A Biblical Case for Public Vengeance ｜ Guest： Timon Cline ｜ 10⧸15⧸25
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.90703
Summary
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, many have called for public vengeance against the shooter. But what does the Bible say about the role of public vengeance and forgiveness in the case of a crime like this? And what does it really say about forgiveness?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just
00:00:05.020
your destination. It takes you to winding streets, spontaneous detours, and the realisation that
00:00:11.840
neither of you is actually good with directions. And when the final shortcut taken isn't exactly
00:00:19.360
short, our crew is here to give you a trip home that goes just as planned. KLM Royal Dutch
00:00:27.340
Airlines. When you travel, travel well. Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining
00:00:32.420
this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to
00:00:36.340
enjoy. A lot of things have been coming out after the Charlie Kirk assassination. Obviously,
00:00:43.100
we've seen continued leftist violence, but even in the face of this violence, many people have said
00:00:49.160
that it's not okay to call for justice or even vengeance for Charlie Kirk. They say, no, you're
00:00:56.120
a Christian. You have to forgive. You have to move on. There's nothing you're allowed to do,
00:01:00.340
nothing you're allowed to go out and say, nothing you're allowed to advocate on behalf of,
00:01:04.340
because ultimately forgiveness has to be what you're centered on. But that's not really a reflection
00:01:09.780
of what Christian society has said about justice, what the Bible says about justice, and the role
00:01:15.460
that the government plays in this process. Oftentimes we entirely conflate the role of the government
00:01:21.460
and the role of the individual when it comes to forgiveness and justice. Talking to me today about
00:01:27.440
this is one of the guys over at American Reformer. He wrote a great article on this topic.
00:01:33.540
Simon Klein, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks so much for having me again, Warren. Always good to be
00:01:37.720
with you. Absolutely. Well, we're going to dive into the biblical case for public vengeance, but before
00:01:43.560
we get started, let's hear from today's sponsor. Everyone knows that college is a major investment,
00:01:47.480
so it's really important to do your research. You want to find a school that shares your values,
00:01:51.760
but who has the time to dig through all those college websites? Well, today I've got great news
00:01:56.220
for you. There's a free, easy-to-use resource that does the work for you. It's called christiancollegeguide.com.
00:02:03.380
This online directory of over 250 Christian colleges and universities is a one-stop shop.
00:02:10.080
christiancollegeguide.com lists all the basics, such as acceptance rates, tuition costs,
00:02:14.740
and academic majors. But here's what makes this resource truly special.
00:02:19.240
christiancollegeguide.com will show you the school's faith commitments,
00:02:22.880
its campus policies, and its spiritual life. All the info that you will need to find the college you can trust.
00:02:29.000
This is the definitive college guide for Christian higher education, and it's completely free.
00:02:34.320
So if you or someone you know is considering college,
00:02:36.980
go to christiancollegeguide.com to create a free user profile and start today.
00:02:44.740
All right, Timon, like I said, we've talked, of course, on the show about the practical political
00:02:50.340
realities, why you have to punish the left, why it's not okay to just let this slide in general.
00:02:57.200
I think a lot of people, of course, would say you need to punish the murderer of Charlie Kirk. I think
00:03:03.240
that's pretty obvious to everyone, why the public magistrate would punish the murderer, and then
00:03:09.660
Erica Kirk can choose to forgive or not as a private citizen. However, a lot of us have,
00:03:15.260
I think, correctly pointed out that there needs to be a wider scope of this kind of pushback. It's not
00:03:21.300
enough to simply punish the one person who pulled the trigger, and a lot of people have had big
00:03:26.460
problems with that. I even got attacked by Reason Magazine as an incredibly dangerous figure for
00:03:32.420
pointing out that if there is no public vengeance, if there is no wider understanding applied by the
00:03:39.300
government of how we should conduct ourselves in moments like this, we're going to see more of
00:03:44.340
this. And I think you laid this out very well in your piece at American Reformer. Can you give us a
00:03:49.680
little bit of just a basic framework? Why do we need to understand the role of private forgiveness and
00:03:57.480
public vengeance differently? Yeah. Well, first of all, I just say everything appears dangerous to
00:04:03.820
Reason Magazine, and you should consider it a badge of honor that they find you dangerous.
00:04:09.660
In any case, right, so the dichotomy was kind of set up publicly even as early as Charlie Kirk's
00:04:17.440
memorial service between Erica and her personal forgiveness of the killer, even unrequested by the
00:04:24.780
killer, but she offered it anyway. And then Trump saying, I don't forgive my enemies, you know,
00:04:29.100
and obviously, I think there's a good argument that was partly tongue in cheek, but there's also
00:04:33.240
something serious about it, given his position. And I think that apparent dichotomy or apparent
00:04:40.580
conflict, followed by people, as you were noting, generally speaking, saying, you know, as Christians,
00:04:47.380
we should be calling for the forgiveness and maybe clemency of people who do wrong. And of course,
00:04:53.080
at bare minimum, you have to take the Mike Pence route, which is to limit all the causality and all
00:04:58.640
the damage to this one individual case, this one person. I think he said, well, you know, one person
00:05:04.200
killed Charlie Kirk, we're not going to put America on trial. That was kind of his line after this.
