Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 26, 2019


Ep 130 ｜ Christians in Politics


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

188.80759

Word Count

5,866

Sentence Count

386

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, hello! I hope everyone's having an awesome day. Today we are going to talk about
00:00:07.780 Christians in politics. I've been hearing a lot of hogwash for the past few years of my life that
00:00:14.320 Christians don't need to be involved in politics at all or any kind of civic life. Well, I have
00:00:21.040 something to say about that. So first, we are going to set this up. We are going to set up
00:00:28.680 what the Bible has to say about governments, what the Bible has to say about politics, kind of.
00:00:34.280 And from that, we can deduce what our role should look like and what our view of justice in government
00:00:41.240 should look like as Christians. I remember in the 2016 election, we had the choice between
00:00:48.080 two candidates that at the time, we didn't really think that they reflected Christian values,
00:00:53.440 Christlike values. We had Hillary Clinton, and we said, okay, well, she's a crook. Let's look at her
00:00:58.240 career, her political career, the things that she's been involved with, particularly with her
00:01:01.920 husband, Bill. And we can say, okay, this is a career politician that we really don't want to
00:01:07.600 get behind, not to mention all of her terrible policies. We don't want four more years of a
00:01:12.900 highly progressive president who has such a corrupt background. Just can't bring myself to do that,
00:01:17.920 especially as someone who's pro-life. There's no way that I would vote for anyone who is pro-choice,
00:01:22.720 but particularly not Hillary Clinton. I'm not really talking about myself. I'm just talking about what a lot
00:01:26.700 of Christians were thinking at the time. And then we looked at Donald Trump. The infamous Access
00:01:31.440 Hollywood tape came out. And we thought, okay, well, this guy doesn't seem Christlike. He said a
00:01:37.280 lot of things about women and a lot of things in general that I don't agree with. He doesn't really
00:01:40.860 seem to have the fruit of the spirit. He doesn't seem to be a Christian. He's probably got some sketchy
00:01:44.840 business dealings. What the heck do we do? And so instead of reasoning through that, instead of
00:01:50.540 trying to decide, okay, what is the best option that I can take as a Christian, as a responsible
00:01:56.540 citizen, you had some Christians, particularly young Christians, I heard say, it doesn't matter.
00:02:02.400 None of this matters. Jesus is coming back. This is not, you know, this is a different kingdom. This is
00:02:08.880 not eternal. This is temporal. I don't need to worry about that. I'm just going to worry what's going on
00:02:15.960 in the realm of Christianity, in the realm of the church, in the realm of theology. I don't really
00:02:20.820 care what happens in this election. And so I'm just not going to get involved with it. Well, let me
00:02:26.080 tell you, that in my opinion is an excuse for apathy. That is typically, not always, some people
00:02:32.320 really have a principled stance on not being involved in politics. But as far as the millennial
00:02:37.160 generation goes, as far as a lot of the hipsters that you're hearing say that, that's typically an
00:02:41.960 excuse for ignorance, an excuse for not really doing anything about what's going on in the world,
00:02:46.420 because you don't want to learn. You don't want to put any effort into all of this. So that has been
00:02:52.020 my experience. Politics, civic life, the government, all of it matters. It all matters. In the words of
00:03:01.860 Abraham Cooper, don't really know how to say that. There is not a square inch in the whole domain of
00:03:07.640 our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine. And man,
00:03:13.700 is that so true? The Bible reflects this as well. Remember, God created the world and everything in
00:03:18.900 it. Listen to how holistic God's control of the universe is in Daniel 2.21. He changes times and
00:03:25.620 seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who
00:03:31.060 have understanding. Proverbs 8.15. By me, kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just. By me,
00:03:39.520 princes govern and nobles, all who rule on earth. So God sets up government. It is a necessary tool
00:03:46.560 for public good. Romans 13.1. Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities,
00:03:54.400 for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
00:03:58.540 A good government is to enact justice. It is to protect its citizens from exploitation. It is to
00:04:05.100 be free from bias. God is a fair judge who cares about justice, who cares about exploitation,
00:04:11.800 who cares about the oppressed. We see that throughout the Bible. Leviticus 19.15 says,
00:04:17.000 you shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great,
00:04:23.280 but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. So this is justice that is based on truth.
