The King's Hall - Homo Adorans： Interview with Dr. Uriesou Brito

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00:00:36.600 16th century Spain was a country filled with beauty,

00:00:40.380 coming at the height of Christian influence in the West,

00:00:43.660 with the Catholic and Protestant Reformations.

00:00:46.780 In this time, Spain had arrived at a golden age of art, literature, and architecture.

00:00:53.300 Imagine walking through the cobblestone streets in central Spain

00:00:56.880 and stopping to admire the royal monastery of San Lorenzo de Escarol,

00:01:03.540 its imposing high white stone walls inlaid with glass,

00:01:07.640 statues of the great saints of the Christian faith overlooking the courtyard of the kings.

00:01:13.320 As you walk into the monastery, your chest tightens at the transcendent beauty of the high altar,

00:01:20.060 where 92-foot arched ceilings stand overhead,

00:01:24.880 adorned with paintings from some of the greatest artists in human history.

00:01:29.780 The altar screen is crafted with the finest red granite and jasper.

00:01:34.920 There, kneeling in humble contrition at the sides of the altar,

00:01:38.640 sit bronze statues of the kings and queens of Spain.

00:01:43.540 As you explore the beautiful marriage of art and architecture,

00:01:47.320 you hear distant echoes of monks chanting in Latin.

00:01:52.000 The chanting quiets as you approach the most solemn chambers of the monastery,

00:01:56.760 the Pantheon of the Kings,

00:01:58.880 where the kings and queens of Spain are laid to rest.

00:02:02.460 The walls of polished Toledo marble are ornamented in gold-plated bronze.

00:02:08.420 Twenty-six marble sepulchers containing the remains of the kings and queens of Spain

00:02:13.280 await the return of Christ to raise them from their long sleep.

00:02:18.600 The Spanish explorers who landed on the coasts of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 0.89

00:02:23.020 were sent out from this culture.

00:02:25.780 What they found there was so horrifically shocking

00:02:28.780 that for hundreds of years, no one believed them.

00:02:35.100 Modern-day historians assume the Spanish conquistadors

00:02:39.000 had wildly exaggerated the horrors of the Aztec people

00:02:42.960 in order to justify their brutal conquest of the Aztec Empire.

00:02:48.580 The Spanish claimed that display racks containing up to 130,000 human skulls

00:02:55.480 were seen around the Aztec temple.

00:02:58.680 But centuries had gone by without a trace of these supposed horrors.

00:03:03.460 Scholars began to doubt the existence of these temples and macabre displays,

00:03:08.340 believing that it was simply a false report from the Spanish

00:03:12.020 to justify the brutal treatment and extermination of the Aztec people.

00:03:17.640 But in February of 1978, near Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral,

00:03:24.280 power company workers were installing an underground transformer.

00:03:28.620 While digging a shallow hole, they uncovered a giant monolith

00:03:32.840 that led to the discovery of the ancient Aztec Temple Mayor.

00:03:37.400 later in 2015 architect Raul Rodriguez received an unexpected phone call he and his team were

00:03:46.840 invited to excavate a site near the temple mayor Raul knew this could lead to a major discovery

00:03:53.300 he and his team began their dig in the middle of Mexico City under the feet of 21 million people

00:04:00.300 he carefully dug 20 test pits where like layers of history he discovered modern debris

00:04:06.880 then deeper colonial porcelain, and finally the slabs of ancient Mexica period basalt flooring.

00:04:15.900 Imagine having your whole life dedicated to the discovery of a place that had been written off

00:04:20.820 as legend, simply a fable or lie that had been told to cover up past sins. But then your trowel

00:04:28.340 strike something chalky and off-white. Rock? Basalt? Bone. More bone than hundreds of human

00:04:37.560 skull fragments. Nothing had ever been discovered like it. Remember the tales of horror from the

00:04:44.180 Spanish conquistadors? In describing the worship liturgy of the Aztec priests to their false gods, 0.88

00:04:50.740 they told of the enormous appetites of the Aztec gods for human sacrifice atop of Temple Meor.

00:04:58.340 Their methods of sacrifice were brutal. The priests, with obsidian blades sharper than surgical steel, would cut open the abdomen of the living victim and remove their still-beating heart.

00:05:11.880 They would then sever the head from the body

00:05:13.980 and throw the body down the massive staircase of Temple Mayor,

00:05:18.340 where, at times, they would even cook and consume the body.

00:05:23.000 They would fillet the face from the decapitated head,

00:05:26.260 then punch holes into the side of the skull

00:05:28.340 so it could be hung on numerous rows of horizontal poles that ringed the area. 0.87

00:05:34.760 The horrors the Spanish discovered didn't stop there.

00:05:38.940 When rotting skulls fell from the poles, 0.99

00:05:41.080 They were fashioned into masks that the people would wear, all of this in an effort to appease 0.98

00:05:46.860 their gods. When Raul Rodriguez discovered these skulls, exactly as described by the

00:05:53.640 conquistadors, they realized that there had been no exaggeration. The racks of skulls were row

00:06:00.300 upon row, stacked high, wide, and long with thousands of skulls of men, women, and children

00:06:07.920 side by side. The racks of skulls were 15 feet tall and larger than a basketball court.

00:06:16.200 If a skull was not hung, it would be cemented like bricks into a massive cylindrical pillar.

00:06:23.320 One of the main objectives of the King's Hall is to convince you that you become what you worship.

00:06:30.580 If you worship demon gods of death, you become like them. If you worship bloodthirsty wraiths,

00:06:37.260 you become like them. But what would happen if you worship the one true and living God?

00:06:44.800 What might you become? Imagine a family, a people, a tribe, a nation, a world that worship

00:06:52.320 the father of lights from whom comes down every good and perfect gift. What might that people

00:06:58.200 become? The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

00:07:07.260 In today's episode of the King's Hall Podcast, we have a special guest, the Reverend Uri Brito,

00:07:15.440 pastor of Providence Church, founder of Kyperian Commentary, and board member at Theopolis

00:07:20.500 Institute. A through line that you'll note throughout all of Uri's work is this conviction

00:07:25.580 that humanity is a worshiping being whose identity will be formed in a totalizing way

00:07:32.660 by that which he worships, and that therefore the only safe grounds from which to build a

00:07:38.040 flourishing human culture is the worship of the God who is the three and one. Steeped in the work

00:07:43.960 and thought of 19th century theologian and political figure Abraham Kuyper, Uri and his

00:07:49.360 cohorts at Kuyperian Commentary are committed not just to thinking good thoughts, not just having

00:07:55.060 good ideas, but to living those ideas out in obedience to Christ in every part of what it

00:08:00.600 means to be human. Worship shapes men who shape the world, and so it is essential that we get

00:08:07.620 worship right. It's one of the foundational ideas of this season of the King's Hall, as we seek to

00:08:13.580 build a new Christendom from the rich compost of the old. So we're going to go ahead and roll the

00:08:18.460 interview, and the first thing that you'll hear is going to be Yuri's answer to Eric's question,

00:08:23.240 why is worship central to the rebuilding of culture?

00:08:27.340 The Bible begins with acts of worship.

00:08:31.640 The book of Genesis says that Adam communed with God,

00:08:35.360 that Adam functioned as a priest unto God.

00:08:38.840 We see the garden takes on the shape of an initial temple.

00:08:43.700 It has all the ingredients that we're going to later see in the worship of Israel.

00:08:50.580 Adam was called to offer his life as a servant of God in the house of God

00:08:54.940 for the sake of the name of God, the Creator.

00:08:58.080 In fact, even the first event after the fall, you may remember in Genesis 4,

00:09:02.320 was a dispute about proper worship between Cain and Abel.

00:09:06.120 The first thing that Noah does after the ark, let's call it after the ark,

00:09:10.440 Sabbaths or rests on the mountain is to offer worship to God.

