Ep 430 ｜ Is 'Christian Nationalism' a Threat to Evangelicalism？ ｜ Guest： Nathan Finochio
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Summary
Nathan Finocchio is the founder of Theosu, the online seminary Theos University, which is a subscription based theological education site. In this episode, we talk about deconstructionism, Christian nationalism, nationalism, and imperialism, and much more.
Transcript
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hey guys welcome to relatable today i am talking to nathan finocchio you guys probably i know a
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lot of you do you follow him on instagram um and you know of him you know of theos university
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the online seminary that he is a part of today we are going to talk about a whole host of things
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it's really a wide-ranging conversation that i know that you guys are going to like because he's
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super interesting we are going to talk about deconstructionism um he's a charismatic and so
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he's going to talk about some of the issues that he sees in kind of his part of uh the christian
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evangelical world and then we are going to have a conversation about christian nationalism nationalism
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imperialism um he's got some really interesting perspectives on that and he has a lot to say
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that honestly i don't think that we talk about in a very serious way very much in the christian
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evangelical world and so we're going to have that conversation and because progressives are having
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that conversation so that means that we need to understand what's going on so i'm really excited
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for you to listen to this so without further ado here is nathan finocchio
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nathan thank you so much for joining us can you first tell everyone who you are and what you do
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yeah so my name is nathan finocchio and i am the founder of theos you and theos seminary theos you
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is a subscription based theological uh education site basically we condense um kind of full length
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bible college courses uh from you know say let's say the the book of romans from like 36 hours to
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do about six or eight hours um have a uh a wide uh ecumenical range of teachers uh at theos you and
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people pay you know 14 bucks a month and they subscribe i'm a i'm a charismatic um evangelical
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politically conservative uh guy and so that's kind of the space that i live in and uh we have about
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just over 4 000 subscribers kind of worldwide about a quarter of them are pastors of of charismatic
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evangelical churches um so that's that's kind of uh that's kind of what i do yeah that's awesome
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tell me why you guys started they asked you we started they asked you because we we feel like
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a couple things firstly we believe that um the average person sitting in the pew on a sunday morning
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in an evangelical charismatic church uh their their uh their desire for theological depth is
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dramatically underestimated um number one number two we feel like uh the charismatic evangelical world
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is sort of the wild wild west theologically and um and many schools are slipping into sort of a
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progressive liberalism theologically and um so we just wanted to do something about that we wanted to
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we wanted to be a part of the solution for what feels like an unraveling of the evangelical charismatic
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uh movement which i you know has been has been conservative for for decades uh but is now
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yeah kind of become kind of a swing you know uh yeah swing state so to speak yeah and it's not just
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the charismatic world it's not just the evangelical charismatic world obviously that's not the world
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that i occupy but i see that kind of liberalism deconstructionism post-modernism infiltrating
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you know the the southern baptist convention which certainly has been seen as some kind of pillar of
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conservatism for a long time why why do you think that's why do you think that's happening why do you
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think this kind of post-modern liberalism is infiltrating so many parts of the church that
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used to be seen as staunchly conservative yeah uh a couple of reasons um i think that
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there's a crisis of authority um and so so so so firstly i'd say it's epistemological i think that
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kids the younger generation um has learned um an epistemology that lends itself to deconstruction that
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lends itself to progressive um theology and that epistemology is that uh i i can't trust
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traditional forms of authority i can't trust the church i can't trust my own history so you know
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america they're taught america's bad they're taught the church is bad they're taught the bible hurt you
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know hurts people um and that love is the most important thing and self is the most important
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thing and so to me it's a it's a crisis of authority it's a crisis of uh and there's just an immense
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um multiplied pressure on these young people to make moral choices and not be moral monsters like
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america like the church um so that that to me it's like it's it's sort of like a it's a it's a it's a
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conundrum of i don't want to be man like america's bad the church is bad i don't want to be bad so i need
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to sort of but but but i i think that god is right and god is good so i don't want to throw god out i
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don't want to i don't want to throw jesus out entirely it's interesting ali like nobody's really
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throwing jesus out they're just giving jesus a new accent and putting new clothes on him um yeah and
