Ep. 188: The Lies We Believe

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of indoubt. My name’s Kourtney, the indoubt Coordinator, and I’m so glad you’re listening today. On this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking with Shane Pruitt, who’s the Director of Evangelism for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and also an author and a speaker. Our focus today is really his new book, 9 Common Lies Christians Believe and Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better. But before we get into our conversation with Shane, we have Joshua here, and I’ve wanted to really welcome him as this is your first-time hosting.

Joshua Scott:
That’s right. Thank you, Kourtney.

Kourtney Cromwell:
So, Joshua, we learned a little bit about you on episode 184, but I think it’d be really helpful for everybody if we just take a bit more time to get to know you better.

Joshua Scott:
Sure.

Kourtney Cromwell:
If you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Joshua, what’s your story? Who are you?

Joshua Scott:
Yeah. I grew up in Jasper, Alberta, growing up in the Rocky Mountains, but I grew up going to a public school and going to a really small church. So, as much as my parents raised me to know Christ and to believe in the Lord, I really didn’t take that to heart. But I have one of those stories that I think maybe a lot of our listeners can relate with of looking back and saying, there’s not really a day or a moment that I look at and say, “I was made new that day. I was born again on this day, at this hour, in this place because of this.” I don’t know if it was when I was 10. I was in the car with my mom after church one day, and I said, “Mom, I want to accept Christ.” She said, “Well, let’s pray,” so we prayed together.
I remember that vividly, so that could be the day. But whether that was or not, I grew up in Jasper with a very shallow faith, and I just didn’t pursue the Lord significantly in any way. I actually lived quite blatantly in opposition to Him in many ways, although you wouldn’t really see that on the outside. I was really the guy who wanted to be the nice guy and be the guy who is kind to everybody. Because I did care about everybody, but I also had this root of pride in me that I was the nice guy. I was the guy who held the door open for people. When I came to my grade 12 year, the opportunity showed up for me to move to Saskatchewan, to Caronport, and go to Caronport High School, which is a Christian high school.
It was there that suddenly I was confronted with the fact of I’m not the only nice guy anymore. There’s other nice guys. But rather than saying, “Oh, I need to turn to the Lord, and I need to repent of my pride,” actually, I took it one step further. In my grade 12 year, I not only wanted to be the nice guy, I wanted to be the godly guy. So, I would have my Bible open. I’d be reading it every day. I’d be reading as much as I could, and I would be memorizing scripture. I would be doing the best I could in my classes, and I wanted people to think of me as a great, Christian guy.
But I came to the end of that year, and I stood up at my grad ceremony. As I walked across that stage, I couldn’t even smile because I knew in the depth of my heart that I had fooled every single one of them. I was not godly. I was, in fact, the very opposite of that. I was an incredibly sinful, proud guy. So, I went back to my dorm room, and He just broke me that night as I just wept in my dorm room. It was from that day onward that really my love for Jesus has grown in profound ways.
I went to Briercrest College, and I studied the Bible there. I fell in love with the Word and the gospel as it was expressed through the Word and the fullness of life in Christ. At that point, I still had no desire to be a pastor, which is what I am now and what I’m studying to be. That was something that God worked in me later, simply by opening doors that suddenly I couldn’t say there was any other way that this would happen except that God made it happen. But that was a bit of a long answer to your short question, so …

Kourtney Cromwell:
No, that’s perfect. I want to ask you what you’re most excited about to be part of indoubt. What does that look like for you? What are you excited about?

Joshua Scott:
Yeah. I’m really excited to have conversations with all sorts of people who have studied God’s Word and who are experts far more than I am that will be able to speak to daily life, things that we wrestle with every day. What do I do when my friend is struggling with depression? What do I do when my close friend, my family member passes away? How do I wrestle with these things? Our culture is constantly changing, so we actually need to turn to something that’s steadfast, and the Word of God is that. So, I’m really excited for the fruit of those conversations of how God can use His Word to call us back to Himself and help us to shape our lives.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Oh, good. Joshua, I have one last question for you. This is kind of a funny one around the office.

