The King's Hall - The Dark Spell Over the West： An Interview with Dr. Joe Rigney

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00:00:43.160 Anthony Eslin says the following in his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization.

00:00:49.460 Quote, we all know what the Middle Ages were like.

00:00:52.100 My freshmen know.

00:00:53.680 They've learned it from the infallible authority known as high school platitudes.

00:00:59.040 First, the Middle Ages were dark.

00:01:00.920 People lived in squalor.

00:01:02.680 Beset by terrible fears, they burned kindly old ladies peddling herbal remedies, calling them witches.

00:01:09.840 They made no progress in the natural sciences.

00:01:12.200 They knew nothing of the world beyond their time and place and had no desire to know.

00:01:17.880 Their studies were narrow and dogmatic, and few great minds of their era plied their intellect

00:01:23.700 to discover how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

00:01:28.680 Life was so miserable that most people, especially the dirt peasant majority,

00:01:33.360 lived only for the next world, placing all their hope in heaven beyond the stars.

00:01:39.080 Let's set the record straight.

00:01:40.920 From 962, the crowning of Otto the Great as Holy Roman Emperor,

00:01:45.160 to 1321, the death of Dante, Europe enjoyed one of the most magnificent flourishings of culture

00:01:52.380 the world has seen. In some ways, it was the most magnificent, and this was not despite the fact

00:01:58.820 that the daily tolling of the church bells provided the rhythm of men's lives, but because of it,

00:02:04.300 because the people believed they lived in a comic world, that is, a world redeemed from sin,

00:02:10.420 wherein the Savior had triumphed over darkness and death.

00:02:14.060 They could love that world aright.

00:02:16.700 They were pilgrims at heart

00:02:17.980 who yet passionately loved their native local food and drink.

00:02:21.980 They enjoyed the freedom of hope.

00:02:23.900 They were not pressed to death with urgency

00:02:25.820 to create a heaven upon earth,

00:02:28.040 a longing that ends in despair or the gulag.

00:02:31.280 You won't hear this tale on television or in school.

00:02:33.940 A powerful church should be a regular monster

00:02:37.100 destroying the intellectual endeavor

00:02:39.280 and enforcing dreariness upon art, long before academia, made artistic dreariness a mark of

00:02:46.580 sophistication. Forswearing instant gratification, not that everyone in the Middle Ages did forswear

00:02:52.260 it, should produce a continent of mopes, of seething villains, or something miserable which

00:02:57.540 Americans, with their dropout factories and nearly three million incarcerated men, know nothing of.

00:03:03.800 Besides, because we all believe in inevitable social progress,

00:03:08.620 everything must have been terrible in the past, at least comparable to today.

00:03:13.320 We would shy away from the Middle Ages, not because of its drabness,

00:03:17.760 but because its vitality would fray our weak nerves.

00:03:21.200 We'd have to rub our eyes to get used to the light.

00:03:26.260 Why do modern historians classify Christendom as the Dark Ages?

00:03:30.540 Why is this time period obscured by an incantation like a Jedi waving his hand saying,

00:03:36.600 These are not the droids you're looking for.

00:03:39.840 Authors of Protestant church history are as much to blame as modern secular historians

00:03:44.280 for attempting to hide or at least obscuring this time as a time to be ignored or at the

00:03:49.680 very least to be ashamed of.

00:03:51.720 There is a sin at root of these narratives and motivations.

00:03:55.480 By condemning this time in our history, these men fundamentally show that they hate their

00:04:00.000 fathers of the faith. They are ashamed of the courage they displayed, of the things they built,

00:04:05.400 and of their failure to measure up to the task of our own time. This modern incantation is an

00:04:11.380 attempt to hide the truth from us. This incantation is reminiscent of the following story told by C.S.

00:04:18.140 Lewis in his book, Silver Chair, in which the power of a tyrant can only be maintained by

00:04:23.840 obscuring a world of light so that men would settle for darkness. In the story, the ruler of

00:04:30.440 the underworld was an evil witch who had enslaved the prince of Narnia. The prince's faithful

00:04:36.560 companions had freed him from his prison and were making an escape when the witch interrupted

00:04:42.280 their efforts. Now the witch said nothing at all, but moved gently across the room,

00:04:47.900 always keeping her face and her eyes very steadily towards the prince. When she had come

00:04:53.360 to the little ark set on a wall not far from the fireplace, she opened it and took out first a

00:04:59.280 handful of green powder. This she threw on the fire. It did not blaze much, but a very sweet

00:05:05.800 and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, the smell grew

00:05:11.120 stronger and filled the room and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument

00:05:17.480 rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers, a steady, monotonous thrumming.

00:05:23.360 that you don't notice after a few minutes.

00:05:26.160 But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood.

00:05:29.760 This also made it hard to think.

00:05:31.580 After she had thrummed for a time, and the sweet smell was now growing strong,

00:05:36.620 she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

00:05:41.240 Narnia, she said.

00:05:43.220 Narnia, I have often heard your lordship utter that name in your ravings.

00:05:47.660 Dear prince, you are very sick.

00:05:49.420 There is no land called Narnia.

00:05:50.960 Yes, there is, though, ma'am, said Puddleglum. You see, I happen to have lived there all my life.

00:05:58.040 Indeed, said the witch. Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?

00:06:03.620 Up there, said Puddleglum, stoutly pointing overhead. I don't know exactly where.

00:06:10.260 How, said the queen with a soft, musical laugh. Is there a country up among the stones and mortar

00:06:17.940 of the roof? No, said Puddleglum, struggling, a little to get his breath. It's an overworld.

00:06:26.180 And what, or where, pray, is this, how do you call it, overworld?

00:06:31.520 Oh, don't be so silly, said Scrub, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the

00:06:35.780 sweet smell and the thrumming. As if you didn't know, it's up above, up where you can see the

00:06:40.960 sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there.

00:06:44.880 I cry you mercy, little brother, laughed the witch.

00:06:48.040 You couldn't have heard a lovelier laugh.

00:06:51.120 I have no memory of that meeting,

00:06:53.580 but we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream,

00:06:56.960 and unless all dreamed alike, you must not ask them to remember it.

00:07:01.900 Madam, said the prince sternly,

00:07:03.780 I have already told your grace that I am the king's son of Narnia.

00:07:08.920 And shalt be, dear friend, said the witch in a soothing voice,

00:07:13.060 As if she were humoring a child,

00:07:15.080 shalt be king of many imagined lands in thy fancies.

00:07:18.820 We've been there too, snapped Jill.

00:07:20.880 She was very angry because she could feel the enchantment getting a hold of her every moment.

00:07:25.460 But of course, the very fact that she could still feel it showed it had not yet fully worked.

00:07:30.640 And thou art queen of Narnia too, I doubt not, pretty one,

00:07:34.840 said the witch in the same coaxing, half-mocking tone.

00:07:38.880 I'm nothing of the sort, said Jill, stamping her foot.

00:07:41.340 We come from another world. Why? This is a prettier game than the other, said the witch.

00:07:47.320 Tell us, little maid, where is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?

00:07:54.160 Of course, a lot of things started in a Jill's head at once. Experiment house, Adelia Pennyfeller,

00:07:59.960 her own home, radio sets, cinemas, cars, airplanes, ration books, and queues, but they seemed dim

00:08:07.500 and far away. Thrum, thrum, thrum with the strings of the witch's instrument. Jill couldn't remember

00:08:14.660 the names of the things in our world. And at this time, it didn't come into her head that she was

00:08:20.400 being enchanted. For now, the magic was in its full strength. And of course, the more enchanted

00:08:26.080 you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all. She found herself saying,

00:08:31.560 and at the moment it was a relief to say. No, I suppose that other world must all be a dream.

00:08:39.280 Yes, it is a dream, said the witch, always thrumming. Yes, all a dream, said Jill.

00:08:46.220 There never was such a world, said the witch. No, said Jill and Scrub, never was such a world.

00:08:54.140 There never was any world but mine, said the witch. There never was any world but yours,

00:09:00.460 said they puddle glum was still fighting hard i don't know rightly what you all mean by a world

00:09:08.560 he said talking like a man who hasn't enough air but you can play the fiddle till your fingers

00:09:14.500 drop off and still you won't make me forget narnia and the whole overworld too we'll never

00:09:19.420 see it again i shouldn't wonder you may have blotted it out and turned it dark like this

00:09:23.960 for all i know nothing more likely but i know i was there once i've seen the sky full of stars

00:09:30.440 I've seen the sun coming up out of the sea of a morning and sinking behind the mountains at night,

00:09:35.900 and I've seen him up in the midday sky when I couldn't look at him for brightness.

00:09:41.380 Puddleglum's words had a very rousing effect. The other three all breathed again and looked

00:09:46.420 at one another like people newly awakened. Why, there it is, cried the prince. Of course,

00:09:52.420 the blessing of Aslan upon this honest marsh wiggle. We all have been dreaming these last

00:09:57.820 few minutes. How could we have forgotten it? Of course we've all seen the sun. By Joe, so we have,

00:10:04.020 said Scrub. Good for you, Puddleglum. You're the only one of us with any sense, I do believe.

00:10:09.780 Then came the witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood pigeon from the high elms of

00:10:15.300 an old garden at three o'clock in the middle of a sleepy summer afternoon, and it said,

00:10:20.560 What is this sun you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?

00:10:26.660 Yes, we jolly well do, said Scrub.

00:10:29.880 Can you tell me what it's like? asked the witch.

00:10:33.300 Thrum, thrum, thrum went the strings.

00:10:37.120 Please, at your grace, said the prince very cruelly and politely.

00:10:40.580 You see that lamp? It is round and yellow, and gives light to the whole room,

00:10:45.120 and hangeth moreover from the roof.

00:10:47.340 Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter.

00:10:52.900 It giveth light to the whole overworld, and hangeth in the sky.

00:10:57.240 Hangeth from what, my lord? asked the witch.

00:11:00.420 And then while they were still all thinking how to answer her, she added, with another

00:11:04.860 of her soft silver laughs, You see, when you try to think out clearly what the sun must

00:11:10.480 be, cannot tell me.

00:11:12.260 You can only tell me it is like the lamp.

00:11:15.380 Your sun is a dream, and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp.

00:11:20.520 The lamp is the real thing.

00:11:22.340 The sun is but a tale, a children's story.

00:11:26.660 Yes, I see now, said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone.

00:11:30.900 It must be so.

00:11:32.380 And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

00:11:36.320 Slowly and gravely, the witch repeated,

00:11:39.180 There is no sun, and they all said nothing.

00:11:41.440 She repeated in a softer and deeper voice,

00:11:44.780 There is no sun.

00:11:46.760 After a pause and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together,

00:11:52.240 You're right, there is no sun.

00:11:54.600 It was such a relief to give it and say it.

00:11:58.400 There never was a sun, said the witch.

00:12:01.560 No, there never was a sun, said the prince and the marsh wiggle and the children.

00:12:07.060 For the last few minutes, Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs,

00:12:12.220 and now she did, but it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were

00:12:17.900 laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all of the good out of

00:12:22.840 her, she said, there's Aslan. Aslan, said the witch, quickening ever so slightly the

00:12:29.560 pace of her thrumming. What a pretty name, what does it mean? He is the great lion who

00:12:34.980 called us out of our own world, said Scrub, and sent us into this to find Prince Rillian.

00:12:41.820 What is a lion? asked the witch.

00:12:44.600 Oh, hang it all, said Scrub.

00:12:46.580 Don't you know? How can we describe it to her? Have you ever seen a cat?

00:12:50.960 Surely, said the queen. I love cats.

00:12:54.680 Well, a lion is a little bit, only a little bit, mind you, like a huge cat with a mane.

00:13:00.240 At least, it's not like a horse's mane, you know.

00:13:03.180 It's more like a judge's wig, and it's yellow and terrifically strong.

00:13:07.760 The witch shook her head.

00:13:09.180 I see, she said.

00:13:10.360 that we shouldn't do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your sun.

00:13:15.640 You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp, and call it the sun.

00:13:20.480 You've seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion.

00:13:26.280 Well, tis a pretty make-believe thought to say truth.

00:13:29.840 It would suit you all better if you were younger.

00:13:32.240 And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world,

00:13:37.020 this world of mine, which is the only world, but even you children are too old for such play.

00:13:43.420 As for you, my lord prince, that art a man fully grown, fee upon you. Are you not ashamed of such

00:13:50.200 toys? Come, all of you, put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world.

00:13:56.420 There is no Narnia, no overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan, and now to bet all, and let us begin a

00:14:04.780 wiser life tomorrow, but first to bed, to sleep, deep sleep, soft pillows, sleep without foolish

00:14:12.600 dreams. The prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down,

00:14:18.480 their cheeks flushed, their eyes half-closed, the strength all gone from them, the enchantment

00:14:24.640 almost complete. But Puddleglum desperately gathered all his strength, walked over to the

00:14:31.200 fire, then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn't hurt him quite as much as it would hurt

00:14:36.360 a human, for his feet, which were bare, were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck's.

00:14:42.820 But he knew it would hurt him badly enough, and so it did. With his bare foot, he stamped on the

00:14:47.840 fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

00:14:55.340 First, the sweet, heavy smell grew very much less, for though the whole fire had not been put out,

00:15:00.780 a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt marsh wiggle, which is not

00:15:06.100 at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone's brain far clearer. The prince and the

00:15:11.800 children held up their heads again and opened their eyes. Secondly, the witch, in a loud,

00:15:17.060 terrible voice, uttered different from all the sweet tones she had been using up till now,

00:15:22.500 called out, What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud filth, and I'll turn your blood

00:15:27.880 to fire inside your veins. Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment

00:15:33.540 perfectly clear, and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good

00:15:38.560 shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic. One word, ma'am, he said, coming back

00:15:44.120 from the fire limping because of the pain. One word. All you've been saying is quite right,

00:15:48.720 I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always like to know the worst and then put a best face on it I

00:15:52.820 can. So I won't deny any of what you've said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so.

00:15:58.540 Suppose we have only dreamed or made up all those things, trees and grass and sun and moon and stars

00:16:04.340 and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made up things

00:16:10.520 seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours

00:16:15.800 is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing when you come

00:16:20.640 to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing

00:16:24.860 a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand

00:16:29.960 by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to

00:16:35.020 live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So thanking you kindly for

00:16:40.300 our supper. If these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once

00:16:45.280 and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for overland. Not that our lives will be

00:16:50.180 very long, I should think, but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say.

