Curiosity Won't Kill Me, You, or Mike Cosper

On the spiritual gift of discernment

Christianity Today’s Mike Cosper has a new podcast called The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and it isn’t very good. The production is supposed to be about the “satanic panic” amongst Evangelicals in the 1990s and how American independent churches ignored the devils in their own midst even as they villainized the culture around them. The first few episodes evidently provide historical context that led to the satanic panic. But Cosper’s “history” strikes me as bad journalism and poor storytelling. He talks at length about Billy Graham, Larry Norman, Bill Gothard, Richard Nixon, Josh Duggar, and the West Memphis Three. But all these (granted interesting) historical vignettes seem like a series of non-sequiturs. There’s no backbone to keep it all together. And then there’s the eerie music that sounds like the gongs clanging in the wind in an abandoned Tibetan temple. The canned horror-flick music seems…overproduced.

The seeming lack of organization reminds me of one episode of his The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill—a podcast I felt generally positive about. In the midst of asking why “we”—the people of American Evangelical churches—keep letting celebrity narcissist pastors like Mark Driscoll do their thing (an important and welcome question!), Cosper inserted an entire episode about former Indiana coach Bobby Knight. The only connective tissue to Mark Driscoll seemed to be “here’s another celebrity who had an anger problem.”

The reason I bring all of this is up is because it’s gotten me thinking once again about how I feel about Evangelicalism in the United States, especially given our current political situation. 80% of Evangelicals voted for Trump.

For my part, I’ve been coming to terms with the how incredibly mixed Evangelicalism’s history is. This shouldn’t need to be said because one could say that about literally any movement from the Republican Party to punk rock to the Boy Scouts of America. On my listening of The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Cosper seems to concede this about the characters he highlights, but only rarely admits it. For example, he relates the lengths some Evangelicals went to villainize the use of LSD in the 60s and 70s, even going as far as to lie about some individuals’ causes of death. He suggests that Evangelicals overreacted to the threat of pervasive drug use in American society. But then Cosper relates story after story of what seems like a genuine public health crisis, tacitly admitting that Evangelicals were right to draw attention to the issue. At one point, there’s mention of a person who lived for several years believing they were a frog because of the effects of the psychedelic. More examples abound in the podcast.

My Pentecostal upbringing taught me about the importance of discernment. Paul mentions the “ability to distinguish between spirits” in his list of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:10). I was taught that this meant that something may have the appearance of good, but might actually be evil. Or the opposite: something might seem obviously evil, but God might still be working in the midst of it, and we need to have eyes to see and ears to hear it. The Spirit gives us sight and hearing when we don’t have either.

Curiosity is a virtue. And, like most virtues, humans have some natural ability to cultivate it. There’s a limit to growth due at least to our sinful desires. That’s why the Spirit is poured out to make us (however temporarily and imperfectly) what we will be in the New Heavens and New Earth. We can’t distinguish between all spirits now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at all. With God’s help, we can begin with curiosity, and then let the Spirit use our curiosity to discern what is good, beautiful and right—and what’s not.

And that’s how I’ve come to think about Evangelicalism. As some of you know, I’ve held my own relationship to Evangelicalism at arm’s length. But as of late, I’ve also intentionally become curious about how many ways I’m positively and deeply indebted to the Evangelical waters I’ve swam in my entire life. I believe this is a work of the Spirit.

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In case you missed it…

I have a new book out about how God hasn’t given up on little churches. Here’s what Allen Tennison, theological counsel to the General Council of the Assemblies of God says about it:

“This book is the testimony of a Pentecostal pastor who worked hard to revitalize the worship of his congregation and, in the process, resuscitated a dying church. Lear writes to other Pentecostals to demonstrate how a church’s worship shapes the quality of their discipleship. Some may be uncomfortable with his testimony as it includes historic Christian practices rarely seen in Pentecostal gatherings. You do not have to embrace all his recommendations to appreciate his approach. Lear takes seriously the worship of the church as a faithful response to the full gospel of Jesus under the direction of the Holy Spirit. What could be more Pentecostal than that?”