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that that's kind of what you know that's obviously that's deconstruction that's the most frustrating
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thing so it's like you know they want their cake their cake and and they want to eat it too
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so that that's kind of my my yeah yeah little minute spin yeah i mean there's so many different
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factors i think that have gone into why we're in the place that we're in and evangelicalism can you
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talk a little bit more about deconstruction there are some people that they they don't know what it is
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and we're also told by people that almost like you said like almost sound biblical like they sound
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like they really love jesus saying that deconstruction is actually a key part of
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sanctification that job deconstructed his faith and so there might be some people listening who think
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you know deconstruction is awesome and wonderful and it's something that we all have to do can you
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kind of just break that down for us yeah sure i mean i think you do a wonderful job
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um yourself but uh just a just a couple of thoughts i think that
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we all we all sort of um so deconstruction i think is misunderstood to be education right so
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so um you know for example i grew up in a charismatic community and there were things in the charismatic
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community that i didn't necessarily like and so i sort of you know went out exploring and i decided
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that there were probably some excesses there's some weird teachings on faith there's some you know
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so but that's that's that's just i mean that's that's what you do you as you grow up you you start
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to you know read and you start to read the reformers or you read you know the the patristics or
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whatever and you just add knowledge to your faith which is what you're supposed to do as a christian
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deconstruction is questioning um the meta narratives so it's kind of like you know is the bible even true
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what parts are even true so it's it's it's deacon i mean eve was the first person to deconstruct
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right god told her thing and she decided to question god's word you know who god is which is an extension
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of who god is and that's what deconstruction is deconstruction is basically going you know what
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i'm willing to turn this whole thing upside down because ultimately i don't trust anybody including
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god myself is the locus of authority and i only trust myself and my experiences and once again coming
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getting back to the epistemological factor there um so that's what deconstruction is and very few people
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come back from it very few people return right to orthodox um to historic orthodox christianity so
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it's it's because it's you know once you start going down that path of you know you're tugging
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you know deconstruction has its whole community it's kind of like if you start you know obsessing over
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um you know i don't know fitness you know fitness has its it's it's a whole community you know you
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start wearing fitness fit fash and you see you know and you start working up in garages you know
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like so deconstruction has a whole thing to it and people get into that and they start following all
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these accounts and they just start literally talking babble nonsense yeah right and that actually
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is a perfect point that leads to the question that i was about to ask is that we're talking about
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epistemology and how they view you know truth through the prism of themselves the only thing
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like you said that they can trust is themselves their feelings their lived experiences i actually
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saw a post the other day that said like your uh your marginalized status and your lived experiences
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are holier than the bible so that i think is a good summation of what deconstructionists think but
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at the same time even though in that like hyper individualistic personal subjective way of
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obtaining knowledge they all end up saying the same thing so really they just replace what they see as
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religious dogma and orthodox christianity for other kinds of religious dogma they say that it's just
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through them that they're finding truth but they all have the same talking points and so it seems like
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they're just adopting they're adopting a new doctrine and they are still believing in some
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kind of absolute truth because surely if you just trusted yourself you would all be kind of coming up
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with different ideas of what faith and what jesus and what god looks like but they all think that jesus
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was a transgender communist so like where does that happen like where are these people going to get this
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information to get their new dogmas and to get their new faith it's not just their lived
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experiences they must have some kind of source yeah i reckon that there's there's definitely
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you know there's there's unity among uh the orthodox and then there's unity among the periphery
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and there are some key players in the peripheral uh the the peripheral world of christianity i would
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say like richard roar would be one of them um brian zahn would be one of them um these are some you know
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some some some some authors that they that people you know eventually gravitate to um and so you know
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they they obviously they like you said they have a dogma they have there is a there is some sort of