00:04:28.520 This is judgment that is based on righteousness, not based on someone's station, not based on
00:04:33.260 someone's socioeconomic status, but on what is true and what is not, on who is guilty based on
00:04:38.880 evidence and who is not. Typically, when we hear that, what stands out to a lot of people is that
00:04:44.320 we're not supposed to favor the rich, that we're not supposed to favor those who are in power,
00:04:47.860 which is absolutely true. But we're also, the Bible says, not to favor the poor. We're not to show any
00:04:53.400 kind of favoritism, whether someone is lowly or whether someone is great, whether someone is high
00:04:58.920 up. So this is based on truth. So knowing that God set up the government, that he cares about
00:05:04.660 righteousness and justice, it makes no sense. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that Christians
00:05:09.800 are supposed to be separate from that. That is to say that God exists in some realm over here.
00:05:15.520 The world exists in some realm over here. I don't believe that that's true. God is sovereign
00:05:21.200 over all of it. He works through all of it. It makes no sense to say that Christians should not
00:05:26.080 at all be involved in politics. People say politics is dark or the government is corrupt.
00:05:31.680 Yes, that's true. That's precisely why we need Christians in it. The Bible says that Christians
00:05:36.860 are to be salt and light. And so that means that we preserve and we clarify, we add flavor and we
00:05:42.460 illuminate wisdom. The work of the Christian is necessary in civic life. It's necessary to justice.
00:05:49.220 Christians are the ones who are defending religious liberty. Christians are the ones pushing for
00:05:56.160 legislation to protect the unborn, to keep assisted suicide illegal. Christians protect the dignity of
00:06:02.260 life. Christians should be pushing for justice, for the exploited, for the oppressed to be fairly
00:06:07.820 treated. Now, here's my side note. It's going to be a kind of long side note because I think it's
00:06:12.340 important. This is my side note. We are not talking about social justice as it is defined today.
00:06:19.000 I say, quote, social justice. Social justice, as we have discussed many, many times on this podcast,
00:06:25.940 is the effort toward equal outcomes through the vehicle of big government. It is about
00:06:30.540 suppressing the privileged and lifting up the unprivileged by favoring the unprivileged,
00:06:35.920 which we know the Bible speaks against. And again, I'm using quotes around privileged and
00:06:41.360 unprivileged because who is privileged and who is not is based on these arbitrary standards
00:06:45.900 that is dictated by intersectionality, which says that all white people, for example,
00:06:50.160 are privileged, but all black people are not privileged when that's not even true.
00:06:54.360 So that is what social justice today is based on. It favors the quote unprivileged
00:07:00.360 in taxation, in court, et cetera. Examples of this, examples of this kind of equal outcome,
00:07:06.120 social justice, or the effort towards equal outcome, social justice based on intersectionality,
00:07:11.140 which of course is the group identity of someone based on their religion or skin color. And you
00:07:17.780 allocate oppression points based on that. If that is all confusing to you, it's because you're a
00:07:22.160 logically thinking person, it should be confusing to you, but you can go back and listen to previous
00:07:25.540 episodes. So here's some example of that kind of thwarting of justice, which is now known as social
00:07:30.500 justice. The Dallas district attorney, there was a news story a few months ago saying that he was no
00:07:37.720 longer going to prosecute people who stole items that were less than $750. So if you stole something
00:07:48.000 less than $750 and you said it was truly for the economic benefit of your family, you needed that
00:07:53.700 thing. He wasn't going to prosecute you for that. That is an effort to quote uplift the poor or uplift
00:08:01.020 the marginalized by no longer prosecuting crimes. Affirmative action is another example of this.