00:05:09.440
And among other things, what's confused in all this is the distinction, very, you know, the traditional
00:05:15.620
kind of distinction between public and private persons. These are different things. Public persons are
00:05:21.360
representative of others. They have authority. They have sovereignty. However, they get it
00:05:26.600
doesn't matter at this point. The point is they're different than private people are. And so there is
00:05:32.560
actually, in many ways, a different ethic that public figures have to embody in order to perform
00:05:39.880
their duties as public persons. So this basic distinction being absent from a lot of the conversation
00:05:45.740
created a lot of confusion. And we can, we can unpack it more, but I think that's the most basic
00:05:52.800
No, again, very important. As you say, your role as a magistrate is not the same as a private
00:05:58.840
individual. And you go into this in the piece that ultimately the magistrate is taking on certain
00:06:05.440
tasks. He has to commit certain acts that otherwise people would shy away from. And this is something
00:06:11.560
that I think a lot of people miss in our discussions about public officials, right? They, we want
00:06:16.700
someone who's just competent. We want someone who just has the right managerial skills, but actually
00:06:21.780
statecraft is not just a set of managerial skills. It's not the ability to more efficiently run a
00:06:28.880
bureaucracy or apply government policy. It's about making critical decisions and taking on
00:06:34.240
responsibilities that other people would not. Joseph de Maestria called this decisionism, right? That you
00:06:39.560
have this duty to act when others would not, to bear the weight of responsibility when others would
00:06:45.780
not. And in many ways, he says the executioner is kind of a cog between the authority of the prince,
00:06:54.520
the authority of the king and the people. It's this thing that binds them together and cements the
00:07:00.200
authority that God has instantiated in that system. And if you don't properly exercise that authority,
00:07:07.700
if you leave it on the wayside, then order breaks down because if people do not see the magistrate
00:07:14.120
applying that form of public vengeance, they will seek private vengeance. And so when we think about
00:07:21.140
the Christian ethic, it's not that there's a lack of justice or even a lack of vengeance, but it's
00:07:27.180
a transferral of the authority from the private vengeance on the private enemy to the magistrate's
00:07:35.260
public vengeance on the enemy that has wronged the public. Yeah. And I think you can see right away
00:07:41.700
a difference between the public and private person, the magistrate and the citizen, a difference in the
00:07:48.500
way they're supposed to behave and what they're allowed to do, because clearly the injunction against
00:07:55.700
murder in the Sixth Commandment does not in some way apply to the civil authority. He is allowed to
00:08:01.840
take life, right? So clearly there's a difference in what we are. And then there's a difference in
00:08:07.200
purpose of our actions and what they're supposed to be oriented to. And so we're precluded from taking
00:08:12.320
private vengeance for people who wrong us in a private way. The Bible's very clear on this. We
00:08:18.680
are supposed to forgive. We are supposed to be long-suffering. We're supposed to have our
00:08:22.940
sort of consciousness of actions even against us understood in light of eternity and in providence
00:08:29.960
and so on and so forth. But the public man, the magistrate, the one who has authority is supposed
00:08:36.340
to have a very different perspective on these things, especially threats against his citizens,
00:08:41.840
threats to disorder, violence, so on and so forth. And this is all part of his duty of rewarding good
00:08:48.180
and punishing evil, of keeping order, of reflecting God on earth, of being God on earth. So vengeance
00:08:53.440
is the Lord's for all wrong in eternity. It also belongs to inside of time, temporally for the
00:09:01.960
sake of God's purposes to the magistrate, the one who's been given authority to do this. And to your
00:09:07.040
point about competence, I mean, yes, this is how we think about our elected officials and these things
00:09:11.660
now. If you read older theologians like Heinrich Bollinger, who I cite in the piece, the first
00:09:19.280
qualification of a magistrate that he lists before anything else is not competency. It's to have
00:09:24.660
sort of the ability, the power, and what he calls a princely stomach to do these things that private
00:09:31.960
people don't want to do and don't have to do, right? And one of those is to execute justice on
00:09:36.320
wrongdoers, both for the safety of your people, but also as an expression of God's justice and his
00:09:42.920
righteous anger. And more functionally, to limit what we call copycats. If you don't punish sin,
00:09:51.680
if you don't publish crime rigidly, you will suggest that people can get away with it. You will
00:09:57.620
multiply the violence, you'll multiply the crimes, which seems pretty intuitive. But this is something
00:10:03.760
that many authors walk through to sort of explain why you actually have to have this vengeance
00:10:09.060
exercise regularly and forcefully and laws upheld so that you don't degrade their authority.
00:10:16.700
So one of the things that I think is really critical as well is that you talk again about
00:10:23.260
going beyond just the original shooter, like you said, Mike Pence, and okay, we're not putting the
00:10:27.960
whole country on trial. But you point out that incitement is itself a form of public disorder,
00:10:34.860
that this is going to create more violence, that this is designed, that's why we call it
00:10:40.000
incitement, designed specifically to end in additional violence, additional crimes against
00:10:47.060
the state, against the magistrate. And so therefore, it's not simply enough to punish just the individual
00:10:53.720
who did the crime if there are those around them that are building up a system, building up a call,
00:11:00.500
building up a reward, ultimately, for committing the crime in the first place. And I think this is
00:11:07.700
what some people got worried about, right? Because we're saying, okay, it's not enough to just stop
00:11:12.680
at this shooter. Like, yes, the shooter should be punished. But we have people who are openly calling
00:11:19.080
for violence. We have people who are repeatedly funding organizations that are enabling violence.
00:11:24.800
And this needs to be the wider scope of what's going on here. The Trump administration has already
00:11:29.800
promised to go after NGOs, to go after Antifa, to designate it as a foreign terrorist organization,
00:11:36.080
to start breaking up its cells. We've seen some arrests at the site of crimes when it comes to
00:11:43.000
ICE agents being assaulted, blocked, this kind of thing. But we have not seen a wider campaign of
00:11:49.700
striking at the heart of this terror network that is encouraging these attacks. Can you explain why
00:11:57.640
biblically it is all right to move to these moments of incitement, to move to these organizations
00:12:02.680
that while they may not be pulling the trigger, are creating an environment, creating an incentive
00:12:07.140
structure, and enabling the violence itself? Yeah, I think the Bible and Christian theology are both
00:12:15.240
realistic about how these things work, right? And that culpability is not limited to the sort of final
00:12:21.380
action. Anything that is, you know, traditional commentary on the Sixth Commandment itself would
00:12:28.900
say, if you are inciting this, if you're encouraging it, if you're preying upon, especially weak people
00:12:34.260
who will take you up on it foolishly, if you're creating the kind of environment where it's foreseeable
00:12:40.780
and that this is going to emerge, especially against like specified targets, you know, it's one thing to
00:12:47.080
just, I don't think most people would take an argument that's just like, you just go outside and
00:12:51.460
somehow be violent, just a general encouragement. But we've seen, you know, I give this thinly veiled
00:12:57.760
hypothetical of like, what if you were a journalist who for the past like 10 years has every day been
00:13:03.100
going out and joining your other journalist friends to declare so-and-so Satan and then to justify that
00:13:09.220
Satan, of course, can be resisted by violence, even lethal force. And you do this over and over and
00:13:13.540
over again until people take you up on it. You have culpability in this. And this is what we've
00:13:17.640
seen from our journalistic class for a decade at this point since, you know, 2015, 2016. And then,
00:13:24.920
of course, you know, what you're referring to is even more culpable, not just the encouragement,
00:13:29.080
but the mechanized and organized enabling and provisions for this kind of violence. So it's the
00:13:36.240
encouraging sort of propagandistic side, but then it's also, you know, providing the munitions,
00:13:41.800
we might say, certainly culpable in this regard. And so therefore this culpability should be met
00:13:48.660
with public vengeance, again, not private vigilante justice. In fact, that's what we're
00:13:53.660
trying to discourage and punish in this regard. But with public vengeance, and it's perfectly justified,
00:13:59.440
in fact, good for Christians to be enemies of disorder and corruption and so on and so forth
00:14:05.000
to encourage the magistrate to call on him to exercise public vengeance on these things.