00:09:14.680 So worship is written all over the scriptures as the act you do,

00:09:18.760 not only in the old world, but in the new world and in every other world in between. It's the way

00:09:25.460 that God enculturates culture for the Christian. There's no other way that that happens. 0.66

00:09:32.700 Yeah, I think that's so huge. And so when you're thinking about, you know, something like how

00:09:37.340 people vote on Roe v. Wade, where we are culturally, and you see a problem like, you know,

00:09:42.020 there's a lot of Christians on Twitter who are saying right now, you know, how you vote

00:09:45.820 on this issue doesn't really matter. We can all worship. We can all be together.

00:09:50.360 How would what we do in worship, how would that cause us to respond differently to that person?

00:09:55.540 So I think it's important to sort of distinguish between worship broadly,

00:10:00.720 broad rituals, broad practices, and worship in particular, specific rituals, specific practices.

00:10:07.480 The best way to phrase it, Eric, is the church worships in particular so that she can worship

00:10:12.240 broadly so in worship the way i phrase it in the past is to worship is to commune with god in

00:10:19.220 conversation it's a dialogue so god speaks and we respond we respond and god speaks back to us it's

00:10:26.960 a groom and bride union of thought and life it's this continual conversation and so cultures are

00:10:34.620 shaped by a variety of things they're shaped by symbols but primarily cultures are shaped by

00:10:41.140 conversations. And because the Christian's primary way of thinking about life is through worship,

00:10:50.520 which is a conversation, therefore the way we do worship in our conversation is going to shape

00:10:56.240 the conversations of culture. And my argument is that only true conversations can shape worship,

00:11:03.760 can shape culture. Cultures are shaped by one conversation or another. It's not a neutral

00:11:10.020 endeavor it can be influenced by the conversations between heaven and earth between god and man

00:11:16.560 or the conversations between man and man which which as we know offer just no transcendent

00:11:23.740 guidance but only uh you know the kind of sort of secularized verbiage that cannot be self-sustaining

00:11:30.600 long term so this is where we need to put on our solomonic wisdom and and think this through here

00:11:36.240 Because it is true that the conversations between Marx and Hegel, the conversations between secularists and men provide an initial sustenance.

00:11:50.940 It provides some kind of initial substance.

00:11:53.700 It allows people to offer certain cultural motivations to keep that system going. 0.58

00:12:01.920 But only the Christian conversation, because it is grounded in eternal categories, only that conversation can provide self-sustaining, long-term, covenantal categories to take culture in the trajectory it needs to go. 0.95

00:12:19.280 Yeah, I think that's a really fantastic point. 0.92

00:12:21.700 One of the other things I think is, when you look at, say, Reformed worship, you look at what was happening in Geneva, and you look at the kind of culture that produced.

00:12:30.900 Okay, so there's a connection there.

00:12:32.740 But I want to look at our culture today, and you look at even things like Chris Tomlin songs versus singing the Psalms.

00:12:41.020 That's producing a different kind of culture.

00:12:43.960 My question is, what happened, I guess, in church history over the last 150, 200 years that we got sort of a light slapstick worship, and then now we've got a culture that is similar?

00:12:57.060 What happened, church history, to bring that about?

00:12:59.800 That's a really good question. You know, there's a sociologist by the name of George Ritzer, I think, and he talks about the McDonaldization of culture. And of course, the principles here, what he's applying specifically to is sort of the principles of the fast food market sort of applied to society at large, fast, quick, cigarette consumption, right? 0.78

00:13:22.160 But when that term is applied to the church's life, what that means is that the church life is McDonaldized, and so it's privatized, it's a quick fix faith rather than discipleship or apprenticeship in the Christian community.

00:13:41.300 And what it does, unbeknownst to those who are partakers of it, what it does is it diminishes, I think this is the language of Eugene Peterson, it diminishes the long obedience in the right direction so that church comes packaged for fast consumption.

00:14:00.940 And even as I'm thinking of that, I'm thinking about the little grape juice and wafer sort of easy consumption that people have used through COVID.

00:14:08.700 So you sit down on Sunday morning with your latte purchased at the upstairs coffee shop,

00:14:13.640 and then you consume the service like you would consume a theater experience with your butter popcorn and your extra, extra size soda.

00:14:22.300 So what you have done, Eric, you have essentially industrialized church to make us feel at ease with the experience of worship.

00:14:32.040 To the point, and you know this, you've seen this as well, to the point where the live stream service is so live that as long as you keep tithing, you're going to be perfectly okay with staying home on Sunday.

00:14:45.300 So sit for 45 minutes, make business context to extend your professional career as it's happening, and then leave your faith at the exit door, and then see you at the buffet line.

00:14:54.940 But that kind of easy consumption is made and tailored for American worship consumerism.

00:15:05.540 And nothing in this model resembles, approaches, or even nears the kind of robust biblical faith of our Hebrew and early church forefathers.

00:15:17.200 It doesn't matter how it's phrased either, by the way.

00:15:19.480 It doesn't matter how cool it looks.

00:15:20.620 whether it's phrased with the kind of rationale for evangelism or gospel-centeredness.

00:15:27.020 However it's phrased, it ultimately ends up like a fast food line and a fast consumption experience.

00:15:34.760 For the project of this season to be successful, the project of seeing a new Christendom built, 0.90

00:15:40.160 there will need to be thousands and thousands of Christian men and women

00:15:43.120 who are equipped to stand for the truth of Scripture

00:15:45.360 against the errors of both the liberal church and the pagan culture.

00:15:50.620 This is one reason we're so glad to be partnering with our sponsor for this season,

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00:16:35.520 Tap the link in the description of this episode to pick one up today.

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00:17:10.820 at advertising at newchristendompress.com. Oh man, that's so true. And one of the things I know

00:17:21.620 personally for me, so I kind of in college was going to baptistry style churches, some mega

00:17:27.100 churches in there. Some of those were charismatic. And then I remember at some point I went to Bill

00:17:32.100 Smith's Church in Louisville. And first of all, I walked in. So this is, you know, the time it was

00:17:38.240 just totally foreign to me. I walk in and I'm like, why is Bill dressed like a Catholic priest?

00:17:43.680 I have no idea what's happening here. And then we're going through the worship service and

00:17:47.960 I'm like, well, how do I follow worship? And somebody hands me what is like a phone book,

00:17:53.040 what seemed like a phone book, at least to me at the time. So it's, you've got this thing that

00:17:57.220 you've got to follow along with. And it shocked me. It was a shock to the system. Like you had

00:18:01.720 to participate they're chanting they're singing uh the gloria all this stuff is in there so we go

00:18:08.100 to one worship service and i said to my wife i said that was the most bizarre thing that i've

00:18:12.160 ever been a part of i said i'm never doing that again and i remember i went home and i told my

00:18:16.560 mother-in-law i said it was so weird and i'm explaining it and she goes well that sounds

00:18:20.520 kind of cool she's like well maybe you should just try just try it again just at least go twice

00:18:25.580 you know well we went twice and then became you know eventually part of the crec and all those

00:18:30.640 things. But one of the things I think Jim Jordan has said before is that worship is supposed to

00:18:36.380 be other. It's supposed to be different than what you get in the consumer experience in the

00:18:41.740 American culture. So I guess for a minute, just talk to me about what is this covenant renewal

00:18:46.780 worship? That's a word that's been used to describe it. What is it in some of its specifics,

00:18:51.740 and how is that different than what people would generally experience in church today?

00:18:56.140 Jim Jordan talks about how the incense of worship, even the, quote, smell of worship ought to be different.

00:19:03.720 And the principle is larger here.

00:19:06.020 The principle is that the experience you have on a Sunday morning ought to be different than your experiences from Monday through Saturday.

00:19:14.060 And so the experience of the liturgy, liturgy simply means the work of the people.

00:19:19.600 The experience of the work of the people on Sunday morning has to be an experience that transcends time and biblically transcends locations.

00:19:32.720 Paul says that we're raised into heavenly places.

00:19:35.940 So that in itself reorders the imagination of the Christian on Sunday morning.

