:  And you were pulling her out of the way from an oncoming car. And the other thing that the person who witnessed the abuse didn't see was her embracing you and giving the biggest kiss of your life.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Biggest kiss of our 35-year marriage.

Eric Huffman: That was part of your fantasy. But it's a great illustration because I think the world hears Christians who admittedly we don't always get it right. Sometimes we do come across in an un-Christ-like way. I give you that. But the world also doesn't want to hear oftentimes what Christians have to say, no matter how we say it. And what they interpret is hate, oppression, restriction. And what we're saying is love. It's just not touchy-feely, emotional, sentimental love. It's sometimes let me grab you before you get hit by this oncoming car kind of love.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And the other thing is... you just made me just... you think about this. What people are not being honest about is that those lifestyles, they're not lifestyles or death styles. The levels of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, domestic violence within those types of relationships, the greatest levels of domestic violence in relationships in our culture, they're not male-female. They're female-female. Domestic violence is off the chain for lesbian relationships.

And so, you know, the average lifespan of gay men is some 10 to 20 years shorter than the average lifespan of a heterosexual man. The movies and television programs present this in this, you know, wonderful, happy, rose-colored way, but it's not so. People who are going through these transitions, their lives are a wreck, you know, not just emotionally and spiritually, but also medically.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They become perpetual patients for the rest of their lives because of the stuff that they're trying to do. So I think we need to get rid of that myth too. Because the myth is that there are these people who are out there just experiencing their best lives. They're the happiest people in the world because they're finally being true to who they are, quote-unquote-

Eric Huffman: Following their hearts.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: They're finally following their hearts. And then here we come while the birds are singing and the sun is shining, and we're just ripping them out of this perfect reality when the truth is actually very different. These are dark lifestyles.

Eric Huffman: And speaking the truth in a way that is in any way compelling is a tough thing. So if you're a Christian and you're watching and you're like, I don't wanna stick my neck out there like Voddie's doing, I think we both get that. But, man, let the Lord guide you and just show you how to speak the truth in love. But speak the truth nonetheless and, just no longer going along with the winds of change in the culture. That's always the easy thing to do.

Couple of last questions. If there's somebody watching right now and or faithful follower of Jesus in this culture, given everything we know about this culture, just give us a word for them. What would you say to the average believer out there that's wanting to take the next step of faithfulness and be a witness to the world?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I think you need to be honest and faithful in terms of who you are and what you have. I always talk about Moses' theology. What I mean by that is when he comes to the Red Sea and the waters have to part, God could have done or used anything. But He asked them, what's that in your hand? And that's what He used. I mean, he's a shepherd and there's a shepherd's staff and this is what he carries, so that's what He used.

And so I think we need to be asking ourselves, what do I have in my hand? Because that's what the Lord uses. Yeah. I think the problem comes when we look at other people and we look at what they have and we think, oh, that person is doing it, that's the way it's supposed to be done. I don't have that, therefore, I can't do it. You know? I think we need to just be looking at what we have in our hands and be faithful and be good stewards of what we have in our hands.

Do you have relationship with somebody? Use that relationship. Do you have a writing ministry? Use that writing ministry. Do you have... whatever. What is it that the lord has given you? Be faithful with that. Use that to God's glory. Don't get mired in trying to figure out how to do it like somebody else.

Eric Huffman: You know what He's put in most of our hands are these things. And these things, believe it or not, can be used for God's glory.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Really?

Eric Huffman: But take some work, man. Take some discipline. You gotta watch what you're following and watch what you're saying with it. But yeah.

And what about to somebody, and I know we have people that are still watching who are not on team Jesus yet and have more doubts than answers about Him, and just for whatever reason, y'all don't feel like Christians like me and Voddie are for you and yet we are, as much as God was for us when we were lost and by His grace, He found us. What would you say to them about Jesus and His gospel?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: A couple of things. Number one, there is no other hope. Every other religion in the world basically says you need to have a religious experience and then do more good things than bad things and hope for the best when you die.

And there's so many problems with that. Problem number one, you can't be good. You know that. I know that. You can't be good. And then if you do believe that you can be good, you're proud. And that's not good.

Eric Huffman: Round and round we go.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: And the other thing is, what do you do with all that stuff you did before your religious experience? Nobody has an answer. We do. Christ died for sin once for all, the just for the unjust in order that He might bring us to god. You have to, you have to deal with the fact that there is a God who created the world and that we must deal with Him. You have to deal with the fact that you know that there's sin in your life and you know that this God who exists has to be a just God. A lot of people are mad at God because something happened that they feel like He's not just, which means that they know that God is supposed to be just. But if God is supposed to be just, you're in trouble. And all we're telling you is that there's one answer, and we found that answer. And what kind of people would we be if we found that answer and didn't share it?

What wretched creatures, hateful would we be to have found that answer-

Eric Huffman: Bro.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: ...and then decided not to share it. So whatever it is that you're thinking or dealing with or wrestling with, just keep that in mind, you know?

Eric Huffman: Amen. Well, Voddie, this has been amazing. Thank you for spending so much time with us today. There's more I wanted to get into, but I'm just grateful and slightly amazed that you came to my church and shared a word with us and... just following you all these years online, it's a surreal day. And-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's been my pleasure. I appreciate you.

Eric Huffman: Bro, thank you. As much as I've respected, looked up to you and your courage... like there's other things we could talk about that we don't necessarily line up on on some nonessential, you know. I think your team, maybe team Calvin and I'm team Wesley or whatever, reformed and not or whatever. And... what? We baptized the babies here.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: But you just signed off on everything that I believe, though. Because isn't that what we do today? Right? You can't sit down with somebody unless you sign off-

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Everything that, you know... and I'm calling you sign off on mine.

Eric Huffman: Amen. That's why you're here.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: No. But ain't that good though, brother?

Eric Huffman: I hope it is. I really do.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Because we have to recognize that, like you said, there are those secondary and tertiary issues, that we disagree on. But we sit here and we spent all this time as brothers and that hadn't even been a part of it. And there's so much more that we have. Not that any of us thinks that those things are completely unimportant or that you don't, you know, have those discussions. But there's so much more that we can get done if we do it.

Eric Huffman: And we can't emulate the world, like they did to my wife, you know, when they decided that she was no longer a voice that needs to be heard because she didn't fit their limited whatever. You know, I baptized babies and you don't and we'll work it out in heaven one day. So you're right.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Yeah, man. Amen.

Eric Huffman: Among other things. But Lord, I just am grateful that we have Jesus in common.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Amen.

Eric Huffman: That's all we need. So if you wanna know more about, Voddie, you can find more links in the show notes today and pick up his latest book — Man, I wish I'd written down the subtitle when you told me — It's Not the Same as Being Black. Is that right?

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's Not Like Being Black

Eric Huffman: It's Not Like Being Black. Then subtitle, what is it?

Dr. Voddie Baucham:  How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement.

Eric Huffman:  How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement. Buy it on Amazon while you still can before they remove it. Or wherever the books-

Dr. Voddie Baucham: I don't think they found it yet. I don't think they noticed it yet.

Eric Huffman: Well, thank you again, Dr. Baucham, for being with us.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: It's my pleasure, brother.

Eric Huffman: Been such a blessing.

Dr. Voddie Baucham: Thanks for having me.

Eric Huffman: Thank you. Thank you all for watching.