00:14:11.800
So I think the word vengeance is one that's going to give a lot of people pause in this,
00:14:17.020
right? They might say, well, I don't mind justice or deterrence, maybe even, right? Like maybe they
00:14:22.580
say, well, I understand why we might need to execute the bad guy to deter further crimes, right? But the
00:14:29.980
word vengeance for a lot of people, that sounds hateful. That sounds, you know, the retributive justice
00:14:36.700
is the problem, right? That ultimately we should only be deterring and we should never have
00:14:41.440
retribution. But I think that aspect is important because, as you say, these crimes do call out for
00:14:48.660
vengeance. There is ultimately a recognition that justice means vengeance at some level.
00:14:55.640
And so if there is not the understanding that you are ultimately making right some aspect of this
00:15:01.380
crime, that the proper wage is being paid, then I think we do miss something as a society. That
00:15:07.860
doesn't mean that we are reveling in a violence or torture or these things, but recognizing, as I think
00:15:14.380
you point out in the piece, that clemency itself is a crime against the victim if it's done by the
00:15:22.340
magistrate without any justice. The clemency there is something that is giving them an opportunity to pull
00:15:30.380
back, perhaps, excesses of vengeance. But that does not mean that we should not, in general, have this
00:15:36.480
vengeance, because if you don't have it, as you're pointing out, if the state will not do it, will not
00:15:40.620
take its role in this moment, then the average person will, because just the laws of nature will
00:15:45.680
drive them towards this end if they do not see it meted out by the state.
00:15:49.980
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'll briefly say, then circle back to the point of retribution, but
00:16:00.420
is tempting people to take matters into their own hands, right?
00:16:17.360
of Italian immigrants that takes place in Louisiana because they suspect
00:16:21.140
them of being in the mafia. And he says, obviously, this cannot be condoned and these
00:16:25.780
people should be punished, but this is Congress's fault for their immigration policy.
00:16:30.100
They've they've created the conditions where people will do this and it's totally foreseeable
00:16:34.980
and it's on you guys. Right. So it's a perfectly
00:16:38.980
reasonable way to work this out and think about it. So if an inattentive or weak government
00:16:43.700
paves the way for this kind of thing and this is what you want to avoid, this is what a just
00:16:47.300
government should avoid. On the question of like retribution, vengeance, I mean,
00:16:50.740
these are just words we're uncomfortable with, I suppose, but all law is coercive.
00:16:55.380
This is points and obligation backed by punishment. This is how you keep order.
00:17:00.180
And then the punishment can't just be mere deterrence or threat if it's never worked.
00:17:04.580
If it's never doled out, you have to actually punish people for violations.
00:17:08.580
And this is part of the deterrence is most effective deterrence.
00:17:12.100
Otherwise, it's all toothless. So this is just the nature of law and secular authority.
00:17:16.820
And it is retribution on behalf of the whole when these things are broken, when public order is
00:17:22.180
is abused. So this is just what we're doing all the time or should be doing if we actually uphold
00:17:27.700
our law. So this is not a strange thing. And especially heinous acts. Right. We're not talking
00:17:32.500
about like speeding fines, but heinous acts of violence, public assassinations, political
00:17:37.860
assassinations should be met with retribution and vengeance on behalf of the whole. I just think
00:17:43.220
that's unavoidable and proper. And then you're right. I have a discussion. We can talk more about
00:17:49.780
it of clemency. Of course, this is like, you know, leniency with a sentence when the letter of the law
00:17:56.180
would say you have to, you know, you have to execute them or something. And the magistrate
00:18:01.060
judges can use this at their discretion. It's theirs. But the proper way to exercise it is if
00:18:06.420
equity or if justice calls for a commuted sentence, that the letter of the law somehow doesn't fit the
00:18:11.940
scenario perfectly and justice actually would be to to forego sentencing. When this is not the case,
00:18:18.980
it is, you know, wrong to do so, to exercise clemency in sort of a gratuitous way, in a weak
00:18:25.060
way. And it doesn't promote the public good and it doesn't pursue equity. And in most cases, the law
00:18:32.180
has already been formulated to provide temperance. That's its point in this regard to an order,
00:18:38.100
and it should be followed. And, you know, there's no question in the case of public assassinations
00:18:43.220
whether or not this is legal or illegal. So this is not a case of clemency. Neither is it the case
00:18:48.820
that, you know, abusing published public trust with evil NGOs and slush funds and all these sorts
00:18:56.980
of things is in any way legal or appropriate to the ends that these these kind of carve outs were
00:19:02.420
provided. So those also should not be provided clemency. You also discuss the importance of
00:19:08.580
particularly violence against public figures, figures that are part of the state, old official
00:19:14.420
office or otherwise represent the body politic in a larger way and the importance that those must be
00:19:20.340
punished and they must be punished severely. Can you talk a little bit about why? I mean, I think a
00:19:24.980
lot of people just say, oh, well, of course, the politicians will want to, you know, punish anybody
00:19:28.420
who hurts them. That's going to be their first priority. But you make a case that this is actually
00:19:33.300
critical for the common good as well. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the public violence,
00:19:38.820
meaning not just that it's done publicly like everyone sees it, but violence against public
00:19:43.700
figures who are representative figures who constitute like a compound or public moral person.
00:19:50.020
They're more than than just themselves because of their either their position or, you know,
00:19:55.220
they're following these sorts of things there. They matter to the commonwealth in a different way.
00:20:00.340
And so this is more acutely an act against the whole the whole country,
00:20:04.820
not just one private individual like they have a disagreement, you know, over who owes who money
00:20:10.580
or something. This is an attack on the entire nation, the entire commonwealth. And so it must be
00:20:17.780
met with particular retribution for that purpose. And we even treat murders generally this way. This
00:20:23.380
is why murder cases are not handled through private suit or civil suit. You actually are not in charge
00:20:29.300
of the prosecution. It's the victim or the family, the victim. You're not in charge with the
00:20:33.220
prosecution. The state conducts that on behalf of the whole, because all murders are considered to
00:20:38.020
be a crime against the society, not just against the individual. So we already do this and already
00:20:43.460
understand this. And it's even more the case when that person, I think everyone intuitively knows
00:20:47.540
this, the way they mourn about it, the way they understand something big has happened. And throughout
00:20:53.140
the history of any, you know, assassinations of public figures in America, this is obviously the case.
00:20:58.740
It means something different and for good reason. And you also discussed the importance of the
00:21:05.380
magistrate to seem severe, even cruel, which again, I think a lot of people would be very scared of that
00:21:12.660
language. But I really want to emphasize this point because I don't think we focus on it enough.