00:08:07.960 You don't include some people that are qualified because of their skin color. You include and
00:08:12.780 accept people who are not as qualified maybe because of their skin color. California forcing all public
00:08:19.180 companies to put women on the boards of their companies. The whole Kavanaugh thing was social
00:08:23.960 justice. We had to believe all women simply because she was a woman. The whole Covington scandal,
00:08:29.220 we had to believe Nathan Phillips because he was a Native American. We had to call the pro-life white
00:08:35.300 teenagers who were Catholic. We had to call them bigots because of the color of their skin and their
00:08:40.440 political association. The Jussie Smollett thing, the fact that he got off, that is an effort to make
00:08:47.080 equal outcomes through this vehicle of social justice that is dictated by intersectionality, which is not
00:08:53.480 based on truth. That is not justice. That is not fair. That is not showing impartiality. That is
00:08:59.580 showing bias towards those who you think are oppressed simply based on some kind of group
00:09:05.060 identity, not based on individual cases. That is preferential treatment of people that we assume
00:09:09.780 have been oppressed and thus can't excel on their own, can't get by on their own. They can't do the
00:09:14.460 right thing. And so the powers that be have to help them and oppress the other people who have been
00:09:19.480 able to do it on their own. It's done at the expense of others. That is not how Leviticus
00:09:24.240 describes justice. That is not God's justice because it is not based on truth. That is not based
00:09:29.060 on any kind of reality. The same thing with reparations doesn't make any sense. It's based
00:09:34.680 on a random calculation of who is more oppressed than the other. That is what Thomas Sowell calls
00:09:39.760 cosmic justice. If you have not read the book, Quest for Cosmic Justice, I recommend that you do.
00:09:45.880 So Christians do not strive for equal outcomes because equal outcomes are impossible.
00:09:52.100 We strive for equal opportunity, equal treatment in the eyes of the law, realizing that people are
00:09:57.800 still going to make their own choices that may not lead to the same outcomes as someone else.
00:10:02.480 That's just the reality of life. Earth is not heaven. Things are going to be different here.
00:10:08.300 Even though Jesus says, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The fact of the matter is we
00:10:12.880 live in a fallen world. Equal outcomes are impossible. Socialists don't want you to believe
00:10:16.920 that. They want you to believe that fairness is all outcomes are the same. Everyone has to be
00:10:21.380 forced into the same level of mediocrity. That's not true. So Christians are called to real justice,
00:10:28.440 which is justice based on truth. So an example is William Wilberforce. Through civic engagement,
00:10:34.360 Wilberforce brought forth global change in the flourishing of an entire people group by bringing
00:10:40.160 an end to slavery. He did that through civic engagement. Now, Romans 13 says that Christians
00:10:46.180 are to submit to governing authorities. And there has been an argument that has been made that that
00:10:52.180 means that we're never supposed to rebel, that we're never supposed to push back, that we're just
00:10:56.360 supposed to be quiet. And if we live in a tyrannical government, then we're just supposed to subside in
00:11:03.380 that. But I mean, you have some very real questions to ask about Christian figures in history that we
00:11:09.320 regard as heroes. So are you saying that Wilberforce was disobeying God, that he was disobeying God's
00:11:15.900 word by trying to legally end slavery? Was Corrie ten Boom disobeying God by hiding Jews in her house
00:11:21.900 during the Holocaust? Was Bonhoeffer disobeying God by resisting the Nazis? Are missionaries in other
00:11:28.360 countries who are prohibited by law from sharing the gospel? Are they disobeying God by sharing the
00:11:33.340 gospel? Of course not. Of course not. So we look at Romans 13, 1 in light of the rest of scripture
00:11:39.400 that says that we are supposed to submit to governing authorities. So we look at Daniel in the Bible who
00:11:45.180 disobeyed authorities when he prayed, despite the governmental ordinance not to pray. Shadrach,
00:11:50.360 Meshach, and Abednego disobeyed authorities when they refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar and were
00:11:55.860 thrown into a furnace. Jesus himself disobeyed earthly authorities by insisting that he was God
00:12:00.800 to the point of crucifixion. When Peter was arrested in Acts 5 and he stood before the council,
00:12:06.700 the high priest said, why do you keep preaching in Jerusalem when we've told you not to? And Peter
00:12:11.180 responds by saying, we must obey God rather than men. So how do we reconcile these two things? How do
00:12:16.700 we reconcile Romans 13, 1 that says that we are supposed to submit to earthly authorities with all of
00:12:22.440 this? We reconcile this by saying, okay, in all of these instances of God-ordained civic disobedience,