00:19:40.780 And so if worship doesn't do that, it makes sense why it would be viewed as a fast consumption exercise.

00:19:49.080 however if worship does everything that Paul says it does if it takes us to the heavenly places by

00:19:55.600 the power of the spirit if worship is communion with angels and archangels and all the company

00:20:01.440 of heaven and all the church on earth if worship is a service where we sit at the table and our

00:20:08.120 host is Jesus the Christ the risen the ascended Lord if it is at the very least Eric 25 of that

00:20:17.000 then everything we do on Sunday morning is going to be different

00:20:20.880 and is going to shake up your experience like it did yours and it did mine

00:20:26.420 the first time we indwelt that kind of life.

00:20:32.580 And so the most, how can I phrase it,

00:20:35.920 the most beautiful rhythms of our lives, and you said it so well,

00:20:40.120 and so a hearty cheers for your mother-in-law,

00:20:43.860 But the most beautiful rhythms of our lives were developed through persistence.

00:20:49.440 But we have grown to believe that life needs to be sort of dramatic and unpredictable,

00:20:57.380 that we need a cycle of shock and all to get us through.

00:21:01.400 But the common is the thing that shapes our experiences.

00:21:05.920 We are made to be not so much Homo sapiens, but Homo adorans.

00:21:11.220 We are liturgical creatures.

00:21:13.000 We are worshiping creatures because God created a world of order from the very beginning.

00:21:19.920 He created seasons.

00:21:22.400 He established time to guide our rhythms.

00:21:26.260 He offered the world as a gift of six and one, a gift of work and Sabbath, a gift of labor and leisure.

00:21:34.120 and the things we do and you know this as well as the things we do that shape the most our

00:21:41.740 imagination are the repetitive acts and in fact human beings live we live you know modern evangelists

00:21:51.480 who won't say this but we live as if there's a a happy expectation of repetition nobody i mean

00:21:57.160 imagine this nobody lives constantly in surprise mode you know that would you just you just have a

00:22:03.720 stroke if everything you were expecting was a surprise. So liturgy shapes our rhythms and

00:22:08.940 rituals, and that's why it's so different and so shocking for many of us in the evangelical

00:22:15.140 culture who sort of just have this expectation of having their desires constantly surprised.

00:22:22.840 Yeah, and it's such a good point. I mean, even something that you mentioned, liturgy being the

00:22:27.180 work of the people, that was something that changed, where when I would go to worship before,

00:22:31.860 it was like there was a band on stage, and there were lights and smoke machines, and I was basically

00:22:36.400 a spectator. And then, like, going and realizing, like, I'm gonna have to sing here. Like, I'm gonna

00:22:42.820 have to participate. You know, I've got to say the portion of the psalm back, you know, as the

00:22:48.500 pastor's leading. You know, and all this stuff is, you know, raising hands. It's incorporating your

00:22:53.420 whole body. And one of the interesting things I think it brings up is you're talking about these

00:22:58.620 elements in the worship service. So, you know, confession, communion, ascension, all of it

00:23:05.860 absolution. What I saw happening in my life over time was, as I was repeating these things in

00:23:13.380 worship, they became expected, they became habitual. It was that in my daily life, like,

00:23:20.460 you know, I'd sin against a brother, and I'm like, well, what do we do? Well, there's confession,

00:23:23.720 there's absolution. So it's like, I mean, it actually became ingrained in the pattern of the

00:23:28.580 rest of life as well. One of the questions I want to ask, though, is a lot of times people will say

00:23:34.040 to me, yeah, but liturgy is hard. Like, learning the liturgy is hard. Learning how to worship as

00:23:39.440 the people of God is hard. And one of those things would be like singing psalms. It's harder than

00:23:44.760 standing there listening to a, you know, we called them 7-Eleven songs, you know, seven words repeated

00:23:49.780 it 11 times. It's a lot harder. So what would your encouragement be to people, say they come

00:23:55.880 to your church, they experience it, they say, you know, Pastor Uri, this is hard. How would you

00:24:00.320 encourage them that it's worthwhile? Well, the first thing I'd say is good. If someone comes

00:24:06.420 to my congregation from your local megachurch and they say, man, this was fantastic, I'm often

00:24:13.680 skeptical to tell the truth because i want them to see the radical transition from a world where

00:24:23.360 things are spontaneously created right a world where things come into being that have not been

00:24:33.860 thought through and then a world where things have had this this this aroma of preparation

00:24:40.680 where everything that happens, and you gave some indication of this,

00:24:45.260 we call the five C's of covenant renewal, which is the call, the confession,

00:24:51.200 the consecration, the communion, and the commissioning.

00:24:55.500 And you come into that worship environment, and suddenly it's hard for you

00:25:01.400 because you've been trained to think about these categories scattered throughout,

00:25:06.640 if at all. But now you're being retrained, as Walter Brueggemann says, you're being reoriented

00:25:14.000 into a liturgy of expectation, into a liturgy of repetition, into a liturgy that keeps you

00:25:21.960 no longer as a passive engager, but an active engager through and through. You mentioned this

00:25:28.980 as well. You know, the difference between the passive worship experience of the local megachurch

00:25:35.280 and the difference between the active experience in your local congregation,

00:25:41.620 in whatever tradition it is,

00:25:43.600 the difference is that there's no room for individuality to blossom.

00:25:48.980 There's only room for the corporate experience

00:25:51.660 so that my little, my youngest is four years old,

00:25:56.020 so that my little four-year-old looks at what's happening

00:25:59.240 when we raise our hands for the Gloria and says,

00:26:01.780 this is what's expected of me and everybody else so there's no room for the individual to sort of

00:26:09.280 blossom with his privatized mcdonaldized worship experience and all of that now is shifted into

00:26:19.460 a corporate expression that prior was not a part of his involvement and so that's why worship is

00:26:27.680 a conversation, because there is this responsorial element of the worship experience that, whereas

00:26:33.880 before, was a one-way street. Prior, it was a monologue. Now it's a dialogue between God and

00:26:39.540 man. And that ought to be hard, but the good kind of hard, you know? And so when you talk about the

00:26:46.340 Psalter, that's a whole different level of hard. But I want you to—your thoughts there. Follow up

00:26:50.660 on that, if you don't mind. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly true. I was thinking about it—so

00:26:54.320 we have psalm sing on tuesday nights and so one of the things we have to do as you're saying like

00:26:59.920 you have to practice you have to get better at it anything worthwhile is going to be hard to some

00:27:05.020 extent but one of the things i loved we have a family who one child is adopted from the foster

00:27:11.580 program and they have a new child so i think four and two and they can't even speak words but you

00:27:17.640 know very few and very few intelligible words but what i love so we're standing there we're singing

00:27:22.460 the doxology and the child who's been in the home longer is raising her hands and she turns and

00:27:28.340 looks at the the new child to the foster home and grabs his hands and raises them and i was like

00:27:34.680 man it was so moving you know because it's this understanding of like this is what we're doing

00:27:39.640 and you're a part of this now and so respond appropriately um it also makes me think of

00:27:45.220 something i think it's henry van till said that culture is religion externalized and so one of

00:27:51.360 the things about that that strikes me is if we want our culture to be different, fundamentally

00:27:56.120 what we have to do in worship is retrain our affections. One of the things that I was, I never

00:28:02.220 would have thought about this way prior, but Bill would say, especially like you get to absolution

00:28:08.680 of sin, and Bill would say, how you feel right now is not the important thing. The important thing

00:28:14.880 is what Jesus says about you. And I just became so acutely aware in that moment, I need to train

00:28:20.920 my affections according to what God says, and not come in here saying, well, this is

00:28:25.820 me trying to emote my way through the worship service, basically.

00:28:31.420 So I guess if you would, for a moment, talk about that aspect of retraining the affections

00:28:36.660 of the heart, so that we go out in culture and we create the things that we love, but

00:28:40.700 they're the right things.

00:28:41.980 Yeah, that's terrific.