00:21:17.540
It is that ability to justly apply that capacity, which is so rare and what makes leaders valuable.
00:21:25.540
Uh, so can you talk a little bit about why it would be okay for a Christian leader to appear,
00:21:30.340
appeal cruel or why it might even be necessary?
00:21:33.220
Yeah. I have this, um, commentary that's, um, you know, drawing from, from various theologians,
00:21:39.140
but the general idea is like most people actually, um, would advocate, maybe this is counterintuitive,
00:21:46.020
but it would advocate leniency against criminals. Why? Because they're thinking of themselves of what,
00:21:50.580
if that was me, I would want the leniency. So they're not generally capable of actually
00:21:55.060
doling out, uh, punishment or, or real justice in this way. Um, at the same time, they, they can be
00:22:01.380
intemperate like in their anger and do, you know, mob violence is an expression of this. The good
00:22:06.500
ruler has to have control and has to be able to, uh, chart the middle course that is, uh,
00:22:12.420
neither too lenient nor, uh, disproportionate in its punishment. But these things will, this,
00:22:18.020
this exercise of just severity, we might call it is going to appear cruel to the common person,
00:22:23.460
um, because it is cruel. It is shocking. And it's meant to be, um, as a public figure representing
00:22:29.540
the, again, the, the retribution of God and, uh, the, the whole commonwealth. Um, it has to,
00:22:35.700
it has to be this way. And, and the private man is just incapable of doing this. And most of our,
00:22:39.860
you know, today, most of our rulers are incapable of doing this, but this is supposed to be
00:22:43.300
part of their natural criteria. Um, and this is why they are where they are. And we're not,
00:22:48.820
um, ideally speaking. So yes, the magistrate in exercising justice for these types of crimes
00:22:55.140
has to be willing to be thought extremely cruel. And in fact, in a sense, he is being very severe
00:23:00.420
and cruel in that way, but it's for, uh, the, the distinguished, you know, distinguishing factor
00:23:04.980
is, is it, is it for just cause or not? Is it for the public good or not?
00:23:10.660
Interestingly, I think that most of our, uh, you know, civil magistrates have lost this ability,
00:23:16.180
right? This is something that we select against these days. And you can tell because we desperately
00:23:22.020
avoid at all costs, basically applying the death penalty. We still technically have it on a books,
00:23:27.140
but it, it's going to take the most heinous crime you can imagine. And like 30 years of sitting on
00:23:32.420
death row before you finally actually have any of this happen. So the idea of any kind of timely,
00:23:38.660
uh, justice, actual, uh, you know, uh, public vengeance, uh, for the most severe crimes is
00:23:44.340
actually pretty, uh, non-existent in our current paradigm. We can talk a little bit about the
00:23:48.740
death penalty. Let's talk about that first, but also a wider understanding of corporal punishments.
00:23:54.900
Do you think that, uh, well, I guess we'll start with the death penalty. Uh, we have a lot of people,
00:24:00.420
even especially actually the Catholic church saying that this is not Christian, that we should not have
00:24:05.940
the, the death penalty. So can you first make a case for, uh, the death penalty as a Christian,
00:24:12.340
uh, I guess, ultimately, uh, and it's swift application, not a, not a 30 year infinite appeal
00:24:18.260
process. Well, this is a point I make in the, um, in the piece is actually, if you're, if you're
00:24:25.300
unwilling to, to appear to be cruel and to be severe, you end up being cruel in, in the, uh,
00:24:31.060
in an unjust way, not only is mercy to the guilty, unmercy to the innocent. Um, but also it, it lends
00:24:39.300
itself when you don't have swift and severe justice to things like you're talking about, which I would
00:24:44.820
say it's, it's demonstrably more cruel to have people sitting on death row for 30 years than it
00:24:50.180
is to execute the death penalty. Um, I just think this is an inhuman way to, to, to sort of house people.
00:24:56.020
Um, and it has all sort of like, you know, bad externalities. And so I would say it's, it's actually,
00:24:59.860
we've arrived through our, um, misplaced leniency and mercy, um, at crueler punishments and a crueler
00:25:07.220
state of, of living than, than otherwise would have been the case, uh, because we don't have the
00:25:11.700
stomach to actually do, do what's necessary and appear cruel and severe. Um, yes, I, I heard,
00:25:17.140
you know, many, many people from, uh, suppose a Christian perspective saying that the death penalty
00:25:22.420
is, is I guess just wrong. You know, it offends their sensibilities is what they're really saying. But,
00:25:27.380
um, this is, you know, certainly contrary to, uh, Christian tradition. It's, I mean,
00:25:33.300
capital punishment has been upheld, uh, over and over again throughout the Western, uh, Western
00:25:38.420
civilization, which is to say Christian civilization, um, and has been exercised in, you know, all
00:25:43.620
Western countries until historically speaking fairly recently. Um, and of course it's just, it's,
00:25:48.740
it's, you know, in the Bible, the only time the image of God, that, that phrase that like all
00:25:53.380
evangelicals love to throw around as a sort of comprehensive ethic is ever mentioned is in the
00:25:58.260
context of, uh, justifying capital punishment. Um, and the reason is justified is it is in a,
00:26:04.340
in this sense, when you are destroying the image of God in man, you are attacking God himself. Um,
00:26:10.980
you are playing God, you are, you're, um, deciding when and where life will be ended, um, in place of the
00:26:17.220
creator. So as the actual God on earth, the magistrate, um, should behave, this should be,
00:26:22.820
uh, the most severely punished crime. Um, it's the most universally recognized as, as, you know,
00:26:28.900
according to the natural law as being, um, you know, disallowed and, and, uh, and, and awful, or,
00:26:35.300
you know, whatever you want to say about it. Um, and that's for a good reason also, uh, sort of
00:26:39.300
encoded into nature, into our being self-preservation being sort of the first law of nature is the
00:26:44.420
contrast of this self-defense, you know, flows from that. Um, so obviously the, the magistrate
00:26:49.980
should take this with the utmost serious, it should never be tolerated. It should never be
00:26:53.760
offered clemency, right? Uh, there's all sorts of, you know, edge cases you can come up with,
00:26:58.020
of course, and this is not speaking to adjudication of these crimes, uh, to have demonstrable proof
00:27:02.720
and, you know, make, you know, do your best to make sure you don't falsely accuse, uh, innocent
00:27:06.860
people. Uh, but in the main, and in the case we're talking about, um, I think there's, there's no room
00:27:12.280
within, uh, scripture or the, or the Christian tradition to say that this would somehow be
00:27:16.820
unwarranted or inhumane to do so. Uh, in fact, the opposite's the case.