00:12:29.820 what were these people doing? They were obeying God. So obedience to God is more important and is
00:12:36.720 higher than obedience to any institution. That is why I don't believe, as some have asserted, as some very
00:12:43.380 theologically sound people have asserted, that the American Revolution, originally called the
00:12:51.420 Presbyterian Rebellion was unbiblical. Some people say that it was. I do not agree with that. They
00:12:57.440 were obeying God rather than man by fleeing the oppression of tyranny. And this was a religiously
00:13:02.880 motivated rebellion. So I say all of this to say that Christians do have a responsibility to engage
00:13:11.280 civically, to engage the government, to change laws that are oppressive, to change laws that are unjust.
00:13:17.400 We do play a role in that. When we are bringing God's kingdom on earth, when we are fighting
00:13:22.420 against things like slavery or like the Holocaust or like abortion or assisted suicide, all of these
00:13:27.320 things that denigrate human dignity, that is something we are called to do. Of course, we are
00:13:33.200 supposed to be involved in that. And of course, that does mean voting. That doesn't mean that every
00:13:37.880 single candidate that we vote for is going to be perfectly Christ-like, but we look at the issues,
00:13:42.540 we look at the values and we say, okay, what is truly most just? And not just based on
00:13:48.040 intersectionality, not just based on skin color, but what is just based on truth? What stands up for
00:13:53.040 the dignity of the individual? And for me, conservatism fits right into that. Now, I'm not
00:13:59.580 trying to make the argument that you have to be a Republican to be a Christian. I am not trying to
00:14:03.420 make the argument that God is a Republican. I'm not trying to make the argument that there are
00:14:07.400 biblical supports or that the Bible only supports being a Republican. I'm not saying that. It can be
00:14:15.440 very nonpartisan. You could find yourself in the middle on a lot of issues if you are following the
00:14:19.820 biblical guidance of justice rather than on one side of the other. But when I look at the values
00:14:25.820 of conservatism, when I look at the values of the constitution, the liberties that they protect
00:14:29.880 and the dignity that it protects by acknowledging that our rights come from God rather than from
00:14:37.680 man, when I look at conservatism and the values that conservatism stand up or the values that
00:14:46.000 conservatism stands for, then I find a much closer alignment. I find much closer alignment to God's
00:14:56.300 word than I do of big governments and tyranny and socialism. And as far as the dignity of life
00:15:03.820 goes. Now, that doesn't mean that I agree with everything Republicans do. That doesn't mean that
00:15:07.500 I agree with all border policy, for example. That doesn't mean that I agree with all Republican
00:15:11.960 politicians by any means. I do think that we can take a nuanced look at every politician and that we
00:15:16.800 can see what they stand up for. But I have found that free societies in which things like freedom of
00:15:22.860 speech, freedom of religious expression, and the constitutional values that our founding fathers
00:15:28.440 ingeniously put into writing, that people thrive. People of all faiths thrive in a society like that,
00:15:36.080 not in a socialist society. I mean, all you have to do is look at other countries who have tried
00:15:39.640 socialism and failed. But I will be dedicating an entire podcast episode to that particular subject,
00:15:46.980 so I won't get into it. Now, the bottom line is, for this episode, is that yes, Christians should be
00:15:53.680 involved in the government. We should be involved in civic life. Yes, Jesus is coming back. Yes,
00:15:59.400 this stuff is temporary. Yes, this stuff is fleeting. But it's also important because it affects people's
00:16:04.640 lives. It affects people's livelihoods. It affects people's medical care. It affects people's
00:16:10.280 insurance. It affects people's taxes that they pay. It affects everything. And so the questions that you
00:16:16.400 have to start asking yourself are going to be, again, questions that we ask in a future episode,
00:16:21.160 but what system actually frees people to be able to provide for themselves? Because as Christians,
00:16:28.000 we also believe in something called the dignity of work. We believe, or we know from the Bible,
00:16:32.580 that work existed before the fall, that it was good. So humans run on work. We are supposed to be
00:16:38.100 productive. We are supposed to actually sow something and then reap it. We're not supposed to just lay
00:16:44.720 around. The Bible has a lot to say about the evils of laziness. And so we ask ourselves not,
00:16:51.020 okay, what's a society in which everyone is taken care of and no one actually has to work for what
00:16:55.380 they have, but what is a society that allows people to be productive so they can take care of
00:17:00.060 themselves, they can take care of their families, they can take care of the people around them.