00:28:43.360 You know, we talk about worship, and we view it through categories of spirituality, but

00:28:50.480 the Bible says that we are to worship in spirit and truth. And so truth brings about this

00:28:57.460 ritualized component, which essentially means when you're retraining yourself in worship,

00:29:03.500 what you're doing is you're not just retraining your spirit, you're also retraining your actions,

00:29:08.520 you're retraining your body, you're retraining, I mean, think about this,

00:29:12.820 tithes and offerings, okay? We got an ethics of economy in the church, which is translated into

00:29:18.880 culture. You think about confession. You have an ethics of reconciliation happening. We're training

00:29:25.100 ourselves to relate to other human beings with whom we don't get along well with at times. Think

00:29:30.460 about the call of worship. At that point, we're retraining what it means to be in the presence of

00:29:36.240 others, what it means to be called, what it means to receive, what it means to give gifts. When we're

00:29:42.200 talking about the element of consecration, we're talking about how a minister preaches to us.

00:29:48.400 Well, that also translates into culture because we're talking about how we receive information, how we receive data from culture, how we look through our social media feed, and how we sort of embody that and respond appropriately to it.

00:30:02.700 And then when we talk about commissioning, the same principle apply.

00:30:06.120 God is commissioning us to go into the world.

00:30:08.780 So we're taking the blueprint of heaven that I refer to as worship.

00:30:12.480 That's what it is, the blueprint of heaven.

00:30:13.960 And then we're taking from the Mount of Transfiguration, and now we're saying, let's go back down where the Pharisees and Sadducees are eager to get into debates with us.

00:30:23.620 And so how are we going to take that blueprint of heaven and now apply it to our sphere of our earthly domain?

00:30:29.860 And so that is a little bit, that requires an adjustment in orientation, but it also means that worship changes our imagination in various ways.

00:30:39.560 unbeknownst to us right unbeknownst to us if our tithing is our offerings and our tributes

00:30:46.120 well that's going to shape our benevolence and charity whereas often we're used to viewing that

00:30:51.880 whole quote transaction as a one-way transaction no no the things we're doing in worship on Sunday

00:30:57.760 morning is training our bodies and our souls our souls and our bodies it's a holistic endeavor

00:31:03.180 from the call to the commission and that's what I think is missing from the modern evangelical

00:31:09.080 ethos that doesn't view worship through the lens of the the shaping of imagination desires and

00:31:17.020 longings what are we longing for what are we desiring when we leave worship on sunday morning

00:31:21.500 we're desiring that the heavenly experience we've had in an hour an hour 15 an hour 30

00:31:26.540 be translated into the the ethos of culture and that it affects what happens in the halls of

00:31:32.960 washington dc and that it affects what happens in uh you know mom's kitchen at 6 p.m oh man

00:31:39.060 Man, yeah, that's so huge.

00:31:41.140 Yuri, I want to ask you now about family.

00:31:44.080 So family is another important part of worship and culture creation.

00:31:49.180 Obviously, you know, the way God has structured the covenants is through households and families.

00:31:55.580 How does that play into worship and culture creation with what you do with your family, I guess, is part of this question.

00:32:03.000 And I guess if you would just tie it to, like, what does that actually look like on a daily basis, say, for you and your family?

00:32:08.560 How are you creating a liturgy for your family, and then how does that translate to the culture

00:32:14.240 of your family?

00:32:15.540 Let me put a plug for a book that I edited many, many years ago, and it was called The

00:32:21.720 Church-Friendly Family, and it contains essays from Rich Lusk and Randy Booth, and a lengthy

00:32:27.840 introductory essay from myself.

00:32:29.740 And I think it's being republished by Covenant Media Press soon, but I tackle a lot of these

00:32:34.540 issues there, and the other writers do as well.

00:32:36.780 I think we have been trained to think of the life of the church as merely the kind of life that adds weight to the life of the family.

00:32:48.800 And what I've tried to do is to say that the life of the family does not have any weightiness to it apart from the central life of the church.

00:32:57.640 So that on Sunday morning, we typically view the Sunday morning experience as the cumulative effect of several households being put together.

00:33:07.680 And I want to change that language, Eric.

00:33:09.860 I want to say that what happens on Sunday morning, just to quote my mentor, Peter Lightheart,

00:33:14.480 what happens on Sunday morning is that at that point, there's a transformation of familial and household realities.

00:33:21.100 We're now being incorporated into a larger family than our own households so that my son Ezekiel looks at his friend across the other side of church as his brother, as his heavenly participant, as somebody who is united to him in a task that's greater than himself.

00:33:42.100 And so once we get that perspective right and we see sort of the centrality,

00:33:46.400 the liturgical expression in shaping our familial habits,

00:33:49.440 then I think we can talk about family practices.

00:33:52.220 And I've thought about this quite a bit over the years

00:33:54.840 because there's a lot of interest in developing the concept of the oikos in our society.

00:34:00.480 And it's true that as the family goes, so goes the culture.

00:34:05.540 But when the family is separated from the life of the church,

00:34:09.480 which is the true life of the headquarters of heaven, the family cannot fulfill its task.

00:34:15.360 So as we have seen through COVID, families that stay together on Sunday morning at home

00:34:22.740 do not stay together throughout their lives in the ecclesiastical affair.

00:34:28.140 When you think about life in the longevity of the experience of a father-son, for example,

00:34:35.360 when you think about that kind of life the father that doesn't train his son at home

00:34:40.980 in the rituals of church that father will eventually lose his son to other rituals

00:34:48.020 which means the son is going to be looking for other rituals to stabilize him and he'll find it

00:34:55.200 very quickly by the way he'll find it so the home needs to be the household i'm talking about the

00:35:01.060 the biological expression where you and your wife and your children live that home needs to be a

00:35:07.000 place shaped by the productivity of church church is to be a productive experience the home needs

00:35:13.680 to be a productive experience which is how i understand interprets of proverbs 31 as the home

00:35:19.960 being shaped by the bride of christ as a productive experience if you as a dad if you're trying to

00:35:27.980 leave a piece of Christendom behind for your children to pick up and keep building, then

00:35:34.960 productivity in the household is going to be very key. And what that means is going to entail that

00:35:40.500 you need a family that is committed to the principle of productivity. You need mom to be on

00:35:46.100 the same page. You need Ezekiel. You need Johnny. You need everybody to be on the same page. We're 0.58

00:35:51.160 going to be a productive home. You need a wife that is committed to see a bigger picture than 0.73

00:35:57.060 merely what she's doing. A wife is not merely doing dishes in the home. A wife is saving 0.96

00:36:02.480 civilization while she's doing dishes in the home. You know, P.J. O'Rourke said, 1.00

00:36:07.120 everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to help mama with the dishes.

00:36:11.300 And that's kind of the reality. This is a community project, and mom needs to see these

00:36:17.820 things. It's my job as a pastor, it's your job to encourage our wives and mothers to see their

00:36:24.300 role is much greater so so here's the principle i just want to leave with this because i think this

00:36:29.280 is a sort of a forgotten piece of this puzzle here when things pick up in traffic in the home

00:36:37.300 that is when opportunities to serve opportunities to grow are all over the place right the family

00:36:45.340 is becoming more productive and the more productive you are the more opportunities will show up

00:36:49.880 the general strategy in our society among families is to shrink down our blueprint so if we have

00:36:58.360 seven things we do now what we really need to do is only one thing so that we don't get too

00:37:04.260 overwhelming to overwhelm so guys let's do less right but what if the helpful thing is to

00:37:13.760 strategize the things that are good the things that are better and the things that are best in

00:37:19.320 other words, what if the way to move is to build more strategically, to say no to lesser projects

00:37:26.380 and yes to more efficient projects? Family units need to function like that. And I have five kids.

00:37:34.360 The more kids you have, the more strategic mom and dad have to be. So here's a prime example in the

00:37:41.840 area of, let's say, devotional life, right? I've been doing this for 14 years as a senior pastor,

00:37:48.700 So I deal with this all the time.