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fellowship some sort of a common held system of belief um but i think that at the end of the day
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it's probably motivated by um once again lots of motivations perhaps one of the motivations is that
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they you know they have a misguided sense of love and and to me that's that's what's one of the ear
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marks or the a watermark of um of richard roar and brian zahn is that you know god is never retributive
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in his in his justice everybody gets to go to heaven you know rob bell um so it's a it's a it's
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a it's a christian heresy all their heresies are christian which is hilarious and you're right you
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know that nobody's deconstructing to become you know to worship the norse gods right like the norse
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gods are cruel the norse gods are horrible nobody's nobody's deconstructing to become a pagan
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all of the um all of the deconstructionists are just christian heresies so that's kind of cute
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yeah that's interesting and why is it you mentioned this before like why is it that they try to
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not just retain jesus but like you said give him new clothes recharacterize him and then really like
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detach him from the trinity i've noticed because they don't want to think that he has anything to do
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with the god of the old testament even if that even existed they would probably say like how do
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they how do they get that like why do they hold on to jesus so tightly and yet the jesus they hold on
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to is not even the jesus we see depicted in the gospels why not just let go of jesus altogether
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because because i think that they're nervous i think they're scared i honestly think that they
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believe that there's an afterlife it's it's a it's really hard to like the last thing that a
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deconstructionist has to do is scrub their conscience to basically sear their conscience
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of uh of this uh of the idea that there is an afterlife because i do think that that we all do have some
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sense of justice like surely the the world is broken it needs to be put to right and i think that most of
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them are going okay i don't like orthodox christian i don't like organized religion but i'm going to
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hold on to jesus because then i think that i i still squeeze in somehow so it's i think it's sort of
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their fire insurance and and you know you don't get rid of uh the you know even you know the psyche
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i mean it's burned into you the the reality of hell right like the the and that there's surely
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there'd be a justice so i i think i think that's exactly it that the the heresies are christian
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because they're scared to to just let go to totally let go yeah i also think that if you can cast
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jesus into whatever image you want it's kind of like what c.s lewis talks about in um screw tape
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letters about social justice christianity using jesus or using christianity as a means to their
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ends i think jesus is a really nice mascot because like you said you can kind of retain your
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christianity but you can you know believe whatever you want to believe and jesus just comes along for
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the ride he can make you feel good about your political activism if you believe that he was a
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palestinian you know freedom fighter who just you know advocates for all the things that you advocate
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for so i think it's also like a righteous sounding way to be to be liberal um and to be a secular
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leftist that jesus is kind of just coming along for the ride of your ideological journey yeah i think
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it's that's similar to what you said though that having jesus still at least pat you on the back
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and still be your cheerleader that makes you feel like you're on the right path even if you've
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abandoned all idea of christian morality yeah that's that's absolutely it yeah shaking shaking jesus
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is going to make you really nervous because um you know it's interesting well you quoted c.s lewis
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and uh isn't it funny kind of an aside here that c.s lewis is now like a right-wing talking point
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i i think i saw you say that on instagram i would love for you to give me an example of that so people
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are saying like if you quote c.s lewis then you're what like you're a bigot or you're on the right or
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what is it well for example like c.s lewis writes an essay on capital punishment he writes an essay on
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you know in the same one as he writes about retributive justice on just desserts um he writes
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uh in the abolition of man he absolutely slams socialism um yeah he writes on patriotism like
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quite uh quite profusely and he and patriotism and kind of nationalism are somewhat synonymous in
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terms of his descriptions as descriptors um you know lewis is for all intents and purposes orthodox
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uh mere christianity is is is just cat it's just high anglican catechism um and so all that to say
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you know c.s lewis was sort of like he was like in my world particularly when i grew up he was like sort
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of like left of center and like all of my social justice friends would like quote c.s lewis and now
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like none of them quote c.s lewis uh which i think is absolutely hilarious oh in the screw tape letters
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you know c.s lewis uh talks about how christians are christians will will use social justice you know
