In this episode of Theology Applied, Pastor Joel Webin is joined by the co-hosts of Backwoods Belief, Jeff and Ben, to discuss patriotism, the 5th commandment, and the war on whiteness.
00:02:12.040So Backwoods Belief is a podcast that Jeff and I started.
00:02:15.980Oh, man, I don't remember how long ago.
00:02:17.720But a while back, just focusing on sort of the basic backwoods Christian who isn't a part of a big city, isn't a part of a big platform, isn't a part of a big association, but is just a faithful Christian trying to make his way in the world in the United States.
00:02:38.360and uh we've put out some episodes that i think have been helpful to people and uh we have been
00:02:44.000lax in our releasing of episodes recently but i know we've both been pretty busy so it's been
00:02:50.460hard to hard to find time to do it but nice jeff what would you say what do you feel like the the
00:02:56.140vision of you and ben's podcast backwoods belief uh i think that christianity thrives on the margins
00:03:03.120And we've been in a season where that vision has kind of been lost
00:03:07.900We've assumed that the way for Christianity to thrive was by making inroads with elites
00:03:12.800And, you know, in the Lord's providence and His blessing on our country
00:03:48.520Yeah, it just depends where you are in history and what the Lord and His providence is doing.
00:03:52.200And the conception of positive and neutral and negative world, I think, is helpful.
00:03:56.780And, you know, we started off very much with a general positive view towards Christianity.
00:04:03.580And then for a while, it was kind of like this neutral world where you didn't really
00:04:08.460gain much by being a Christian, but you didn't really, you know, get penalized for it either.
00:04:13.080And really, you know, for a while now, coming up on a decade, I would say, you know, probably0.68
00:04:18.1802015, Obergefell was kind of the nail in the coffin with officially being a negative world.
00:04:24.040And we're not saying that the scenery of the United States towards Christianity is the most
00:04:34.000negative that it could be. We're not claiming that at all, but we are saying that it has shifted to0.69
00:04:40.180where officially by being a biblical Orthodox Christian, you stand the promise of loss more0.95
00:04:47.640than gain. And that doesn't mean that there aren't faithful Christians losing more and more negative0.89
00:04:53.100places and more hostile places, but, um, it's not a persecution contest. Um, but you, you don't have
00:04:59.520to be, um, you don't have to wait until your wife and children are beheaded to say that you're under
00:05:05.280attack and to, uh, to try to do something about it. And so, and, and to say otherwise is just,
00:05:10.740uh, foolishness. Mike, Mike Cosper, I think, didn't he say something recently about look at
00:05:15.820how bad it is in Nigeria and, you know, so, so, but his point wasn't have gratitude in the Lord.0.98
00:05:22.360His point was, so let it happen here. Stop it. Stop defending. Stop trying. It's really bad in Nigeria. And so you should do nothing until it gets that bad here.1.00
00:05:33.140right cosper is a great uh he's a great example of the persecution fetish that's held by some of
00:05:41.700our elite evangelical leaders and i couldn't use that term more loosely as applied to cosper and
00:05:47.260christianity today but um the thing about cosper is he will constantly yield to whatever a pagan
00:05:55.680culture wants and so he actually won't ever face persecution he'll just be a court evangelical for
00:06:01.920whatever the spirit of the age demands.
00:06:04.140And so it's easy for him to sit in isolation on an evangelical paycheck by
00:06:08.580people who don't understand they're paying a betrayer and say, well, you know,
00:06:12.380this isn't persecution. Of course, Mike,
00:06:14.680you'll never experience it because there's nothing that you won't jettison
00:06:31.920That's a really good point. All right, so we're going to hop into the topic here in just a second. We're going to be discussing patriotism. Should Christians be patriotic? Is that a good thing, a positive thing? And tying that to the Fifth Commandment in light of Independence Day that just recently passed.
00:06:48.800And so we'll do that. But real quick, for some of our listeners, I think we might have done this last time we had you guys on. But Ben, you got to just, I feel like your claim to fame is Wary's Law. Is it Wary's or Barry's? It's Wary's Law.
