Dear Mr. King,

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Thank you for including Pastor John MacArthur on your panel for the March 11, 2003 show ("Panel of Christians Speaks Out on War with Iraq").

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I felt that MacArthur was an excellent guest for your show.  He stood in stark contrast to the other panelists on the show, in that
<ol>
  <li>he has a tremendous knowledge and facility with Biblical theology,</li>
  <li>he articulated his thoughts very clearly & succinctly,</li>
  <li>he is willing to be respectfully confrontational, and</li>
  <li>he hasn't bought into the liberal dogma that there is no such thing as truth (and, in my opinion, that dogma is _the_ defining component of modern American liberalism, both political and theological).</li>
</ol>

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I'm sure that you have received large quantities of negative feedback on MacArthur's participation from viewers with whom he disagreed, but I am guessing that the majority of that feedback is along the lines of, basically, "how dare he disagree with me and say that I am wrong (when it comes to matters of religion)".

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For example, at one point MacArthur respectfully confronted Bishop Melvin Talbert about his stance (or lack thereof) on truth and Islam.  Talbert was trying to skate by with the assertion that the opposing claims of Islam and of the Bible are both simultaneously true (an assertion which skirts the Christian's responsibility to exercise discernment in "rightly dividing the word of truth").  Pastor MacArthur confronted Bishop Talbert about this irresponsible assertion, as did you.  Then the next caller that you took labeled this interaction as "a religious war" (which was offensive:  it casually equated the rational debate of theological matters with the sort of "military as an instrument of religion" politics which all of the panel were disavowing, most of all Pastor MacArthur).

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Regardless of that caller's reaction, I commend you for hosting such a "divisive" guest, particularly in an age when audiences tend to equate someone's treatment of ideas with someone's treatment of people, the notion that rejecting a falsehood somehow means hating the person who believes the falsehood (it is this confused sentiment which most irritates viewers with conservative leanings, be they theological or political).  I encourage you to book Pastor MacArthur whenever you can get him in the future.

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Thanks for making a great show.

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-Matt Libby