00:16:54.860 Oh, hooray, good old puddle-glum, cried Scrub and Jill. But the prince shouted suddenly,

00:16:59.540 Where? Look to the witch! When they did look, their hair nearly stood on end.

00:17:05.420 The instrument dropped from her hands. Her arms appeared to be fastened to her sides.

00:17:10.880 Her legs were intertwined with each other, and her feet had disappeared.

00:17:15.480 The long green train of her skirt thickened and grew solid,

00:17:18.820 and seemed to be all one piece with the writhing green pillar of her interlocked legs.

00:17:25.540 And that writhing green pillar was curving and swaying as if it had no joints,

00:17:30.240 or else were all joints.

00:17:32.100 Her head was thrown far back, and while her nose grew longer and longer,

00:17:36.840 every part of her face seemed to disappear except her eyes.

00:17:40.540 Huge, flaming eyes they were now, without brows or lashes,

00:17:45.180 All this takes time to write down.

00:17:47.360 It happened so quickly that there was only just time to see it.

00:17:51.380 Long before there was time to do anything, the change was complete,

00:17:55.380 and the great serpent, which the witch had become, green as poison.

00:18:00.040 Thick as Jill's waist, had flung two or three coils of its loathsome body round the prince's legs.

00:18:05.640 Quick as lightning, another great loop darted around,

00:18:09.360 intending to pinion his sword arm to his side.

00:18:12.540 But the prince was just in time.

00:18:14.640 He raised his arms and got them clear. The living knot closed only round his chest,

00:18:21.000 ready to crack his ribs like firewood when it drew tight. The prince caught the creature's

00:18:26.220 neck in his left hand, trying to squeeze it till it choked. This held its face,

00:18:31.220 if you could call it a face, about five inches from his own. The forked tongue flickered horribly

00:18:37.020 in and out, but could not reach him. With his right hand, he drew back his sword for the

00:18:42.480 strongest blow he could give. Meanwhile, Scrub and Puddleglum had drawn their weapons and rushed

00:18:48.080 to his aid. All three blows fell at once, Scrub's, which did not even pierce the scales and did no

00:18:54.460 good, on the body of the snake below the prince's hand, but the prince's own blow and Puddleglum's

00:18:59.800 both on its neck. Even that did not quite kill it, though it began to loosen its hold on Rillian's

00:19:06.160 legs and chest. With repeated blows, they hacked off its head. The horrible thing went on coiling

00:19:11.780 and moving like a bit of wire long after it had died, and the floor, as you might imagine,

00:19:17.620 was a nasty mess. What if the Dark Ages were not dark? What if they want you to believe,

00:19:28.320 like an incantation, that the Dark Ages were actually a time of light, a time of human

00:19:33.980 flourishing, a time of global dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ? What if the beauty of the

00:19:40.160 cathedrals that were built were not a sign of an oppressive Christian empire, but were the work of

00:19:46.260 men who feared God and loved the light of Jesus Christ. What if their work was a testament to the

00:19:52.700 works of God and his glory, and not merely the works of a dark and evil people living in evil

00:19:58.400 times? In the 12th century, the Abbot Sugar engraved the following on the doors of the

00:20:05.440 Abbey Church of St. Dennis. All you who seek to honor these doors, marvel not at the gold and

00:20:13.720 expense, but at the craftsmanship of the work. The noble work is bright, but being nobly bright,

00:20:20.380 the work should brighten the minds, allowing them to travel through the lights, to the true light,

00:20:26.380 where Christ is the true door. The golden door defines how it is imminent in all these things.

00:20:32.920 The dull mind rises to the truth through material things and is resurrected from its former

00:20:39.160 submersion when the light is seen.

00:20:44.360 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

00:20:53.920 Well, gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast.

00:20:57.320 We have really some podcast champions joining us.

00:21:00.620 Man, so true, King.

00:21:01.480 First and foremost, Puddle Glum himself, Dan Berkolder.

00:21:06.760 That's a high compliment.

00:21:07.900 Hey, I'm not a podcast champion.

00:21:10.440 There's only one podcast champion that's being recorded right now.

00:21:13.660 There are two in the room, but it's Brian Sauvé.

00:21:16.020 Man, I just want to say, first of all, I'd like to thank the Lord for granting me such talent.

00:21:21.920 Oh, my word.

00:21:22.580 I'm just kidding, guys.

00:21:24.740 You know who the real champion is?

00:21:26.460 Ogden.

00:21:26.640 Why are you?

00:21:27.400 You know what?

00:21:29.460 That guy actually deserves.

00:21:30.640 That was deserved.

00:21:32.180 Ben Zaisalov said that guy, he put him in the meme.

00:21:34.980 He was a winner.

00:21:35.600 So for people who don't know, if you were living under a rock, what happened, Brian?

00:21:39.960 Just walk me through the.

00:21:41.320 So there was a podcast competition of a poll competition on Twitter dot com that put 64 supposedly reformed podcasts head to head and did an elimination style bracket where, you know, it was down to the final two.

00:21:54.920 And look, not only did Kings Hall and Haunted Cosmos make the top 64, not only did we make

00:22:03.240 the top 32, not only did we make the top 16, not only did we make the top eight and not

00:22:10.240 only did we make the top four, but Ogden vanquished and we tied for first place as far as I'm

00:22:16.880 concerned with a double Ogden win.

00:22:19.400 Thank you guys for voting.

00:22:20.500 All you Anons, you know who you are.

00:22:22.320 You know who you are.

00:22:23.040 So we don't know who you are in every case.

00:22:28.280 We do not know.

00:22:29.500 We gave away some tickets, Brian.

00:22:31.220 Yeah, we did.

00:22:31.940 To a conference.

00:22:32.900 I think it's worth pointing out, too, that the round that really caught my attention was Apologia.

00:22:37.780 So I think that was the final four.

00:22:40.200 Yeah, we had dividing line against Hanna Cosmos on one side.

00:22:42.800 And then we had Apologia, Jeff Durbin, you know, on the other side against Kings Hall.

00:22:47.500 And they've got, I mean, probably tens of millions.

00:22:52.100 so James White's YouTube channel has 23 million

00:22:54.560 plus views so far. Apology has

00:22:56.540 millions and millions. They've got way more

00:22:58.640 followers than us, way more everything

00:23:00.520 and you guys

00:23:02.060 showed up and you said no.

00:23:04.980 I think we probably would have lost

00:23:06.460 even on the dividing line, Haunted Cosmos.

00:23:08.100 Then the winged Hussars arrived.

00:23:10.380 The winged Anans arrived.

00:23:12.580 I think we would have lost to James White

00:23:14.080 but everybody was trying to cast a vote via

00:23:16.100 ham radio.

00:23:17.740 They were like

00:23:20.040 how do I get it to bounce off the ionosphere?

00:23:22.100 where's Twitter and so

00:23:24.860 it just didn't work for that I'm just glad the poll

00:23:26.980 wasn't on Facebook seriously because

00:23:28.800 the boomer army would have come out

00:23:30.740 we would have rose oh yeah

00:23:32.700 we would have lost for sure but

00:23:34.840 yeah that was you know what I love the mandate

00:23:36.820 because it just said that what you

00:23:38.940 guys love is

00:23:41.220 applied theology

00:23:43.280 theology

00:23:44.500 that makes contact with your life

00:23:46.520 and you love gay jokes

00:23:48.900 would you remember

00:23:50.400 when George W. Bush

00:23:54.100 he won the hanging chat election

00:23:56.240 with Al Gore and he said

00:23:58.080 afterwards he's like I now have a mandate

00:23:59.840 I have a mandate to do

00:24:02.080 whatever I want and so I'm kind of taking that to heart

00:24:04.160 yeah that's kind of how I feel

00:24:05.480 we actually have a mandate now

00:24:06.720 did we beat Apologia by a total of 90 something

00:24:10.040 votes out of 6,000 yes

00:24:11.860 do we have a mandate

00:24:13.600 obviously yes

00:24:15.060 obviously yes

00:24:17.260 as I said we gave away a bunch of conference

00:24:20.260 tickets. That was really Dan's idea. And part of that is, Brian, we have this enormous conference

00:24:26.420 coming. We do. And so if you would tell our dear listeners what they're going to miss out on if

00:24:31.060 they don't join us. Look, June 6th to the 8th, Ogden, Utah. That's a Thursday evening through

00:24:36.100 a Saturday afternoon. We have one of the coolest buildings in Ogden booked. More than a thousand

00:24:41.720 seats available to us. And we are going to be talking about building Christian boroughs,

00:24:45.780 building thick Christian culture with Dr. Stephen Wolf, Dr. Rigney,

00:24:49.980 who you're going to hear more from later in this episode, the, you know,

00:24:53.620 obviously the Ogden folks and, and more. So come hang out.

00:24:57.060 We've got a singles mixer that's going on.

00:25:00.380 I'll be doing a live concert and then stay through Sunday because we're going

00:25:04.260 to probably book the same room and just do church,

00:25:07.100 our church service so we can fit everybody at the venue as well.

00:25:11.700 Since we can't even fit our people in our own church. Yeah.

00:25:15.140 We were 99% full on Sunday, so probably more like 106% full, to be honest.

00:25:21.360 Yeah.

00:25:21.560 With the littles.

00:25:22.440 Yeah, with the little people.

00:25:23.540 Yeah, it had a good turnout so far.

00:25:24.860 I think you said we currently we have over 500 people.

00:25:27.960 Yeah.

00:25:28.420 Yeah.

00:25:28.640 Who are coming to the conference.

00:25:29.800 We've got 70 people coming to a singles mixer.

00:25:32.100 Yep.

00:25:32.780 We're projecting at least 10 weddings to come out of this event.

00:25:35.800 10 to 20, probably.

00:25:36.840 I think conservatively.

00:25:37.920 Yeah.

00:25:38.140 10 to 20.

00:25:38.840 Okay.

00:25:39.240 Yeah.

00:25:39.400 And we're going to be singing psalms together.

00:25:41.280 I'll be sending out a playlist.

00:25:42.980 You've got a conference or a concert.

00:25:43.860 Yeah.

00:25:44.000 Oh, yeah.

00:25:44.280 conference i'll be doing a live concert of some of my original music and psalm settings but also

00:25:48.480 we'll just i'll be sending out in about a month or so maybe six weeks out from the concert from

00:25:53.940 the concert from the conference um the psalms that we'll be singing together so you can start

00:25:58.020 working on your parts and see shanty and we're gonna we're just gonna have a lot of fun it's

00:26:02.500 gonna be so much fun how jazzed are you dan i mean my face is at all right now yeah i wish people

00:26:07.940 can see dan's actually making jazz hands right now yeah i am watch so dan just did a cartwheel

00:26:14.480 across the podcasting table it's the noise gates on these mics are so good you couldn't hear it but

00:26:19.240 it happened that's what it was uh we are gentlemen jumping into this episode in just a minute we've

00:26:25.440 got a fantastic conversation with dr joe rigney of course we'll be one of the speakers at the event

00:26:31.120 but uh dan and i got a chance to sit down with him one of the things that sticks out in this

00:26:36.260 episode it's why we chose the cold open the way that we did uh his reference to puddle glum a

00:26:41.900 really interesting character uh you know we're asking who your favorite characters are in narnia

00:26:47.980 and he pointed to puddle glum and it's interesting because we've said that there's sort of a

00:26:53.780 disenchantment going on with the way history is told about the west and it's made to disheart

00:26:58.340 dishearten people but it was interesting dan that he pointed out actually there's a dark spell over

00:27:03.120 the West. Yeah. There is an enchantment. Yeah. So, so walk me through what you see as the

00:27:08.340 significance. Obviously he'll talk about it in the episode two, we're adding here some of our,

00:27:12.720 we're jujuring it up. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you just look at recent history, if there's any,

00:27:19.000 any part of data or information or history that the predominant narrative in our society is trying

00:27:26.420 to obscure, it's immediately where you ought to dig, right? That's just kind of the instincts

00:27:32.540 that we've been developing and why are you looking at such a profound point and so i mean this really

00:27:41.700 was a crux for this whole season is that you know you look at the dark ages the middle ages there's

00:27:48.180 a lot of mystery around this time period it's over a thousand years of our own history yep and

00:27:54.700 we knew almost nothing about it other than what the predominant narrative told us and so as we

00:28:02.400 started to dig in you realize there's a reason i think that historians secular and protestant

00:28:09.980 don't want us to look in this time period that there is actually an enchantment like i said

00:28:16.440 in the in the cold open these aren't the droids you're looking for like like just trying to avert

00:28:22.160 your eyes from this time period and i think there are many reasons for it but uh i'd be curious to

00:28:28.440 hear what you guys have to say about like what are the motivations yeah i totally agree i want

00:28:33.300 to get a little background on puddle club so for people who don't know dan's question was great but

00:28:39.140 it was i'm gonna ask her better it was phenomenal but i do i do want to ask about puddle club before

00:28:43.540 we get on to that so brian as the sort of i guess narnian in the room are you i will never forget

00:28:51.880 that you said that and it will now be my whole personality thank you i want to say thank you so

00:28:56.140 Well, who's Puddleglum?

00:28:56.840 Why does this matter in this conversation?

00:28:59.080 Puddleglum is a Marshwiggle, and he shows up in the silver chair.

00:29:03.240 And in the silver chair, he accompanies the children that Aslan sends into Narnia, as

00:29:08.400 he does in the stories, to save Narnia from some great peril.

00:29:10.900 And they're sent to save Prince Rillian from this sorceress who has, in a snake-like form,

00:29:18.420 the Lady of the Green Curdle.

00:29:19.940 She has kidnapped him, killed his mother and is imprisoning him so that she can magically enslave him and dig a big tunnel up into Narnia and come up and conquer all of Narnia and rule through King or through really in like a puppet.

00:29:36.360 Right. But he's enchanted. He's insane under her magic spell.

00:29:41.160 And Puddleglum is just this character who is comically pessimistic.

