Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 526 ｜ When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone is having a great day, a great week so far.

00:00:15.900 Today I am talking to Andrew Walker. He is a Christian ethics professor. He also worked

00:00:23.880 at World Magazine where I also write. He is an associate dean at the School of Theology at the

00:00:31.480 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well. And he has so much wisdom when it comes to Christian

00:00:38.840 ethics and how Christians should be engaging with the culture and with the political realm. And so

00:00:46.360 he's going to tell us today, how do we balance not trusting too much in politics and putting our

00:00:53.580 hope too much in politics while also realizing it's an important world for us to engage in and

00:00:59.200 for us to understand. So without further ado, here is my friend, Andrew T. Walker.

00:01:06.260 Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and

00:01:11.480 what you do? Sure. My name is Andrew Walker, and I'm a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern

00:01:18.160 Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and then also serve as managing editor of the new

00:01:26.180 project of World Opinions, who is led by Dr. Albert Muller, who's the president of my institution.

00:01:32.780 And then I also serve as a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center based in Washington, D.C.

00:01:37.940 as well. But I currently call Louisville, Kentucky home, and I'm very privileged to do what I get to do

00:01:44.600 for my calling, which is to write and teach pastors and to train up individuals and the moral witness

00:01:54.100 of the Christian faith. And how have you become a public voice on the things that you talk about?

00:01:59.660 You're a professor, so that obviously puts you in front of an audience, but now you have a pretty large

00:02:05.180 audience. So how did you come into this world of political and cultural public commentary?

00:02:11.620 That's a good question. I would say it's almost a result of there just being very few people willing

00:02:20.260 to step into the arena. You know, Ali, I know you know this, when you hear the statistics about

00:02:25.540 millennials and kind of the bad state of their biblical theological literacy and their willingness to step

00:02:33.740 into the arena, what that ends up doing is creating a smaller number of people who are willing to

00:02:40.300 potentially burn down their reputation and their credibility to say what needs to be said.

00:02:48.220 And so really, I don't know. It's really the fact that I'm overly that gifted. It could be the fact

00:02:55.180 that I'm perhaps bravely or naively prepared to enter into the arena and to say things that I think need to

00:03:04.940 be said. And that's not just because I want to be correct and right, but because as Christians,

00:03:12.780 we believe that what is right is ultimately for our good. And so what we are talking about in the

00:03:19.960 public square, it's not mere sectarian truths. This is not about us being vindicated. Ultimately,

00:03:26.720 Christ is the one who vindicates. But if we love our neighbor, one of the very practical ways we're going

00:03:32.680 to love our neighbor is to say what is true for our neighbor and what is true about our society as

00:03:38.320 well. And I have a few questions within your answer or from your answer that I want to ask. But first,

00:03:43.940 I want to back up a little bit. How would you summarize Christian ethics? What is it that you

00:03:49.420 teach as a professor? Sure. That's a good question. I would say Christian ethics is a branch of moral

00:03:56.840 theology, and it's effectively—sometimes I like to call it applied Christology, because what we're trying

00:04:04.100 to do is live a life patterned after Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ. So obviously that

00:04:11.920 means that's going to impact our day-to-day conduct and interactions with the world. So we want to model and

00:04:19.680 pattern our life after the person of Christ. But then also we understand that Christian ethics is bigger than

00:04:26.200 just pure imitation. And I'm not trying to downplay the significance of imitation. But when we look at passages

00:04:32.820 of Scripture, like in John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 1, what we understand is that Christ is at the

00:04:41.100 center of the universe. In fact, in the Greek, he is referred to as the Logos, which means he is the divine cosmic

00:04:48.640 ordering principle of the universe. So that means that implicates every single thing about how we see

00:04:56.740 the world. So Christian ethics is really an issue of Christian worldview. So how am I called to relate

00:05:04.920 to my world, to my role as a citizen, to my role as a husband and a father, in light of the revelation

00:05:13.040 of Christ that we get from Scripture? And for those who say, you know, Christians really don't need to 0.98

00:05:20.360 be messing around with these culture wars. We don't need to be so caught up in politics. I think