00:27:22.360
Now, obviously this is, uh, this is currently two Protestants, uh, you know, uh, throwing stuff
00:27:27.580
over the fence here, uh, but since, you know, we are the foundation of this, uh, you know, uh, fine
00:27:34.560
land, uh, we will, we will go at our, at our leisure. Uh, so, uh, why do you think, cause this is
00:27:40.600
what I hear all the time from Catholics, right? And, and I, there's a lot about the Catholic
00:27:44.640
church that I respect, but this is always a difficult one for me. They always tell me,
00:27:48.960
well, it doesn't matter if you get a bad Pope because ultimately, uh, the doctrine of the church
00:27:53.540
persists, right? Like that we, we, we, we never changed the doctrine and that's, that's what
00:27:58.340
continues to be stalwart in the face of, you know, any given, uh, leader. And, you know, I I'm
00:28:03.880
sympathetic to that case. I I've made the, you know, the case many times, what if you get a bad
00:28:08.240
King? And then you have all these horrible democratically elected politicians, uh, that
00:28:12.960
are worse than any King you can ever imagine. But, uh, but when you look at, um, the Pope
00:28:18.340
here and, uh, what has become Catholic teaching, uh, it becomes clear that, uh, the death penalty
00:28:24.180
is basically forbidden at this point under Catholic doctrine. Uh, but if I read the Bible,
00:28:29.620
if I look at Christian tradition, none of that seems to be the case. Why has this shifted
00:28:34.980
over time? And then they, obviously I'm not going to make you make the case for papal authority,
00:28:39.080
but, but what, why has this shifted over time when it's supposed to be the bad Popes
00:28:42.860
don't shift Christian doctrine under the Catholic church? Why are we, why do they keep moving this
00:28:47.440
direction? Yeah. Well, and, and our, our Catholic friends, you know, those, those of them in the
00:28:53.080
trenches with us, I'm sure we'll have their, their own objections to this. And they always have
00:28:57.160
very clever, smart ways of interpreting these, these problems and solving them for themselves. I'll
00:29:02.460
leave, I'll leave that to them. It's, it's apparent to me that the, uh, certainly the string of Popes,
00:29:07.100
uh, since we've been alive, but I would say in the, in the modern era have increasingly, uh, ticked
00:29:12.700
towards basically the, the baptism of liberal sensibilities, um, as the rest of the world calls
00:29:18.780
on it to be. So, you know, what the motivation is for that, uh, I'm not sure, uh, but it's coming
00:29:24.320
externally on onto the church in terms of its tradition, rather than internally being generated as far,
00:29:29.540
as far as I can tell. Um, and so this, these kinds of things like, you know, the same, uh, adoption by
00:29:35.680
the, by the papacy for all intents and purposes of, of like climate change dogma and, uh, the same
00:29:41.300
kind of talking points on migration, all these things. Um, these are, you do not find these kinds
00:29:47.020
of concerns or practices in the high medieval church. Uh, you don't find aversion to capital
00:29:52.000
punishment in the high medieval church. This is just not, you know, where, where all the tradcasts
00:29:56.360
would like to land. This stuff is not there. Um, and I'm sure they recognize that. And that's part
00:30:00.820
of why they, they think the way they, they do. Um, so it seemed to me, it's a foreign incursion into,
00:30:05.540
uh, the Roman Catholic church, but that has nevertheless been adopted or approved by its,
00:30:10.240
its leadership. And I don't understand as a Roman Catholic, how you're not forced to
00:30:14.840
either embrace it and adopt it based on your own ecclesiology, um, or go elsewhere. Um, it's,
00:30:21.160
it's a conundrum for them to figure out, but I certainly wouldn't be able to stomach it.
00:30:24.540
Yeah. I mean, the dodge you always get is like, well, the Pope wasn't speaking ex cathedra,
00:30:29.240
right? I think that's what they call it when he's speaking with, with, with the official weight
00:30:32.400
of divine, uh, authority. Uh, and that, okay, I can take that, you know, for some of this,
00:30:37.980
but I'm pretty sure when it comes to death penalty, they have spoken on this. And so,
00:30:42.860
uh, it seems like their dictate is in direct violation of Christian tradition and biblical law.
00:30:49.600
Uh, and so, yeah, that, that's, and we would say of apostolic law, right? What about the case
00:30:54.160
of Ananias and Sapphira, where we would say, uh, the, the Roman reading of this is that St.
00:30:59.360
Peter himself, and of course he does actually do this, but I mean, the, uh, the political
00:31:02.880
theology, theological import, uh, commits the, uh, you know, executes, uh, two members of the church
00:31:09.420
for their theft. Okay. So the, the St. Peter, you know, exercises capital punishment. And so in the
00:31:16.140
lineage, the apostolic lineage, it would seem that this can't be, uh, this can't be changed. Um,
00:31:21.500
this is something that power, the apostles exercised. Yeah. Yeah. No, good point. Good
00:31:26.540
point. Well, uh, I think that covers mainly what you covered in your article, but I also
00:31:30.920
want to want to talk about the larger reaction in a Christian sense, because, uh, you know,
00:31:36.300
one of the most interesting things, uh, about Charlie Kirk's memorial service and a lot of
00:31:41.140
people, uh, it's flashy, it's loud. There's, you know, guitar music, there's pyrotechnics.
00:31:47.280
I get all that. The aesthetics aside, um, this was a, uh, situation where basically every
00:31:55.420
major, uh, leader on of the Republican party, the Trump administration, these people came
00:32:01.540
out and the vast majority of them focused their discussions on Christ, right? Like everyone
00:32:08.540
from Rubio to, uh, uh, to Vance to Tucker Carlson, you know, public officials, uh, public, uh,
00:32:16.280
voices, uh, you know, commentators, all these things, every one of them, almost to a man
00:32:21.320
comes out and discusses the importance of Christianity in this instance. And of course,
00:32:27.580
you know, we're used to have presidents sneaking in God bless America at the end of a speech
00:32:32.880
or, you know, when it's really convenient saying, you know, Barack Obama saying, well, the scriptures
00:32:37.380
tell us, you know, something and then completely, but this was the, you know, the first time I had
00:32:42.220
seen that level, uh, of kind of Christianity and on public display. And that's weird. Cause
00:32:48.880
you know, I'm getting old. So I, like, I re I remember, you know, in the, I remember the late
00:32:53.500
eighties and early nineties to some degree. And even then I don't remember there being, you know,
00:32:58.880
even when the, the religious majority, the moral majority was a real active force in politics.