00:29:47.120 every you know he

00:29:49.020 feeds the kids a meal and he says well

00:29:51.080 we've got a meal for you but

00:29:52.460 it probably won't agree with you

00:29:54.900 you'll probably be sick for days

00:29:57.020 and it'll be sunny and he'll be like well

00:29:59.300 you know it's probably a thunderclap

00:30:00.980 coming in the night you know he's always

00:30:02.980 pessimistic but then at the end of

00:30:05.020 the story and you've had like 70

00:30:07.080 years to read it guys so calm

00:30:09.080 down and I read the portion and he

00:30:11.000 literally read it he you see that whole

00:30:13.120 exchange where Puddle Glum stands

00:30:14.860 stalwart as this kind of like

00:30:16.760 gloomy principled just immovable courageous figure he's one of the i think one of the top

00:30:23.060 five characters in the narniad why dan i know you agreed with dr rigney maybe one of the the great

00:30:30.440 characters uh why well this may not come as a surprise obviously you resonate with him i resonate

00:30:37.760 with the character why why why dan i don't know maybe it's my chipper disposition i've always

00:30:44.840 seen you as more of a reaper cheap no actually i've always seen eric i mean i don't know if i

00:30:50.420 could be bestowed a higher honor i think i need to say no more no more stop no one of the things

00:30:57.180 that's really interesting about puddle glum is i think we can all relate to him to do to a degree

00:31:01.780 maybe not maybe it is just my disposition but when the moment comes the moment for courage comes

00:31:08.340 he actually does the hard thing yeah and and we talk about we've talked about this for seasons

00:31:14.120 Like you're going to be faced with a decision one day, whether it's small or great, where you actually have to step on the fire and you have to do the courageous thing.

00:31:25.140 And his so he does the thing, but not only that, the motivation for why he stamps out the fire and he breaks this incantation is because of faith, because of his faith in Aslan and his faith in the world that Aslan created.

00:31:41.520 And so part of our, our whole goal with this episode in particular, like, why aren't we just diving into the, into the crusades is because I, I contend that there is an enchantment over our time in trying to hide our past and in trying to disrespect our fathers that came before us.

00:32:03.340 because if we actually have faith in the work that the Lord Jesus Christ has done in the narrative

00:32:08.020 of history, I think it would stir courage in the hearts of men. And I don't think that people want

00:32:13.700 that. I don't think the enemies of God want that. And so that's why I really resonate with the

00:32:20.680 marsh wiggle. Yeah. I love how you just put it, that we're all going to have moments in our lives

00:32:25.940 where we need to stamp our foot in the fire of that dark enchantment and fill the air with the

00:32:32.580 aroma of burnt marsh wiggle which is an offensive aroma like it's in a people don't like the point

00:32:38.680 being people don't like it when you stomp on the fire of enchantment you're making a call you an

00:32:42.740 enemy yeah you're making a stick you're filling the room with burnt marsh wiggle but we must

00:32:46.840 nonetheless put our foot in that fire otherwise the enchantment will never be broken eric always

00:32:52.180 smells thank you yeah thank you i'd like thank you yeah i want to accept that one of the questions

00:33:00.880 i want to ask since we have a resident scholar from the haunted cosmos in pastor brian's obey

00:33:08.900 oh i thought you're gonna say ben but also ben's here so he can grab a mic and chime in

00:33:13.540 is this like is it weird that people would say this is demonic this is there there's more to it

00:33:21.120 than just the material i don't know if you would say that this enchantment is but we know the world

00:33:27.380 is just stuff, Brian.

00:33:28.500 So how could it be more than that?

00:33:30.200 Well, are there spiritual powers?

00:33:31.700 What's going on?

00:33:32.280 Yeah, well, we know that this entire war

00:33:34.820 is fundamentally a war

00:33:36.060 that's not with flesh and blood at the bottom,

00:33:38.280 but that it's with powers

00:33:39.340 and principalities in the heavenly places.

00:33:40.920 And they obviously fight

00:33:42.380 on the stage of the material.

00:33:44.180 But what we've seen,

00:33:45.340 part of the dark enchantment

00:33:46.660 of since the Enlightenment

00:33:48.200 has been the reduction

00:33:50.340 and reduction and reduction

00:33:51.900 more and more one step at a time

00:33:53.960 from cosmic origins to human origins

00:33:56.260 to intellectual origins

00:33:57.360 to philosophical truth, all of these different steps down the ladder till we got to brute

00:34:02.540 materialism where people are positing that the world is just stuff, that everything that

00:34:08.920 is, is material.

00:34:10.280 And the world is not just stuff.

00:34:12.140 And I'm telling you, but what's crazy about this whole process of deracination, where

00:34:18.220 we've cut ourself off from the root of the spiritual is that it's so dumb and untenable

00:34:23.360 because the world really is not just stuff that eventually it stops working and you find that

00:34:29.400 just under when you scratch the surface of materialism all of the old gods are there

00:34:34.380 right under the surface all of the old demons they turn out to be the ones through through

00:34:39.480 human wickedness certainly and human unbelief and human hardness of heart they've been propping

00:34:44.620 up and orchestrating uh an assault and a war against the kingdom of god um via these materialist

00:34:52.040 follies, right? Oh, there's no sun above. There's no, there's no overworld. There's no Aslan. What

00:34:56.900 a silly, you've just gotten your idea of the sun from this lamp. Like they've been pulling that

00:35:01.860 crap. It's so stupid. It's completely nonsensical when you think about it at the end of the day,

00:35:07.100 all of their materialist claims. But as that withdraws, the high tide of that has already

00:35:11.120 happened. As the tide pulls back and the wave pulls back, what it's going to leave and what

00:35:17.700 What people are going to turn to are supernatural, spiritual, overt, spiritual forces of darkness.

00:35:22.480 And you'll find that the same forces orchestrating that materialist play are the demons and the

00:35:28.220 old gods that are going to continue to enslave people via paganism and witchcraft and all

00:35:34.900 of these other evil, overtly demonic practices wearing lots of different faces.

00:35:40.760 So I think it's important to see that one of the ways that they have to, one of the

00:35:45.980 areas they have to succeed if they're going to the demons are going to succeed in this battle

00:35:49.700 and their servants is they cannot allow for the glory of Christian history to shine through

00:35:55.620 they can't allow for that because that is the story of the advance of the kingdom of God

00:36:00.200 putting down all of those old gods if we apostatize they will come back in fact they'll

00:36:05.180 bring seven of their friends worse than themselves yeah but but that's the story yeah I think it's

00:36:10.160 really interesting so I saw it yesterday on Twitter but there was a video with James O'Keefe

00:36:14.820 and eric metaxas so james from project veritas was talking about you know getting ousted from

00:36:21.580 project veritas and going up against the powers that be planned parenthood stuff like this like

00:36:26.500 really demonically backed people and forces and he had an interesting thing and this gets to

00:36:32.800 putting your foot in the fire um you know eric was asking him about like how is this to speak

00:36:37.800 truth to power and all that stuff and he said you have to settle in yourself that your price can't

00:36:41.620 be 10 million it can't be 20 it can't be 200 million the price has to be your life he said

00:36:46.800 and when you realize that you're going to have to put your life on the line he said trust me

00:36:51.160 things get spiritual real quick yeah and so i think that's one of the realities in a materialist

00:36:56.080 quote-unquote world yep that you're finding out like no there's actually more going on here and

00:37:00.420 you see that when you go to battle and we've certainly seen that when you go to battle with

00:37:04.160 some of these ideas one of them brian you mentioned the enlightenment one of the ideas that we'll

00:37:10.140 unpack especially as we get into next episode in the first crusade is the enlightenment idea that

00:37:15.700 there were dark a thing called the dark ages so dan i'm going to ask you about that in just a

00:37:19.760 second but i want to reread this quote from i think anthony esalen he said we would shy away

00:37:24.740 from the middle ages not because of its drabness but because its vitality would fray our weak

00:37:30.480 nerves we'd have to rub our eyes to get used to the light dang so esalen for the win obviously

00:37:37.860 But Dan, I want to ask you about that.

00:37:40.020 This is one of the big lies is that this great period of Christendom was actually dark.

00:37:44.980 And so I want to ask you just to unpack that for me.

00:37:47.960 Why is that so important that we get that right?

00:37:49.700 Well, yeah, that's an interesting question and a really good quote, if I do say so myself.

00:37:53.540 The the term Dark Ages, I was really curious as to its origins.

00:37:59.160 It actually appeared in the 14th century.

00:38:02.120 It was Petrarch.

00:38:03.340 he said this amidst the errors they're shorn shone forth men of genius no less keen were their eyes

00:38:10.080 although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom so this term the dark ages originally

00:38:16.580 meant that the world of christendom was light and it was surrounded by darkness interesting

00:38:22.960 because they were being attacked by the pagan hordes yeah remember the muhammadans the muhammadans

00:38:28.620 Yeah, they were being attacked by them.

00:38:30.720 What's really interesting is that through the Reformation, the Protestants actually latched on this idea that originated in the Renaissance, that it was actually a dark age.

00:38:44.080 And they added anti-Catholic perspective, saying that the light of the gospel was lost during that time or it was diminished.

00:38:51.660 Wait, so you're saying that the Protestant reformers were saying, yeah, it was dark because it was Catholic.

00:38:56.080 It was dark because it was Catholic and they, they contrasted it with the classical antiquity period as being rich in Latin and it witnessed the beginnings of the Christian faith.

00:39:08.140 And so they promoted the ideas that the middle age was this time of darkness because of corruption within the Catholic church because there was the papacy.

00:39:16.180 There was obviously like some, some serious problems, licentious priesthood.

00:39:21.320 And it's funny because sometimes we think, oh, yeah, that was true of back then.

00:39:25.500 But we forget that if you just look at what's happening in Christendom today.

00:39:29.420 Yeah, you can look at the Vatican or at the local mega church.

00:39:33.680 Yeah, right.

00:39:34.080 You're going to find nonsense.

00:39:35.140 You're going to find corruption.

00:39:36.620 And so I think that's really the origin of the idea of the Dark Ages.

00:39:40.720 It was proposed as this idea that Christianity was a light in a very, very dark time.

00:39:45.960 And you can see how that's actually flipped to say, no, the darkness was actually Christianity and the oppression.

00:39:54.920 That's really interesting.

00:39:56.380 Brian, I'm curious from your perspective, why do you think.

00:40:00.020 Why have Christians not done more to attack this idea of dark ages, materialism, enlightenment thinking?

00:40:06.980 I know some people obviously have.

00:40:08.560 Yeah.

00:40:08.840 But it didn't catch on in the mainstream.

00:40:10.480 I'm curious if they think it wasn't a threat.

00:40:12.980 I think what happened, there's probably lots of correct answers, but I think that one of the things that certainly happened is that the enemy, this rationalist enlightenment thinking, liberalism, we call today the libs, very sophisticatedly, they are masters of turning your weapons against you.

00:40:31.560 And so what they did, they did this with the Crusades.

00:40:34.500 I think they did this with the medieval period.

00:40:36.020 They did it with lots of different aspects of Christianity is that they would take some of the ethical framework of Christians and then they would find problems and sins.

00:40:45.460 And then they would say, aren't you ashamed of these people?

00:40:48.700 Look, they didn't even follow your book, right?

00:40:51.180 Look, though, they killed some people unjustly.

00:40:52.780 Look, they were greedy.

00:40:54.280 This person was sexually licentious.

00:40:55.840 And over time, what they did is they got they averted our gaze to settle entirely on the faults of our forefathers until we forgot their glories and until we and also they did that without the introspection of looking in the mirror of our own lives in time and recognizing that every age has its evils.

00:41:16.260 Every age has its follies, but the Christian gospel was weaponized against us.

00:41:21.220 Similarly to people who say like, Hey, yeah, just, um, just let the, let the illegal immigrants

00:41:26.980 come in and take your country and that cause turn the other cheek guys.

00:41:29.500 Yeah.

00:41:29.900 Or get the vax or wear the mask.

00:41:31.680 Don't you love your neighbor?

00:41:32.660 Same play.

00:41:33.700 It's just played out in slow motion, um, until our, our gaze was filled with their sins.

00:41:39.520 And then we began to invent new sins and, um, do this mid rash where we went back through

00:41:45.620 their history and imported novel sins we'd made up onto them and so pretty soon it's like all of

00:41:52.920 the dei sins we're finding them in lutheran we're finding them in calvin and we're finding them in

00:41:57.820 augustine or finding them in like all these does that make sense yeah using chronological snobbery

00:42:03.360 in order to export the sins of today on our ancestors who lived in a different time and we

00:42:08.680 didn't take the time or care to actually understand them that's why you look at a man like lewis and

00:42:13.980 And one of the glories of Lewis, the people call him the last medieval man, because he sought to understand them.

00:42:19.560 And I think he succeeded.

00:42:21.160 He had a very like he could he could think their thoughts after them, understand where they were coming from.

00:42:26.580 He could value the things they valued.

00:42:28.140 And even though I don't think Lewis agreed with everything they did, obviously he didn't.

00:42:32.340 But he sought to understand them because that's if you want, if you love somebody, you'll seek to understand them charitably.

00:42:40.200 The enemy doesn't want us to do that with our forefathers.

00:42:42.420 It wants us to be uncharitable and ungrateful fundamentally, because to do that is ultimately just practice for being ungrateful towards our father in heaven and accusing him of sin.

00:42:52.920 That's really helpful. One final question, then we'll jump into this wonderful interview with Dr. Rigney.

00:42:57.900 But a lot of people would say, I think particularly if you're like a political right wing type person, but especially not a Christian or haven't really thought through a lot of the things we've unpacked in the show.

00:43:09.140 they would probably say to something like this this is stupid you guys are talking about narnia

00:43:14.620 and c.s lewis and fiction fiction is stupid and fiction doesn't matter we need to change the

00:43:20.440 political structure so the look on brian's face i wish we had video for that look but but dan i

00:43:27.520 want to kick this to you because you're a big story guy you're a big story guy uh we have seen

00:43:33.120 even today as we're talking through this episode dan's reading to me from the silver chair

00:43:38.740 i mean i my my eyes were getting moist just thinking about it yeah it moves you it makes

00:43:45.300 you want to go put your feet in the fire but dan why story when there's so many practical

00:43:50.880 political things we could be doing let me answer the question and then throw it over to you no to

00:43:54.680 the person who would say that stories are dumb that c.s lewis the chronicles of narnia this is

00:44:01.560 childish there's a really good good quote from robert howard and it goes like this civilized men

00:44:07.540 are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their

00:44:12.200 skulls split as a general thing the viking has spoken no but in all in all honesty what you said

00:44:19.720 is is right is the fundamentals of story is it actually sneaks past the defenses of your

00:44:27.300 intellectualism and of your day and it it tends to sneak down past your mind and right into your

00:44:34.000 heart and so puddle glum can accomplish more in that story over the last 60 years or whenever it

00:44:40.320 was published than the best defense of you know courage from an intellectual viewpoint because i

00:44:47.940 can look at puddle glum and say you know puddle glum's my guy i want to be like puddle glum and

00:44:52.580 i can say that to brian and brian has read the story and eric hasn't but he will and ben has

00:44:58.160 and i can say hey man today be puddle glum yeah and we all know immediately in our heart that it

00:45:05.000 rings with with courage yeah so that's why story is so important because it gets past those those

00:45:12.080 defenses and right into your heart do you guys know that i'm going to be turning 40 this year

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00:48:34.360 yeah but brian facts don't care about your feelings so i want to hear brian's answer

00:48:45.440 because i once again i think this has been the conservative movement we talked about it

00:48:50.180 But it's like we need another white paper. We need another argument. A lot of those people aren't doing anything. Why story? Why Narnia? Joe's obviously this great mind on Narnia. But why spend your time reading it?