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to to get their means that that you know the that like social justice is essentially um a ploy of the
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enemy you know to to kind of socialize christianity and make it palatable but really they're you know
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they'll have other um ends so it's just it's hilarious um you know as you read c.s lewis
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you talked about um you mentioned their nationalism and patriotism that is also um like a flashpoint
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in christian conversations right now that a lot of the people i would say not even just totally
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progressive christians but like people maybe center laughter in the center they're really afraid
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to say anything about american exceptionalism or that america is a great country there's even been
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this like towards the fourth of july and then we hear all this stuff about christian nationalism being
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the biggest threat to christianity people like beth moore have said things like that and you've really
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pushed back against that in a way that i haven't seen anyone else do because i've kind of been like
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well no i don't think christian nationalism is it is a big threat and you have kind of said what's
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wrong with christian nationalism so i kind of just want to hear your perspective on all that
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yeah so so i think that christian that okay so so uh i'll try to lay this out um as best i can so
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firstly we all have a nationalistic picture right like would you would you not agree that every
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everybody has a nationalistic idea like as in i want the country should be like this the country
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should be less christian or more secular or more like like doesn't wouldn't you agree that everybody
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has a nationalistic ideal yeah like you're saying everyone has an idea of what they think the country
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should be like correct yeah exactly so christians are just honest about how they want the country to
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be um yeah we want we we want our legislation to be informed by judeo-christian principles we
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right all legislation is moral um and so we that that's we're just we're we're frank we're honest this
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is this is what we believe people who are are secularists you know draw from this that everybody
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draws from some sort of moral pool right so um so my my my first contention is that we all have a
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nationalistic ideal uh this is what the country should be like we all vote um we all engage politically
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um all of our justice initiatives they all come from some sort of moral pool so so when you say
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christian nationalists i think to myself i you know if jesus was building a country
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like wouldn't that be cool you know like what if we followed jesus's ideals of you know loving people
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and and and defending people and so so you know at first glance you know just on face value christian
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nationalists seems like actually that's a great idea you know to to have a country you know i wish all of
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god's people were you know were prophets like why wouldn't wouldn't that be great so number one
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number two though i found i've come to learn uh there's a book uh written recently about about
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christian nationalism the the the title escapes me at the moment um but basically like is it the
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winning back america for god one yeah yeah that's it when it it's about it's from like the
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progressive perspective right correct yeah and basically what it does is it just caricatures
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it basically takes the name christian nationalist and then caricatures this this concept so it so
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instead of it meaning like christian and nationalist which we should talk about what nationalist means
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it puts these two together and it's like christian nationalists you know hate immigration christian
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you know like and just it's a litany of ridiculous characters hate interracial interracial marriage
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they said that um which i don't know where they get this information i think they they base it off of
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like one misguided poll or something like that and they decided they does everything that is bad about
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anyone they decided okay like let's make a list of that and then let's say that people who are christian
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nationalists according to our definition like hold on to those character qualities like not liking a
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black and a white person getting married yeah yeah exactly it's just all ridiculous so so so that is
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kind of a working and i was seeing christian nationalists pop up everywhere on instagram you
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know people going you know we need to repent of christian nationalism and i'm like what are you
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talking about like what you know and i kept on asking people to define what it was like in christian
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nationalism yeah total sincerity you know like would you please tell me what and nobody would
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respond to me absolutely nobody would respond to me finally i got a pdf uh which was basically a
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um sort of a a a skeleton or a sketch of what that book was and then i began okay got you okay so
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it is a pejorative term um and these are um these are the descriptors etc so
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uh and i i kind of worked my way through it and kind of responded to it it's just it's just a lot
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of nonsense but um nationalism so one of my favorite authors uh gk chesterton uh who was a mentor of c.s