00:33:04.060
I don't remember ever seeing a public event with that outpouring of Christian faith. And not just
00:33:10.140
that it was, you know, mentioned, not just in the sense that God bless our country and pray for
00:33:14.700
these things, but you know, God should be guiding our response to this. We, we, you know, we should
00:33:19.400
be in embracing a Christian faith, you know, uh, the, of course, many of them were doing this because
00:33:24.640
it was so important to Charlie Kirk and they wanted to honor him, but still, I think that level of,
00:33:29.640
uh, open Christian, uh, acknowledgement and imbuing it into the rationality, you know, that, that we are
00:33:36.980
following a Christian ethic and a Christian logic and how we should respond to this. I think that
00:33:41.680
was a really important moment for the country. What do you think? No, I mean, uh, you're, you're
00:33:47.240
only slightly older than I am more and, uh, so you have a little more memory than I do. But, um, I think
00:33:53.220
that's, I think everyone would have to admit this, even people that hated it, that we haven't seen
00:33:57.400
anything like that from not just one public official, but, but sort of essentially all the major
00:34:03.900
ones, the, you know, the, the cabinet is there basically, um, do it, doing the same thing over
00:34:09.960
and over, you know, some were better than others. Obviously Marco Rubio stood out, um, JD Vance,
00:34:14.880
you know, even later when he's hosting Charlie Kirk show, you know, that stood out where he's
00:34:19.020
reciting, reciting the Nicene Creed and so on and so forth. Um, so I've never seen anything like it.
00:34:23.320
And I do think it marks, um, a change in the cultural dynamics. Um, you could say, uh, you know,
00:34:30.660
this is how I think of it. It's sort of the, the actual immersion immersion for the first time
00:34:36.060
of the culture wars. Um, because this only works, um, when, when only one side of sort of
00:34:42.980
appropriately responding to cultural dynamics, it's a one-sided conflict and the rights never
00:34:48.500
really pushing back with equal force, uh, according to their contrary position and, and convictions and
00:34:54.720
things. You don't really have a war. You have, you have some, you know, basically, uh, you're being
00:34:59.220
bullied, uh, the whole time. And we had, of course, everyone remembers like culture of warriors,
00:35:03.680
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and these, and they were in some ways ahead of their time
00:35:07.500
in a lot of what they recognize and a lot of what they did, but they didn't have this force. They
00:35:12.000
didn't have real power behind them and they were sort of marginalized. Um, this to me marks something
00:35:17.880
very different where there really is two diametrically opposed positions on display between the left and
00:35:25.160
the right. And the right actually has the ability at least to exercise power. Um, not just, uh, of,
00:35:32.140
you know, the actual government power itself, but of persuasion of, of vying for the laws of fashion
00:35:37.900
and of, of public morality. And that's what those speeches did. They signaled, we think this is good.
00:35:44.340
Maybe some of us are up here for Charlie. Maybe some of us really believe it. Uh, but we think this
00:35:49.340
is good and it's actually something we're going to get behind and we're going to put, uh, our own
00:35:53.760
reputations, uh, on the line, you know, along with it. Um, so totally changed, I think overnight,
00:36:00.280
uh, the cultural dynamics and what we're actually seeing, I would say for now is the first time you
00:36:04.800
actually have a two-sided culture war, uh, that are sort of in many ways equally matched, right? For
00:36:10.620
the, for the first time, you both are able to wield certain forms of real power.
00:36:16.120
You know, uh, the, the term Christian nationalism has been bantied around and I have my own problems,
00:36:21.620
uh, with the term just from a tactical, uh, sense, but ultimately, um, is this not really
00:36:28.480
the embrace of actual Christian nationalism in the sense that this is now, again, I think it's a big
00:36:35.580
shift between, you know, Christianity is this thing that we adorn our speeches with because it kind of
00:36:41.660
harkens back to this thing. We know we should probably be talking about, you know, what will slip
00:36:46.620
it into a speech somewhere as opposed to like, no, this is the justification and logic for our
00:36:52.780
actions. Like we are following the Christian teachings on this. That is, that is the, uh,
00:36:58.660
tradition that is, you know, the epistemology that brings us to our conclusions. We are following
00:37:03.700
this because that is the natural way that we should reason through or arrive at these decisions
00:37:08.980
collectively. And a lot of the left of course did, you know, we, we get the, the, ah, everything's a
00:37:14.980
Nazi rally. It's a, you know, we, we hear this all the time. Uh, but I do really think that, that,
00:37:19.860
that underlying logic, uh, logical shift is important because even as you say, if some people
00:37:25.540
up there just saying that, cause okay, well, this is what Charlie would have wanted. And so that's,
00:37:29.580
you know, he would have approved this. We'll talk about this way. I think that starts to seep its way
00:37:34.200
into the operations of many politicians. And in a way, what you were seeing with the Trump
00:37:40.340
administration up there was, uh, uh, an insurgent, uh, movement inside the GOP itself. That's always
00:37:47.000
been true. Of course, Mag has always been, you know, kind of pushing against the established GOP,
00:37:51.480
but I don't think you would have seen even the most Christian, you know, quote unquote politicians.