00:49:04.040 Yeah, I mean, stories encode truth or lies powerfully and in ways like Dan said that teach you truth in a way that's deeper than the mere statement of a proposition, a true proposition or an argument that is both a deductive argument is both valid and sound.

00:49:25.040 right you can take truth and you can encode it in story in a way that actually tends to function

00:49:32.600 the way that the lord works in his telling of truth which is that you think about it like when

00:49:37.820 god created the world which is full of true of truth um his word is truth he what does he do

00:49:44.560 well he wraps it all in beauty and majesty and glory and mysteries and wonders and then

00:49:49.180 and then he uses it he creates time and he uses it to create a great story that he tells through

00:49:54.620 history and most of that story

00:49:56.700 we'll never read like

00:49:58.340 Andy Wilson has talked about this before

00:50:00.660 like this we'll never know the story

00:50:02.700 of the last stand of a valiant ant

00:50:04.800 carpenter ant who

00:50:06.440 saved his colony at the gift of his

00:50:08.480 life from the invading wasps

00:50:10.560 that story is playing out a

00:50:12.560 billion billion times daily

00:50:14.540 on this planet and the

00:50:16.460 you know the mother that the mother

00:50:18.060 deer that gives her life

00:50:20.560 to you know save from the wolves

00:50:22.220 because Dan shot the deer

00:50:23.960 Because Dan shot the deer, but he did not shoot the deputy.

00:50:29.180 I think that you look at how does God tell the truth?

00:50:32.660 How does God?

00:50:33.580 Well, he wraps it in beauty and glory and mystery and majesty.

00:50:36.520 And it's not all just Jesus didn't come and give us a systematic theology.

00:50:43.080 No, he came as the truth incarnate and he lived a life.

00:50:46.980 So it doesn't mean those things.

00:50:49.580 We're actually not pitting those two things against one another.

00:50:52.100 You ought to have systematic theology.

00:50:53.460 However one of the errors and the reason I think we've lost one of the reasons we've lost so much ground is because conservatives have they have cared not enough about story and beauty and they've let the enemies take those weapons that are force multipliers on truth or error and they've let them use them to force multiply their errors.

00:51:16.800 while we have told

00:51:18.440 we've told the by the way first of all

00:51:20.740 before I say this we've told the best stories

00:51:22.640 there's a read of the reason Lord of the Rings

00:51:24.660 I think is the greatest work of fiction in the English

00:51:26.640 language and that's

00:51:28.780 a Christian story right so

00:51:30.760 so before I denigrate

00:51:32.620 we've told some of the best stories of all

00:51:34.720 time but we've also

00:51:36.620 told by volume a lot of really

00:51:38.640 sloppy and lazy stories

00:51:40.840 that are thinly veiled

00:51:42.760 packaging for propositions

00:51:44.460 in ways that doesn't actually win people's hearts

00:51:46.660 It's clunky.

00:51:47.420 It's clunky.

00:51:48.520 It's embarrassing.

00:51:50.100 But what's not clunky and embarrassing is this transition is this transition.

00:51:54.580 So we're going to jump into the interview.

00:51:56.980 But first, I do want to give a plug for another great story.

00:51:59.520 Yeah.

00:51:59.840 So if you join on Patreon, you'll have full access to these most recent story we've been

00:52:03.940 telling is of Sir Godfrey of Boyan.

00:52:05.900 Yeah.

00:52:06.680 And let me just say that if you cut a man in half with your sword in one stroke and

00:52:12.280 half of his body rides back into town

00:52:14.260 and disheartens all the other

00:52:16.340 Muhammadans, then that's

00:52:18.340 a good story, Dan. Sounds like

00:52:20.360 a great story. That would be a really good story.

00:52:22.440 It is a great story. And then

00:52:24.300 you become sort of the king of Jerusalem

00:52:26.200 even though he doesn't want to take that title. Wait, and where can

00:52:28.300 I hear that story? That's on the Deus

00:52:30.120 Vault. Okay. And that

00:52:32.220 is on Patreon. So we encourage people to

00:52:34.200 sign up for the King's Hall Patreon. Man, that

00:52:36.120 sounds like the kind of thing that allows us to keep doing

00:52:38.320 this important work at a high

00:52:40.220 level. It really does. It does, Ryan.

00:52:41.540 and and just show their their thankfulness for this content man that if you want to see more of

00:52:46.120 it yeah exactly invest your dollars in the things you want to see more of stories are winning that

00:52:51.160 was the big encouragement to me from the podcast bracket is that i think story and the format is

00:52:57.200 resonating and we've been blessed by that and we hope you have been too yeah so gentlemen until

00:53:02.640 next time we'll part ways here but listener enjoy this interview with dr joe rigney

00:53:11.540 well welcome to this episode of the king's hall podcast today we have a special guest

00:53:19.460 mr joe rigney joe thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the king's hall podcast

00:53:24.200 yeah glad to be here thanks for having me yeah absolutely joe uh we wanted to start off talking

00:53:27.840 a little bit about fatherhood uh so we're dealing with that in season two of the king's hall podcast

00:53:32.240 just kind of to get some of the background on you for people who don't know kind of your

00:53:36.280 background where you've been uh you're teaching now at new saint andrews but just fill us in on

00:53:41.240 kind of who you are as a person. Sure. I grew up in West Texas in a town called Midland.

00:53:47.720 Claim to fame is Friday Night Lights. So I did that in high school. Also, George Bush lived

00:53:53.700 there for a while, George W. So there's that. And so I grew up there and then went to Texas A&M

00:53:58.960 University. It's where I met my wife. And then we moved to Minnesota right like right when we were

00:54:05.760 married. And I was a part of the Bethel was the Bethlehem Institute was now Bethlehem College

00:54:11.400 and Seminary. So it was at John Piper's church there, Bethlehem Baptist Church. And so I went

00:54:17.020 through the apprenticeship and seminary there and then was kind of at the ground zero when that was

00:54:22.160 becoming more than just an institute, but was a full degree, degree granting, full college,

00:54:28.860 full seminary. So I did that for about 18 years from about 2005 until a couple of months ago when

00:54:34.940 we moved west and i am now here uh in moscow teaching at new saint andrews and working at

00:54:41.620 christ church right on uh so being from texas and specifically midland you've got to be you've

00:54:47.780 got to be somewhat of a football fan uh i am so i grew up playing west texas high school football

00:54:52.480 so friday night lights like that was my high school and uh so i did that all through high

00:54:57.100 school and then kind of took a break i mean like i did like intramurals in college or whatever

00:55:01.380 But then when I started having kids, we were a baseball family.

00:55:04.160 So I've got a big baseball history.

00:55:06.080 So we did baseball all through when we were in Minnesota.

00:55:09.060 But then we moved out here.

00:55:10.660 And so my boys started playing football.

00:55:13.400 Like this is the first time they've played football.

00:55:15.020 So I've got a sixth grader playing football for a team.

00:55:18.560 And then my ninth grader is on the place for Logos here.

00:55:23.480 Eight man Idaho football.

00:55:25.580 And we are in the state playoffs on Friday.

00:55:28.900 Oh, yeah.

00:55:29.580 Wow.

00:55:30.380 Perfect.

00:55:30.860 Are you coaching, Joe, or are you?

00:55:32.640 I am.

00:55:33.240 So I've coached baseball for years, but then came out here and was like, I want to just

00:55:36.840 dive in with both feet.

00:55:37.820 And so I'm an assistant coach, kind of helped out with the junior varsity team, which is

00:55:41.580 what my son, my son's ninth grade, so he was on that, but also helping out with the high

00:55:44.640 school football team here.

00:55:46.100 So I'm definitely just, I'm like the low man on the totem pole.

00:55:49.940 I don't know.

00:55:50.340 These guys definitely know football better than I do.

00:55:53.000 And I'm just there to like hold the card to like show people what the thing is.

00:55:57.080 But it's sure a lot of fun.

00:55:58.240 You know, as we talk about fatherhood, one of the things that that I remember from growing up was sort of how sports were so formative.

00:56:06.100 So just talk about that experience. Why is it important as a family?

00:56:09.320 You guys are obviously involved in that. But in the formation of your boys, how does that how does that play out?

00:56:14.680 Yeah, I think I didn't recognize at the time how big of a deal it was.

00:56:19.040 So I played baseball, soccer, you know, I played all the sports when I was really young and then got into like football beginning seventh grade,

00:56:26.580 had kind of kept kept baseball through like sophomore year and then was like really just

00:56:30.140 all in on football and i don't think until i was i don't know like yesterday realized how formative

00:56:37.540 some of that stuff was really a couple of things like the the teamwork dimension of just like men

00:56:43.560 doing things together and the sort of shared mission and the camaraderie that comes and that

00:56:48.400 that sense of brotherhood and accomplishment that comes when you do things together hard things

00:56:53.840 together. But I think that there was something there that was just sort of woven. It's a natural

00:56:57.520 good. It's not a spiritual good in and of itself, but it's a good thing that can be sort of taken

00:57:00.980 up. And I don't think I realized how formative that was. And then I think just, yeah, they're

00:57:04.640 really doing the hard, the hard part of it. So, you know, you're doing two days, it's August,

00:57:09.220 it's West Texas, it's 105 and it's just brutal. And, and it's, and you have to push your body

00:57:15.280 through it and, or it's winter and you're not playing baseball or you're not playing football

00:57:19.080 again for another like nine months and yet there you are like in the weight room and and you're

00:57:24.560 you're doing I remember distinctly like we would have these I don't know sequences of stuff where

00:57:29.020 like different stations during the winter and we would do like the monkey bar type thing and just

00:57:33.660 go through and like have to like do the hand pops and stuff like that and your hands would just be

00:57:37.220 bloody and it's like it's January and you're not playing football again until August and it's like

00:57:43.080 why are my my hands are bleeding because I'm doing this why am I doing this this is so but it was

00:57:48.600 Like because you needed to have a certain mentality, you needed to have a certain fortitude.

00:57:52.940 And so I don't think I appreciated that in sort of the philosophical step out of this and think what what's good, what is this good for?

00:57:59.520 But now I would say that was really that it sort of put something in the in the character that then I would say later has been sort of taken up natural good that sort of was elevated by grace to a spiritual good.

00:58:13.180 And so then when I look at my boys, I'm like, that's what I want.

00:58:15.680 I want. So I've seen it. I've seen it kind of in baseball.

00:58:17.920 my son, uh, one of my sons is a pitcher. And so there's that, that moment when he's on the mound

00:58:22.720 and like, things aren't going right. Guy makes an error. And like, just there's a mental thing

00:58:26.280 that has to happen there of just like pushing through. And he needs to experience both the,

00:58:30.780 the, Oh no. And the disappointment as well as the, and all right, push through it. So I've

00:58:36.800 seen that sort of in the mental side and though, you know, baseball is great for the, it's a team

00:58:40.340 sport with the one-on-one dynamic, like it's pitcher versus batter and everything's on your

00:58:44.600 shoulders and you're either going to get a hit or you're going to strike out or you're going to

00:58:47.600 strike him out where he's going to get a hit. And so I love that aspect. And then adding football

00:58:52.560 to it, I think now has really helped me to appreciate just the, yeah, that brotherhood

00:58:58.200 of like, you do it all together. Everybody has to be moving as a unit. Everybody's got their job.

00:59:02.500 If one guy fails, the whole thing fails. And there's an element, our head coach talks a lot

00:59:09.020 about just the sacrifice that's required in a sport like football that you don't get credit for.

00:59:14.160 So like the quarterback is going to be in the newspaper. You're the old lineman and nobody cares.

00:59:19.040 You get no love, but you get no love. You get no love.

00:59:21.600 But like you're throwing your body on the line every time to help him get yards or your team can win.

00:59:26.500 And nobody knows who you are. And so there's a kind of self-sacrifice and a, yeah, lose your life.

00:59:34.660 And it's not going to be for your your name is not going to be written in lights, but it's still what you're built for.

00:59:39.900 you're built to die you're built to to lay yourself down for the good of the mission and

00:59:43.520 the good of the the team uh which is and our coach this is one of the great things when i was in high

00:59:48.080 school i did it at a public high school so i went to public high school all the way through and so

00:59:51.680 all of that stuff like there was west texas it was christian culture but it was still very worldly

00:59:56.120 you know all of the guys in the football team were professing christians who would get you know they

00:59:59.880 would let a lot of drinking and sleeping around and stuff like that and the coaches sort of winked

01:00:03.740 laughed encouraged a lot of that sort of stuff now i'm at a christian school and it's like you

01:00:08.740 get all the stuff and then it's been, you know, baptized. It's, uh, this is, you know, and, and

01:00:15.020 now we're going to connect the dots for these guys of, you know, you know how hard it was today.

01:00:18.620 This is so that you can love your wife someday when it's hard, you can lay down your life. And

01:00:22.700 so it's, it's making the connections explicit, uh, which has been really cool, honestly, like,

01:00:26.800 it's like, Oh, it's all of the things that I loved about high school football, but now with Jesus,

01:00:30.780 like in the middle of it and boy, that's, that's even better. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's phenomenal.

01:00:35.680 You know, it reminds me like a lot of the conversation reform circles, especially right now.

01:00:40.280 Doug even wrote about this right with the first no quarter November about masculinity.

01:00:44.900 I think there's a lot of people trying to work through that issue.

01:00:48.280 There's pushback on both sides.