00:17:03.680 That's a question that I think that we have to ask ourselves as Christians while also having some
00:17:08.620 kind of compassionate safety net, I believe, for the people who really do fall on hard times and
00:17:13.380 they can't provide for themselves at all and they need some kind of help. I think that there is a
00:17:18.820 place for conversation about that, whether you're on the right or the left. And so those are the
00:17:22.880 conversations that you have to ask yourself. And you also have to get educated in the issues,
00:17:27.680 always looking at everything through the lens of scripture. But one of our responsibilities as
00:17:32.440 Christians and people who care about justice and God's version of justice is to know the facts and to
00:17:37.560 know the truth and to not just know a narrative on the right or the left. That's going to take a
00:17:41.840 little bit of effort. I always say it's much easier to just be an apathetic progressive than
00:17:46.980 it is to be an apathetic conservative, because all you have to do to be a progressive is to listen to
00:17:52.760 what celebrities tell you and to scroll through your Facebook or Instagram feed or to see what pops up
00:17:58.420 on Snapchat or what pops up on the skim. And you're going to have a progressive leaning viewpoint of
00:18:04.540 everything because it's hard to find the facts behind the leftist narrative in the mainstream.
00:18:09.660 It just is. It's not blatantly out there. And so you have to listen to podcasts. You have to
00:18:14.400 look at the Wall Street Journal. You have to look at multiple outlets in order to get a holistic
00:18:20.900 story. If you just read the New York Times, that could be good. You might get a perspective in it.
00:18:25.800 You might be enlightened in some way. I read the New York Times. I read the Washington Post.
00:18:29.740 But it's important to dig a little bit and to ask yourself questions and to pay attention to language
00:18:35.180 as well. The way that they describe people, the way that they describe events, the way that they
00:18:39.800 cast a certain people in certain lights. Why did they use that adjective? Why did they use that verb
00:18:45.520 here? Is there anything missing in this part of the story? Because it just sounds too crazy. I'm not
00:18:50.520 saying all reporting is biased or all reporting is bad, but it is incumbent upon you to make sure that
00:18:55.800 you have the responsibility to know what's true and to know what's not true. For me, that means reading a
00:19:01.460 lot of different outlets in order to gain a holistic perspective of a story. But it also means reading
00:19:05.960 in general, not just the news, but just reading about history, reading autobiographies, reading
00:19:12.140 biographies, reading different kinds of political books in order to have a background knowledge of
00:19:19.000 the things that are going on. Because I think that really helps us when we approach the news to be
00:19:23.940 able to fit things into a larger context. And a lot of the things, the more I read, the more I realize
00:19:29.220 that things that happen today just aren't new. They're just not that different than things that
00:19:35.420 might've happened 20 years ago. Our technology might be different. The questions we may be asking
00:19:39.420 might be different. Society might be different in a lot of ways, but it's not new. A lot of the
00:19:46.140 things that happened today have happened before. And I think it's important for Christians to know
00:19:50.120 what's true. Of course, never prioritizing watching the news or anything like that over knowing
00:19:56.600 scripture, because the truth that we find in scripture are transcendent and they set up how
00:20:02.200 we view what's going on today. And of course, sharing the gospel, knowing the gospel, knowing
00:20:08.400 your Bible, loving your neighbor as you love yourself is always going to be far more important
00:20:13.500 than being involved in politics. But those things don't have to be mutually exclusive, I don't believe.