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lewis c.s lewis said of chesterton i only ever added water to his wine um so a lot of of lewis's views
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are in chesterton um and and chesterton was a and he he self-defined as an english nationalist
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and when he talked about nationalism he didn't talk about uh in he didn't he didn't mean it as
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imperialism so this is this is one of the issues that people don't understand about nationalism
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nationalism is not imperialism so imperialism is when you violate the sovereignty of another country
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like for example um you know hitler was hitler a nationalist yeah in some ways he was a nationalist
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but it wasn't his nationalism that got him in trouble um it was his imperialism that got him in
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trouble right he wanted he wanted the whole world to be the third reich um so nationalism is a it's a
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passion for your own country and it's a passion for the sovereignty of your own nation um in this
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way chesterton thought that it was the opposite of um it was the opposite of selfish because you're
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championing other people not yourself um which i thought was pretty cool and and when he took when
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chesterton talked about nationalism he loved it because he wanted the french to be french and he
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wanted the english to be english and when he visited france he's like man i don't want to hear english
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spoken i want to hear french spoken and i want to eat french foods and i want to be totally immersed
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in the culture but when i returned to england i want it to be english and so uh his for example
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chesterton was a stout defender believe it or not at you know the time that he was really writing in the
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uh the early 20th century um a staunch defender of indian nationalism like you know for example like
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you know gandhi and that whole movement like hey you know like we want the right of self-determination
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that's ultimately what nationalism is it's it's the the right of self-determination we want to determine
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as a country um who we are and what we want to be and we don't want the british to tell us who we are
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and what we want to be he was a staunch defender of irish nationalism you know let the irish be irish
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let them be self-determining let them be their own country that's pretty cool stuff nobody would
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would would say today you know that indian nationalism sucks and that it's evil or that
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irish nationalism sucks or even you know for that matter scottish nationalism i mean we all
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everybody watches that movie braveheart and we all cry and we all hate long shanks and we all you
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know freedom and we paint our faces blue and we're obsessed with scottish nationalism but for some
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reason there's a disconnect when we talk about american nationalism and scottish nationalism and that
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right there's the problem so yeah american nationalism is a desire for self-determination
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now the problem with american nationalism is there's there's there's kind of two views so
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in my estimation trump was an american nationalist he was not an imperialist for the most part um an
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imperialist is is somebody who so for example i mean let's just take the eu and the un for an example
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um those are imperial structures so um the assyrian empire the egyptian empire the babylonian empire
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those were imperial empires right they they they conquered and then they imported their culture and their
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ideas etc and imperialism american imperialism for example looks like a starbucks on every corner
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you know of you know you're in germany and you there's a starbucks you know you're in japan there's
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a starbucks it's horrible and um and then more importantly the eu right like or the un for example
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those nations regularly violate the self-determination and sovereignty of other nations and they do it by
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force right like yeah and and they're unelected bodies who are pushing other elected bodies around
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and they do it with the force of the american military machine and so there's two types of americanism at the
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moment there's this imperial americanism and then there's a there's a there's a american nationalist
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um ideal and the american nationalist ideal is hey we want the right to self-determination
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and then and so if you add christian nationalism that is just simply um we we want our country we
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want to vote christian we want to be christian we want to invite everybody to be christian hey if you
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want to vote secular if you want whatever but we think that our ideals are going to be better ideals
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and we're going to vote that way and we're you know of course going to be tolerant but we're not
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going to we're not going to be imperial so that's kind of how um now the reason why nationalism got
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such a dirty name um because before world war ii everybody was a nationalist like everybody was
00:29:02.600
talking about man you know like you know germany needs to be german and belgium needs to be belgium
00:29:07.240
and you know france needs to be french and every everybody should be what they are etc but after world
00:29:14.700
war ii people falsely diagnosed the german problem with uh misplaced nationalism which a the reason why
00:29:25.080
germany was defeated because other nationalists defeated him b once again uh hitler was an imperialist
00:29:33.820
he was trying to you know i mean obviously he had other problems like you know killing jews for example
00:29:39.760
but he wanted everybody to kill jews that's imperialism right like he wanted the polish to treat
