Andy Stanley calls out conservatives who say that the Democratic Party and Christianity cannot go hand in hand. And also, we are going to look back at Pride Month and go into some taboo territory about the ideology that underpins this community. This episode is brought to you by GoodRanchers.
00:03:54.160It's actually not compassionate at all.
00:03:56.180It harms the most vulnerable, the very people we say that we are trying to help when we open up the border.
00:04:02.680And so I am unapologetically a Christian who is so thankful to be born in America and to say that, yes, I care about the well-being and the interests of the American people before the well-being and the interests of other countries.
00:04:24.100Yes, all people are made in the image of God.
00:04:26.420Yes, the kingdom of God is made up of all kinds of people.
00:04:29.700And when we get to the other side of eternity, we will be linking arms with our brothers and sisters in Christ of all different skin colors and of all different kinds of backgrounds.
00:04:41.280And that, above anything else, of course, is our highest allegiance, is our utmost citizenship, if you will, our greatest alliance.
00:04:51.940Of course, of course, of course, that is true.
00:04:53.300But here in this life, which matters because we are in a physical, temporal context right now that God has providentially placed us in, we have to care about the country, the state, the communities in which God has purposely put us.
00:05:11.100We care about the interests and the needs of our fellow citizens because, again, God has placed us here, not arbitrarily, not accidentally, but on purpose.
00:05:28.020You are on this tiny spot of the universe, this tiny speck of eternity right now for a reason.
00:05:35.280So are your children and so are your children's children, just as Israel, as exiles.
00:05:41.040In Jeremiah 29, we're tasked with making the world around them better, the community around them better while they were in exile.
00:05:50.340So Christians who are exiles in this life are called to make the world around us better, to make it better than how we found it once we leave.
00:06:07.200Politics matter because policy matters, because people matter.
00:06:11.440People matter to God, and therefore people matter to us.
00:06:16.160And so just remember that as we hear this very vague, morally relativistic language from a lot of professing Christians, that we don't need to care about politics, that that's so-called empire or Christian nationalism, that we shouldn't involve ourselves at all, and that none of this really matters all that much because Jesus is coming back.
00:06:41.420Jesus is absolutely coming back, praise God, but he's not here yet.
00:06:56.540Political wins are not our number one priority because we know Jesus has the victory in the end.
00:07:02.500But what are we tasked to do for his glory?
00:07:05.900Doing the next right thing in excellence with faith and for the glory of God.
00:07:12.540Doing the next right thing with faith and excellence and for the glory of God.
00:07:18.240I kind of change up the preposition sometimes, but it's all the same spirit.
00:07:23.200So all that to say, happy 4th of July.
00:07:27.180There's a lot of good, bad, and ugly in America, but let's thank God for the good and celebrate our friends and our family and the freedom that we have to express our faith tomorrow and going into the weekend.
00:07:37.900Also, we will have replay episodes next week, Monday and Tuesday.
00:07:44.100Just FYI on that, we're taking a little bit of a break as a team, but we'll have a new episode Wednesday and Thursday of next week.
00:07:51.620Also, we've got a new merch drop, similar design, same designs that you've seen in the past.
00:07:57.520Our most popular design ever is the t-shirt and the sweatshirt that says, you're not enough and on the back, but Jesus is.
00:08:04.580Of course, that's a play off of the book that I wrote a few years ago.
00:09:31.140They are so transparent about their struggles and about some really bad big things that have happened in their marriage and how God has just redeemed it.
00:09:38.840They've also given parenting advice and my parents too in this conversation.
00:09:43.860And so you guys are going to love this.
00:09:47.940Use code Allie for $20 off your subscription.
00:09:50.420When you subscribe, you get access to all Blaze TV exclusive content.
00:09:54.300That helps us out, that protects us from the censors, and it makes sure you have access to all kinds of really cool stuff that only subscribers get.
00:10:24.920There are certainly a lot of people in my life that I love, that I respect so much, that go to Andy Stanley's church.
00:10:33.320I am not trying to—I'm certainly not trying to attack you, and I'm not even trying to attack Andy Stanley.
00:10:39.740Sorry, I just lost my voice a little bit.
00:10:41.520I'm not trying to attack Andy Stanley.
00:10:43.740When he says something publicly that seems pertinent to the things that we talk about on this show, I think it's really important to respond to it.
00:11:31.840He has also been very outspoken about how the church treats the quote-unquote LGBTQ community.
00:11:39.500We'll include a couple past episodes that we've done in response to things that he has said that I think are just absolutely unbiblical and dead wrong.