00:20:19.620 So the question is, where do Christians fit into all of this? How do Christians fit into this?
00:20:25.020 There have been a lot of teachers, some more liberal theologically, some more conservative
00:20:29.780 theologically that have tried to approach this question. And it's not always easy. Like I said,
00:20:34.900 you can register, of course, under a party affiliation. I do. You can be active in politics,
00:20:41.280 but you should not identify the Christian church or get confused about where your value system comes
00:20:49.400 from. So you shouldn't identify the Christian church with a particular party affiliation. Now,
00:20:53.780 you can, like I said, say, okay, I have these values, or this is what the Bible says. And from
00:20:59.620 what the Bible says, I derive these values and that leans me in a conservative direction. That's what I do.
00:21:05.520 I think that's completely fine. But to make a party affiliation, some kind of salvation issue or a
00:21:13.360 qualification for membership is not biblical. Now you might be thinking, and if you followed me for a long
00:21:19.700 time, I did make the argument and I stand by the argument that it is impossible to be a far left,
00:21:26.440 a far left progressive and a Christian. Now, the reason why I say that is not because it
00:21:33.940 disqualifies you from salvation or because Jesus can't save you. That's of course not true. Jesus can
00:21:39.540 do absolutely anything. The reason why I say that, if you actually go back and you listen to my argument
00:21:45.360 is because it doesn't progressive, far left progressivism, I'm not just talking about,
00:21:51.960 you know, having differences on taxes or having differences on welfare, having differences on
00:21:56.140 social security or the environment or things like that. I'm not just talking about those kind of
00:21:59.780 differences that we can have all within the realm of biblical Christianity. I am talking about
00:22:04.440 the redefinition of truth, the redefinition of who Jesus was, because far leftism is going to tell
00:22:12.780 you that you cannot simultaneously believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life,
00:22:18.300 and be associated with them. You cannot believe that the Bible is inerrant and be associated with
00:22:22.800 the far left. That's what the far left is going to tell you, that you can't believe in biblical
00:22:25.800 marriage. You can't believe in biblical gender roles and be a part of the far left. You can't do that.
00:22:30.700 And maybe that's true for a part of the far right as well. That probably is true. I think both extremes
00:22:36.120 are terrible, but we see it a lot more prevalently on the far left trying to say that,
00:22:41.060 oh, well, Jesus was this radical leftist, radical progressive. Well, no, he wasn't because radical
00:22:45.820 progressives completely deny the inerrancy of scripture and so much in scripture that it's
00:22:51.260 impossible to do both because both ask you to fully deny yourself, take up your cross and follow them.
00:22:56.400 And they're going in two different directions. So I think that it's not just far leftism. It's really
00:23:01.260 any ideology that tells you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow it. And it is going in a
00:23:08.480 different direction than where Jesus is going. You can't do both. You can't serve God and money,
00:23:13.220 the Bible says. You can't serve two masters. You can't have two gods. So it's not just far leftism.
00:23:17.860 It's anything that demands you to compromise something for the sake of following that thing
00:23:23.960 rather than the Bible, rather than God's word, rather than Jesus. So that is true of really any
00:23:30.240 ideology that demands full purity from you in a way that is different than what Christ is demanding
00:23:36.780 from you, if that makes sense. So I say all that to say that still God is not partisan,
00:23:43.360 that still God doesn't belong to a political party, that still the Bible doesn't say that you
00:23:48.120 have to be a capitalist, that you have to be a conservative. Do I believe that the Bible has
00:23:51.980 foundations for those things? Of course they do. And we'll talk about that in the future,
00:23:55.700 but it is not a matter of salvation. We can have these kinds of disagreements, honestly,
00:24:00.940 within biblical Christianity. And I think it's important to have these kinds of disagreements.