01:00:49.820 You know, masculinity isn't just about being physically fit, although we would say, well, yeah, but where does it fit?

01:00:55.580 So as you think about sons, especially in raising young men, how do you kind of work through those issues, both as a pastor and as a father?

01:01:02.840 Yeah, so I think, so like physical training is of some value. Like that's in the Bible. So you can't make it everything because it's not everything. It's of some value. And so that's where it belongs is it's of some value, which can then, so don't make it a God, but don't treat it as a nothing, as though it doesn't matter. It does matter. Physical training is of some value.

01:01:25.580 But training godliness is of ultimate value, right?

01:01:28.080 That's Paul's point is take the thing that's of some value, of natural value, and then

01:01:33.620 use it to sort of better understand the spiritual dimensions of life.

01:01:38.200 Like that's the thing that needs to govern it.

01:01:40.140 So when I look at my sons, I can see areas in their life, you know, I want them to be

01:01:44.460 motivated.

01:01:45.760 I want them to take initiative.

01:01:47.460 I want them to sacrifice.

01:01:48.640 I want them to have fortitude.

01:01:50.020 I don't want them to crumble.

01:01:51.400 I don't want them to be passive.

01:01:52.340 and so um and i can exhort them to all of those things in a spiritual sense

01:01:56.740 but where does the sort of uh intuitive knowledge of what that even means come from so this is i

01:02:04.100 mean this is a it's somewhat like a things of earth point right so like i you know i've got

01:02:08.520 the things of earth stuff and this is just an application of that where it's like you in the

01:02:12.600 same way um bible says eat honey because it's good drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your

01:02:17.380 taste, know that wisdom is such to your soul. So I can't just say, Hey, if I say just wisdom is

01:02:22.060 good, you're like, okay, what does that mean? But if I'm like, wisdom is good, the way that honey

01:02:25.880 is good on your tongue, then you're like, Oh, I know how honey is good on my tongue. And so you're

01:02:29.740 saying wisdom is like that. And it's the connection between the sort of natural physical thing. And

01:02:36.600 then, and then the elevation of that into the, into the spiritual, into the soul level, that is

01:02:41.160 how the Bible works. It's the same thing here. Like my boys need, they, they need the hardship

01:02:46.120 of physical reality because God made us as physical beings. They need that. And then the

01:02:50.640 goal is, Hey, do you remember when, you know, you, uh, you got your legs got taken out and you,

01:02:57.080 and it hurt and you wanted to come out of the game. And I said, no, you don't get to come out

01:03:00.360 of the game. You have to laugh and keep playing, shake it off and go. And you, and you did like

01:03:06.280 you were limping and it hurt, but like you push through it. Okay. You're going to need that in

01:03:11.720 all kinds of places, spiritually in your life. You're going to get your, you're just going to

01:03:15.400 get, you know, something's going to sweep you off your feet spiritually, right? Something's

01:03:19.820 going to, something calamity is going to happen and you don't have the luxury of saying, I'm going

01:03:23.720 to take a time out now and tap out. It's like, you've got to, you've got to get back on your

01:03:27.900 feet because God has something for you to do. And so I need, they need that lived experience

01:03:32.000 basically in order to have categories to see, and this is what, this is how Paul does it, right?

01:03:36.680 Like the, the run the race set before you or the, you know, compete as though you want to win the

01:03:41.360 prize, all of that imagery, Paul assumes that, you know, what races are, you know, what boxing

01:03:46.740 is, you know, you know, these sports and you have some intuitive sense of them. And then that's

01:03:52.700 going to give you categories for thinking about the Christian life. Yeah, that's really helpful.

01:03:56.780 And you mentioned your book, The Things of Earth. I did want to ask you about that.

01:04:00.800 Was there something in life and study? What was going on that you said, hey, I think this is an

01:04:06.120 issue, we need to address both the physical as well as the spiritual realities.

01:04:11.680 Kind of coming of age in early 2000s, young, restless, reformed, supremacy of God in all

01:04:16.640 things like, you know, John Piper is one of the seminal influences in my life, you know,

01:04:21.100 opened up a whole world of biblical reality, supremacy of God when I was in college.

01:04:27.480 And yet, and then when I moved there, I wanted to see what that was like on the ground.

01:04:30.860 And it was like, as I was living there, it was evident that that emphasis, which was

01:04:34.720 really needed also could create certain, it could go wrong in certain sorts of ways and in predictable

01:04:39.360 ways. There was a kind of asceticism, which the Bible has a certain kind of asceticism,

01:04:44.660 but it had, it could kind of get twisted, you know, everything, good things can get twisted.

01:04:48.500 And so it would get twisted. And, and so it was basically like, okay, Jesus is supreme. What does

01:04:54.940 that mean for all this stuff though? Like, what do I do? Like, okay, Jesus is better. Now, what do I

01:04:59.900 do. And it was the now what do I do thing that I felt personally as a young married guy and then

01:05:05.960 started kind of working through that. You know, Doug actually was really helpful in a lot of ways

01:05:09.380 as kind of like the parent, like that book I, you know, I've described as sort of like this,

01:05:12.400 you know, union of three rivers. It's like Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, C.S. Lewis and

01:05:16.620 Doug Wilson, just kind of like boom. And it's like pull those together and that's you get things of

01:05:21.260 earth. That's me. And so it was like building out how do I actually engage with created reality in

01:05:26.580 a way that's faithful, that knows Jesus is better, but also doesn't despise it. It can say thank you

01:05:31.700 for it, can enjoy it rightly. And so that's where that book kind of came from. And then I think I've

01:05:36.720 just, you know, over the years, it's just kind of like a deepening sense of like, yes. And there's

01:05:40.580 ditches on every side. Like it's not like there's one way to like, okay, now we don't have to worry

01:05:44.680 about any dangers, idolatry. You don't have to worry about that ingratitude. Like, no, you're

01:05:48.340 always got to worry about all of it, but it's an attempt to kind of, to, to get it right, to order

01:05:53.060 it rightly. Yeah, that's really helpful. I want to ask you about another book, which is more than

01:05:57.620 a battle. You've probably seen this pastorally in other fields. It seems like one of the most

01:06:01.880 common things, especially with men, but not exclusive to men, is the issue of pornography

01:06:06.500 and lust. So you've written about this. Obviously, it's going to be crucial in sort of that fatherly

01:06:11.860 training of sons. But why this book and what is your approach, I guess, in it to wrestling with

01:06:18.560 that issue and being a good discipler of young men? Yeah. So, um, I, you know, had, had history

01:06:24.200 there when I was in high school and college, uh, and the way that that sort of issue in a sort of

01:06:27.880 pre-smartphone era, but the internet era, um, was kind of a major, major stumbling block and major

01:06:33.360 scenario. And, uh, saw God do a great work in my life in, you know, beginnings of marriage and,

01:06:39.220 and, uh, beyond there to, to sort of see like, Oh, change is really possible here. God, the gospel

01:06:43.960 is really powerful against this, this issue. And, uh, and yet it's not an automatic thing.

01:06:49.200 It's not like you can just wave the gospel at your sin and every, it's not a magic word. It's

01:06:53.240 not a talisman. It's not like, you know, you actually have to understand how sin works,

01:06:58.120 how it corrupts and, and what goods are underneath it that are getting twisted so that you can

01:07:03.280 restore them rightly. And so you really got to get into the muck in order to like, you got to

01:07:06.360 scrub and you got to then know what the thing is that you're scrubbing. And so that was kind of

01:07:10.380 where that book came from was a recognition of like, I think sometimes sanctification for

01:07:14.800 Christians in all areas is like, just, just preach the gospel to yourself. And it's like, well,

01:07:19.280 okay, but how, like, what does that actually mean? How does the gospel do something to this?

01:07:24.740 And then, and then the wisdom stuff of, it's not just, um, this is something that came later in

01:07:29.720 the game for me, um, but was like a light bulb of just that in the, in the scriptures, sanctification

01:07:34.780 is both a matter of like sort of your mental life, mental, you know, the mind and the will

01:07:39.960 level, but also the bodily level, like they're both included. So you think about a passage like

01:07:45.100 Romans 12, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, and then don't be conformed to the pattern of this

01:07:50.240 world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So like there's this bodily thing, you're

01:07:53.920 supposed to offer your body in a certain way. And there's this mental thing, you're supposed to be

01:07:57.620 transformed by the renewal of your mind. And you need both. Or in Romans 6, where it's consider

01:08:03.260 yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. So in light of what Jesus has done, consider

01:08:07.600 yourself, think of yourself in a particular way, you know, think about yourself in a particular

01:08:11.500 way. And then the next passage is don't present your members as instruments of unrighteousness.

01:08:16.340 So there's that bodily thing again. And so I think it was both of those recognizing like our bodies

01:08:21.000 are, can be shaped, they can be molded, they can be habituated. You can cut brain ruts. And that's

01:08:26.980 what porn does. Not just porn, but like smartphones in general do this, right? Like they're designed

01:08:31.720 as sort of these addictive deals.

01:08:34.000 And so you're habituating yourself,

01:08:37.240 you're cultivating habits

01:08:38.960 and therefore your body,

01:08:40.880 like with porn,

01:08:41.540 your body is your enemy.

01:08:42.900 You've weaponized your body

01:08:44.280 against your soul, basically.

01:08:46.500 And so that's not something

01:08:47.460 that's going to be fixed

01:08:48.160 with like a snap of a finger.

01:08:49.300 Oh, you got converted.

01:08:50.360 Didn't fix it, right?

01:08:51.680 Right away.

01:08:52.200 Like instead what it did is

01:08:53.300 sort of there's this new principle,

01:08:54.980 like new birth, new life at the core,

01:08:57.360 but now it's got to work its way out, right?

01:08:58.960 Work out your salvation, right?

01:09:00.040 You've got to work it out.

01:09:01.020 And that's something that takes intentional, wise effort, usually with other, with community to help get eyes on it and to hold you accountable to it.

01:09:09.500 And so that's kind of the approach of the book.

01:09:10.740 The goal was sanctification is a community project.

01:09:14.220 It's not a solo deal.

01:09:15.660 And if you try to fight that fight, particularly solo, you're going to lose badly.

01:09:19.820 And so how do we, how do you cultivate groups of men who wisely, faithfully are in each other's corner, right?

01:09:26.480 Like I'm for you, God's for you.

01:09:27.900 And in fact, I'm, I'm for you in the way God is for you, which means I'm not going to leave you wallowing in this pit, but we're going to try something different. And so let's, what, what, what hands do we need to cut off? What eyes do we need to gouge out? Let's wage war. And then not just war, but thinking about like other, like we, the warfare imagery is helpful as one lens, I think, to view the fight with sin. But there's also this sort of like slavery element, like you're a slave to sin. So that's not just war. That's like, you need to be delivered. You need to be freed.

01:09:55.600 and then there's uh there's this sort of brokenness element which i think is a real one like

01:09:59.340 you know you're broken you're weak uh you need to be healed you need to be restored and so it's

01:10:03.380 like okay those are three different lenses three different sort of metaphors or word pictures to

01:10:08.500 think about the fight with sin or the the struggle against sin and i wanted to kind of bring all of

01:10:12.880 them and say like hey there's certain things probably need to get healed certain certain

01:10:15.540 fuel that's underneath this struggle it's like like lust is not just for most guys lust is not

01:10:20.420 simply a matter of like physical release like there's that element and they get hijacked but

01:10:25.160 there's often a deeply emotional component to it. They're seeking something else. Like it's

01:10:29.520 a pursuit of manliness. It's vicarious manual manliness. You're wanting to see your own

01:10:35.440 sort of manhood reflected in the sexual satisfaction of a woman, but you're doing

01:10:39.460 it on a screen or something like that. And so it's like, what are you actually looking for?

01:10:43.220 It's not just sexual release. It's some sort of validation and approval. Well, that's interesting.

01:10:47.360 Like that's, so then where's that supposed to be met? And so you're just broadening it out. So

01:10:51.260 that's, that's the kind of thing is broadening it out, deepening it, trying to figure out the

01:10:54.400 subtleties, uh, to where you're fighting at earlier stages. So that whole book is basically

01:10:59.060 like a guide for men's groups, really, for both mentors and guys who are in the pit to like work

01:11:05.260 together to like try different things, um, in order to wisely apply the gospel and walk by the

01:11:10.460 spirit. I guess I've, I've got a question. I've, I'm a father of four young boys.

01:11:15.700 What would you say, you know, to a guy like me that has young boys, they don't have any exposure

01:11:20.820 to the digital world really how do how do i best guard my sons against even being introduced to

01:11:27.500 this world of pornography and how do i insulate them yeah so i think you there's a the proactive

01:11:33.700 thing you're doing is you're going to teach them try to teach them self-control in other areas

01:11:37.380 so self-control is just it's a habit it's not something you can't just turn it on all of a

01:11:43.320 sudden when porn shows up so in other areas so whether it's just their emotions and impulses in

01:11:48.460 general, like, are they, you know, do they know, like I have to talk to my kids, right? Like I've

01:11:52.900 got three boys, I got, uh, 14, 12 and four. And especially with the older ones, it's like,

01:11:58.420 you know, there's, they're in that kind of junior high age and you're like, Hey, okay. You're,

01:12:03.200 you're kind of, your passions are going, you're just kind of being crazy. Can you reign it in?

01:12:07.440 Do you know, do you know where the line is? You know how to not to cross the line. I'm not saying

01:12:10.240 don't have fun. I'm not saying don't be silly. I'm not saying don't have, you know, all that

01:12:13.520 sort of stuff, but do you know where the lines are and are you in control of you or, or do your

01:12:17.480 passions run the show like are your impulses in charge and so that's something that you can do

01:12:21.680 from like okay are they you know are they two you're you're like okay we're trying to help you

01:12:26.800 with your you know control your passions um because sexual lust is just one passion right

01:12:33.720 so controlling passions you know whether it's anger whether it's you know anxiety worry all

01:12:38.640 of these things are passions and so you're working on that that's proactive all all the way through

01:12:43.840 And, and you need to be thinking about it as I'm doing this, um, partly so that when

01:12:48.520 they hit 15, 16, they've got some ballast to be able to deal with the new challenge

01:12:54.000 that the hormones just turned on.

01:12:55.940 I think on the other side, uh, and this is something I actually, where my wife, I think

01:12:59.680 is even has been a real help to me in recognizing just like, so like these things right here,

01:13:04.380 right?