00:05:26.260 evangelicals in particular are sometimes accused of idolizing politics, of getting too caught up in

00:05:33.700 these political and culture wars. How do we as Christians balance that? We obviously don't want to put

00:05:40.940 our trust in politicians or our hope in politicians or even in any kind of political future while

00:05:47.640 realizing, as you said, we do have an obligation to our neighbor. And one of the ways, one of the ways

00:05:53.140 we can love our neighbor is not only speaking truth, but also by participating in the political

00:05:59.220 process that we are free to participate in in the United States. We say on this podcast almost every

00:06:04.960 episode, politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy,

00:06:09.980 policy affects people. So that is one of the ways that we care about people. But, you know,

00:06:16.080 we do as conservative Christians, we do diverge from progressive Christians who think that activism

00:06:21.260 is a form of sanctification, who actually believe that they're going to be able to accomplish some

00:06:26.020 kind of heavenly utopia here on earth through their political activism. So I guess what I'm asking is,

00:06:33.640 what is the Christian biblical way to look at how we interact with these political,

00:06:38.060 cultural issues without idolatry, but also we don't want to be apathetic either?

00:06:44.440 Goodness. Well, so I have a whole class I teach on political theology, which is dedicated to that

00:06:50.020 simple question. There is so much there. Let me just kind of maybe scratch at the surface.

00:06:55.180 One of the things I would say is we need to ask ourselves, what is the nature of politics?

00:07:03.060 What does it mean to live in a political community? So that's a theological question.

00:07:09.980 So government has been given in this particular age, as you said, not to bring about political

00:07:17.880 utopia. When you look at Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter 2, and in fact, I would actually go all the

00:07:25.120 way back to Genesis chapter 9 with the Noahic Covenant. What we see fundamentally as the purpose of

00:07:31.640 government is to exercise preservative justice. So that means government is a positive good.

00:07:40.200 It's not something to run away from. That government is one of the instruments where fallen individuals

00:07:46.580 are cooperating with in order to allow competing interests and often conflicted interests to figure

00:07:54.260 out ways to peaceably live together in a fractious, fragmented moment like our own. So if we go back

00:08:01.800 to Genesis chapter 3, because we ideally would love to have stayed in Genesis 1 and 2, but we didn't

00:08:07.960 stay there. So Genesis 3 enters in, which means sin, decay, fallenness. We then get to Genesis chapter 9,

00:08:15.540 which is what most scholars would look to as kind of the very beginnings of what we would understand as

00:08:22.740 kind of the reciprocal or retributive understandings of justice. We see that God is concerned with

00:08:29.800 maintaining the contours of this creation, and He's interested in maintaining the contours of this

00:08:36.660 creation. One, I would say because He loves this creation. Two, He maintains the contours or the stage

00:08:45.120 or platform of this creation, because ultimately it was going to be that platform that would ultimately

00:08:50.400 bring Christ onto the scene when we get to the New Testament. And so one of the ways we manage 0.56

00:08:57.520 living in a fallen age is to provide governing authorities to help us work out these differences.

00:09:05.680 You know, when we think about the nature of statecraft, Scripture doesn't really give us

00:09:11.060 any one particular formula for what a government ought to look like. So hypothetically, monarchy,

00:09:18.820 parliamentary systems, democratic and republican-style systems, those are all legitimate.

00:09:25.040 What all governments are called to do is to pursue justice. And as a Christian, we would look at passages

00:09:32.680 like Romans chapter 2, 14, and 15, which is kind of a classical passage on the teaching of the natural

00:09:38.660 law that states that God has placed effectively eternity and a longing for justice inside the

00:09:46.380 human heart. And one of the ways that we commiserate and work together in society is to pass just laws

00:09:54.000 and then install people into power. We understand our good individuals and trustworthy who can then

00:10:02.820 create and carry out these laws on our behalf. But I want to dwell on something that you just said

00:10:12.060 that I thought was really important. And that's not to invest too much into politics, but at the same

00:10:20.100 time, not then minimizing politics either. It is to understand kind of this paradoxical reality that in a

00:10:28.580 fallen age, government is absolutely necessary. And so government is therefore obligated to recognize

00:10:34.980 what is true about the universe, while at the same time, recognizing that there are limitations to what

00:10:41.440 the government is actually able to bring about. I'm a Baptist, and so we have a strong tradition of

00:10:48.320 religious liberty. And so I don't want the government meddling in kind of intricate matters of

00:10:54.360 theology. That doesn't mean that we keep religion and politics separate. That's actually impossible.