00:37:50.980 And often when I hear very enthusiastic fathers, they build these kinds of romantic notions of offering the family a night with this grandiose Spurgeon-esque devotions.

00:38:04.380 And what they are doing is essentially training.

00:38:08.320 I mean, unless you have the rhetoric of Chrysostom, which most men don't, unless what you're doing is you're poorly strategizing.

00:38:17.780 So what you have to do, and I'm borrowing this from a little line that I think Wilson used in one of his books.

00:38:24.660 What you have to do is to make your time efficient.

00:38:28.140 So what we do in our home essentially is a catechism question, a prayer, and a dinner conversation.

00:38:35.220 And that can be done consistently without demanding too much.

00:38:41.820 But the idea here is you're having conversations, which means, back to the earlier thing I said about worship,

00:38:47.780 You're shaping the imagination and you're allowing your family to be simultaneously strategizing by thinking and adding ethical categories to the household.

00:38:59.900 So you're having a conversation with your home and dad, who is the leader strategist, begins to put ethical dilemmas at the table.

00:39:10.260 And now your oldest son is beginning to have to think through these ethical dilemmas.

00:39:15.300 And dad is just there as a facilitator.

00:39:17.780 and mom is there to help out as well, but you're training your offspring to think about how more

00:39:24.420 accurately their arrows can pierce the kingdom of darkness, and you do that through strategizing

00:39:30.040 through ethical dilemmas, but also thinking through life at a more grander picture than

00:39:35.860 a narrow vision for the church, for the home. Yeah, that is so huge. It made me think of two

00:39:42.920 things, Yuri. First of all, really the way that modern church has, I don't know if it sought to

00:39:48.880 do it or it just ended up doing it, but I think as the household has fallen apart, really what

00:39:54.040 the church did is try to replace those roles. So we have youth group, and it's like, well,

00:39:58.680 you don't need to be a father, just send them to me, and in half hour, 15 minutes, every Sunday,

00:40:04.540 I'll do all that heavy lifting, and you'll be safe. Well, we've clearly seen culturally that

00:40:09.120 doesn't work. And so I think a lot of this worship model is, it's really about structuring

00:40:15.640 the church so that it's assisting the family in its roles, not replacing them. And so that's

00:40:21.360 really key here. The second thing, and it'll dovetail into the next question I want to ask

00:40:25.740 you, you were talking about moms doing dishes. And one of the things that strikes me is this is

00:40:30.760 why we need biblical theology, because we need to understand what part of the story we're in.

00:40:36.000 We need to understand what God is doing in his work of taking dominion,

00:40:40.620 that he's using us to be a part of that.

00:40:42.880 We're part of the kingdom coming on earth.

00:40:45.500 And it's so important because it gives life to these mundane, everyday tasks, right?

00:40:49.200 We're not just doing dishes.

00:40:51.940 You know, if you're a dad, you're not just—maybe today you're filling out spreadsheets.

00:40:55.820 But we're part of this greater mission of God, the Missio Dei,

00:41:00.000 and we need to see ourselves properly in the story.

00:41:03.380 So I guess just break down, if people aren't aware, what is biblical theology, and why

00:41:09.340 is it so important to know where you're at in the story?

00:41:11.520 Biblical theology is the unfolding of redemptive history in the scriptures.

00:41:18.400 So biblical theology is not so much concerned with propositional categories, that's what

00:41:24.420 systematic theology does.

00:41:26.420 Biblical theology unfolds before us in this beautiful tapestry, the story of redemption.

00:41:31.940 And it does it in a way that is, quote, liturgical, close quote, right?

00:41:36.920 So it borrows rhythms and patterns.

00:41:40.340 And so what you see, and I've argued this just recently in one of my sermons,

00:41:44.900 that one of the problems of our day is we have lost touch with the first six days.

00:41:51.440 And because the first six days offer us a rhythm, a pattern, a typology

00:41:57.060 for how all the other days of redemptive history

00:41:59.960 from Genesis 3 till the second coming of Jesus

00:42:04.280 are going to unfold.

00:42:05.980 Wow, yeah.

00:42:06.600 And if we begin, so this is another aspect here.

00:42:11.820 If we begin, Eric, our anthropology in Genesis chapter 3,

00:42:16.200 we're going to see the world as this lost cause.

00:42:19.940 But if we begin our anthropology where the Bible begins

00:42:23.160 in Genesis 1 and 2,

00:42:24.260 we're going to develop a biblical way of looking at redemptive history and we're going to see the

00:42:30.080 sin in chapter three that we begin things where things ought to be and that's where christians

00:42:35.560 ought to pursue where things ought to be not where things have been lost we pursue

00:42:41.400 redemptive history we pursue our role redemptive history through the lens of how things were

00:42:47.160 established by god in the garden and then we move from there sin is there but christians must

00:42:53.560 remember that the sin bearer has also come. We no longer live in the days of Malachi. We live

00:43:01.280 in the days of the new creation, where Jesus has become our prophet, our priest, and our true king,

00:43:08.480 and he makes us into all these things as we look at redemptive history.

00:43:12.420 Man, that's so good, and especially as you were talking about early chapters in Genesis. I think

00:43:16.520 I was talking to Rich Lusk about this on the podcast, and he mentioned, you know, part of

00:43:21.660 reason that we've dropped the ball culturally on the issue of sexuality is because we jettisoned

00:43:28.220 a historical creation view, right? So like with evolution, it's like, oh, well, you know, Adam,

00:43:34.700 Eve, you know, were they real people? Is that sexuality really that important? And when we're

00:43:41.080 looking at it from the proper perspective, the gospel is restoring people to that original

00:43:46.300 calling, right? So taking dominion, bearing fruit, men and women in their God-ordained roles,

00:43:52.540 their natures, etc. That becomes hugely important. What do you think—so you take that story,

00:43:59.920 say, of anthropology beginning Genesis 1, not chapter 3. Think about some of the things that

00:44:08.060 that would apply to in the way that you engage the culture. Again, the sexuality issue, we have

00:44:13.740 Roe v. Wade. It's all tied together. But I'm curious, where do you see that playing out in

00:44:18.580 culture? The Bible begins with a very clear political worldview. Adam ate from the fruit

00:44:23.720 of his labors, right? That's an economic theology. Adam was married to one woman. That is a sexual

00:44:29.880 theology. Adam communed with God. Well, that's covenant theology. Adam named the animals.

00:44:37.340 That's dominion theology. Adam lived according to the seasons that God established. Well,

00:44:43.060 that's a liturgical theology. And I'm just starting, man. I could go on and on. But all

00:44:49.520 these elements from our understanding of our economic theory, all these elements have come

00:44:57.340 because we have forgotten that Adam ate from the fruit of his labors. The fruit wasn't given to

00:45:04.380 him without his labors. It came as a result of his labors. Our view of sexuality has come because

00:45:10.640 we have treated the abnormal as if it were normal.

00:45:15.680 We've treated the, we view the initial marriage of man and the woman that was created, we

00:45:23.860 view that as if that were one of the 17,000 options of sexuality, when that is the de facto

00:45:32.400 understanding of sexuality.

00:45:34.460 And I mean, don't even get me started with covenant theology, but all these principles

00:45:38.160 apply. And some of these also are, I should say, they are devalued in our society because we have

00:45:45.320 changed the hierarchy of our loves. Man has dominion over things, and we have changed the

00:45:53.180 priority of these things by saying that things should have dominion over man. And so you can't

00:45:58.900 establish a proper theology of the Imago Dei unless everything in its proper order. And that,

00:46:05.620 of course incidentally affects how we look at 1 Corinthians 11 through 14 and our understanding

00:46:11.160 of hierarchies and placements and sexuality in the church. Who should do what? Well, all those

00:46:19.020 things were already ordered for us and our attempts to reorder the things that were initially ordered

00:46:25.240 is our human attempt to do away with the original order. And I'm only 42, but I know a little bit

00:46:34.260 about life. Every time man attempts to do that, we get a disordered economy, a disordered sexuality,

00:46:41.400 a disordered ethical and liturgical theology. So all these things are clearly connected,

00:46:47.160 but we need to begin where everything begins. Yeah, that's a really excellent point.