00:11:48.520And I want to do the same thing today.
00:11:51.840I think it's really important to point out what I see as error in what he is saying here.
00:11:57.940And so we've got two different clips from his sermon that we are going to play.
00:12:03.240You can go listen to, watch the whole sermon, okay?
00:12:49.200And so that's just a term that people have used for a very long time to call for a clip.
00:12:58.100And it just helps the people back there know exactly what clip I'm calling for rather than them trying to guess based on the context of what I'm saying.
00:13:13.520That you can't be a Christian and be a Democrat.
00:13:16.840You can't possibly be a true Christian if you're a Democrat, which is absolutely absurd.
00:13:26.140But what's even more absurd is as conservative Christians, Republicans, demonize Democrats, all Democrats, and you can't possibly be a Christian, as they demonize Democrats,
00:13:38.860they basically go against one of Jesus' primary teachings.
00:13:43.280Instead of loving their enemies, all these lost Democrats, they demonize them.
00:13:48.280Okay, I have no idea if he is talking about me or this show or who exactly he has talked about.
00:13:55.120But I have seen some people say that I have said that, that I have said you can't be a Christian and be a Democrat.
00:14:03.080What I have said many, many times very explicitly is that, of course, our partisan affiliation is not what gets us into heaven.
00:14:42.260Progressivism is its own opposing ideology and religion with its own theology, its own soteriology, its own eschatology.
00:14:57.000And once you understand the roots of progressivism, the tenets of progressivism, the goals of progressivism, you begin to see that.
00:15:07.600It's not just a subset of politics that Christians can choose from.
00:15:17.180At least they can't choose from progressivism and be aligned with Scripture.
00:15:22.160Now, that is not to say that every Republican policy is explicitly supported by the Bible or that Republicans are all the representatives of Christianity and sound Christian doctrine.
00:15:38.800But I say that where Republicanism, where conservatism in America today gets it wrong is that they are not nearly conservative enough when it comes to things like marriage, when it comes to things like immigration, for example.
00:15:58.200I actually think that they should be a lot more conservative, if that's even the adjective that you want to use on those issues.
00:16:05.140The problem that I have with Republicans today is not that they are too far right, is not that they are too conservative.
00:16:12.600It's that they are not conservative enough.
00:16:15.320They are actually too liberal, I would say, and too squishy on most issues.
00:16:20.240So I certainly don't think that Republicans are perfect, but typically what you hear from what I call like the mushy middle and evangelicalism is that, oh, Republicans and Democrats are both bad and Republicans are way too extreme on the right and Democrats are way too extreme on the left.
00:16:35.980And we really need to be somewhere that's more independent, somewhere that's more centrist, somewhere that's more in the middle.
00:16:42.520We should take some Democrat policies and take some Republican policies.
00:16:49.320We should get out of this dichotomy, get out of this binary, take policies from both sides.
00:16:55.300And, you know, Tim Keller, who I really respect and in a lot of ways and who I learned from a lot while he was alive, he talked about this a lot, that it seemed that that should be the Christian position, that kind of like third way of taking things from the right and the left.
00:17:14.980Look, I also think Christians exist out of America's political binary of Republican and Democrat, but it's not because we should be in the middle of them, in my view.
00:17:26.840It is actually because we are way more conservative, according to scripture, than the current Republican Party.
00:17:32.880Of course, like we are going to have a staunch view on marriage and sexuality, even on things like freedom of worship, freedom of religion, maybe even on things like immigration that mainstream Republicans aren't going to have.
00:17:52.960Now, is there room for good faith disagreement on some issues that are political in America today?
00:18:05.060I think that there can be good faith disagreement on economic issues, even good faith disagreement on the right immigration policy.
00:18:15.160I think that there can be some good faith disagreement on like what law enforcement looks like, in what ways the justice system functions.
00:18:26.600Again, I would say those disagreements have a limited scope.
00:18:29.400But I absolutely think that two Christians who believe that the Bible is inerrant and authoritative and should inform our worldview, should inform how we see political and social issues, can disagree in good faith on some of those things.
00:18:47.100But some things Christians cannot, in good faith, disagree on.
00:18:53.000We cannot, in good faith, disagree on abortion.
00:18:55.260We cannot, in good faith, disagree on the definition of gender as male and female and the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.
00:19:06.220These are Genesis 1 existential issues explicitly covered in Scripture and us advocating for the positions that God very clearly articulates in His Word.
00:19:18.740Remember what God designs, He also defines.
00:19:23.420It is not within our authority to define them either legally or not in any other way.