00:11:00.760 But it means we keep these spheres of church and state kind of jurisdictionally separate in order to

00:11:07.680 make sure that their callings and their jurisdictions and their competencies are all properly borne out

00:11:13.420 respective to their callings. But if we love our neighbor, one of the most very practical ways we're

00:11:20.280 going to love our neighbor is to codify laws that seek to do good to our neighbors. And one of the

00:11:27.900 real ironies of this particular moment that we're living in is we have a lot of Christians who are

00:11:33.160 saying, government is bad. Don't place your trust in government. Well, at the same time, these Christians 1.00

00:11:38.320 are the same Christians who are saying, pursue social justice. Do good to your neighbor. And I want to say to

00:11:43.560 that, yes and amen. But the problem, though, is if you're going to actually hope to bring about

00:11:48.680 justice and truth, that is necessarily a call to the government, not away from the government.

00:11:56.580 I want to go a little deeper into the distinction that you just made between

00:12:01.200 intermingling or allowing religion to influence law and the intermingling of church and state. So

00:12:09.400 we're against, you know, the we're for the separation of church and state. But it is impossible,

00:12:17.560 as you said, to separate religion and politics or religion and law. I think that's a very important

00:12:24.320 point. Can you explain more about what you mean? Sure. One of the real, I would say, fictions that

00:12:32.200 our age kind of trades in is this idea that you can separate a person's ultimate values and their

00:12:42.360 worldview from from from how they're how they vote and how they're going to want to see those values

00:12:48.120 lived out. And so this is really kind of we're living in the after after effects of a scholar

00:12:53.080 named John Rawls. And John Rawls said, because we're living in this diverse society, we have to figure out

00:12:59.880 kind of a common moral discourse that allows us to communicate with one another without automatically

00:13:06.680 deferring to religion. And so what he said effectively was to keep religion out of it.

00:13:11.880 You have to operate on secular terms only. Well, the problem, though, is in his attempt to

00:13:19.880 argue for secular neutrality, you know, this alley, what that really does is smuggle in

00:13:26.680 secular neutrality or secularism as the real actual morality and system that's behind the debate.

00:13:36.120 And it's not neutral. And it's not neutral at all. Absolutely. And so what secularism has done

00:13:45.400 wrong is to sever the sacred from the public. Now, notice, I didn't say sacred and the political,

00:13:56.840 because there is one sense in which government is a secular enterprise. And a part of that means

00:14:02.840 recovering a healthy understanding of secular secular and a traditional historic Christian

00:14:08.200 understanding doesn't mean anti-religion. Rather, secular refers to only those temporal institutions

00:14:16.200 that are not designed to be present into the eschatological age, which we would say government

00:14:21.080 is one of those functions. So government is a secular institution, but that doesn't mean that it's

00:14:26.840 it's cut off or immune from influence from individuals who have been formed and cultivated

00:14:33.720 and habituated by the traditions that have formed them. So there's an interesting paradox here,

00:14:40.360 especially as as a Baptist evangelical Christian here is I want religion intricately involved

00:14:48.120 in the public space. I have friends who are legislators who are evangelical Christians.

00:14:53.640 I want more of that in public office. What I would not want these individuals then doing is to say,

00:14:59.880 well, well, then government is only there for Christians and government is only interpretable

00:15:06.600 or intelligible exclusively on Christian grounds. And so therefore, if you're not a Christian,

00:15:12.440 you're a second class citizen. That's not what I'm saying at all when we talk about secularism.

00:15:16.360 Rather, it's it's helping us to to capture what I think is the real brilliance of our founding is

00:15:25.400 our founders understood that this apparatus of government is really just a tool and a vehicle.