00:46:53.080 It gets to a question I want to ask you as we sort of wrap up here. One of the ways that

00:46:58.460 Reformed folks—one of the ways that Reformed folks have tended to apply this question of,

00:47:03.800 okay, how do we take the law of God, we take what Scripture says,

00:47:07.780 and then how are we going to do that work of applying it in culture

00:47:10.760 is what we've seen with theonomy.

00:47:14.040 This has been, I think, helpful in many ways,

00:47:17.180 but you and I were kind of talking about this on Twitter,

00:47:20.120 and I said one of the things we've seen in the theonomy post-mill camp

00:47:24.620 is just a lot of these dudes who I would call the hyper-schismatic reconstructionists.

00:47:30.860 So I guess my first question is, why do these guys exist? Why are they so attracted to our camp? What's going on?

00:47:38.080 Yeah, there's a hyper-schismatic reconstructionist coming to a church near you.

00:47:42.380 Yes, you're right.

00:47:43.480 That's a true danger. Again, it's a disordered truth, right?

00:47:48.620 So people often can take a true thing, and the methodology or the principle of it can be disordered to such a way, in such a manner, that you no longer recognize a true thing.

00:48:02.220 And that's a real danger.

00:48:04.140 So there are several factors involved here, as I've thought about this issue over the years.

00:48:08.960 The one that comes to mind, I just had a chance to hear him here in Pensacola, is the Jordan Peterson phenomena, you know?

00:48:16.400 Yeah.

00:48:16.680 Jordan Peterson, and I encourage you also to, I can't remember the book right now, but it's a book edited on Jordan Peterson and one of my fellow board members of Theopolis, Alistair Roberts, wrote a wonderful essay there.

00:48:29.560 But the Jordan Peterson phenomenon caused men all over the world to reconsider life and to reconsider what makes life meaningful.

00:48:39.240 so Peterson and I know all your listeners probably know he is but just for recollection here

00:48:44.660 Peterson is a sort of quasi-secular prophet trying to instill some sense of direction and purpose

00:48:51.240 and the majority of his hearers and listeners are men because they're the primary consumers on

00:48:56.420 on YouTube where most of his material finds itself and when you take that Peterson mentality of

00:49:03.740 purpose and direction and leadership when that mentality reaches christians let's say just

00:49:10.000 hypothetically dispensational christians uh they what they realize at that point when it hits them

00:49:16.920 to the heart right when they accept peterson into their hearts what happens there is they realize 0.95

00:49:22.800 they realize at that moment that their escapist philosophy that brought them no theological and

00:49:30.900 cultural satisfaction needs to go and then they go online and they see the stuff eric khan is

00:49:38.800 writing the stuff other guys are writing and then they come across you know good people like uh you

00:49:46.120 know the late greg bonson or my friend in california andrew sandlin or you know captain

00:49:51.660 stay out of controversy doug wilson or or even you know the late rush duny that i've never had

00:49:56.960 a chance to meet, but who died in 01. And then suddenly, I don't know if your experience is the

00:50:02.560 same. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Suddenly, what took them 30 years to see takes

00:50:07.220 them one day to unsee. And then, and then, and then, man, what happens is they become sort of

00:50:15.120 the social media apologist for the 613 case laws in the Bible. And they carry around the biggest

00:50:23.780 copy of rush duny's institutes of biblical law they can get and so they make enemies of everyone

00:50:30.300 they offend everyone and they drive pastors like me absolutely insane with their with their zealotry

00:50:38.200 they want to change everything overnight no matter who suffers in the wake of their passion

00:50:43.060 no matter what havoc they bring to the local church and i have done some counseling for other

00:50:50.300 pastors there's some some ways to identify these kinds of guys but you know if you're interested

00:50:57.040 I'd be happy to talk about it but any follow-ups there by the way what has what has been your

00:51:01.140 experience Eric any thoughts there oh man is I you're you're spot on I mean so really what we

00:51:06.900 see is you know and I've seen it in multiple places too that's kind of the weird thing but

00:51:11.800 you'll get a guy like I've seen guys who are like one minute it's Joel Osteen the next minute they

00:51:18.220 have read Rush Dooney and the next minute they're calling their pastor a heretic and it's just

00:51:24.540 bizarre stuff like you know um we've called it like drawing the circle of orthodoxy around your

00:51:29.840 own feet um not having like an awareness that you came to this position five seconds ago you you

00:51:36.580 probably are not being wise when you're on social media anathematizing everyone who yesterday you

00:51:43.360 thought they were great and today they're heretics um we've had them show up in sunday school

00:51:48.000 you know and it's it's stuff like well you know you have unrepentant murderers in your congregation

00:51:53.420 and we're like uh where and they're like well you have people who served in the military

00:51:59.320 they're unrepentant murderers and they should be stoned tomorrow and i'm like okay uh well

00:52:06.180 yeah there's some issues that we'll have to work through the other one is um we had uh some some 0.93

00:52:12.380 police officers in our church and one of the same dudes you know he said uh he's like well

00:52:18.260 you've got people who are committing kidnapping on a regular basis and they deserve to be punished

00:52:25.860 according to the book of leviticus and and the other one i would say is like this principle you

00:52:31.900 were talking about where you know part of what we talk about with post-mill dominion theology

00:52:37.460 is, look, God has time, and we're loving people, we're doing it in a way that is hopefully winsome,

00:52:44.620 in the right biblical sense of winsome, yet people are like, you know, well, I took it upon myself to

00:52:50.580 go to the woman who just came to our church yesterday, hasn't been in 10 years, and she's 0.99

00:52:55.920 a public school teacher, and I told her that she's a whore for the state, and it's like, 0.99

00:53:00.100 oh please why oh my you know and so you know pastorally we've actually seen people you know 1.00

00:53:07.960 quit their jobs and women go home and love their families and stuff like that but it's this idea

00:53:13.060 that it has to be now overnight so yeah yeah it has to be right now but but i have to know right

00:53:19.940 now yuri i have to know how do you identify these people well i i think i think you do you do test

00:53:26.800 their loyalties and i think they're they're questions you can ask and i've been doing this

00:53:33.060 long enough where most often within five minutes i have a pretty good sense of what direction

00:53:38.980 they're going what are the things that consume them now you shared a few kind of interesting

00:53:43.080 experiences i had one uh during the covet season where someone came to our congregation and within

00:53:48.320 five minutes he was condemning anyone who took the vaccine as a a heretic of the state and somebody

00:53:55.660 who could no longer be trusted as a Christian.

00:53:58.740 Well, you know, every congregation is going to differ. 0.97

00:54:02.040 Now, anybody who has read anything I've written

00:54:04.740 has a very healthy sense of where I lean on these issues.

00:54:09.120 However, there are also issues of conscience

00:54:13.060 that show up in your congregation.

00:54:15.440 And so one way to test it is how do certain people

00:54:17.800 that come to your congregation view others in the congregation?

00:54:22.140 So let's say you have a family that is in a public school

00:54:25.640 but they have come to your congregation and they have found the things there to be healthy for

00:54:30.140 them. Well, how is that first conversation with that person? Well, my desire would be to draw

00:54:37.140 them into the beauty of what we do rather than damage their minds by acting as if everything

00:54:45.220 they've ever done in life has been an incredible waste and they're leading their children to hell

00:54:51.280 right now. If that were the application, everything you and I have talked about redemptive history

00:54:56.900 is completely mute. It has no bearing at all in this conversation. But interestingly enough,

00:55:03.500 families that have had their kids in public school because of ignorance or because they were just

00:55:08.620 thinking through these issues, if they grow into the vision you're laying out Sunday after Sunday

00:55:13.820 through various sweet conversations around the dinner table with good wine,

00:55:20.080 through a helpful dialogue, through the years, through the months and through the years,

00:55:25.580 these families end up becoming the most loyal to the vision of the church long term.

