Evangelical controversies and the LeBron problem.

Law, gospel, the online outrage machine, and the need for more coffee conversations.

Photo by Kevin Mazur / Getty Images

A while ago, there was a lot of hullabaloo regarding Megan Basham’s book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, which was marketed as a book that would pull the masks of compromise off prominent thinkers and leaders operating in a wide array of capacities and positions within broader Evangelicalism. The apparent “progressive creep” was enough for Megan to throw down the proverbial gauntlet as she interrogated the supposed adoption of “leftist” agendas — such as social justice, critical race theory, and pandemic-era government mandates — at the expense of biblical fidelity. Her book quickly made the rounds. Critics and proponents quickly published their approvals, responses, or rebuttals, noting both the broadsides The Daily Wire author launched and the numerous research errors that appeared throughout.

I will leave the more pointed critiques or reviews for those more in the know. However, I highly recommend you read

Samuel D. James

’s very fair and thorough analysis. If you want a full evaluation of this matter, Samuel’s is the one to digest. Likewise, Zoe Miller published a two-part review for The Heidelblog, which is also very well done. (You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.) Jordan Steffaniak, editor of The Hanover Review and founder of the London Lyceum, published a lengthy read that is also well worth your time. This quote from Jordan’s piece stood out to me:

If we suggest a Christian is for sale, corrupt, or apostate, it should be related to matters of creedal orthodoxy — not matters of political activism which are matters of Christian liberty and prudence.

I usually tend to stay away from controversies like these, especially ones that seem to exist only online. To date, I have never had anyone approach me about the “Megan Basham controversy,” let alone her book, and I don’t expect I will. That doesn’t mean it is not worth commenting on, but it does mean, at least for me, it is less urgent. What is worthwhile, though, is considering how this controversy is itself a microcosm for the issues that are fracturing both the church and society. Those with whom we disagree are automatically siphoned into a new bin of enemies whom we mark and avoid for the foreseeable future. I call this the “LeBron Problem.”

I have an embarrassing amount of texts in my phone to a beloved group chat in which I can be seen defending the professional legacy of LeBron Raymone James, Sr. (as if it needed defending). It has become a running joke within the group to avoid the topic almost entirely or else risk the wrath of my thumbs as I reply with lengthy exposés articulating the merits of LeBron’s “G.O.A.T.” status. At this point, I think I’ve convinced myself of this argument, even though I might say otherwise if my life depended on it. The point is, and those within the group thread know this is true, that I mostly take up the mantle of LeBron defender because some of the rhetoric surrounding him might make one believe he’s a scrub. In the very long shadow of Michael Jordan’s much-lionized and mythologized NBA career, LeBron barely registers, or so the argument goes.

The LeBron Problem emerges when a Jordan defender can’t even seem to acknowledge the truly remarkable and noteworthy career James has had, one that has seen him log the most points of all time among a litany of other accolades. But compared to Jordan’s six NBA championship trophies, LeBron’s awards are piddling. Apparently, nuance is disallowed and you are not allowed to claim that both Jordan and LeBron were the greatest of all time during their respective generations. Never mind the fact that comparing the game of basketball from the nineties to today is like comparing an iPod Touch to an iPhone 16. It’s not the same. (And, to be honest, I don’t very much care for what the modern NBA has evolved into. The flurry of three-point shot attempts has all but nullified any sort of creativity or “poetry in motion” that used to be part and parcel of the sport. This piece from Freddie DeBoer expresses my feelings pretty accurately.)

Before I ramble more about that topic, let me rein myself in by bringing this back to the controversy at hand. What Basham’s book represents, for better or worse, is the notion of incoherent jingoism for one’s held beliefs. You could also call this the “ESPN First Take Problem,” but I won’t beleaguer you with yet another sports-related analogy. Nevertheless, what stifles any discussion is the presupposition that one’s convictions are one hundred percent true one hundred percent of the time. Despite well-founded and -articulated arguments, we dig in our heels and rest on our long-held beliefs, no matter what our rivals have to say. This might make for (moderately) interesting television (again, see First Take), but it doesn’t lead to any exchange of ideas necessary to find common ground and preserve relative harmony.

Actual conversations that lead to eventual resolutions are the byproduct of intentional understanding of and/or active listening to the opponent’s perspective. I think the reason we aren’t eager for these types of conversations is that it opens us up to the possibility that not only may our rival be right but also we both might be. Again, there’s no reason any healthy basketball discussion can’t end with the recognition that both LeBron and Jordan are the G.O.A.T. The same could be said about the 80s with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson or, to go back even further, about the 50s-60s with Bill Russell and Walt Chamberlain. The point is that both assertions can be right at the same time. Not only is that “not how the world is supposed to work,” so we think, but it is also incredibly taxing on our longstanding convictions.