00:24:05.940 A lot of political positions are not matters of explicit biblical command, but are deduced from
00:24:12.520 the Bible and are also part of practical wisdom. Like what experiences have people had with this
00:24:18.480 particular policy? That would be capitalism versus socialism. What kind of results does this produce?
00:24:26.040 And then we can kind of look at that and say, okay, well, that tyranny didn't lead out,
00:24:31.300 didn't, didn't turn out very well, but this freedom did whatever it is. And so we have to
00:24:35.620 be thoughtful Christians. We are all trying to obey God's call and they're going to be people,
00:24:40.260 genuine Christians on the other side of the aisle than you. And I think it's important for us to
00:24:44.300 recognize that, that there are Christians who are Democrats that who have somehow, I think wrongly
00:24:51.720 justified abortion. They've justified certain things in their minds. That doesn't mean that
00:24:56.680 they're not saved. It means they're wrong. It doesn't mean they're not saved. There are going
00:25:00.200 to be Christians who disagree with you. If you are a Democrat on the Republican side, that doesn't
00:25:04.760 take away their Christian card. We might have misunderstandings that are genuine, and we might
00:25:09.620 have different perspectives that are genuine. Now, there are some things that when we get down to it,
00:25:14.600 kind of go into what you actually think of the gospel and can point more towards the state of our
00:25:19.540 heart and more towards a salvation conversation. But there are plenty of things that we might just
00:25:25.940 not know about each other that doesn't necessarily mean that someone is not a part of the body of
00:25:33.100 Christ. And that's why it's important for us to approach our brothers and sisters in Christ as
00:25:37.640 exactly that, as brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we disagree and have these kinds of
00:25:42.860 conversations. Now, what you're going to find is that that's increasingly difficult. And so we have to
00:25:48.600 strive for peace with everyone, just as the Bible says. Now, we might be able to. The great thing is,
00:25:56.540 is that if we see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, first, we might be able to sit down
00:26:01.720 and say, OK, I disagree with you about your version of social justice or your version of racial
00:26:07.820 reconciliation, whatever it is. But maybe it's not so much that we disagree. Maybe we just see things
00:26:15.100 differently. Maybe you have different facts than I do. Maybe you are coming from a completely
00:26:20.460 different perspective, or maybe we're really saying the same thing, but we think that we're
00:26:23.980 saying different things. That's happened to me. I've also had different ideas of justice than I do
00:26:28.540 now. And but the important thing is for two Christians who disagree on something is to go back
00:26:33.300 to God's word. If one of you is not willing to go back to God's word as your ultimate command and your
00:26:37.740 ultimate authority, then the conversation truly is lost. If one of you is just pulling things out of the air
00:26:42.920 and your feelings and liberation theology, whatever it is, or one of you is basing all of his views
00:26:49.180 about justice on some kind of secular, conservative philosopher, but it doesn't align with the Bible,
00:26:55.180 well, then you don't really have a basis for a conversation. But if two Christians can come
00:26:58.840 together and they can look at the word of God and in light of all of scripture, in light of the
00:27:03.680 context of the verse and honestly say, here's what the Bible says. Here's why I believe what I believe.
00:27:09.300 Talk to me about why you believe what you believe. If two Christians can do that,
00:27:13.080 I think that's beautifully productive. We can still love each other. We can still disagree on
00:27:17.040 that. Now we can be sad if we feel like the other person doesn't take the authority of scripture
00:27:21.560 seriously. And if they are putting their feelings before what the word of God actually says, no
00:27:26.500 matter what side of the aisle that we're on, but we can still love one another. There are people that
00:27:30.560 I politically disagree with. There are people in my life that I theologically disagree with who I love
00:27:34.320 very much. And, uh, we've talked about these things, but we don't talk about them every day.