00:55:30.520 So we have to begin thinking through these issues, as John Frame would say,

00:55:35.680 every theology must first and foremost be pastoral theology.

00:55:39.040 and the opposite of that is a theology that does not draw people closer to you but drives them

00:55:46.720 away and when they're driven away eric what usually happens is they carry that one or two

00:55:52.060 experiences with them wherever they go and they damage the very cause you seek to defend oh it's

00:55:57.120 so huge and i think pastorally then it becomes our responsibility to like i want to protect the

00:56:02.480 flock from this person you know they they it depends on the degree but as you said they can 0.83

00:56:07.340 be troublers of Israel. It also reminded me of something that Jim Jordan said, that we were 0.97

00:56:12.880 asking questions about liturgy and making changes in the church. And we're like, how fast do you

00:56:19.100 implement change, etc.? And it was just such a pastoral moment for us, like pastors being

00:56:24.440 pastored. But he said, your people need to know how much you love them. That's what they need to

00:56:29.880 know first, how much you love them. And it was a good check, because all of us, you can read

00:56:36.060 something you get cage stage about it you want to see change immediately and you've you've got

00:56:41.320 to pastorally remember the people and it is it is really hard i think about our own lives like

00:56:48.100 going to covenant renewal worship for the first time i was in shock and so i can imagine if 0.98

00:56:54.820 somebody been like well you're an idiot if you don't get this like rather than recognizing no 0.99

00:56:59.560 i understand there's a shock to the system we love you here's some good brisket and uh it's 1.00

00:57:05.320 going to be okay, Eric. You know, that's basically what happened to me. So I think that's really

00:57:09.900 good. It gets to the last question I want to ask you as we wrap up, Yuri. Something that you do on

00:57:14.720 Kuyperian Commentary is really, I think, about engaging cultural issues, right? Whether it's

00:57:20.020 Roe v. Wade, whether it's physical bodies and how pastors and other men take care of their bodies

00:57:24.880 within the church, etc. But I want to ask you kind of what your approach has been, because you've

00:57:30.820 been somebody who's actually addressed a lot of the societal, cultural, political issues.

00:57:36.280 What are some of the sort of, I guess, your principles for how you decide, I'm going to

00:57:40.300 deal with this, versus I know a lot of pastors are just saying, you know, I don't talk politics,

00:57:44.280 let's not talk politics. We just never deal with the really controversial issues. So how do you

00:57:49.820 wade through that? Well, you know, the first thing to keep in mind is that the things I've written,

00:57:55.140 especially the last few years didn't come because I was a happy graduate of seminary

00:58:01.500 that wasn't my first year into pastoral ministry right there's a sense in which the pastor must

00:58:08.100 earn his shepherding garments and that comes when you visit their children in the hospital when they

00:58:19.280 just got a concussion. That comes when you bury grandma. That comes when you minister to them

00:58:25.960 through relational difficulties. So one of the things that happened, this is my 14th year here

00:58:32.460 at Providence in Pensacola. One of the things that happened during COVID is that I went from

00:58:37.280 quoting a few things on Facebook to writing full length articles on Facebook almost every day for

00:58:44.200 two plus years. And before that, and I think I was sharing this with either Brian Sauvé or

00:58:50.340 David Chocolate Knock, but I had a very small presence before that. But when I began to write

00:58:56.200 more thorough posts that dug very deeply into the current issues of the day, people began to

00:59:03.360 interact and suddenly there were folks reading my material in a consistent and substantive way.

00:59:08.500 And it went very quickly from about 2,000 people on Facebook to 4,500 to 5,000.

00:59:15.400 And I know that there are social media skeptics out there.

00:59:20.100 And some of them, as I said before, they've kind of embraced Wendell Berry in their hearts.

00:59:24.900 And there may be a...

00:59:26.520 I don't have a computer.

00:59:27.860 Yeah, there may be a small dimension of goodness to that.

00:59:31.660 And I tried my life of flip phone for a little bit.

00:59:35.900 It didn't work.

00:59:36.760 But the reality is that social media is where the big conversations are happening.

00:59:43.720 Now, it may be because of old-fashionedness, but people today, whatever the skeptics think,

00:59:49.960 people today are not, the majority of people are not getting their news through daily delivery of New York Times in their front yard.

00:59:57.920 They're getting their news.

00:59:59.260 The majority of conversations I have are with people who send me links to something they saw on Twitter or in their Facebook feed.

01:00:08.780 So my question at the end of the day is, why shouldn't the priests who lead the people of God,

01:00:15.660 priests in very general Protestant terms, who lead the people of God in worship,

01:00:20.680 why should they not have a voice in these conversations that are happening in society?

01:00:25.960 Why should we be quiet while our people are getting their interpretations from others?

01:00:31.920 So I have attempted to sort of speak to cultural, liturgical, ecclesiastical issues with as much humor and as much clarity as I can muster

01:00:40.720 so that people can be shocked by the content, but also realize that what we're discussing are sobering issues in our day 0.93

01:00:50.080 and that we can no longer remain in the keller-esque political middle,

01:00:56.060 but we must take a stand in the political worldview

01:01:00.480 established in the first six days of creation.

01:01:02.760 Yeah, and you bring up such an important point, I think.

01:01:05.280 I noticed this pastoring and being an elder in a church was,

01:01:09.580 this stuff is shaping our people every day.

01:01:11.880 So they get the pastor for 45 minutes or whatever on a Sunday morning,

01:01:17.920 And then all week I noticed I'd be on Facebook and I'd see all my people were sharing Desiring God and Tim Keller and the Gospel Coalition.

01:01:25.680 So they're taking their cues for how to engage socially and culturally from these guys.

01:01:31.740 And that's really why I started as well was this kind of pastoral need to say, look, our people need something better.

01:01:38.480 You know, we have good resources through like Canon Plus and Doug Wilson and a lot of those guys.

01:01:43.340 I think they've really amped up their game too in the last two years. Because I think a lot of us

01:01:48.080 realize, Pastor Brian Sauve says this to me all the time, but he's like, listen, Twitter, like it

01:01:53.060 or not, Twitter is the agora. That is the marketplace of ideas right now. And so that's

01:01:58.420 really a lot of times where we need to engage and interact with people. I was skeptical too

01:02:03.080 in the beginning. I was like, I just want to read my Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson and

01:02:07.780 you know, live in my countryside, you know, Montana Ranch or whatever, and just watch the

01:02:13.500 sunset. But it's like, no, I'm going to have to spar and wrestle with these ideas in a very real

01:02:20.460 way that's meaningful to our people. Because the reality is, look, they're going to Tucker Carlson.

01:02:25.040 And I think a lot of it is because the church and people in the church have been starved for

01:02:28.480 meaningful content that helps them engage and interact with the events of the day.

01:02:32.840 Right, you're absolutely right. Human beings are shaped to follow after priesthoods. Some desire the priesthood of Adam, some desire the priesthood of Melchizedek, and Christians ought to desire the priesthood of Jesus Christ, ultimately.

01:02:48.920 And if anything, the gospel of Jesus Christ was the most public of all gospels.

01:02:55.420 And so if that is the case, then I think pastoral voices, elder voices, need to be engaged in these conversations.

01:03:04.740 Otherwise, it's not like the people are going to say, well, if my pastor's not speaking, therefore I remain neutral.

01:03:10.340 It doesn't work that way.

01:03:11.660 They're going to find a priest to follow.

01:03:13.440 And in my humble opinion, I think it is always a better approach when the local priesthood has a voice and the local people.

01:03:23.480 Yeah, absolutely. Keep it local. I love that.

01:03:25.960 Well, Yuri, thank you so much for joining us on this episode.

01:03:28.700 Definitely encourage people to check out the Kuyperian Commentary.

01:03:31.260 You've also got podcasts. Any other places we can check out to find your work?