00:15:32.680 And the tool and vehicle is only as useful as the people who are using the tool are virtuous. And one of

00:15:41.160 the ways that we get virtue from an American founding understanding is from the vehicle of religion.

00:15:47.960 And so in a time where we're trying to say keep religion and politics separate from each other,

00:15:55.560 I think that's completely disjunctive from what we see is actually the founding vision for our country.

00:16:01.400 I mean, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, what does he say makes America unique from all other

00:16:06.760 countries that he's been in? He says it's effectively because America is a nation with the soul of a

00:16:14.120 church. And so rather than taking our cues and our understanding of of all things from the

00:16:20.760 government in the sense that the government does not hand down, it doesn't determine what is true.

00:16:28.040 Government recognizes what is true. And therefore, it's it's incumbent upon us to put people into office

00:16:35.560 who have that limited understanding of the government's purpose.

00:16:39.400 And that debate gets more and more complicated as we move into or I wouldn't say we move into

00:16:45.240 we are firmly in kind of this post truth postmodern world where we are asking, what is truth?

00:16:51.240 You said that the function of the government is to pursue just laws. One of the ways that we

00:16:56.440 love our neighbor is to speak truth and also to pursue policy that we know is good for them.

00:17:01.240 But what it comes down to is what is good? What is just what is true? You and I believe that there

00:17:08.200 is a God who created all of those things that he has graciously shown us both through general and

00:17:13.560 special revelation, what truth is, what justice is, what goodness is, and what we can pursue.

00:17:19.480 How do we debate these things? And maybe we don't. Maybe that's kind of what you were just saying.

00:17:24.120 How do we debate these things from a non strictly Christian theological perspective in the public

00:17:30.200 square for someone who wants to be persuaded that, you know, abortion is wrong. Like we can list all

00:17:38.760 of the scientific facts about, you know, fetal development. We can try to come from a humanistic

00:17:45.960 moral perspective. But at the end of the day, you and I believe that abortion is wrong because that

00:17:51.320 human being is made in the image of God and God made that human being, that human being has a soul

00:17:55.880 and value. So at the end of the day, even as we might be able to persuade people from a secular

00:18:02.600 perspective, the motivation behind our persuasion is that, you know, that child is made in the Imago Dei.

00:18:10.600 So maybe my question is, should we try to separate the arguments about what is good and right and true

00:18:17.880 from the Bible when we're in the public square? Or should we just say, look,

00:18:22.600 there's a God who created all of this. There's a God who defines all of this. There's a God who

00:18:27.240 originates justice and goodness. And we cannot even really have a full conversation about those things

00:18:33.800 without talking about where they come from.

00:18:37.480 Gosh, I love that question. And that's, again, central to the class I teach in political theology.

00:18:43.560 One of the things I would say here is Christians would say we believe in a common morality,

00:18:50.440 but there is no such thing as a neutral morality. So by virtue of the fact that we have been created

00:18:57.160 with reason, God instills some baseline moral foundation inside the heart of every human being.

00:19:05.560 So there can be common morality, but there is no moral neutrality in the sense that we would say

00:19:12.520 that truth is coming from all different directions. No, that's not what I'm saying. Truth ultimately is

00:19:19.080 grounded in the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who then manifests himself and reveals himself

00:19:25.720 in Scripture. But then as you helpfully and rightly noted, and I should say as a side note,

00:19:31.400 Alibeth, in your writing, I've appreciated that you're talking about general revelation

00:19:36.120 as much as you are. And this is the idea that God has communicated to us in two ways,

00:19:41.880 both through the Bible, but then also through creation. And so individuals, when they're out

00:19:47.480 in creation, by looking at design patterns, the law of consequence, they understand that there is

00:19:56.760 something ultimately behind the foundations of this universe. And in a classical sense,

00:20:02.760 we would call that being God. So special revelation and general revelation are two tools that we have at

00:20:09.640 our disposal. But when you're thinking about kind of the practical ways of how would you actually argue

00:20:15.800 for what Christians believe on kind of hot button cultural issues, one of the things I always say

00:20:21.960 is it's not an either or. In many ways, how we argue is likened to what is the best golf club to use

00:20:31.080 relative to the swing. And so really, that's a prudential issue that we have to wrestle with

00:20:36.840 on fact-specific and context-specific circumstances that we find ourselves in.