01:13:04.740 These are, these are like, it's like having a brothel in your pocket.

01:13:07.840 Okay.

01:13:08.560 So like sexual sins is all just dirt.

01:13:11.140 you it's always been there since you know early days lamex got two wives right so uh nephilim

01:13:17.940 whatever you know that all that stuff so all of that it's it's old as dirt and sexual morality

01:13:23.880 fornication are all through but like you had brothels but now you have a brothel in your pocket

01:13:28.760 and that sort of changes the game and it means that you know it's in the old days it's like

01:13:34.940 let's just make sure our kids don't go to that store or to go down that street or whatever and

01:13:40.660 now it's like they carry the street with them in their pocket and so that requires a different

01:13:46.040 level of diligence and vigilance in trying to to guard them from things so they don't stumble into

01:13:50.900 it and i think i don't think that christians really have fully reckoned with this both on

01:13:55.260 the porn side but just the technology side in general like what what do what are these devices

01:13:59.380 and what do they basically open our families up to and so uh and this is a place where i think

01:14:05.940 it's not simply it's a household thing at one level but i think it's a broader christian

01:14:09.200 community thing because it at some level you can go like okay i'm going to guard my family my kid's

01:14:12.780 not going to have a smartphone until he's you know 18 years old you know we'll get the dumb phone if

01:14:18.080 we need to get a hold of him whenever he's in in high school that's what we've got we've got like

01:14:21.400 one of these gab phones which is like it talks and it texts and that's all you need there's no you

01:14:25.660 know um none of the other junk and so it's like that's what that's it's a phone we can get a hold

01:14:30.640 of him but it's like okay so that's true of him but it's not true of all of his friends

01:14:34.560 and so now you've got like okay so how do i guard against that well that's a that's a function of

01:14:39.760 just like community and culture in a in a you know so they're they're like the shared customs of like

01:14:45.440 hey we all do this and it's necessary for that because your kid's going to come home and say

01:14:50.380 well so and so has the phone all of my friends have the phone all of my friends have this why

01:14:54.340 can't i and there's a constant then drip drip drip of frustration on the part of your son who's like

01:14:58.600 all the other christian kids have this and i don't and so which is which is sort of removed if it's

01:15:03.620 like well some of the kids in your class do but a lot of the kids don't and here's why we we've we

01:15:09.060 talked to our kids now at this point of like there are things we don't want you to see there are

01:15:12.640 images there are are there's immodesty they know what it is we've talked about that once they

01:15:18.460 started getting older there's this there's a set of books i forget what they're called but like

01:15:21.260 they're kind of age appropriate how do you talk to kids about sex kind of books and it's like when

01:15:25.560 they're when they're really young it's like you know mommy and daddy's lay in bed together and

01:15:29.540 then a baby comes, you know, it's like, it's real basic. And then you kind of, every, every book

01:15:34.740 kind of like graduates up a little bit and it's more like, Hey, this is how it works. This is the

01:15:37.920 mechanics. It feels good. And so we've been doing that, uh, periodically just kind of checking in,

01:15:43.820 giving them some more info so that they hear it from us and not from somebody, you know,

01:15:48.160 in the playground, you know, somebody in the baseball team and that they have a context for

01:15:51.920 like, Hey, he said that somebody said this and now we're like, yeah, I remember when we talked

01:15:55.280 about that. Okay. He's just making jokes about it. And, uh, and so you're, you're kind of working

01:16:00.120 with them all the, all the way. And then there's a category for, okay, some people take off their

01:16:04.300 clothes and, and have sex with each other and other people watch it because it feels good.

01:16:10.420 And this is not what God wants. It's not what God intends. That's, that's for marriage. That's a

01:16:13.920 good thing, but it belongs in God's boundaries. And we don't want you to see it before then.

01:16:18.560 We don't want you to be a part of it before then. And it's a snare. And we, you know, I can,

01:16:22.440 I can say stuff like, guys, there's stuff that I saw when I was young that I can still

01:16:26.140 remember.

01:16:26.640 Like it just, it's in your, it gets locked in there and they act, my kids actually have

01:16:30.640 categories for this because they've seen stuff like, like scary stuff, you know, like when

01:16:34.360 they're little, they see a commercial for a horror movie and when they can't, they like

01:16:38.200 it's burned into their mind.

01:16:39.840 And so you can appeal to that and say, Hey, you remember when you saw that and it really

01:16:42.860 scared you and like, you still think about it now?

01:16:45.480 Yeah.

01:16:45.740 It's like, okay, there's other things that are like that.

01:16:47.500 and we don't and so mom and dad are trying to guard you from those because we love you and so

01:16:53.260 you need to trust us so that's kind of how you i think like that's just like that's how we're

01:16:57.820 talking about it and uh and yet mindful of the fact that like this is the world we live in i

01:17:03.160 wish i could give um i saw somebody the other day in an article was like i wish i could give my kids

01:17:07.420 a world in which porn was not ubiquitous but i don't have it's not in my power to give them that

01:17:12.360 world. Instead, I have to guard against that world. And that's a harder thing, but it's a

01:17:18.580 necessary. And it's where I think men, families together have to like kind of band together so

01:17:23.420 that everybody's on the walls and not just I have to guard my little household by myself.

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01:21:45.740 Caffeinating the Modern Reformation.

01:21:48.460 Yeah, that's really, really helpful.

01:21:50.820 One of the broader questions, you were talking about young, restless and reformed.

01:21:54.380 You mentioned that earlier.

01:21:55.740 A lot of the things that seem like maybe we all wish would go away, like the Josh Harris

01:21:59.900 situation, they seem to come back.

01:22:02.700 You know, his wife, I think, was in the news and, you know, deconstructing, usually tied

01:22:08.360 to sexual sin.

01:22:10.000 As you think about that movement, kind of, you know, spending a lot of your years growing

01:22:13.900 up in it, we all kind of did a little bit.

01:22:15.780 uh what do you look back on especially with the sexual issues maybe identify as like some bad

01:22:21.780 fruit what was going on that produced you know as i look at it young restless and reform it seems

01:22:26.420 like it kind of died and there was a lot of fallout um so as you look at that what do you what do you

01:22:31.200 see as maybe some things that we could say okay we could learn from this and not not repeat that's

01:22:36.040 a good question so i think a couple of things when i when i consider back again that was my coming of

01:22:40.160 age was all through that deal and i think there was so much good in it but but it's actually not

01:22:45.580 all that different from like the Great Awakening. So Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening,

01:22:49.660 right? He's one of my guys. So Great Awakening, here's this great work of God, Whitfield's

01:22:53.580 preaching, all these guys are preaching and like people's lives are being changed. And yet Edwards

01:22:57.700 is like, and as soon as that happens, Satan's going to sow wheat among the tares. This is just

01:23:01.760 how it goes. Like there's going to be counterfeits. There's going to be fakes. There's going to be

01:23:05.760 stuff that looks like the real deal, but it's not the real deal. And so he writes like multiple,

01:23:09.500 Edwards literally writes multiple books about how do you tell the difference between a true work of

01:23:13.140 god and sort of its counterfeit what's a reliable sign of genuine religion of true religion and

01:23:19.940 what's not and there's lots of things that are not that sort of they're there it's not that

01:23:24.920 they're not that they're bad so like a good example in edwards is like if you talk a lot about

01:23:29.260 religion about christianity he's like that's not reliable like pharisees do that hypocrites do that

01:23:34.900 but it's not that it's not that it's negative it's just not you can't trust it and so i think

01:23:41.780 in some ways what happened with young wrestlers reformed was like that sort of thing and so

01:23:46.440 there's all sorts of good happening and then there's all the counterfeit there's all there's

01:23:49.820 all there's all the counterfeit stuff that that comes with it uh so i think a couple of things

01:23:53.960 the function of celebrity culture in pushing young guys to the foreground too early so i think like

01:24:00.180 when you think about josh harris like i mean that's clearly an issue in play this guy's he's

01:24:04.560 writing books at 17 about dating you know and it's like and i think that there was sort of this

01:24:09.640 I think this has been an affliction of certain kind of Christian groups.

01:24:14.540 I think classical Christian education can sometimes fall into this, where it's like, hey, we're going to outdo the world.

01:24:19.600 Like, look what our kids are going to be able to do.

01:24:21.340 Like, we're going to get them there quicker, better, faster.

01:24:24.480 And it's kind of like this valid, like, look what we did.

01:24:27.840 And you start showing off the fruit when it's like still, it's not ripe yet.

01:24:31.740 it's like the fruit, the fruit that you want to see the, the, as a, as a dad, the fruit that you

01:24:36.960 want to see is like, look at, it's not mainly like, look at my 17 year old, but it's like,

01:24:40.940 you're 60 and it's like, look at my 45 year old, you know, I guess that's not the right numbers,

01:24:45.380 whatever the numbers would be like, look at my, you know, look at my 40 year old son

01:24:48.780 raising his own kids faithfully. Like that's the fruit when you can really go, Hey, look at it.

01:24:54.020 Like, look, look what God did. Um, as opposed to kind of like preemptively going like, Hey,

01:24:58.680 here he is at 12 and he can recite the catechism and it's like that's great but it's still too

01:25:03.700 early and so i think that there was kind of a rush to like put some young young guys out there

01:25:09.500 too young i think you know this is what's going on with driscoll at some level like he's 26

01:25:13.320 plants a church it blows up and then like he's just kind of thrust out there and kind of is

01:25:17.660 willing to roll with it and so i think a lot like there was a lot of that basically in that movement

01:25:22.640 And I think the healthier versions of it typically were those that emerged under the leadership of godly older men.

01:25:33.040 Does that make sense?

01:25:33.780 So, like, I feel really, like, blessed.

01:25:36.540 It was a great kindness that, like, in my zeal, it wasn't like, I'm going to go run out.

01:25:41.180 I had this impulse.

01:25:42.240 Like, I guess I'll go plant a church at 25, like Mark Griscoll did, because I read him in college.

01:25:46.340 I was like, let's go do that.

01:25:47.160 and instead was like no i'm gonna i'm gonna go to bethlehem and like learn how to do it

01:25:53.840 and then therefore there was kind of like there was wise old hands you know kind of helping to

01:25:58.520 guide and lead and temper and direct and i think that was a great protection it meant when i ran

01:26:02.980 into stuff or things happened there was people with with some ballast that i could look to like

01:26:07.880 john piper and the other elders at bethlehem and uh and so i think that was like a so one thing

01:26:12.380 would be don't promote guys too young that's like a biblical principle like don't if young convert

01:26:18.060 it's not just young converts just young immature guys in general shouldn't be necessarily put

01:26:21.300 forward um preemptively and i feel some of that because i like wrote my first book at 30 and i'm

01:26:25.560 kind of like oh like was that okay and it's like it was at some level because there was other

01:26:30.800 people's hands on the on the steering wheel a little bit so that's one thing i think the other

01:26:34.340 thing uh to learn from is part of why i think the movement cracked up was because the feel like the

01:26:40.240 theological center like we're gonna have theological unity but we're not necessarily

01:26:44.740 going to insist on other kinds of commonality like that like diversity was our strength right

01:26:51.320 like and and at some level i like there's a good impulse there of like hey uh the big battles are

01:26:56.780 not over baptist paedo baptist or even like uh charismatic cessation is like we can we can

01:27:03.540 together for the gospel across that line like but let's let's hold firm on sovereignty of god

01:27:07.820 complementarity biblical authority that's the core and we have this diversity and i think that that's

01:27:12.660 actually right i think that's helpful healthy um mere protestantism mere christendom sort of

01:27:16.640 mentality but what i think was missed is as the culture sort of went off the rails over you know

01:27:23.240 beginning you know in the run-up to obergefell and then now over the last decade i think what

01:27:27.600 was missed is now we have to have a certain kind of posture like how do we relate to this thing

01:27:32.100 and like how how do we respond to it actually didn't matter and it was that's a culture question

01:27:36.780 and so some of the crack up was people who could sign the same affirmation of faith

01:27:41.540 but their orientation towards the present moment was fundamentally different and therefore different

01:27:47.420 ministry philosophies and then that's where you see kind of the parting of the ways and so i think

01:27:51.600 that that uh one of the things that you're seeing right now is actually folks who have a shared

01:27:57.700 theology but also like a shared approach to cultural stuff both internal culture building

01:28:04.260 and external culture warring or not culture warring,

01:28:07.820 whatever you want to call that other view,

01:28:09.380 like those people are finding each other

01:28:11.300 and going like, yeah, we want to build together.

01:28:13.060 And it's really hard to build

01:28:14.840 if we don't have a shared mentality

01:28:17.240 on culture building and culture warring.

01:28:18.800 You can't build well.

01:28:19.940 Yeah, it's such a good point.

01:28:21.080 You mentioned John Piper.

01:28:22.300 I remember being in college reading Desiring God.

01:28:24.800 And I think one of the best things it did for me,

01:28:27.340 and John was just huge on this,

01:28:28.680 was he was an introduction.

01:28:29.980 He was like a gateway drug

01:28:31.160 to all these great thinkers of the past, right?

01:28:34.260 um so we started you know here at new christendom press we're going through old old literature old

01:28:39.740 books um especially with the school too our kids are reading them they're like dad you haven't read

01:28:43.760 the song of roland what's wrong with you you need to read this book uh so it's interesting the more

01:28:48.420 we've gone back and looked at stuff you can sort of trace uh you know the history of revivals and

01:28:53.800 reformations throughout you know the last couple thousand years and it always seems to be tied to

01:28:58.480 education uh you know alfred the great maybe being a good example where it's like yeah he he defeated

01:29:03.280 the Danes. That's definitely true. But he was also leading his people in learning how to read

01:29:08.140 and, you know, translating the Bible into the vernacular and stuff like this. So I want to ask

01:29:12.740 you why, as we think about, you know, reformation, wanting to see great works of God in our culture

01:29:17.300 and our day in the church and society, why is it so important to tackle and deal well with this

01:29:22.140 issue of education? I think the way I would, I approach this question is like, if you think of

01:29:26.580 the church or the people of God, so don't think when I say people say church and they immediately

01:29:30.900 think of like just the institution of the church or something like that so think people of god in

01:29:36.160 all of its facets um the heart it's a body the heartbeat of that body is worship okay so that's

01:29:41.920 one of the things we emphasize out here in moscow so one of doug's long-term standing is like worship

01:29:45.420 is like the foundation it's the heartbeat it pumps blood to everything else okay i think education

01:29:52.060 is like the the the backbone it's the skeleton of the body so you need a heart to pump blood like

01:29:58.020 if you, and if you take out the heart, that body's going to die. It's not going to make it right.