00:29:45.640
the jews in such and such a way um and um and then you know so so so so what happens is after the
00:29:54.280
after the war everybody begins to go on a tirade and begins to blame you know nationalism well
00:30:00.380
nationalism is why this happened well no hitler was the scorpion's tale of 150 years of of frederican
00:30:09.640
exceptionalism like that that was the issue the issue was that you guys thought that you were you
00:30:16.720
know the cat's meow and you'd been telling you know that you were you know superior even in your race
00:30:22.900
to everybody else and then you know you wanted to you wanted to create an empire you were imperialists
00:30:30.340
you weren't just it wasn't you weren't just naturalists desiring the right of self-determination
00:30:34.900
you're imperialists you thought you were better and you wanted to conquer everybody so um right so
00:30:40.780
people were unable to properly diagnose nationalism at the end of world war ii and they just went along
00:30:47.060
with this thing and we're like yeah nationalism is bad and then that was adopted in the academy
00:30:51.640
right oh yeah national so you know you know in the 1950s and 1960s all of a sudden we start to see this
00:30:56.360
whole uh kickback against nationalism and now nationalism is a dirty word and now it's becoming a pejorative word
00:31:03.040
and let's say patriot not nationalist and the issue is now uh yoram azoni has a book called the virtue of
00:31:10.380
nationalism which i highly highly highly recommend uh he's actually uh he's he's a jew he's an old
00:31:16.740
testament scholar which is kind of fun and he is a he's a an israeli nationalist and he talks about
00:31:24.200
there's just i could go on and on about about nationalism and about the book and about his views but
00:31:29.320
uh chesterton does the same thing chesterton talks about how the a nation is less like a business
00:31:35.380
and more like a family a nation is less a group of individuals and more a family like a in a marriage
00:31:44.380
you know you get into a marriage you marry a woman two individuals kind of coming together and it's
00:31:48.900
sort of like a business contract but then after a while you start having kids everything changes i mean
00:31:53.760
those kids aren't in the relationship with you because it's a business right there there are other
00:31:59.160
loyalties um and so his his idea here is that nationalism understands that nations are more than
00:32:08.960
individuals and there are other loyalties and when you don't um when you disregard those nuances
00:32:17.520
of those extended and complex loyalties that's when you start to get into political trouble um so all
00:32:24.620
that to say that's sort of my my two cents on on christian nationalism i think it's a great idea
00:32:29.640
i think that it's a good idea i think it's a god idea i think that nations are a god idea um you know
00:32:37.180
the the scriptures the book of revelation for example talks about the nations bringing their wealth
00:32:40.820
so um that's my two cents i have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions so so i think that there are
00:32:51.220
like your definition of nationalism which i would agree is simply saying that we need to put the needs
00:32:58.820
of our country before the needs of another country if you are the leader of that country and you would
00:33:05.220
say that that's a good thing that in the same way that a family would also in the same way that like
00:33:11.080
a mayor would or a governor would it's funny how people say that putting america first like that was
00:33:16.880
trump's line america first oh that's bigoted that's so wrong that seems to be what a lot of left-leaning
00:33:22.200
christians had a hard time with like that's prideful that's what we need to repent of jesus doesn't care
00:33:27.480
about america all that kind of stuff but you would never blame the mayor of tulsa for saying hey
00:33:32.460
tulsa is the best city in the country i love the people of tulsa and i don't care i mean i i'm sorry
00:33:39.620
but i don't care about what baltimore needs or whatever it is my priority is tulsa and i'm gonna
00:33:45.660
put the needs of the people of tulsa before the needs of the people of sacramento or whatever no one
00:33:51.180
would fault someone for that and actually you would probably think it was really weird if the mayor of
00:33:57.360
tulsa was like you know i really actually care just as much about dallas as i do about tulsa you'd be
00:34:03.580
like no you're a horrible leader but for whatever reason when it comes to national leadership and like
00:34:09.120
you said not of any other country but of america people think that's prideful if the leader of kenya
00:34:15.280
said i love kenya i love kenyans i love kenyan values and i want to put kenya first there's not a
00:34:22.120
leftist in america who would think that that's bigoted or wrong or supremacist but because i think
00:34:27.820
like you said i guess after world war ii and i hadn't thought about that the west started i guess
00:34:34.400
you know thinking that oh nationalism is bad exceptionalism is bad which i i don't think
00:34:40.880
exceptionalism is bad i think it's totally fine if someone from australia thinks australia
00:34:45.180
is the best country in the world like i want their leaders to think that i want them to like
00:34:50.560
australia i want them to be patriotic and people also i think that they get confused between that
00:34:56.420
mentality which like i like you said um i think is good and then thinking that like that by saying
00:35:03.900
that you're saying that god thinks that americans are superior to other christian or like other people
00:35:11.600
in the world and i think that's where when people say you need to repent of christian nationalism
00:35:16.040
that's what they are assuming that patriotic americans think that i think that god loves us
00:35:22.360
better than they love someone from south america or that we are god's chosen nation like israel in the
00:35:30.200
old testament and america not christians but america is the city on a hill and people from brazil don't
00:35:37.520
matter i think that is what they think they are critiquing when they critique christian nationalism
00:35:44.020
do you agree with that 100 they they think that that there's there's this hilarious idea that
00:35:54.120
americans it's a caricature that conservative americans don't care about the world don't care about other
00:36:02.400
people think that you know that jesus is american the jesus is white like it's it's so stupid it's such a
00:36:09.900
stupid caricature meanwhile uh you know evangelicals um you know feeding the world but we adopt more
00:36:20.260
kids from third world countries you know uh by ratio we give we we started all of the you know like
00:36:28.400
world vision and and compassion etc we you know we go on everybody goes on mission trips every i mean
00:36:35.140
i remember being dragged to haiti a couple times by my dad um you know that that's what we do as
00:36:40.660
conservative christians we that's what you do you you get involved you you go to the soup kitchen you
00:36:45.600
know like you that's what we so it's just utter and total nonsense it's it's it's um it's a it's a it's a
00:36:55.480
caricature and it doesn't hold up um but it's convenient right like and and and it's it's a great way to
00:37:03.040
bludgeon um conservatives for going yeah no i i believe in you know uh for example i'm a canadian
00:37:10.060
and i i live in the united states and you know on a visa um and i've been here for for 10 years
00:37:16.260