This is where Dave Zahl’s book Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself) proves so insightful and trenchant. Dave’s basic premise is community and relationships are forged when we embrace our frailty, fallibility, and dependence; theologically speaking, it’s when we accept and admit our need for grace. “A low anthropology,” Dave says, “injects even our most heartfelt conclusions with humility” (35). The tenets of the gospel excepted, everything else should be held loosely. Basham’s book, therefore, while neither a wholesale failure nor a success, ought to be engaged from this vantage point. But, more to the point, this brings me to an even more recent brouhaha involving Basham and something she posted to Twitter/X.

I’m not sure where the conversation began or what posts preceded this one, so I can’t (won’t) comment on the politically charged narrative that may or may not be behind this exchange (let the reader understand), but, nevertheless, Megan shared the way in which she understands the biblical account of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), writing:

The love shown by the good Samaritan is so extravagant that every single person [on] this planet fails to meet that standard. Only one has ever shown that kind of love.

And that was the point of the parable. To show us how far we are from God’s standard so that we realize that only by taking on the righteousness of Christ, could we ever meet it.

It’s not actually a story just telling you to be nice to people. It’s a story pointing you to your need for a perfect Savior.

Notably, her interpretive lens appears to be wholly Christocentric — that is, the Christ of God is the true and better Samaritan who not only attends to the wounds of left-for-dead Jewish travelers but also shoulders the weight of the world’s sins and is mortally wounded on the cross so that sinners might be mercifully absolved. This, I take it, is what she means when she says that the “point of the parable” is to highlight the apparent chasm between God’s standard of neighborly love and righteousness and our ability to live up to it.

Whether she meant to or not, this understanding of Jesus’s parable is paradigmatic of a law-gospel hermeneutic. (For what it’s worth, I took the same approach when I wrote about the parable back in the day.) But this explanation didn’t sit well with the Twitter-verse, apparently, with some referring to Basham’s view of Scripture as “abhorrent” and “effed up” since she was seemingly undermining or lessening one’s biblical socio-political responsibility to love one’s neighbor or something like that. (Not The Bee’s Peter Heck collected some of these reactions and offered his own comments on the kerfuffle, which aligns with what I’ve been saying thus far.) It would appear that emphasizing how the Bible points us to Christ is tantamount to letting citizens run amok and treat their neighbors discompassionately.

Again, the point is that both applications of Luke 10 are true. Jesus is, to be sure, making a social point to expose the atrocious treatment of those who were viewed as “lesser than” in those days, but he was also making a point about himself. That shouldn’t be a shocking statement. All of Jesus’s words were, in a way, about himself since his entire earthly life was an embodied revelation of the heart of God. Consequently, his story about the Good Samaritan is that for all the ardent law-keeping on display by the religious aristocracy, it still wasn’t good enough to warrant entry into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says as much at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).

No amount of social action, charitable donations, or humanitarian projects can fulfill God’s standard of righteousness. For that, we need someone capable of giving us the very righteousness of God, which, of course, is what the gospel announces has been offered to one and all through the person and work of Jesus Christ. This, however, doesn’t mean there’s no need or sense of urgency to treat others compassionately. On the contrary, we could all do for a more heartfelt consideration of the plight of those with whom we do life and interact on a daily basis. Perhaps conversations like this ought to be relegated to just that: face-to-face conversations with actual people. Indeed, I think we would all do well to listen to the sage advice of the late Episcopal priest Robert F. Capon, who once quipped, “The world could use more pastry cooks and fewer politicians” (45).

Instead of quarreling over who said what and who is greater than whom, perhaps we should try actually talking to someone in person over a cup of coffee and a donut — someone whose views are contrary to our own. This, to me, is what’s missing most in all the brouhaha of our present moment. (And yes, I understand the irony of such imperatives being published online. But I’m also preaching to myself here.) Rather than look for the next theological or cultural skirmish to wage from behind our screens, we might do well to take a breath and remember that the avatar on the other side of the debate is, in fact, a person — a flawed and frail human being who needs the very same grace we so readily claim for ourselves. Perhaps if we set aside our need to be right long enough to share a meal (or at the very least, a bear claw), we might discover that the real scandal of grace isn’t in winning the argument but in the humbling realization that Christ has already won it for us.

Okay, now I need a donut.

Grace and peace to you.

Works cited:

Robert Capon, More Theology & Less Heavy Cream: The Domestic Life of Pietro and Madeleine (Charlottesville, VA: Mockingbird, 2016).

David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself) (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2022).