Joshua Scott:
Oh boy.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Would you rather fight a T-Rex or King Kong, and why?

Joshua Scott:
A T-Rex or King Kong? You know, I’m going to go with King Kong.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Why? Why?

Joshua Scott:
Well, because I’m just a … The reality is I’m going to die either way. I know that. I think King Kong is going to snap me, and that’ll be faster, whereas T-Rex is going to chew on me, and that could be a little bit slower. So, I’m going to go with King Kong.

Kourtney Cromwell:
All right. Thanks for the details there.

Joshua Scott:
You’re welcome.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Yeah. No, thank you so much, Joshua, for taking the time right now. I’m really looking forward to working with you and having you as one of our hosts, and we are going to get into your conversation with Shane just now. Going into that, is there any quick word that you have about it?

Joshua Scott:
Well, I would just say I really enjoyed my conversation with Shane, and I’m excited at what his book really sets out to do. He’s talking about setting up these things that we take as common truths and holding them up against the Word of God. I just hope you really enjoy it, and I hope you get some benefit out of hearing what Shane has found in the Word of God and laying it next to these things. Yeah.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much, and I hope that you guys enjoy the episode with Joshua and Shane.

Joshua Scott:
Well, welcome to indoubt everybody. My name’s Joshua. I’m one of your hosts here. I have to be honest; I’m very much looking forward to the conversation I get to have today. I was just out in the Okanagan, sitting out enjoying a beach and the water, looking at mountains. As I was sitting there, I cracked open Dr. Shane Pruitt’s 9 Common Lies That Christians Believe and Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better. I have to be honest; I was so encouraged at how biblically focused and gospel-centred all of these chapters were as Shane walked through the different lies that we hear all the time. People will just come along, and they’ll say smart little pithy statements that we just generally believe. So, Shane, thanks so much for joining us today.

Shane Pruitt:
Hey, thank you so much, Joshua, for having me on. Let me just say, man, it made me a little envious that you were sitting out looking at mountains because I’m here in Dallas, Texas. So, I’m looking at fields and highways and concrete, you know?

Joshua Scott:
Ooh, man. Well, Shane, why don’t we get started by having you just share a little bit about your story, how you came to know the Lord, and maybe your call to ministry, and what you do now as you’re the Director of Evangelism for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. What does that mean? If you could share just a little bit, that’d be great.

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah, sure. Yeah, grew up in Texas. Been in Texas my whole life. Did not grow up going to church, which I know sounds odd for especially people’s perception of Texas, Bible Belt and those things. Did not grow up going to church. Became a Christian when I was 21. Came out of kind of a partying lifestyle, played sports, partying, chasing girls, those kinds of things. Whenever I got saved, I just spent all of my time at the church and was hanging out with the pastor of the church. One day, he said, “Hey, what are you going to do with your life?” I said, “I don’t know.” Because, Josh, when I was lost, I wasn’t just lost spiritually. I was lost in life. I was bouncing from job to job, relationship to relationship. I was failing out of junior college. That’s almost impossible, but I was making it happen.
Then, he said, “Well, why don’t you at least go to Bible college and learn the Bible till you figure out what you’re going to do?” I was like, “Hey, that sounds great.” I didn’t even know there was a Bible college. So, I went and visited and looked at the degree programs and did not see any math classes, and I was like, “The Lord has spoken. This is where I’m supposed to go.”

Joshua Scott:
That’s awesome.