00:20:41.480 I often use the example of, what would I do if I were a legislator on the floor of Congress?

00:20:49.560 And there was a bill that came up that was a pro-life bill. I would argue that bill in several

00:20:57.000 different horizons. I would argue on the basis that, listen, political societies need babies. 0.75

00:21:04.760 Babies are good things for societies because we need voters, we need taxpayers. And so killing a 0.97

00:21:09.960 population of individuals is wrong as a sociological and political matter. I would then argue probably

00:21:15.560 on the grounds of natural law and a conscience issue that life is a basic good. And so therefore,

00:21:21.640 we should never pursue any policy or law that would terminate innocent life. That's unlawful.

00:21:30.040 It's unethical. It's at the very opposite end of what you would consider to be a just system of

00:21:36.200 government. And then third, I would simply end my imagined floor speech by simply saying,

00:21:43.080 you know, my fellow legislators, I come here to you today, someone who cares passionately about these

00:21:50.600 issues, both as an American, as a human, but fundamentally as someone who is creating the image

00:21:56.920 of God, because I believe every single human being is creating the image of God. And I learned that

00:22:02.200 ultimately from Scripture. But what I understand is that the God who has created us in His image

00:22:07.400 has instilled within all people a longing for justice. And so what I would say is,

00:22:13.720 pass pro-life legislation, because this honors both creation, it honors humanity,

00:22:19.320 but fundamentally it honors God and His Word as well.

00:22:21.960 God's glory and our good are always going to be inextricably intertwined. And so while it's not

00:22:31.160 always a simple argument, sometimes it takes some explaining and obviously some persuading.

00:22:40.200 It is an, or maybe I should say, it's not always an easy argument, but it is a simple argument. It is

00:22:47.160 always pretty forthright. Now this gets a little bit more complicated when we're talking about the

00:22:53.000 issue of sexuality, of identity, of people's relationships. One question that I think a lot

00:22:59.880 of Christians have is how much influence should Christianity have over the law, which we've already

00:23:05.400 been discussing. But when it comes to homosexuality, when it comes to gay marriage, which is kind of just 0.72

00:23:11.000 a foregone conversation at this point. And even when it comes to some of the things that you have

00:23:16.920 been talking about, cohabitation, even no-fault divorce, some of these things that we really don't

00:23:22.840 discuss on the policy level anymore. Should Christians even be thinking about this from a 1.00

00:23:28.440 policy perspective? Is it worth having a debate anymore about the legality of gay marriage?

00:23:34.760 Or should Christians really just try to persuade people personally when it comes to the importance 0.90

00:23:44.040 of biblical sexuality? Where's the line that we draw today?

00:23:48.200 So I think regardless of how you think about this in either a relational or policy bucket,

00:23:56.360 first and foremost, Christians are called to be truthful and to bear witness to the truth.

00:24:02.760 And so I think that means in whatever domain or bucket you find yourself in, you are obligated

00:24:09.400 to speak truthfully. And you should never allow your speech to be blurred or suppressed or drafted

00:24:16.520 into things that you believe are immoral and wrong. Now, when we think about gender and sexuality issues,

00:24:23.800 I agree with you. It would be seemingly difficult right now to overturn Obergefell because the

00:24:31.480 direction our culture is going is not with Christians on this issue. But you know what? 0.67

00:24:38.600 I don't believe in the kind of progressive utopia of the right side of history and the wrong side of

00:24:45.240 history. We might have an issue right now where a particular policy is in place for a certain period of

00:24:53.640 time. And then later in a few decades, a couple hundred years, we might understand that these

00:25:00.040 policies have sowed destruction for our culture. And I'm not just talking about same-sex marriage. 0.95

00:25:06.760 I'm talking about no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce has been catastrophic on our culture. 0.99

00:25:13.960 And then you think about just the general rise of cohabitation and just the decline of marriage

00:25:19.640 right now in our general culture. I talk about this in my classes because it's hard to be aware

