Southern Baptists Need to Stop Hating Thom Rainer

I don’t know who Tim Dukeman is, but he has written an excellent blog post titled Selling Crack for Jesus.  This post highlights a major problem in the Southern Baptist Convention.  It’s not too long, and I’d encourage you to read it before you continue reading this post.

Thom Rainer, President and CEO of Lifeway, seems like a nice guy.  He writes blogs that are helpful for some pastors and churches.  And he makes his living selling spiritual poison.  

His decision to sell books by some of today’s most harmful false teachers is leading many further from Christ and hardening hearts to the truth of the gospel.  

If you don’t believe me, take a look at some of the books found by JD Hall and Justin Peters when they visited a Lifeway together a few months ago.

• T.D. Jakes teaches the prosperity gospel, which is an entirely different gospel than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and no gospel at all.  He also comes from a Oneness Pentecostal background which denies that God is eternally Father, Son, and Spirit all at the same time.
• Rick Warren distorts the message of the book of Daniel into a diet plan in The Daniel Plan.  
• John Hagee is a false prophet.
• Sarah Young is a false prophet who blasphemously claims to write the very words of Jesus.  It should be noted that the tenth anniversary edition of her book Jesus Calling contains numerous revisions of the supposed words of Jesus.
• Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker is supposedly a Christian book on prayer, yet his ideas are not drawn from Scripture but a Jewish myth.
• The various books about supposed visits to Heaven contradict Scripture and each other.

In Matthew 23:15, in the middle of a series of woes pronounced against the scribes and Pharisees, our Lord Jesus said this:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. 

The scribes and the Pharisees were the dominant false teachers in Jesus’ day.  Jesus tells us that it’s better for a person to be spiritually neutral than caught in false teaching, for the person caught up in a false religious system, even if it has a veneer of Christian truth, is doubly damned.

In 1 Timothy 4:1 Paul wrote to Timothy, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”  The source of all false teaching, going all the way back to the serpent in the Garden, is demonic.  

False teaching is not something to be trifled with.  

I have no doubt Thom Rainer knows these verses.  Yet, he sells books by demonstrably false teachers and false prophets for profit.  He personally profits off of the selling of books that contradict the teaching of Scripture, that have their origin not in the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, but rather are the doctrines of demons.

What does they say about Thom Rainer? About Lifeway?  About the Southern Baptist Convention?

I don’t know Thom Rainer’s heart.  I do know though, that if Thom Rainer’s fellow Southern Baptists actually loved him they would call him to repentance.  The fact that none of his peers among the SBC elite have done so indicates that they are not loving him as they should.

If those close to him truly loved Rainer they would warn him.  They would plead with him.  And if he wouldn’t stop selling the spiritual poison that is he is selling, they would seek to have him removed from his position.  By continuing to sell false teaching for profit he is putting his own soul and the souls of thousands at risk of eternal damnation.  

It is not loving to remain silent when this is the case.  It is not loving to gently ask him why he is selling these books and then drop the issue when he doesn’t respond.  

The way to love Thom Rainer and our neighbors right now is to keep calling on him to stop selling books by false teachers through whatever means are available.  

The way to love Thom Rainer and our neighbors right now is to stop shopping at Lifeway and hope they have to shut down operations if Rainer won’t stop selling the dangerous books he’s selling.

The way to love Thom Rainer and our neighbors right now is to call on influential Southern Baptists like David Platt and Al Mohler, who have spoken out against some of the very books pictured above, to use their influence to remove the books of false teachers and heretics from Lifeway.  

The way to love Thom Rainers and our neighbors right now is to not stop talking about this issue no matter how much smug condescension and bitter hate-speech the Southern Baptist elites like Ed Stetzer ( also employed by Lifeway) and Russell Moore send our way.  

Brothers and sisters, let us love Thom Rainer and our neighbors by not staying silent and not remaining inactive.