00:37:56.680
You wouldn't have seen a Mike Pence that talks about, you know, he will talk about his faith,
00:38:01.040
but I don't think you would have had him explaining how it informs the civic, uh, you know,
00:38:06.720
understanding of how we should take action. And that I think really creates a split,
00:38:11.620
not just in the left, right divide, not just a culture war across left and right,
00:38:15.680
but perhaps even a revolution inside of the right inside of conservatism of how we should address
00:38:22.140
these issues by what logic we should take actions and create justifications. And that informing
00:38:27.900
everybody, you know, from staffers all the way up to cabinet members, I think has a very,
00:38:33.300
very important impact. We probably won't see in three or years or five years, but generationally,
00:38:39.480
it will have a big impact on the way that the right organizes and see it sees itself inside of
00:38:44.220
institutions. Yeah. And I think that's exactly right. I mean, yes, uh, MAGA was always first and
00:38:50.300
foremost, a GOP coup. Um, but, but this has been contentious and sort of questionable what the outcome
00:38:56.340
would be for years now. Right. And I actually think this, this moment, um, it totally solidified,
00:39:03.040
it established, here's what the MAGA base is kind of again, or a new, right? These are,
00:39:08.460
these are the people that were most publicly identified with their way of life, their general
00:39:13.080
convictions, their, uh, understanding of the American tradition and history, um, their way of,
00:39:18.760
of wanting to conduct themselves publicly. This is what we're going to be about. You don't,
00:39:22.420
for the other, um, factions or pieces of MAGA as a coalition, they have not had similar representation,
00:39:29.280
uh, in this way. You know, of course this was out of their hands. This is just an event that happened,
00:39:34.080
you know, this is in the hands of Providence, but I'm just saying this because it did happen. This is,
00:39:39.000
this is an obvious shift on the right, um, as a, as a point of orientation or, or, uh, you know,
00:39:45.220
what's going to be magnetic, what's going to sort of drive the boat in this way. Um, so I think,
00:39:50.460
I think that's absolutely the case. And, uh, you know, as many, many people online were saying,
00:39:55.060
you know, this is it Christian nationalism one. I think there's, there's a good reason to say that,
00:39:59.680
um, insofar as the right, and you see it with people who are not Christians on the right,
00:40:05.720
but still are kind of joined in on this and recognize, um, that it's a good, a good thing,
00:40:11.560
or at least a powerful thing. So they're following the strong horse, the recognition that, um, in the
00:40:16.700
American sort of populist style, this is a Christian nation. And that means we do Christian things
00:40:22.340
publicly. Um, and we sort of center this, that certainly is what, what won in that regard on
00:40:28.340
the right, I think. Um, and that will continue to manifest going forward. I was of course,
00:40:33.780
you know, worried that it was like, is this going to be something real or is this just a moment and
00:40:38.520
everyone sort of put on the Christian hat to do it? But I think it is real. I mean, things that have
00:40:42.440
happened since then, um, that, that have continued that kind of energy or it's still going. Uh, I don't
00:40:48.760
think it's going away anytime soon and we should make sure that it doesn't, you know,
00:40:52.120
the, the left loves to make use of their most despicable kind of martyrs. Um, we shouldn't
00:40:57.140
be ashamed of making a constant reference to and maintaining the memory of a objectively good
00:41:03.000
martyr on our side, um, for, for the same purposes. So if that's what motivates people,
00:41:08.180
that's great. Um, if the moment or the general energy itself does, that's, that's great. But I
00:41:13.120
do think it's, it's changed something. And you see people, even like the, when the vice president
00:41:17.740
says, Charlie inspired me to be more bold about talking about Jesus, I think something's changed,
00:41:23.140
right? Yeah, that's right. Well, and you know, I was just, yeah, that, that dovetails well into
00:41:27.420
my next question. When I had, uh, Nick Landon, Alexander Dugan on, uh, both men who were accused
00:41:33.760
of Satanism recently. Um, they both made, uh, and you were probably accused of Satanism by,
00:41:39.540
I mean, well, it's Tuesday. Um, but, uh, uh, mostly by people who aren't Christian, funny and
00:41:45.880
funny enough. Um, if you've written a book about how much you hate Christianity and then you call
00:41:49.780
me a Satanist, that's really fun. Um, but, um, the, the, the interesting thing at the end of that
00:41:55.280
interview is, you know, I could try to address those, you know, uh, issues head on, uh, a little
00:42:00.360
bit since they had mentioned Don Tucker Carlson and both men said that, look, we, we wouldn't agree
00:42:05.440
with any of these characterizations, especially Dugan. He's an Orthodox Christian. Uh, but the
00:42:09.940
point is the fact that discussions about spirituality are back in the political mainstream is huge,
00:42:18.340
right? The fact that people will talk about, Hey, that's demonic. Yeah. They're behaving in a
00:42:25.120
demonic way. This is clearly evil that we need to be concerned about evil forces in our politics.
00:42:31.320
The fact that we are simply injecting the spiritual as if it is another valid way to recognize our
00:42:38.380
world is critical because obviously previously the rule of rationality was everything. You
00:42:44.440
weren't allowed to acknowledge spiritual realities, spiritual forces, the metaphysical, the transcendent.
00:42:49.160
If you brought any of those things into a mainstream political discussion or even a philosophical
00:42:53.820
discussion, you get laughed out of the room. It can't impact your law. Any of these things.
00:42:58.440
Now it feels like something has really shifted. Right. And it's part of it is, of course,
00:43:03.160
is just how evil, you know, the level of evil around us is too pervasive. It's too obvious to
00:43:09.900
simply shrug off and say, Oh, well, you know, uh, probably just kooky. Uh, but also it's the fact
00:43:15.160
that we are allowed to once again, uh, reach to that part, the other side of reality, right? That,
00:43:21.300
that we, so long we have denied these transcendent truths, these spiritual realities,
00:43:26.520
because we knew that we would get these weird looks and now that is burst through. And I think
00:43:32.220
we can feel that again with Charlie Kirk, right? Like you look at the assassination of this man
00:43:37.360
and you know, that Satan's real, like that, that, that, that has to be real. You can't,
00:43:43.180
you can't look at these people, you know, celebrating the death of this man in front of his young children
00:43:49.860
who still don't understand he's dead at that point. Like it doesn't even register to them.
00:43:54.280
They're that young where like the, the permanence of his death simply does not, does not fire in
00:44:00.200
their neurons, right? Like the fact that that is something you could celebrate as a human being,
00:44:06.120
it's hard not to look at that and not say, okay, that is a spiritual evil acting on an individual,
00:44:12.660
right? That you, you can't just say mental illness or these things, they are no longer sufficient
00:44:17.900
explanations for what we're staring at. And so in a, in a really interesting sense,
00:44:23.580
I think the return of this Christian nationalism, this, whether we want to use that phrase or not,
00:44:29.500
this public acknowledgement of spiritual forces and Christian truth, I think this comes in the light
00:44:36.280
of just a general understanding that we must re-engage with the spiritual, that it's no longer
00:44:42.040
enough to just pretend that science and logic and reason govern us, that there is another realm,
00:44:47.880
there is another reality. And those things are manifesting themselves in real life, whether we
00:44:52.260
want to acknowledge them or not. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I think it's, it's worth appreciating
00:44:57.940
that we wouldn't have this change or this moment probably if it weren't for the reactions,
00:45:05.100
for this very point that the contrast you're pointing out, right? If evil is like negation of
00:45:09.460
the good, you have to see that, that negation to sort of believe it and understand it, that it's,
00:45:15.060
that it's there. And so I think it wasn't just that Charlie Kirk was shot. It was that you had
00:45:21.500
the type of reaction from the left that you did, that was celebrating it, that was justifying it,
00:45:26.780
that was looking for ways to perpetuate it. Not just in sort of, you know, people that were easily
00:45:33.620
dismissed, but in people that you can't say that they're mentally deranged or crazy because you've
00:45:39.200
just invalidated like the entire credentialing system on your side, right? If, if, if someone,
00:45:44.860
you know, you can't say this about Jimmy Kimmel or other people, they have to be totally competent
00:45:49.820
and smart and morally true and in control of their faculties. So then you're met with, with there's,
00:45:56.920
there's not good explanations. It has to be that something evil is happening. There's something
00:46:00.920
transcendent going on. This is too bizarre, too shocking that people would actually celebrate
00:46:06.500
this against their own ostensible principles, right? And even saw some people on the left,
00:46:10.760
like wrestling with this in real time of like, I didn't think we were about this. It's like,
00:46:15.120
no, you are. That's, this is what your crowd is about. And the fact that they, it was, it would
00:46:22.000
not have had the same effect. It would have different effects, but not the same if it had been Donald
00:46:25.580
Trump, right? The fact that it's Charlie Kirk and that even people who disliked him, um, couldn't
00:46:31.940
deny this sort of Christian boy scout quality about him, right? And doing the, playing by all the rules
00:46:37.220
you're supposed to play, uh, you know, in sort of, uh, civil society, still playing that game with
00:46:41.880
everyone. And so for him to be killed and then for the reaction to be what it was from the left,
00:46:46.700
um, I think created, uh, an entirely different moment than it otherwise would have been where people
00:46:52.380
are left with in the face of this kind of evil, um, and sort of mocking evil, uh, to only arrive
00:46:59.440
at certain spiritual conclusions. If they weren't already, I mean, this is the same effect as the
00:47:03.740
left pushing hard from gay rights to transgenderism, to trans in the kids, right? This is something
00:47:09.780
that's so, so shocking that the only explanation is that something demonic is happening. It's out,
00:47:14.740
they broke outside this sort of plausibility structure for most people. And so it has that effect.