Shane Pruitt:
So, I started going to Bible college, literally a year after becoming a Christian. I remember walking in, and here’s all these Bible college students doing what Bible college students do, debating Calvinism and Arminianism and all these other isms. And I just learned the book of Job was Job and not Job, you know? So, I literally knew nothing, and some professors began to take interest in me, disciple me. That’s what I needed more than anything.
Fast-forward about two years later, I got asked by a church to come teach a Sunday school class. A little later, got asked to be the student pastor of that church. Became a student pastor, served in student ministry for six years, and then became a teaching pastor of a church. Started traveling and speaking through those, just getting invited to do that. Started doing a lot of itinerant ministry in that time, planted a church, and then became a lead pastor of a church that we planted. The church grew fast with a lot of young families and a lot of young adults. Then, our state convention, which here in Texas is about 2,800 Baptist churches, asked me to come on as director, oversee our evangelism department.
So, I’ve been doing that almost two years. Our team here is a big team that I oversee in our department, so it’s like all the disaster relief ministries, all the student camps and conferences and student evangelism, collegiate ministries, personal evangelism, language evangelism, interfaith evangelism, apologetics, prayer initiatives, and then a large conference that we oversee called Empower Conference. I have team leaders for each of those, people that serve on those teams, so I really have the best job. I get to pour into those leaders, work with churches, pastors, travel all over the nation to speak and preach and teach, and I love that. Then, writing has become a great ministry that I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years.

Joshua Scott:
Cool. Wow. Very cool. So, what is it that’s really stoked the fire of evangelism in you, in your coming to know Christ?

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think not becoming a Christian till I was 21 … I remember vividly of what it was like without Jesus. Obviously, it’s much better walking with Jesus and having his spirit inside of you. So, whenever I became a Christian at 21, man, I just shared the gospel with all my friends. Honestly, Joshua, I look back, and probably in an obnoxious way. Man, I was … Because I believed if God could save me … I am not a holier-than-thou at all. If God could save me, He could save anyone. I grew up in Waco, Texas. If you’re old enough to remember the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, and all that, so they literally thought I joined a cult. They thought I’d lost my mind, but I prayed for them, shared the gospel.
What’s funny is now, fast-forward, is when I went into my 10-year high school reunion, they gave me the award of the person who had changed the most. They gave me 15 minutes to share about that, and so I could not talk about that without sharing the gospel. So, I got to share the gospel with my whole graduating class 10 years later and to just hear so many of those guys and girls now to say, hey, they’re followers of Jesus, they’re involved with church, they’re walking with the Lord. Or, sadly, some of them are still living like they’re in high school. So, I think just seeing the gospel, what He did in my life, in the life of my family, my friends, I really believe God can save everyone. Yeah, man, I’m just stoked to tell them about the God who can do that.

Joshua Scott:
Absolutely. That’s awesome. Not too long ago, you wrote this book, 9 Common Lies That Christians Believe and Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better. I’m curious, what was it that motivated you to write this book? Because I’ve heard these sayings all the time, and I’ve often thought, okay, yeah, I need to bring up and say, “Well, this isn’t quite true.” But was there something that happened that made you realize, “You know what? Actually, no. I need to sit down and write out a clear explanation as to why this isn’t true and why it’s harmful?” What really motivated you to write this out?

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah, great question. I love to tell that story. I have a wonderful wife named Kasi. Next month, we celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary.

Joshua Scott:
Wow, congratulations.

Shane Pruitt:
I married way, way over my head. It’s a picture of God’s grace in my life, for sure. Then, Josh, we have five kids that are 13 and under. That is a prayer request, all right?

Joshua Scott:
Okay, I got you.