00:27:39.340 We don't talk about them every chance we get, but we've talked about these things and we just say,
00:27:44.660 you know what? Your friendship with me is bigger than that. And I know who you are and I know your
00:27:49.800 heart and the people I know that I disagree with politically and theologically are Bible believing,
00:27:54.500 wonderful Christians. I happen to think they're wrong on particular subjects. They happen to think
00:27:58.760 I'm wrong on particular subjects and that's okay. That's okay. That is part of what we're called to as
00:28:04.080 Christians. So yes, we engage public life. Yes, we engage areas of justice to fight for true justice
00:28:10.000 that is based on truth and on the Bible. And yes, we engage with one another. And we have these kind
00:28:15.720 of productive conversations and we approach them with humility. We approach them with honesty and we
00:28:20.920 use God's word as the basis. As long as he is our supreme authority and all of that, then we're good.
00:28:26.400 Then we can disagree. As long as we agree on the gospel, we agree on the supremacy of Christ,
00:28:30.460 which like I said, is very impossible to do if something else, if some other kind of ideology
00:28:35.240 is supreme in your life. You can't serve two masters. But if we agree on the supremacy and
00:28:40.640 the centrality of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy of his word, we can have all kinds of wonderful
00:28:45.180 disagreements as far as politics go. And even theologically, we can have wonderful disagreements
00:28:50.960 that don't have to do with salvation if we agree on the core tenets of Christianity.
00:28:55.160 Um, so it's okay to disagree and it's okay. It's certainly okay to care about these things. In
00:29:02.020 fact, I think that, like I said, uh, we should care about them. And no matter what we think
00:29:08.200 politically, another thing that we can unite on is that it is our role. It is our responsibility
00:29:12.600 to take care of the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized ourselves, that we have to be the
00:29:18.420 hands and feet of Jesus, that we have to be the ones going out, taking care of them, that that's not
00:29:22.640 the government's job. I don't care what side of the aisle that you're on. You're not going to make
00:29:25.540 that argument to me that it is solely the government's job to take care of people. We
00:29:29.780 have to be the ones to give of ourselves, to lay our lives down, to lay our money down, to, uh, serve
00:29:36.460 those who are hurting around us. That is our responsibility, no matter what side of the aisle that
00:29:41.460 you're on, that is the role of the church, that is the role of the individual. And so we can't negate
00:29:47.480 that either. It doesn't, it doesn't matter what you think. I've seen conservatives who, um,
00:29:52.080 don't care about charity and who don't care about the poor. And I've seen liberals who certainly
00:29:56.120 don't care about the poor really, as far as their own efforts go. They only care about them,
00:30:02.140 um, in, in word, as far as policy goes. So that is also an important reminder. Uh, that wraps up
00:30:09.980 this, why Christians should care about civic life, why Christians should be involved in politics. We also,
00:30:15.940 um, kind of broke down the Romans 13 argument that we shouldn't be involved in politics at all.
00:30:21.240 I simply don't believe that. And we talked about, uh, justice and what that means. I have lots and
00:30:27.400 lots of episodes on that. If you want to hear more about it, if you've got any questions,
00:30:30.600 feel free to email me, Allie at the conservative millennial blog.com. And I will see you guys soon.
00:30:34.780 Bye.
00:30:35.540 Bye.
00:30:37.520 Bye.
00:30:38.520 Bye.
00:30:39.160 Bye.
00:30:41.940 Bye.
00:30:42.380 Bye.
00:30:47.160 Bye.
00:30:47.760 Bye.
00:30:48.060 Bye.
00:30:48.140 Bye.
00:30:49.680 Bye.
00:30:51.060 Bye.
00:30:58.300 Bye.
00:31:00.800 Bye.
00:31:01.160 Bye.
00:31:02.020 Bye.
00:31:03.560 Bye.
00:31:03.740 Bye.