and you know i have to i by all means for all intents and purposes i'm i'm an i'm an immigrant
00:37:22.840
um and i believe in the process of immigration you gotta know who's coming into your country but
00:37:28.600
if you're conservative and you say that um particularly if you're a white evangelical
00:37:33.840
right automatically you don't care about people you just you hate people and conservatives hate
00:37:40.160
people and you're a you're a christian nationalist you don't want anybody who's not white or christian
00:37:45.880
to come in the country no that's literally never said that although hey uh right would it be a bad
00:37:52.080
thing if we had if people that came to america wanted to be american you know like and and they
00:37:59.280
held some of the american philosophy well there is no american philosophy actually there there is
00:38:03.300
there actually is american philosophy um so you know and that's a whole other conversation
00:38:09.960
yeah do you think this is my other question that i thought about when you were talking do you think
00:38:16.680
that imperialism how you defined and described it is always wrong because you kind of described it as
00:38:25.320
trying to like import or export i guess ideas into another country you also kind of talked about like
00:38:34.040
the exporting of power and influence in other countries but you also talked about like exporting
00:38:38.660
businesses like starbucks into other countries like those are all different forms of maybe a kind of
00:38:44.180
imperialism do you always think it's wrong because you kind of contrasted it to nationalism which you
00:38:50.440
think is good but it sounds like you think imperialism is always wrong is it always wrong in your
00:38:55.180
opinion no no no so for example i'm not saying that that you know for like if they ask you that i mean
00:39:01.980
my business is in like you know 60 countries or something so i don't think that doing trade and doing
00:39:10.160
business etc is is wrong um imperialism is it is no so for example like yoram has yoram has only calls
00:39:25.460
the eu the fourth reich which i think is hilarious um and he just basically says like germany's still the
00:39:33.380
one that is setting all of the pace they're the ones that are making all the decisions for everybody
00:39:39.860
else in the eu so it's still german rule but it's economic um so can there be kind of you know
00:39:50.980
economic you know warfare yeah absolutely um am i saying that i'm not i'm not comparing that to trade
00:40:01.300
i'm just saying you know if you don't do this well then we won't lend you this you know so you know you
00:40:05.660
have to fall in line and you're violating somebody else's sovereignty you know like what if what if
00:40:10.520
greece doesn't want to let in any more refugees or immigrants they're like literally hey guys we
00:40:15.960
have no money we haven't had any money for 20 years right but the eu goes well if you're gonna be a
00:40:21.780
part of the eu and you're gonna get bank loans from us then you have to it's got to be open doors
00:40:25.400
bring bring the cages down bring the fences down right that is that's the fourth reich
00:40:32.040
as unpopular as it may sound um so that's sort of what i mean more by imperialism but for example
00:40:39.920
um i don't i i like the world the way it is and so that that doesn't mean that a japanese person
00:40:47.860
you know can't open up a chick-fil-a you know i mean like bring chick-fil-a to japan by all means
00:40:54.000
um but i like japan because it's japanese and that it's not american and that's i think one of the
00:41:02.440
the the i think the fundamental understandings of nationalism is is that nationalism is just about
00:41:09.260
nations keeping their cultures and and being the way they are and thinking the way they think and
00:41:14.640
and allowing them to be that way um and not um economically muscling them into this that or the
00:41:24.480
other thing yeah i think also it can't just be defined as like any other culture trying to influence
00:41:34.960
another culture because like you talked about okay well we defeated the germans in world war ii
00:41:42.720
because of not just german imperialism but bad german imperialism based on bad ideas and we decided
00:41:50.320
like no i'm sorry germany like you're not gonna do that and we're gonna push back on you so i guess
00:41:56.900
you could argue that that was a form of imperialism from the allied forces saying i'm sorry germany like
00:42:03.420
you don't have a right to do that and i think that i think that we have to make a distinction there
00:42:08.720
because we don't want to be morally relativistic because right is right and wrong is wrong and the
00:42:13.780
problem with the third right was not just imperialism was not just nationalism is that it
00:42:17.820
was a bad idea it was a bad idea like objectively it was a bad idea and so when you have good ideas
00:42:24.020
like we actually want that to influence like i do think american foreign policy has been misguided in
00:42:30.600
some ways like we thought that importing capitalism into china was going to make them be this free
00:42:36.580
democracy like that didn't turn out well it just gave them more power to be to be communist but
00:42:42.980
then you look at like you know the british colony of hong kong like importing western values into hong
00:42:49.080
kong was really good for hong kong like they wanted those western values like they wanted that western rule
00:42:54.960
of law and now that they're under the rule of china like they have no autonomy or no freedom so
00:42:59.280
i think it's also important to distinguish between like trying to influence people with good ideas
00:43:05.360
is good influencing people with bad ideas is bad and i i'm not sure like i don't know if we can
00:43:12.000
necessarily say that that's imperialism but i also think it's important to just be objective morally
00:43:17.980
that yeah some ideas are really bad to import and some ideas are good yeah exactly so i totally agree
00:43:23.420
like i don't think imperialism is influencing people with good ideas i think imperialism is
00:43:28.400
right right so um yes the american reaction for example you know england was being bombed um
00:43:37.400
holland had been invaded poland had been invaded so germany had violated the self-determination
00:43:45.260
of other countries and so when we when we declared war on germany we weren't fighting in germany first
00:43:51.340
we were fighting in places where they had muscled for our ally yeah shown imperial strength if that
00:43:57.640
makes sense so you know an imperialistic war is a war where you violate the sovereignty of somebody
00:44:03.960
else um for you know for for so for example you know augustine as a christian you know i'm an
00:44:11.080
augustinian in terms of you know my philosophy on war and augustine believes that defensive war
00:44:17.080
is the only just war so for example the americans coming to the aid of the south vietnamese
00:44:24.100
that would that's a as far as i'm concerned that's a just war if your allies going hey we're being
00:44:30.760
killed right now and we need help that that's a just war that might be the most uh you know um
00:44:38.400
controversial thing i'll ever say um but that that's what i believe so but that's not a but
00:44:44.120
but the war in vietnam was not imperialistic in the sense that america came uninvited into the war
00:44:51.700
no america came invited into the war by their south vietnamese allies who were perishing
00:44:57.780
yeah that is that's controversial because now we look at american history through the lens of
00:45:06.460