00:25:25.640 of this if you're not studying it. But Brad Wilcox, who's a friend of mine and a sociologist at

00:25:30.760 the University of Virginia, I think he would make the argument, based on his data, that marriage and

00:25:37.160 family life is in about the worst state it has ever been in in American history. And what he measures

00:25:44.440 that by is the fact that individuals are either not marrying, they're marrying at later ages,

00:25:51.400 they're having fewer children or not having children at all. And so what we have right now is

00:25:57.400 just the decline overall of kind of why you would enter family life in the first place. And in many

00:26:04.040 ways, this is a, it's the inversion of the creation order. And it's an inversion of the

00:26:08.680 cultural mandate that we see from Genesis chapter one. But, you know, when I worked at the Heritage

00:26:13.640 Foundation, one of the reasons I worked on the marriage issue with my friend Ryan Anderson was

00:26:18.440 because we understood that, excuse me, societies need healthy marriages because society is nothing

00:26:27.000 else but the total aggregate number of families living in that given place, that given locality.

00:26:33.000 So if you have a political community where 50% of the marriages are ending in divorce,

00:26:38.920 you're going to have human suffering as a result. One of the statistics that we know is true

00:26:44.760 is that the greatest indicator of childhood poverty in our country right now is whether or not that

00:26:50.120 child is raised in a household with a married mother and father. So we're all about social justice in

00:26:56.600 this age, right? That's the anthem and the banner that everyone is flying. Well, here's the thing. If you

00:27:01.480 really want to pursue social justice, which means people having proper relationships to themselves,

00:27:07.080 their family and their social order and to God, that means telling the truth about what family is

00:27:13.400 and who created family, which is God. And so if you're asking me to come back full circle,

00:27:19.400 how we began this interview, why do I want to tell the truth about marriage? Because ultimately,

00:27:24.680 I love my neighbor and I cannot sit back and allow society to redefine institutions that are absolutely

00:27:32.120 necessary to its stability and its foundation and see those institutions impaled and then be

00:27:39.240 indifferent about them. If I see individuals being denied the love and care and environment that comes

00:27:46.920 with experiencing the differentiated love of a mother and father. And so this is a huge cultural

00:27:54.040 conversation because you can't sever that issue from the fact that we're now living in an age where

00:28:02.840 toxic masculinity is a thing. So the downplaying of gender distinctions in our society is going to wreak 1.00

00:28:10.840 havoc on our society because at the end of the day, it blurs those categories that God has placed in 1.00

00:28:16.920 creation for our good.

00:28:18.680 I had a guest on my show a few weeks ago. Her name is Katie Faust and she has an organization

00:28:28.280 called Them Before Us. And she's raising a lot of awareness about this issue, about how

00:28:34.120 not just no-fault divorce, but also much of the surrogacy industry, the redefinition of marriage and

00:28:40.120 family and gender has disproportionately hurt children. And as you said, people who say that they care for

00:28:46.440 social justice and care for the marginalized and the oppressed very often don't realize that these

00:28:51.720 issues that have been pushed forward with really without much thought or study or discretion

00:28:56.920 whatsoever are going to affect children. So there's that practical part there that you mentioned that

00:29:03.560 kids who often grow up without a dad, they're more likely to be depressed. They have higher rates of

00:29:08.600 teen pregnancy, teen delinquency, dropping out of high school, poverty. And so there are a lot of

00:29:14.840 practical, tangible issues there that are at stake when we are encouraging divorce or incentivizing,

00:29:21.240 in some cases, single parenthood and all of that. But also there is the theological. She said a couple

00:29:27.400 things that I had never really thought about when it comes to the importance of kids having really a

00:29:34.120 right to a mom and a dad is that you are forcing these kids to disobey the first commandment with a

00:29:41.720 promise that we are to honor our father and mother. The Bible charges us to care for the fatherless.