00:19:32.140Advocating for those positions is not pushing a theocracy, as we've addressed many times.
00:19:38.300And I'm not saying He's saying that, but just to kind of push back against what I know that some of you might be thinking out there.
00:19:45.640It is simply to do what Christians have always done, that's one, but also to do what everyone else is doing.
00:19:52.540Everyone brings their full belief system to the voting booth, to the school board meeting, to the curriculum writing, to their job, to their government position.
00:20:03.980Secular progressives do that every day.
00:20:06.480There are pseudo-religious tenets of what gender is and having some kind of gendered spirit that is different than your biology.
00:20:14.180Their beliefs about even the climate and economics and the oppressed versus oppressor, many of those are not found in fact.
00:20:24.840They're found in a faith that they have.
00:20:27.200They bring the full scope of their faith to every part of the public sphere.
00:20:31.840And yet Christian conservatives are told that we are the only ones that cannot do that or else we are theocratic fascists.
00:20:38.180Again, that's not what Andy Stanley said here, but many people who kind of share the sentiment that he just shared say that kind of thing.
00:20:46.880That, okay, we can believe these things personally as Christians, but we don't have to vote in accordance with what God's Word says about abortion or gender or marriage.
00:20:56.200Look, if you go to Genesis 1-1, which is possibly the most controversial verse in the Bible, that God created the heavens and the earth.
00:21:04.120If God created it, he has the authority over all of it, not just this compartment over here, not just this compartment over there.
00:21:10.280But all of it, Jesus is King, is a holistic, all-encompassing statement.
00:21:18.440And we can still believe in the freedom of religion.
00:21:21.440We can still believe in freedom of speech and bring our worldview, God's definitions, God's design into how we interact politically, how we engage politically.
00:21:34.360Actually, we have to, because if we believe that God is good, then we believe that his design, that his definitions lead to human flourishing.
00:21:44.880If God is love, as 1 John 4-8 says, then am I really being loving if I disagree with him, either privately or publicly, politically or personally, on the definition of marriage, on the definition of gender, on the dignity of life inside the womb?
00:22:13.580And on some very basic fundamental things, like, should the baby inside the womb have a legal right not to be murdered?
00:22:24.920Christians cannot, in good faith, disagree with that.
00:22:28.160And what I mean by that is, sure, you could have two people identifying as Christians who say, well, I'm politically pro-choice or I'm politically pro-life.
00:22:36.600Of course, that is a physical possibility.
00:22:39.020But the person who says, I'm politically pro-choice is wrong.
00:23:16.880I think it's totally fine to redefine marriage and cause an epidemic of fatherlessness and motherlessness in the name of tolerance and empathy.
00:23:26.320And that person calls themselves a Christian, sure, it is possible for that person to call themselves a Christian and believe those things.
00:23:34.820It is possible that they are on a road to sanctification, that they are really saved, but God hasn't gotten rid yet of those false beliefs that they hold.
00:24:25.960That is how evil has always flourished throughout history.
00:24:29.600Think about our guest yesterday who spoke up so courageously against the transgender, quote-unquote, care happening to children on the taxpayer dime illegally in the state of Texas.
00:24:41.380That is a Christian who has carried the 2,000-year Christian tradition of raising a respectful ruckus for the things that matter.
00:24:51.400And there are some Christians who would have called her divisive.
00:24:54.540There are some Christians who I guarantee you, if she would have asked them, would have said, no, you know what?
00:25:23.320Just be nice to those doctors that are prescribing cross-sex hormones to teenage boys and chemically castrating them.
00:25:31.560But that's not the Christian tradition.
00:25:33.660That's not the baton that has been given to us by the martyrs, by the Christians who have pushed back against the ideologies in power for years and years and years.
00:26:03.040I also think that we can say unapologetically that a platform that holds to the belief that killing a baby through all nine months for any reason on the taxpayer dime is evil.
00:26:17.120I think we can say unabashedly, unapologetically that the platform that believes that a man can become a woman, that a boy can become a girl, and vice versa, and is currently taking children out of their parents' custody when the parents don't go along with us.
00:26:40.240I think we can say that the side that is allowing two men to buy eggs, to rent a uterus, to raise motherless children for the first time in history.
00:26:54.580I think that we can say that that's evil.
00:26:56.960The side that is encouraging, enabling, exacerbating lawlessness in the name of social justice by putting in place judges and prosecutors who will not enforce the law.
00:27:12.340The side that is refusing to enforce immigration law, refusing to close the border, exacerbating child sex trafficking, and all kinds of preventable crimes.