00:47:20.200
Um, you know, you could list other things, but I think these are, are, um, the externalities of it
00:47:27.500
have for us have been productive in that way. We, you know, don't like all the things that led here
00:47:33.400
that you had to have these things to get here. Uh, but it has, I think the, these things are what
00:47:38.080
turn people back to more transcendent recognition of, of reality.
00:47:42.200
I think that's right. All right, guys. Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up, but
00:47:47.440
time in, uh, where can people find your article and do you have anything exciting coming out that
00:47:51.620
you want to make people aware of? Yeah. So they can find the article at American reformer.org
00:47:56.300
where, where most of what I write is. And of course there's other stuff, um, on there as well. Um,
00:48:02.180
I have in the near future, a couple of books coming out, one with Canon press
00:48:05.920
called political Protestantism and another, uh, next year with passage press on, uh, evangelicals
00:48:12.480
in the age of Trump. So be on the lookout for both of those. Um, and you can follow along on
00:48:16.800
Twitter to get, get updates and all that, but those are the things on the horizon.
00:48:21.240
Excellent. All right, guys, we've got a few questions of the people, so we'll check over
00:48:25.220
there, but make sure that you are looking for time and work as well. Let's see. Mostly peaceful
00:48:31.700
merch says Romans 13 is, uh, a used as a bludgeon when the left is in power and is ignored when the
00:48:38.100
right gets a hint of power. Yeah, I think, uh, I'm assuming they mean by Christians. I don't know
00:48:45.020
if like atheists leftists are citing Romans 13, but, uh, by Christians, right. When, um, the left is in
00:48:51.800
power, um, they're very good at pursuing substantive goods, a vision of the good and, uh, promoting it
00:48:58.140
throughout society and also punishing things they believe are evil. So they're good at a moral
00:49:02.280
vision of the right is, is bad generally, or has been bad when in power of, of, uh, forwarding of
00:49:08.180
substantive moral vision. And then tiny stupid demon says, I remember watching JFK's funeral
00:49:15.460
when JD Vance gave his speech at the Memorial. I thought no prior political figure in my lifetime
00:49:21.360
could have possibly given this speech. It was that studying. Yeah. And JD has really been batting a
00:49:27.020
thousand. We didn't even get to, uh, uh, to, to JD's actions, uh, yesterday with, uh, kind of the
00:49:32.520
Republican group chat and everything that happened there. I'll be speaking, uh, with, with Dave,
00:49:36.460
the distributist tonight about that. You'll see that episode on Friday. Uh, but, uh, but, uh, yeah,
00:49:41.540
he's, he's, he's been a, uh, fantastic asset for, I think, uh, the administration. Absolutely.
00:49:47.440
Absolutely. And then Joe McDermott says, uh, we need to ignore people who say we cannot, uh, enforce
00:49:54.800
consequences. We can still have compassion and forgiveness, but forgiveness does not forego
00:49:59.800
consequences. Again, this is just, I feel it should be obvious. Uh, this is obvious to any parent who
00:50:05.560
isn't terrible at what they do. Um, and of course the state has a far more severe, uh, version of
00:50:11.780
parenthood that they must do for the entire nation. Uh, so the idea that they should forego any of these
00:50:17.500
punishments or that there should not be serious consequences, uh, as, as Tymon has pointed out
00:50:22.820
repeatedly here, that is just, that is just violence against the innocent, right? This is,
00:50:27.180
this is just abdication of your responsibility and therefore violence against the innocent. The
00:50:32.080
entire structure of our society, the, the reason that we, uh, that we push and work so hard to
00:50:38.380
maintain it is that we forego this private justice for the public justice and the public good. If you
00:50:44.860
don't have the private justice, then literally the magistrate is this there to prevent justice at all,
00:50:50.820
which is the cruelest form at all. This is why we call it a narco tyranny, right? That, that the,
00:50:55.660
that the, the magistrate will punish the just and withhold punishment from the unjust. Uh, this is
00:51:01.780
the worst form of government and it is the one that unfortunately many conservatives and Christians
00:51:06.620
sometimes seem to advocate on behalf of. Yeah, I, I, I totally agree with that obviously. And, um,
00:51:15.100
and again, the magistrate is supposed to, uh, you'll see this frequently, especially in Protestant
00:51:19.800
theology, the, the magistrate is a double image of God. He images God, not just as a man, but in his
00:51:25.120
office. And so when you're talking about the, you know, there's, there's no, uh, conflict, uh, in God,
00:51:30.980
but when he, uh, exercises discipline on us, right? He's still, he's still perfect love and, uh, all of
00:51:37.580
his attributes are perfect and not contradictory, but he still exercises his wrath and retribution and
00:51:43.000
judgment and correction, uh, on us. So insofar as the, a man can image God in this way, the finite
00:51:49.960
man, the side of heaven, the magistrate is supposed to be that. Absolutely. All right, guys, well,
00:51:56.240
we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you everybody. Once again, for watching, make sure
00:52:00.280
that you're checking out Timon's article over at American reformer. And if it's your first time on
00:52:05.640
this YouTube channel, you need to subscribe, click the bell notifications, all that stuff. So, you know,
00:52:09.660
when we go live, if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure to subscribe to your Mac
00:52:13.800
entire show on your favorite podcast networks. Thank you everybody for watching. And as always,