Shane Pruitt:
Our two oldest are biological daughters, 13 and eight. Then, we have a six-year-old son who was adopted from Uganda. Then, we have a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter adopted from here in Texas. Our six-year-old son adopted from Uganda has a lot of special needs. He’s in a wheelchair, has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and suffers from a seizure disorder where he has seizures every day. When we first became adoptive parents, we knew that he had some special needs, but it’s one of those things you really don’t know what you’re getting into until you’ve already gotten in it, you know?
I remember just that first year we were just really struggling. At the time, I was pastoring a fast-growing church, and so my wife and I felt the pressure on that we had to pretend like everything was good and put together on the outside. But on the inside, we were both struggling and just to … I mean, because there’s no kind of suffering like watching your child suffer. We knew we did the right thing. We knew he was our son. God called us to this, but just the constant surgeries and doctor visits and therapies. I just remember well-meaning people, I mean well-meaning, that would tell us things like, “Well, you know what the Bible says. God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Or, “If God calls him home, then God’ll gain another angel.”
After that year where we finally broke in a good way of returning back to God’s Word, being honest with our story, being authentic with our struggles, and just seeing some victory through that, we got to a healthier place and just started making a list. Hey, what are some of these other one-liners or cliches that we try to encourage people with that we, for a lack of a better term, have adopted into the Christian community, baptized them, made them a part of our vernacular that aren’t necessarily scripturally true? You know, like follow your heart. Believe in yourself. God won’t give you more than you can handle. If a loved one dies, God gains another angel. God just wants you to be happy. You can never forgive that person.
Because typically what we do is we share those sentiments with someone who’s struggling. You never say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” to someone who’s having the best day of their life, you know?

Joshua Scott:
Right.

Shane Pruitt:
It’s usually someone who’s going through a dark night of the soul. What we realized is what is going to get us through those dark nights of the soul is God’s truth that’s infinitely better than some little cultural cliche that’s not even biblically true. So, each chapter takes one of those cliches, and then what does God’s Word actually have to say about it, and then some good truth to move forward with.

Joshua Scott:
Right. No, that’s great. Yeah. I wonder if you could speak to a few of these common … As I was reading through the chapters, I just thought, man, I didn’t even realize how much I hear this. It’s in the common vernacular of so many people who are in the church and people outside of the church. I wonder if you could speak to a few of them and explain why this isn’t true and maybe how the Scriptures speak a greater truth. I mean, that’s kind of in the subtitle to your book, Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better.
The first one you start with, is probably the one that I hear the most. God won’t give me more than I can handle, and you’ve shared that a couple times. Why is it that we say that that’s not true, and where do we look to in the Word to understand that?

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s so good. Yeah. I think typically when we say that or share that, really our hope is we hope that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, you know?

Joshua Scott:
Right.

Shane Pruitt:
Because comforts and complacency are great idols in our life, and so we love the idea that maybe God would not do that. But the truth is, is when we really believe God won’t give you more than you can handle, what you’re really doing is placing the pressure on yourself. It’s about what you can handle. I think a lot of times, our stress, our worry, our anxiety, maybe low-grade forms of depression come because we’re trying to be in control. We’re trying to handle everything, and that’s doing a job above our pay grade, that at the end of the day, it’s not our job to handle it. It’s not our job to be in control.
Our only job is to trust God to do His job, and He’s very good at his job. And if you think about it, everything is more than we can handle. I mean, take the most basic thing in life. Breathing is more than we can handle if God doesn’t create oxygen and our lungs to breathe. So, we were never created to take on this world by ourself and what we could handle. Because if that was the truth, then there would be no need for faith. There’d be no need for a God that’s bigger than us. So, at the end of the day, if we are truly a child of God, been bought with the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God lives inside of us, it’s not about what we can handle. It’s really about what God can handle through us.
A lot of times, Joshua, people will use that 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 13 that God won’t let you be tempted beyond your ability as a justification for that. But even in that, it says God is faithful, and He will provide a way of escape. So, even in that moment, you’re still depending on what God can handle. You’re depending on Him to be faithful. You’re depending upon Him to offer the way of escape, and it’s still trusting in the Lord in those moments and not about what you can handle.

Joshua Scott:
Man, and what a profoundly greater encouragement is that to say that God will handle these things through you than it is just to say that, “Oh, you’ll be able to take whatever comes on on your own.” I just think, man, that’s so much greater to say that God … You quoted a couple … Well, Psalm 46:1 you quote your book, right?

Shane Pruitt:
Yep.

Joshua Scott:
“God is our refuge and strength.”

Shane Pruitt:
Yep.

Joshua Scott:
I just think that’s so much more encouraging than you’re going to be able to do it if you can do it, right?

