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

What does the Bible say about politics? What does it say about the role of Christians in government? And what does it mean that Christians need to get involved in politics? In this episode, Pastor Ken talks about what the Bible says about politics and what it says about Christian involvement in government.


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.