01:30:01.540 You've got to have the heart beating, pumping the blood, but then you also have to have that

01:30:05.900 skeleton. Otherwise it's just a blob. It doesn't act. It can't actually do things. And so the

01:30:11.440 teaching ministry of the church, so teaching and preaching in the church, but also this sort of

01:30:15.560 educational thing, Christian education, the paideia of God, that's the backbone. And then it's when

01:30:20.940 you have the heartbeat in the backbone and then you start putting flesh on it, which is when you

01:30:23.600 get into like christian vocation like vocation and mission and and all of the other elements of uh

01:30:30.840 of body life that community all of that is like flesh but it's like built on this foundation of

01:30:36.300 work you know worship and education so and if and so it's really it is really important and i do

01:30:41.420 think that that's one of the you know people can say a young restless and reformed kind of like

01:30:45.480 has has dwindled but i think what it did exactly what you said is it introduced a whole generation

01:30:50.820 of people to like the riches of our tradition, which had sort of been neglected, lost. And all

01:30:56.840 of a sudden guys are like reading these books. And I think actually some of what's happening

01:30:59.600 right now in the present divisions among Christians that kind of all came from that

01:31:06.340 movement, the young, that sort of stream is a bunch of guys kept reading, right? So it's like,

01:31:12.700 you know, it was like, hey, let's go read the Puritans. Hey, let's go read the Reformers. Hey,

01:31:15.880 let's go read these guys. And we're reading them on, you know, doctrine of God and sanctification

01:31:20.640 and the gospel and like, man, this is great stuff. And then some guys are like, Hey,

01:31:25.080 have you read them on political philosophy? You know? And other people were like, no,

01:31:28.980 don't do that. Right. Like, like started out that they got that wrong. And so that the debate is

01:31:33.000 like, are, do, are they helpful? How helpful are they? And how all of, all of their stuff,

01:31:37.980 some of their stuff, where, where did they get it wrong? Where did they get it right? And the

01:31:41.380 debates are, um, some guys kept reading and were like, this makes sense too. And then other guys

01:31:46.040 Like, no, no, that's not it. And so that's but it was the introduction to that great tradition of Christian reflection that that was, I think, will be one of the great legacies of that kind of resurgent Calvinism is that it introduced us to a rich tradition, which we can then sort of revitalize and apply in our own day.

01:32:05.320 yeah that's yeah really helpful uh one of the questions i want to ask you i saw this on twitter

01:32:09.580 uh somebody had asked you or i think they said something like you know i'm i'm coming out

01:32:13.920 and i'm just gonna say that tolkien is better than lewis yeah and uh so we you know we had

01:32:18.340 some division in the office uh there's a little bit of division i would say uh but we're discussing

01:32:22.620 this and you know one of the things that came to mind was uh these guys were both great uh you

01:32:27.820 mentioned that you quoted gk chesterton um but as you think of both of them we've sort of talked

01:32:33.280 about them as i think in a thousand years people will read tolkien and be like great still great

01:32:40.540 they'll read lewis and they'll say still great what is it about these guys particularly their

01:32:44.920 education what they were reading that made them the titans of literature that they were among

01:32:49.840 other things right yes i don't think people uh fully appreciate how many great books those guys

01:32:57.060 had to read in order to produce what they produced right it wasn't it didn't just fall out of the

01:33:02.120 sky it wasn't and it wasn't just oh lewis is really smart tolkien is really smart it's like

01:33:07.420 no there was they were very bookish and they lived at a time when education was what it was and so

01:33:13.700 they're they're reading these texts and they're soaking in them and it's just marinating uh you

01:33:18.660 know tolkien talks about like it bubbles up from the leaf mold of the mind and so it's just like

01:33:23.040 all of this stuff is just churning under the surface so that when it comes time for them to

01:33:27.220 right it's like they're channeling all of the things that they've digested they've eaten the

01:33:32.560 tradition like they've eaten it digested it it's a part of them and then now they're able to kind

01:33:37.460 of speak and so they speak with the wealth of the ages the wealth of of the you know and and so

01:33:44.380 that's that's their real that's the secret sauce and you don't there's no shortcuts you can't you

01:33:50.080 cannot shortcut that uh and just try to get it on the cheap which is i think the modern temptation

01:33:54.280 is to say oh yeah we've we've got look at all the technology we can get from here to there really

01:33:58.160 fast like yeah you can't short circuit wisdom you can't short circuit that kind of imagination

01:34:02.980 and creativity and so you're you're right to say i think we'll be reading those guys uh for

01:34:08.100 centuries and people will look like when there's always like you know when we look back at the

01:34:12.120 past it's like there's certain thinkers that are like that centuries thinker like that you know

01:34:15.860 like there's a few guys it's like oh you know uh aquinas like 13th century and like anselm's like

01:34:20.700 you know 1,000 to 1100 and augustine's like you know when he is so it's like there's like these

01:34:25.180 guys and it's like tolkien and lewis i think will be those kind of thinkers for the 20th century oh

01:34:30.280 yeah uh what i'm just curious like what would you identify as sort of the core influences of stuff

01:34:36.300 they were reading i i know particularly like medieval literature um these guys are steeped

01:34:40.900 in it but you know lewis or tolkien what do you see as like the the really dominant works that

01:34:45.420 affected them yeah so i think for i mean i i know lewis better than i know tolkien um because

01:34:50.060 Tolkien was reading like other weird stuff.

01:34:52.060 He's in like Norse mythology, like he's into all that.

01:34:54.480 And I'm like, I don't even know what that is, if that's a thing.

01:34:57.960 And I'm sure he read the other, the mainstream stuff too.

01:35:00.000 But, you know, the Anglo-Saxon, Beowulf, you know, that kind of thing.

01:35:03.800 But with Lewis, it was definitely, you know, Dante.

01:35:07.100 So like Great Divorce is just Dante's divine comedy updated for the 20th century.

01:35:13.300 Like it's the same story.

01:35:14.960 Okay.

01:35:15.580 And there's in Virgil, the Aeneid's in there.

01:35:18.000 And the Aeneids, you know, so Lewis loved the Aeneid, like started writing a translation of it, and he loved Dante.

01:35:24.520 And so then he does his own little journey to the afterlife thing, and it's basically George MacDonald is his Virgil, and this is just, it's the same thing.

01:35:32.820 It's just, he's updated, he's internalized it, and so that's what it is.

01:35:37.800 The Space Trilogy, Paralandra, is Paradise Lost.

01:35:42.560 It's the Paradise Lost, but it's not actually lost, like Ransom's there to save the day.

01:35:45.800 uh and and uh and so but if you read for example lewis wrote a book called the preface the paradise

01:35:51.640 lost and it was that was written at the same time he's writing perilandra and you can just see like

01:35:55.760 oh he's just doing if you read milton you read that so i think that there's that sort of dimension

01:36:00.140 of his um so virgil dante uh milton um and then i think like the romantic poets i think that's

01:36:08.100 another big kind of influence on him as he read the romantics and there was the and it called him

01:36:12.320 out of himself it was where some of the uh you know wordsworth and these guys were some of the

01:36:16.460 places where um the light from beyond the sun the the longing for joy and this ache for something

01:36:22.960 greater like that it it touched him there even though they weren't necessarily christians they

01:36:27.420 were getting at something and he kind of wanted to follow where'd that come from i want to go find

01:36:31.280 where that came from uh and so then he's he's chasing that back and he eventually finds it

01:36:36.000 you know in christianity as sort of the thing that reconciles his imagination which was stoked

01:36:41.720 by that and his reason which up until that point had sort of said well it's all materialism um it's

01:36:48.460 all atheism and he couldn't bridge the gap and it was like christianity was like no they can't they

01:36:52.840 come together so i think those would be those would be some of the influences i also think

01:36:55.960 if you read his letters like the jesus guys just reading novels all the stinking time like he's

01:37:00.420 reading like jane austen he's reading uh shakespeare uh like i think shakespeare is a big

01:37:04.860 influence in like narnia and places like that the the whole you know my whole deal on manhood right

01:37:09.600 It comes from King Loon in Narnia.

01:37:11.460 This is what it means to be a king, to be first in every desperate attack, to be last in every desperate retreat.

01:37:15.840 When there's hunger in the land, this must be now and again in bad years.

01:37:18.720 To wear finer clothes, laugh louder at a scantier meal than any man in your land.

01:37:22.000 That little speed, first in, last out, laughing loud, it's basically a summary of Henry V, Shakespeare's Henry V.

01:37:28.520 So like Henry V is like before there was Braveheart.

01:37:33.040 You know, before there was Gladiator, there was Henry V.

01:37:35.660 You know, once more under the breach, right?

01:37:37.300 Henry's like the one leading them into the battle.

01:37:39.600 They're surrounded and he's like going through the camp and it's the Shakespeare talks about

01:37:43.400 how he's like encouraging his, his men.

01:37:46.360 He's like the son giving him a little touch of Harry in the night.

01:37:49.300 Like he's just, he's bucking them up when everything's dark.

01:37:51.980 Well, that's laugh louder at a scantier meal.

01:37:53.460 So like all of that stuff, like he's, he's channeling Shakespeare and Henry V in that,

01:37:58.920 in that story.

01:38:00.320 And so I think that again, he's, he's just soaked himself in all this great literature.

01:38:05.180 And so it's at his fingertips whenever he gets creative.

01:38:08.220 Yeah, that's so great.

01:38:09.020 one of the things we've talked about uh with fatherhood this season the king's hall podcast

01:38:13.680 is the need to tell the right stories to our children we were brian was mentioning like with

01:38:19.240 eustace scrub like he heard all the wrong stories they were talking to you about trains and

01:38:22.880 engineering probably and stuff like that uh as you think about that uh and particularly the

01:38:27.840 chronicles of narnia a lot of people said oh this is a child's story and then i read as an adult and

01:38:32.440 i weep and i you know and moved by the story but but why this story why do you think this story is

01:38:37.200 so important why is it important that you know you look around christian communities and like

01:38:40.480 most parents are like reading this or kids or the kids are reading it but but why is narnia so

01:38:45.220 important yeah i think i think because it's like it does two things it taps in both to kind of the

01:38:51.160 christian there's the christian elements to it death resurrection sacrifice all of that sort

01:38:55.980 of stuff so there's all sorts of christian themes that are there but i think also like the medieval

01:39:00.340 stuff um the the weaving together of um the medieval cosmos and mindset and approach and i

01:39:08.060 think that lou and i honestly think that like some of it is he put it in a fairy tale so and when he

01:39:12.880 talks about fairy tale it's like it it what it provided for him was certain kind of constraints

01:39:17.780 it meant he couldn't do it wasn't gonna there was not gonna be a love story because you know like

01:39:22.680 like in other words it wasn't gonna be there's no way to do um junior high or not did you know

01:39:27.380 like high school, young adult fiction.

01:39:29.340 It's not Twilight.

01:39:29.960 It can't be that.

01:39:30.660 It's not Twilight.

01:39:31.480 It's exactly right.

01:39:32.180 And thank God.

01:39:33.440 Yeah, because so it's got to be pitched at this level of you can still have Go Win the

01:39:39.120 Princess, right?

01:39:40.520 All of that stuff can show up, but it has to be done in the fairy tale mode, which is

01:39:44.160 very different than the angsty teen drama mode.

01:39:48.120 And so I think that provides certain kind of guardrails for him to work within.

01:39:52.720 So the form suited it well.

01:39:54.420 And then he had both the Christian stuff and the medieval stuff at his fingertips to, uh, to tell this story, to, to really, and, and then I think to, to follow it through and go like, I'm going to, you know, this is the, the, the argument of Michael Ward and his stuff on, on planet Narnia is basically, he had certain kind of qualities that the medieval mind associated with the planets.

01:40:14.740 and he wanted to like capture them in a story like weave it into a story and and he did really

01:40:21.200 effectively um and so i think that's part of why i think that's just why they work is that he's

01:40:26.000 tapping into something perennial university if they're universal their permanent value to these

01:40:30.860 themes and he was qualified to be able to weave them in and i what's funny is this is the tolkien

01:40:36.420 thing like tolkien did not like it because he was like you you're not allowed to mix those

01:40:41.960 and and lewis is like but watch me i'm gonna i'm gonna do it anyway i'm still doing it you know

01:40:48.360 you cannot put you know the four you know children uh the witch from hans christian

01:40:52.640 and the children out of e nesbitt with a lion and a fawn you know and then father christmas

01:40:57.900 for goodness sake like you can't mix those together and lewis is like but i can actually

01:41:01.840 i really will and there's a unity to that like this jovial um always winter never christmas

01:41:07.720 giving way to spring and new life like that idea he's like that's the thing that's gonna you know

01:41:14.020 pull all this together and he's gonna do something similar with martial virtue and um hardiness and

01:41:21.040 doing hard things he's gonna do the same thing in prince caspian oldness woods all of these things

01:41:24.860 like there's a center he's gonna like pull it all together and tolkien didn't see it that's what's

01:41:28.680 funny it's like he token was such a detail-oriented guy that he could not get past the hodgepodge

01:41:34.160 And I think Lewis just thought that was probably the funniest thing ever.

01:41:37.260 So I know there have been some polls on Twitter in the past about favorite characters in the book of Narnia.

01:41:43.060 I have a strong opinion about that.

01:41:44.620 I was curious.

01:41:45.660 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

01:41:46.540 OK, I was curious.

01:41:47.540 What about you?

01:41:48.720 King Loon obviously seems like a top tier.

01:41:51.360 Exactly.

01:41:51.780 So like I would say, yeah, classic answer there for me is Loon.

01:41:55.880 Minor character, but he's got that speech and he embodies it well.

01:41:59.140 Like he lives it out.

01:42:00.180 He's a model.

01:42:01.780 Outside of that, it's Puddleglum.