01:03:35.140 I have this interesting little endeavor, which is a dream of mine for a long time.

01:03:38.760 It's this little podcast called The Perspectivalist.

01:03:41.580 And so far, all seven of my followers are really enjoying it.

01:03:46.220 Soon to be eight.

01:03:47.500 Soon to be eight.

01:03:48.360 Okay, very good. 0.54

01:03:50.000 Eight is good because eight is a new creation in the Bible.

01:03:52.480 So I'm excited about things to come.

01:03:55.040 But you can find The Perspectivalist on any major social media audio platform.

01:04:00.500 And it's my way of sort of inculcating my inner John Frame.

01:04:05.700 And it's a big part of my ministry.

01:04:08.680 So that's a little endeavor that I have ongoing.

01:04:11.480 Awesome.

01:04:11.800 Well, we'll definitely encourage people to check that out, and we'll include links in the show notes.

01:04:16.680 Yuri, thanks again for joining us.

01:04:18.580 My absolute pleasure, Eric.

01:04:19.760 Thank you.

01:04:21.560 Man, what a great interview, right?

01:04:23.900 That was really amazing.

01:04:26.000 We were talking about Yuri just has presence in Gravitas.

01:04:29.860 He's got that king energy that he always brings whenever I hear him talking.

01:04:33.940 So, Yuri, thank you so much for giving us your time.

01:04:36.200 You know, one of the things that we were discussing, even in the cold open, as you heard that brutal story of the Aztecs' false demon god worship.

01:04:45.620 And what's amazing, Dan pointed out that actually this little detail in the story that you kind of can almost pass over, and it's where they discovered this site, was basically underneath a cathedral.

01:04:57.660 So here's the picture that you get.

01:05:00.120 And this was not accidental.

01:05:01.980 The church showed up with their missionaries, and they started colonizing this area.

01:05:07.280 And they were like, oh, heck no. 0.61

01:05:09.460 This is a demon temple.

01:05:11.100 Look at all these skulls.

01:05:12.360 So they smashed them up.

01:05:14.280 They buried them.

01:05:15.600 And then they built a cathedral on top.

01:05:19.320 That's right, based.

01:05:20.160 That's like the ultimate king energy, Dan.

01:05:22.780 So what's crazy is I went to public school, and so I'm learning about the Spanish conquistadors 1.00

01:05:29.060 and, like, how Cortez and them, they were the most evil human beings 1.00

01:05:33.160 that had ever walked planet Earth.

01:05:34.700 Right.

01:05:35.080 And then as I read about the Aztecs and the point of, like,

01:05:38.860 the liturgy and worship that the Spanish had come out of,

01:05:42.700 and then they go into the Aztec, you know, 0.99

01:05:45.320 people with their demon gods and their demon worship

01:05:47.440 and the utter disregard for human life.

01:05:51.740 Well, like, when you were reading that, I was thinking, man,

01:05:53.740 this is hard to even fathom that somebody would think that that was okay.

01:05:57.220 To women and children.

01:05:58.720 Yeah, and it's weird because I kind of grew up with the, like, Pocahontas. 0.72

01:06:02.580 Yeah, the dances with wolves culture.

01:06:04.880 So we're like, indigenous people are naturally just wonderful, peace-loving.

01:06:09.120 And then you read that and you're like,

01:06:10.100 Hey, with all the colors of the wind.

01:06:12.420 It's a song of your people.

01:06:13.620 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:15.020 Yeah, my people were much more peaceful than the Aztecs.

01:06:17.380 I don't know if that's saying much, but.

01:06:19.240 It was still better.

01:06:20.400 But, yeah, you grow up with this public school, Dan, right there with you.

01:06:24.180 Yeah.

01:06:24.360 And, yeah, now hearing those stories, you can understand why they actually were like, no, this is, we're not going to talk about this.

01:06:30.920 Yeah, every aspect of their life is saturated with the worship of the one true and living God.

01:06:34.860 And then they show up in a place and they're, like, ripping the hearts out of living people.

01:06:38.940 Yeah.

01:06:39.380 Men, women, and children. 0.92

01:06:41.200 Ugh. 0.89

01:06:41.660 And you come across this and then they're eating their bodies on occasion.

01:06:45.060 And you're like, these people, there's only one just punishment for this.

01:06:51.060 Yeah.

01:06:51.640 Exactly.

01:06:52.080 Exactly. It's like the Canaanites. And this is really one of the ways that you can tell this 0.87

01:06:57.840 episode. This is one of the ways you can tell the story of history is the story of the worship of

01:07:02.300 the living God in conflict with the worship of the false God, who whatever shape the false God

01:07:08.920 happens to be conformed to in that moment. What happens? Well, the people of God confront this

01:07:15.860 culture of demon worship, which is always a culture of death. Every single time you find

01:07:20.620 demon worship. You find the worship of anything that is not God. You find a culture of death.

01:07:25.260 Did you just say Planned Parenthood? Exactly. Exactly, Eric. And what do the people of God do?

01:07:31.900 Well, they conquer and they conquer by worship. And actually, here's the glorious part,

01:07:36.720 is that we conquer through conversion even. And so you take, like, this is one of those thoughts

01:07:43.700 I think is just so glorious from a story like the Aztecs, is that not only, a lot of people

01:07:48.000 needed killing. Let's be honest. A lot of those, they needed to make war with these people and

01:07:52.960 utterly put them under their feet because they were just a disgusting, bloodthirsty people. 0.90

01:07:58.840 And yet there are ancestors of, I guarantee you, there are ancestors of Aztec priests who are 0.92

01:08:04.020 worshiping Christ today. Guarantee you. Why? Because the Christian worship is potent. It

01:08:09.500 actually changes things. Our God is the true God. You can build your fake mountain, your fake

01:08:14.960 temple, your ziggurat, and you can put an Aztec priest on the top, but our God is still seated, 0.59

01:08:19.920 his Christ, on Zion's mountain, his holy hill, and he's still reigning, and he is converting the

01:08:24.860 nations. That's right. I love the tie-in, too, with Boniface. We're talking about chopping things

01:08:29.980 down, rebuilding God's cathedrals in place, and Dan, that's exactly what the conquistadores did.

01:08:37.020 Yeah, they took a green grove of absolute horror, and then they erected a temple to the true and

01:08:44.340 living God or a cathedral, so the true and living God. Well, thanks for listening in on this episode

01:08:49.040 of the King's Hall podcast. Again, we would encourage you to make sure that you get worship

01:08:55.260 right at the foundations, that you get worship right with the people of God on the Lord's day.

01:08:59.840 You gather with God's people. You lift up your voices in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

01:09:05.320 You lift your eyes to Christ, and through that sight of Him, find yourself conformed from one

01:09:11.100 degree of glory to another into the same image. That you take that worship and it suffuses your

01:09:15.940 dinner tables in your homes and your evenings with your children. You would teach your children

01:09:20.760 the songs of God's church and the scriptures of God's people. That you would repent of your sin

01:09:26.640 quickly, worship God in the light. And we'd point you to one of our sponsors for this season,

01:09:33.680 of course, Reformation Heritage Books. Their Family Worship Bible Guide is a great resource.

01:09:38.160 Dads, if you're looking for a way to get this happening in your home, it's got devotional

01:09:43.540 thoughts on every chapter of the Bible.

01:09:45.160 That's a good starting point.

01:09:46.400 Pick up a resource like that and get to work in your families so that you can see not only

01:09:51.140 your own life conformed to Christ, but faith pressed downstream in your own legacy.

01:09:58.460 And remember that this is a long project.

01:10:00.400 Fest in Alente, make haste slowly as you go about all of these things.

01:10:04.340 But we hope that you'll tune in next time to the King's Hall podcast.

01:10:08.780 Thanks for listening.

01:10:34.340 It's a great time, so I'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com slash thekingshall

01:10:39.780 if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.

The King's Hall - June 03, 2022

Homo Adorans： Interview with Dr. Uriesou Brito

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