american strength is always bad it's always been the source of oppression and repression and it's all
00:45:13.160
it's also interesting how if you like that kind of worldview if you point out to someone who
00:45:18.320
believes that like well look at all these other countries that are still oppressing their people
00:45:22.760
that are corrupt that have nothing to do with america still somehow conveniently it always falls
00:45:27.900
back on american imperialism it always falls back that it's actually america's fault that africa is poor
00:45:33.580
and not the fact that china is actually colonizing and imperialistically invading those countries as we
00:45:40.620
speak right now and exploiting them that's a great example i think of what you're talking about
00:45:44.680
if you're overweight and you're black it's it's white supremacy yeah that's the critical race theory
00:45:52.280
worldview everything has to fit into america bad white bad evangelical bad now evangelical has been kind
00:45:58.920
of like put into that i saw an article in the new york times the other day how white evangelicals
00:46:04.680
are going to like stop the vaccination effort and um and basically arguing okay white evangelicals are
00:46:14.080
killing people because of this and then they linked to the they linked to the study that shows what
00:46:20.820
white evangelicals think about the vaccines well the majority 55 percent of white evangelicals plan to
00:46:26.640
get the vaccine so that they buried that lead that the majority of white evangelicals plan to get the
00:46:32.900
vaccine and they simply talked about well there's still a large percentage that don't and because
00:46:37.400
of that they're preventing people from getting the vaccine when actually the largest populations of
00:46:41.660
people who are skeptical about the vaccines are not white um and so yeah it's become like the same
00:46:47.160
people who are saying that you know christian nationalists are are everywhere and that we're the the
00:46:55.700
source of the problem they're the ones that have created this boogeyman they've created this boogeyman
00:47:00.460
that has been um i don't know it's just been seeping into american culture i guess for a very long time
00:47:06.800
yeah okay let's finish by oh go ahead go ahead it just delayed for a second nothing i have nothing
00:47:16.060
nothing okay uh let's finish by quickly talking about your book and telling people where they can
00:47:24.140
can find your book why you wrote this book hearing god and what it's about
00:47:27.940
yeah i wrote the book hearing god because i wanted to hear god um i wrote it because i was um
00:47:35.920
my background is growing up charismatic and um and as i began to sort of study you know the
00:47:45.960
scriptures and ask more questions about my you know i'm still charismatic i still identify as
00:47:49.780
charismatic i still believe uh that god talks to people and um but uh i just felt like um maybe my
00:48:00.960
my people the charismatic evangelicals needed um just a guide on you know how to hear god um and
00:48:09.860
specifically that god speaks you know very practically and that the supernatural isn't always spectacular
00:48:15.040
sometimes it's super ordinary um and so like for example like reading the bible well the bible is
00:48:21.380
inspired by the holy spirit and the holy spirit is never going to say something that contradicts the
00:48:27.040
bible because those are his words um so just stuff like that it's sort of like a it's some it's somewhat
00:48:33.840
of a memoir of growing up charismatic um meets laying out foundationally uh how how god speaks god speaks
00:48:42.500
through parents he speaks through mentors he primarily i mean first and foremost he speaks
00:48:48.740
through his word right but i kind of outline it um and then i sort of deal with some charismatic
00:48:53.460
myths it's a bit of a myth busting book so you know does god speak through you know you know if i just
00:49:01.020
flip the you know the the bible and i just put my finger down is that how the bible works is that how
00:49:06.660
is it like like a harry potter map or something um so that's kind of the uh that's the the long and short
00:49:13.380
of it yeah and where can they find that anywhere they want to buy their books yeah amazon um barnes and
00:49:21.000
nobles yeah and you're on instagram that's where i enjoy following both you and your brother you do a lot of
00:49:28.780
myth busting as well on instagram you take posts and kind of break them down a lot of people who listen to this
00:49:34.700
podcast and follow me follow you and they send me you and your brother's post because you guys
00:49:40.020
with a lot of good humor and also in good faith um rebut a lot of the craziness and the chaos that
00:49:46.540
we're seeing with god's word i really appreciate that i appreciate theos you i appreciate all the
00:49:52.060
resources that you are putting into the hands of people they're hungry for truth and the only place
00:49:56.580
where they're finding something masquerading as truth is these progressive deconstructionist
00:50:01.140
instagram account so thank you for for offering alternatives to that and always offering
00:50:07.740
interesting perspectives i really appreciate it yeah well the feeling's mutual i love your
00:50:12.580
instagram account you um your stories they do get a little bit long at times i will say there's a lot
00:50:18.400
of text and it's very small so could you help a brother out and get a little bigger do you have readers
00:50:24.560
what's readers do you have like eyeglasses oh eyeglasses that you can yeah you might you might
00:50:33.640
need it no i know that's true sometimes i have a lot it's typically when i'm copy and pasting like a
00:50:37.780
big chunk of scripture but you're right okay i'll start to break them up i'll start to break them up so
00:50:43.660
the old like you can read them no but you can't because you can't fit it all on there and sometimes
00:50:50.360
like i need to reference i need to reference like this stupid post and so it has to be seen
00:50:56.340
i can't make the fonts bigger i'm not purposely making them small it's just like this is what can
00:51:01.380
fit but i i hear you i take your feedback i'll apply it okay good no i appreciate how thorough you
00:51:06.960
are i like like i know that if i'm going to read your stories and when i'm reading through them
00:51:11.140
like i appreciate how thorough you are so like you know like you you you put in your resources
00:51:16.440
this is why this is the link you know like you're really good for that i i need to be better at that
00:51:21.820
well that's because i've just noticed that you know people a lot of people i you probably get this
00:51:28.600
too but i'll have talked about something one million times and people i'll get messages being like why
00:51:33.800
don't you ever talk about this or why have you never defined crt and i'm like oh my gosh if i define
00:51:39.500
this one more time i think the people who do follow me are going to freak out because i've talked about
00:51:44.280
it so much and so there's just like i i realize that there's so many people that miss contacts
00:51:50.020
and need contacts and also who have no idea what you and i are talking about like there are just
00:51:55.020
people that are coming in and they need a lot of information and so i do try to provide some
00:51:59.820
context you do so anyway uh thank you so much thank you for taking the time to talk to us um i really
00:52:07.340
really appreciate it and we'll put the links to theos you as well and anything else maybe uh your book
00:52:12.720
as well in the description to this podcast cool thank you