01:42:03.800 puddle glum what were you gonna say what were you gonna say puddle glum okay yeah yeah i mean

01:42:08.240 you're going for a reef cheap but oh reaper cheap i mean that's why no i'm still puddle glum

01:42:12.720 because my demeanor kind of matches i can relate to himself yeah so i've got uh one of the the

01:42:18.160 next projects at some point uh whenever i catch a minute uh is working on something with like

01:42:23.320 puddle glum's faith oh yeah yeah and uh because i think you know i've done some lectures uh before

01:42:28.840 at bethlehem on um basically the silver chair that's that scene in the silver chair at the end

01:42:33.580 when they're underground and the witch comes in

01:42:35.520 and the harp and the conversation there,

01:42:38.500 I think it's probably one of the most profound analyses

01:42:41.300 and diagnosis of modernity

01:42:43.180 and like the dark enchantment of the modern world,

01:42:46.920 like ever.

01:42:47.740 Like it's like he just pegs so much

01:42:49.880 and packs so much into that,

01:42:51.220 like the perceptiveness of like what's actually going on

01:42:53.700 and then like the antidote to it,

01:42:56.280 like Puddleglum's sticking his foot in the fire

01:42:58.200 and then answering witches,

01:43:00.480 I'm gonna live like a Narnia

01:43:01.320 even if there's no narnia uh speech is uh i just think it's like this really tightly packed

01:43:07.680 analysis and diagnosis and cure for the dark enchantment of modernity and so like uh i'm

01:43:14.560 probably going to build that out at some point because i think i do think that that's a um it's

01:43:18.220 going to be it's needed it's just like this is the world we live in and we do live have this like

01:43:22.700 dark enchantment thing like it this is what lewis is so brilliant at is that a lot of thinkers have

01:43:27.720 talked about the disenchantment of modernity right like the world used to be enchanted we

01:43:32.140 believed in fairies we believed in supernatural beings we lived in angels and demons and god

01:43:35.880 and it was all we lived in an enchanted world and then like the enlightenment came along and just

01:43:40.700 and then modern technology and they crushed it and now the world's disenchanted and lewis is like

01:43:45.680 actually it's the modern world that is enchanted the modern world is under a dark enchantment

01:43:52.460 so he flips on it it's not that it's been disenchanted it's that you're right now this

01:43:57.420 minute under a dark enchantment you've fallen asleep you've been listening to the witch she's

01:44:02.000 been playing her music there's something in the air like it smells bad it makes you drowsy it

01:44:06.140 numbs you to sleep that's the enchantment it's not that it was enchanted and now it's not it's

01:44:10.880 that um before you were sober-minded and the world was just magic because the world's magic

01:44:16.380 and now you've been under put under an enchantment and so you don't recognize it as such and just

01:44:21.840 flipping that on the world on is like whoa okay wow what what is what implications does that have

01:44:26.500 for for how i think about reality um is it naturally a disenchanted world that we need

01:44:32.520 to add some special magic to in order to like hey let's enchant it everybody let's re-enchant the

01:44:36.220 world or is it like freaking wake up you know like you're you're under a spell like and lewis

01:44:42.000 talks about this in other places in his in his um weight of glory he talks about this where he says

01:44:47.120 um you know he he's sort of talking about this longing that we all have for something more and

01:44:52.240 the like hunger and the kind of romantic impulse and he's like do you think i'm trying to weave a

01:44:56.920 spell and you're like maybe i am but remember your fairy tales spells are useful for breaking

01:45:01.400 enchantments as well as for inducing them and we have need of the strongest enchantment to break

01:45:05.880 the dark spell of modernity that all of our education has been inculcating in us for the

01:45:09.880 last hundred years he's like we are all under an enchantment and i am trying to wake you up

01:45:13.720 oh man that's so good can we can we call dibs on that book yeah yeah dibs dibs we heard it first

01:45:19.760 hopefully dude that's great yeah no phenomenal uh speaking of dark enchantments some people have

01:45:25.000 been talking about a dark alchemy brewing yeah i don't know actually what this is what is this so

01:45:30.400 like uh so i saw i see tweets and they're like dark alchemy and i'm like i don't know what that

01:45:34.200 is yeah so it it was basically owen strand was talking about all these well it followed the

01:45:39.580 adoption tweet but i don't know who did that but there are people uh who are i think they call

01:45:45.700 them Christian nationalists. And so I think Owen is kind of responding to that. But it gets back

01:45:51.360 to something I think that you're talking about earlier, which was really a division, I think,

01:45:55.420 even between the reformers on sort of the magisterial side versus radical, you know,

01:46:00.140 reformation. Guys like myself, you know, we've been reading things that Cannon puts out, like

01:46:05.120 Stephen Wolf, and we're reading about what did some of our fathers in the faith think about

01:46:08.740 classical two kingdoms, et cetera. And then you've got another camp that's saying, no,

01:46:12.380 this is dark magic we don't need to read about this this is this is bad juju and one of the

01:46:17.060 questions i was going to ask you is i know that uh at some point i think on twitter you had offered

01:46:21.040 like hey i'll step in a debate uh help foster this to happen um but first of all why why do

01:46:27.220 you think this issue i've often asked this why this issue among all issues why is this so important

01:46:32.800 right now why are so many people talking about it and getting kind of heated at points yeah so i

01:46:38.260 think uh so i think aaron wren his three worlds thing is a is a helpful device for understanding

01:46:45.280 what's happening and so the move from positive from christendom conditions with positive world

01:46:50.040 so you think of like christendom is like um when the prodigal son he's at home and then he goes

01:46:56.940 he says take give me the money and he goes and that's like neutral world where he's like spending

01:47:01.060 the money on the hookers and everything's okay um and then at some point he runs out of money

01:47:05.480 And it's like, okay, now we're in negative world. Like you ran out of money and you're in the pigsty. And so, but the thing about negative world that I think is the thing that has to be underscored is what it's fundamentally a rejection of is Christian ethics. I mean, Christian ethics are just universal ethics. It's not, there's nothing, the whole point of biblical law is not that it's like this special law imposed on reality, but it's just like natural law. Like it's like God baked this, these standards into the cake.

01:47:31.760 um and it's the rejection of the ethics that's different so like thomas jefferson wanted to like

01:47:37.480 cut up his bible he had scissors jefferson's bible was jeff with jefferson's scissors but he wanted

01:47:42.300 to cut out all of the peculiar doctrines all of the the miracle stuff the you know the deity of

01:47:47.520 christ and the cross and the resurrection he wanted all that but he wanted to keep the ethical

01:47:51.180 okay modern thomas jefferson's want to cut out all the ethical right they actually don't mind

01:47:57.520 the miracles they could they maybe you know like the world's you know haunted cosmos right like

01:48:01.260 the world's spooky. They're fine with spooky mediums and necromancy and all this sort of stuff.

01:48:07.140 That's all fine. Yes, that's miracles. That's supernatural. Maybe that's true. But all the

01:48:11.580 ethics stuff, that's the parts that we got to cut out, especially the sexual ethics.

01:48:15.660 And so that shift in negative world really marked, I think, a turning point. And what we're seeing

01:48:20.500 then in the Christian response is, well, what do we do in light of it? And some people are like,

01:48:25.480 well, what did our fathers in the faith do? How did they build Christendom? And was it good that

01:48:29.340 they did it. And then I think part of what's happening with a lot of, it's not, it makes

01:48:34.660 sense that it's among Baptists that some of the pushback to the recovery of Christendom or the

01:48:40.620 recovery of a Christian nation or that sort of thing is coming from Baptists. But it's because

01:48:45.380 I think Baptist political philosophy was birthed in Christendom. All of them, these were birthed

01:48:50.600 in Christendom, but Baptist was like the dissidents and the separatists within Christendom.

01:48:54.940 And so there's a way in which Baptist political philosophy, I think, assumes Christendom conditions. It implicitly relies on it for a lot. And I don't think it's recognized how much it relies on Christendom for it to work, because it assumes that the moral, the ethical teaching and instruction, sort of the first and second uses of the law are present and active.

01:49:18.520 and then Baptists come along and are like, yeah, and you really need to believe the gospel before

01:49:22.060 you're baptized. Like it's not enough to just be born in a Christian nation. You have to actually

01:49:25.700 believe the thing. And which is a good, that's a good exhortation. That's a danger of Christendom

01:49:30.580 is that you just coast. And so what happens then when you take away those background conditions,

01:49:35.500 when those cultural conditions in the background that were sort of reinforcing the biblical

01:49:40.340 morality that were, that were giving the law, when those are just removed, I think that Baptists have

01:49:46.060 a hard time and i think that that's why and so then when you and then and so then when you say

01:49:50.300 no but you have to there's some foundation it's going to be something it's either going to be

01:49:54.320 god or it's christ or chaos um you've got a you can't have you can't hang horizontal earthly

01:50:00.700 justice man to man no murder no killing no adultery you can't hang that in midair it needs

01:50:06.860 to stand on something and it stands on the confession of the living god of the first

01:50:11.580 table the second table of law depends on the first table of law basically and baptists are

01:50:15.640 really reluctant but it's like they've i think they've been relying on that for it to make sense

01:50:20.120 and so that's where a lot of this discrepancy comes from is christendom is sort of in shambles

01:50:25.920 even more so especially the moral stuff and so now there's some baptists i think who are like

01:50:31.000 well what do we do and they're kind of like oh is there a way to do baptist christian nationalism

01:50:35.480 baptist mere christendom and other guys are like absolutely not and that's where the that's where

01:50:41.100 that debate's coming from yeah what do you see as the way forward on that i know um obviously

01:50:46.880 it's been fairly divisive at points i i personally i would love to see i think a lot of good brothers

01:50:52.160 just come together and have a discussion and maybe hash some things out maybe constantine

01:50:55.840 needs to hold a council uh for the churches we need to we don't we don't we don't have one of

01:51:01.060 those uh so yeah right uh yeah what do you see as the way forward i mean i do think at some point

01:51:06.280 uh i'm encouraged that there's are at least good places where folks are really trying to have it

01:51:10.760 So like the Christ overall, you guys know those guys, Christ overall, they're a bunch

01:51:13.660 of Baptists.

01:51:14.220 So like, uh, SBC guys by and large, but, uh, they through October, I think in November,

01:51:19.200 they've been hosting like basically a bunch of podcasts interviewing different people.

01:51:24.100 And the thing I've been impressed with them about is that they've been able to get folks

01:51:28.000 from across the spectrum, not just their camp.

01:51:30.180 So they got everybody from like a Jonathan Lehman and an Andrew Walker on the Baptist

01:51:33.640 sort of side.

01:51:34.820 Uh, and then they, but they interviewed Steven Wolf and Doug and time and Klein on the other

01:51:39.180 side.

01:51:39.460 And so like they're pulling different guys, asking them same questions like, hey, what is this? What are the differences? And I think that that's a really healthy thing. I think the thing that people that won't work is just trying to say, don't don't read that. Don't don't go there. This you can't. It doesn't work. That kind of pressure. You have to win the argument. You can't just exert sort of the pressure and say, no, but it's really bad.

01:52:02.140 you you're going to have to actually have the debate and and suppression is just going to make

01:52:07.060 it get get worse it's just going to make people more curious like well why can't i read it i'm

01:52:11.740 hopeful you know like we're you know one of the nice things about being out here has been like

01:52:16.600 this just willingness to kind of go anywhere and talk to anybody uh and have the discussion we're

01:52:21.740 happy to have folks come out here and i think i'm hoping at some point that more people will

01:52:25.480 take us up on that and we'll be able to to the first step is just clarity like what actually is

01:52:30.620 the differences, right? So like, I hate confusion. I just hate it. Like few things just get under my

01:52:37.520 skin as much as like, but that's not what that guy thinks. And it doesn't matter. I think I

01:52:40.420 think that guy's totally wrong. I think he's way out to lunch, but I'm like, that's not what he

01:52:44.520 thinks. He thinks this and say it the right way. And then it's bring the clarity. It's either this

01:52:49.820 or that. And then, and then leave it in people's hands. Like you've got a Bible. It's either this

01:52:53.400 or that. And, and I'm content to leave it there and just let, let it go. But oftentimes people

01:52:59.380 like, well, we're going to straw man this so that you hold on to what we think. And if you do that,

01:53:03.960 if you straw man, eventually you burn your credibility because people are going to go

01:53:07.660 read the thing. They're going to go read the source. And you told him that that guy believed

01:53:12.760 X and he doesn't. And now you've just burned your credibility. So don't like, there's just,

01:53:17.100 there's a lot of dangers in that. I think for a lot of pastors who are just trying to tamp it down

01:53:21.820 as opposed to like, honestly, forthrightly engaging, representing brothers fairly,

01:53:27.600 getting it clear and then saying, and this is why we disagree. This is why we agree.

01:53:32.480 You got to make the call. Yeah. I think that's really helpful. Just curious,

01:53:36.140 where do you fall Joe on the spectrum? I don't know if you're a theonomistic, if you're.

01:53:41.380 Yeah. I'm classic Protestant. So I, so I, I don't like people are going to call me a theonomist

01:53:47.640 just because that's, you know, it kind of covers everything, but I'm not a Vantillian. Like I

01:53:52.080 appreciate stuff about Vantill, but I'm not a Vantillian. I don't, I'm not, I've never read

01:53:55.960 any of the reconstructionists at all. And so I have nothing there. So it's like Calvin,

01:54:00.180 Althusius, Hooker, classic Protestant, magisterial, all of that stuff. That's where I land

01:54:05.880 with appreciation for the theonomist. So the general activity theonomy, I think is just a

01:54:10.500 way of, that's the way that guys around here will talk. I think that's just a way of talking about

01:54:14.160 classic Westminster style. And the funny thing is, I just thought about this on Monday in our

01:54:19.460 freshman theology class on the law. And on the question of what aspects of the law still apply,

01:54:25.960 there isn't a dime's bit of difference between the London Baptist confession and the Westminster

01:54:32.000 confession. Like they're identical on this point. And so, uh, you know, it's, it's the moral law,

01:54:37.240 it's the natural law summarizing the 10 commandments, but like, it's not the, you know,

01:54:40.580 so like there, this is actually a place where, Hey, we should all be friends. We all agree on

01:54:43.520 this. This is not like, we, we disagree on other stuff, like, but we don't disagree on this. Um,

01:54:48.820 so there's a, there's the possibility of coming together to kind of, to kind of get that, but

01:54:52.680 But that's awesome. Well, Dr. Joe Rigney, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the podcast.

01:54:57.840 It's been a pleasure and hopefully we'll get to do it again.

01:55:01.120 Yeah. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you.

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The King's Hall - March 22, 2024

The Dark Spell Over the West： An Interview with Dr. Joe Rigney

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