00:29:47.960 Well, if we are redefining the family and saying that, you know, so-called marriage without a husband

00:29:54.600 or without a dad is just as good for kids, you are forcing those kids into fatherlessness. We are

00:30:01.480 forcing those kids into a form of oppression, something that God defines as oppression. And I think,

00:30:08.360 I mean, I didn't even think about that as someone who understands the theological and practical

00:30:13.080 importance of marriage. But unfortunately, I think I see a lot of Christian conservatives thinking

00:30:18.760 that the whole marriage and family issue is a losing issue that we really shouldn't talk about

00:30:25.640 anymore. Let's just talk about capitalism. Let's just talk about small government. Let's just talk

00:30:30.200 about anti-socialism, which of course I think all is important. But to me, it just seems like you're not

00:30:37.320 going to get those issues. You're not going to get the other conservative issues without

00:30:43.960 without remembering and upholding that incubator of liberty, that foundation of the values that we

00:30:51.800 hold dear. If someone doesn't realize that your rights are inherent, they don't come from the

00:30:57.960 government, that your primary caretaker are your parents, your primary authority and your primary

00:31:03.960 disciplers are your parents. Then they do go to the culture, to politicians, to outside influencers

00:31:13.880 to get those values. And then we lose all the rest of the stuff that conservatives want to uphold.

00:31:18.920 So I don't know. I do think a lot of conservative Christians are scared to talk about these issues

00:31:22.840 because they do seem divisive and people are tired of being called bigots.

00:31:26.440 I mean, listen, everything you just said, I couldn't agree more with. You think about

00:31:33.640 what are those first things, those permanent things, issues that we have to get right.

00:31:41.640 The family is one of them. I would put family as kind of the bedrock foundation upon which the rest of

00:31:48.520 society comes to be built on top of. When we are building a foundation on sand, which is what we're

00:31:56.440 now doing, the rest of society is going to be crippled as well. And I'll just end by stating something

00:32:04.040 here you mentioned about denying children access to a mother and a father. This is very unpopular to say,

00:32:12.200 but you all remember the video probably or the photo of Pete Buttigieg with his spouse in a hospital bed

00:32:22.840 with their newborn children. Well, it's celebrated on social media. It's getting all of the retweets

00:32:31.080 celebrating the goodness of life and family, which we want to celebrate life. Absolutely.

00:32:38.120 But you know what's really fascinating is they took that picture inside a hospital room,

00:32:44.440 sitting on a hospital bed where there was someone conspicuously absent, which was the mother.

00:32:51.960 And so while society is applauding and celebrating that image, I saw that and thought, okay, well,

00:32:59.240 what law and public policy has now coordinated to do is to deny those children loving access to a mother.

00:33:10.920 So we have cut out intentionally by design because of public policy, the opportunity for those children

00:33:19.000 to have a mom. That is not justice. That is a disrespect to the creation order that God has placed 0.81

00:33:29.800 in our world. And we should lament the fact that any child is not getting the love that they are

00:33:39.720 entitled to and have a right to from a mother and a father. Yep. Justice doesn't mean whatever people

00:33:45.480 want it to mean justice is synonymous with righteousness. And the one righteous one who

00:33:49.960 created justice tells us what that looks like. And one of the depictions of justice that we see is

00:33:55.880 at the very beginning of the Bible, the creation of the family, not just for his glory, but also for our

00:34:01.000 good. Thank you for defending that so well. I think you've gotten, you've given us a lot to chew on.

00:34:06.920 And, um, I think have been able to boil down very clearly, um, the Christian position on a lot of

00:34:15.480 controversial topics as you do so well consistently. Uh, can you tell everyone how they can find you,

00:34:20.120 how they can support you? Yeah, I would say, um, I'm mostly on Twitter. I'm, uh, simply Andrew T walk,

00:34:27.320 and, uh, I've got some books on Amazon. Um, you know, shockingly Amazon still sells them. Uh, we'll see how

00:34:33.800 much longer that happens. I have a second edition of my book on transgenderism coming out in February.

00:34:38.680 So we'll see if I follow suit like, uh, Ryan Anderson and get my book canceled. So we'll see

00:34:43.560 what happens. Let's hope not. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate you coming on.

00:34:47.960 Thanks, Alibeth.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 18, 2021

Ep 526 ｜ When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker

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