Shane Pruitt:
No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. And I don’t know about you, Josh, but I feel like in my own life, the harder I try, the more I mess up, you know?

Joshua Scott:
Yeah.

Shane Pruitt:
Usually, when I make a mess of things, it’s me trying to handle it. God, I got this one, I’ll take care of this. That’s usually when I make a mess of things. And God is the perfect judge. God is really good at being God, and so it’s really about what He can handle through it, and by faith, us surrendering to Him to do that.

Joshua Scott:
Right.

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah.

Joshua Scott:
Another one of your chapters, you hit on this common statement, God just wants me to be happy. I thought, man, I hear that more than I need to hear that because people … The pursuit of happiness, right, is such a strong push in our culture today, especially North America. God wants you to be happy, and in everything you do, just be happy. Do what makes you happy. I thought you did a great job of speaking against this to a greater happiness, if you could put it that way, to God’s purpose of joy in our lives. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that. Why does God want us to be more than happy, and yet sometimes that means we won’t be happy in the world standards?

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah, sure. Yeah. My wife and I, we’ve been in ministry over 18 years. My wife’s on staff at our home church, and so we’ve done just so many counseling sessions and sadly, I mean, I can tell numerous stories. Every chapter I tell a story. In that chapter, I tell this story that really is one story that represents, sadly, hundreds of, you know, a wife leaving her husband because she wants to be with another guy and to say, “Well, at the end of the day, God just wants me to be happy.” I think that God is not anti-happy. I’m not anti-happy, but what I’m dispelling in there is maybe a worldview or a cultural view of happiness that if the circumstances are right, then I have a happy feeling. If my circumstances aren’t right, I don’t have a happy feeling.
The danger in that is this, is we’re allowing usually circumstances on the outside that we have no control over dictate an inward feeling. That’s very dangerous because circumstances change all the time. Happiness can come and go with a phone call. Why I submit that biblical joy is better than pursuing worldly happiness is when we are resting in biblical joy, we’re not allowing circumstances to dictate our joy because our joy is built on a person named Jesus, and so it’s not … Circumstances are usually dictating. They’re outside of us. They’re dictating our happiness. But joy is dictated by a person on the inside.
What’s great about that is no matter what’s going on around you, you can still have joy. I mean, even the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, and he wrote, Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.” He’s writing that in a jail cell. That’s not a happy circumstance, but he still has joy because his joy is built on a person. So, even in a jail cell, his Christ is with him. So, good days, joy, bad days, joy, difficult seasons, joy, great seasons, joy, because it’s built on Christ, and He’ll never leave us or forsake us. We know that from Hebrews.

Joshua Scott:
Yeah, that’s great. Well, we’re coming to the end of our time here, Shane, but I wonder if really quick, if you could just give us an answer to … You make your subtitle Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better. If you could leave our listeners with this final thought, why do we say, why would you say that God’s truth is infinitely better than these pithy little statements that we throw around?

Shane Pruitt:
Yeah, that’s great. Because if you think about it, a lot of these statements are cultural statements that are somewhat new. Even if they’re years upon years old, they’re somewhat new. But God’s Word is eternal, and it’s been around a long, long time. It will be around a long, long time after us, and so God is so wise. If you think about it, there’s really only one or two ways to approach this world. Either we’re going to be at the centre of our universe, or by faith, God will be at the centre of our universe. We can tend to think, all right, hey, God exists to be my waiter, to please me, or I exist to bring glory and honour to the name of Christ.
I mean, and that’s one of the beautiful paradoxes of the gospel is that even when I submit and surrender and deny myself, that’s really when you find the self who God created you to be. And that’s where joy is and peace is and hope is and love and life and all those things. So, that’s what I would encourage is to say, “Hey, am I at the centre of my universe?” Because if you think about it, all these cultural kind of cliches that we just mentioned are really about you. Or is Christ the centre of your universe? If He is, that’s really where you’re going to find that life, and that life that is exceedingly and abundantly more than we could ever hope for.

