In his latest column in the Southeast Missourian (Oct. 3-4, 2026) Shawn Wasson wants his readers to fact-check their pastors, and it’s a fair request. The Bereans examined even Paul’s teaching against Scripture. So I tried it with Wasson’s own argument.

He warns of clergy calling Jesus transgender and doubting he ever lived, but he never says who they are, where they spoke, or what they actually said. There’s nothing to open, nothing to search, nothing to weigh.

Instead, he hands down the verdict himself. They aren’t real pastors, he writes. He borrows Jesus’ words from John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil,” and likens their churches to a synagogue of Satan.

That isn’t fact-checking. It’s the very thing he says it guards against: a man in a position of trust telling people what to believe and expecting them to take his word for it.

The Bereans made no exception for Paul. 

We shouldn’t make one for Wasson.