Joshua Scott:
Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Shane. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk through your book with us and share a little bit of what you’ve found as you’ve searched through the Scriptures. Thanks for joining us today.

Shane Pruitt:
Hey, thank you so much, Joshua. I had a blast with you. Thank you.

Joshua Scott:
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation I just had with Shane. But unfortunately, he had to duck out to an important meeting, so we didn’t get to talk for long as we would have loved to. But I think this is such an important topic that I think is worth spending just a little bit more time thinking about these phrases that we hear all the time that are common vernacular, things we just say to each other, right? God won’t give you more than you can handle or things that other chapters of Shane’s book go on to say, how heaven gained a new angel, or believe in yourself, follow your heart. These things that we hear all the time that are actually profoundly unbiblical, but more than that, they can actually be incredibly harmful.
So, when we begin to believe and hold fast to and teach these phrases and sayings that just aren’t true, we’re not only disregarding the truth of God, but we’re trying to use something that is going to be sanctifying. We’re trying to be helpful and edifying that actually can’t be and won’t be, and in fact, hurts to the opposite. Actually, we’re going to go on and realize, you know what? We’re not happy in a particular circumstance. Maybe God isn’t who He says He is, and we’ll start to tumble down this line of thinking that really isn’t true.
God is who He says He is, and God never promised that we would be totally happy in this life. He actually said, “In this world, you’re going to have trouble, but don’t be disheartened because I’ve overcome the world.” If we begin to preach and teach and believe these common lines of thinking, these common phrases that just aren’t true, even though we’re trying to do good … I’m trying to be encouraging, so I won’t quite tell the whole truth because it kind of hurts to say that, well, truly God is in control. God is sovereign even over these circumstances, and the promise of Romans 8 stands fast that all things work together for the good of those who love Him.
Well, we don’t necessarily want to say that sometimes because we think, well, how could this work out to the good of those who love Him? And yet that’s true. So, I think we need to elevate our view of God, and by so doing, elevate our view of His Word to say, “Okay, if this truly is the Word of God, 2 Timothy 3:16, breathed out by God Himself, then we need to say, “Okay, God is a God of great love and compassion toward His people. His truth comes to His people with encouragement and comfort as His Spirit works it into us and teaches us and guides us, and we follow by His lead.
It doesn’t necessarily take the edge off of some of the hard things that we learn, but it’s so important that we look and say, “God, we trust you. We believe you to be who you say you are. We believe your Word.” So, let’s hold what we’re going to say against the backdrop of the Word, and let’s seek to not be the encouragers ourselves, but to say, “God would you encourage through me by Your Word that is steadfast?” As we care for one another, as we build up one another as the body of Christ, let’s do that. Let’s think, I actually don’t have that ability to encourage and build up, but God does. So, He’s going to use His Word through me. Let’s turn to His Word together.
I’m really excited about the conversation I just had with Shane. I’m really excited about his book, and I hope you enjoy it if you get your hands on it.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for joining us and listening today. If you liked Shane, and would like to hear more from him, check out his website, www.shanepruitt.com, and grab yourself a copy of his book, 9 Common Lies Christians Believe and Why God’s Truth is Infinitely Better. You can also follow Shane on Instagram @Shane_Pruitt78. We’ll have the links on the episode page online for Shane’s book and social media handles.
If you have a question about this episode, any episode we’ve done in the past, or if you’re looking to find out more information about indoubt, you can email me at info@indoubt.ca, and I’d love to hear from you. I’d encourage you to check out our website for all of our podcast episodes, articles, and more.
All of the content from indoubt is made available to you for free because of the generous support we receive from our listeners. We count on and trust you for financial support. So, if you’re interested in contributing financially to this ministry, head over to our donation page online. Anything that you’re able to give is so valuable and ultimately helps us to continue helping you and others seeking for answers to life’s toughest questions. Thanks again for joining us for this episode, and I look forward to having you with us next week as Isaac is back talking to guest Kristen Strong.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.