00:07:03.760yeah right not not joel barry uh but but wary so what what is what is wary's law because it is uh
00:07:11.560man i mean there's there's a lot of you know predictions that could be made and you could
00:07:15.980be right you could be wrong but wary's law is batting a thousand it's pretty amazing
00:07:20.680yeah so i think it was at the beginning of this past year i posted a tweet that was basically
00:07:29.020said something along the lines of, um, any woman, any woman with a, any conservative woman with a
00:07:36.480public platform is on a trajectory towards liberalism. Um, and then I have since done
00:07:42.520like a 45 minute video where I explained what I meant by that and why it's true. But essentially
00:07:47.380what I was arguing is that, um, just by nature of the attempt to gain public favor, uh, a public
00:07:56.020platform, to engage in the public discourse in a particular way, is in itself not a feminine
00:08:02.040thing. And so by virtue of doing that, no matter what you're saying, you could be saying extremely
00:08:06.760conservative things, but by virtue of engaging in that way, you are actually abandoning the nature
00:08:14.660that God created you for, the purpose that God created you for. And so, you know, it's not an
00:08:19.840attack on, I hate that I even have to say things like this, I really shouldn't, but it's not an
00:08:24.800attack on um you know particular women like oh i hate these women or something like that it's
00:08:29.600pointing out if you engage in this way you are already by virtue of engaging in this way putting
00:08:36.040yourself on a bad trajectory and it's going to end up in really bad place and you know as i've
00:08:42.460said to many of our friends let's just wait a year and we'll you know we'll see right tell me
00:08:47.420about the exceptions exactly they'll say but you know yeah you might be generally right but there
00:08:51.940exceptions and then they'll name you know somebody like it'll that'll never happen with so-and-so
00:08:56.720you know they're they're true they're faithful they're conservative and uh and you yeah you
00:09:01.700always respond by let's wait a year and goodness gracious uh it's disheartening you know but uh
00:09:07.900but you're right because it really is an oxymoron you know it's kind of like uh jumbo shrimp you
00:09:12.680know and what we're saying is not that a woman can't have conservative virtues and values of
00:09:17.380course she can. Of course she can. Um, but it's, it's like a fish out of water. It's, um, it's an1.00
00:09:23.540oxymoron. It's, it's ironic and not in a good way. Um, that, you know, if a woman is conservative,
00:09:29.880one conservative aspect would be a biblical conservative view of gender roles. And as we0.57
00:09:35.300look at gender roles, according to the scripture, a woman has a quiet and gentle spirit. So not,
00:09:40.320not adoring herself with outward beauty, but an imperishable, that beauty will fade, right?
00:09:45.780beauty fades and charm is deceptive. But a woman who fears the Lord is to be pleased. And so not1.00
00:09:51.500this outward perishable beauty, but an imperishable beauty of the heart, which is pleasing in the
00:09:56.420sight of God, which is characterized by a gentle and quiet spirit. And so in public discourse,
00:10:02.420we're saying that in many ways, it's not even just the public square of this idea that we're
00:10:11.760let, let the best idea win where there's discourse between, you know, different philosophies and
00:10:16.700worldviews. Um, but, but social media, especially Twitter, not, not necessarily every single
00:10:22.140platform. Facebook, you know, is, is maybe a little bit more for, you know, the, the 65 year
00:10:27.660old grandma to see pictures of the grandkids, you know, like there, there are different purposes,
00:10:31.920but Twitter, especially X, whatever. Um, it's not really the public square. There's guys who
00:10:37.940said it's more so like the arena it's uh it's not it's not to express ideas and and uh but it is
00:10:45.540it's designed for a fight and uh and so putting a woman in a context to fight saying i'm a0.53
00:10:52.940conservative woman who holds to that women should be feminine and i'm going to fight you um until
00:10:59.260until you agree with me it's just it's just silly you know that's that's you know so it's like uh
00:11:05.540uh it's like saying uh women women are the weaker vessel and uh and i'm going to if you don't agree
00:11:13.760with me um let's have a bench press competition whoever wins uh gets to be right you know so a0.93
00:11:20.560woman proving that she's weaker by outbenching men um it's kind of what we did with the woke1.00
00:11:25.580wars in like 2020 right you know it's like well let's get let's find a black guy and and have him
00:11:30.540say, you know, the thing that, you know, the white guys are, you know, no is true, but, but we're
00:11:36.460afraid to say. And so, you know, we've kind of done that with, with women and we're grateful for
00:11:41.820these women who have, you know, stood the test of time. But really I would say the last thing I'll
00:11:45.680say is, and you guys tell me if you disagree, but I think there are two outcomes. One is that if
00:11:50.680there's a woman holding to, you know, this public voice and this, you know, and it's, and it's not
00:11:55.400just every now and then, but it's really a part of their MO. It's, it's, it's what they do. It's
00:11:59.860they're living, it's, you know, they're in the public discourse as a conservative voice, as a
00:12:05.460woman. Um, the two outcomes, one is that, um, that it's an oxymoron and, and that inevitably they0.88
00:12:12.120drift left and become more progressive. Uh, the other outcome though, is that they actually could
00:12:17.600trend right, in which case they won't continue to have a platform. They'll become so conservative
00:12:26.280that you'd be like, what happened to so-and-so? And it turns out so-and-so is just what happened
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00:14:47.200we want. I don't relish that my predictions have come true often. Right, right. Okay. Well, um,
00:14:56.120let's go ahead and hop into it. You guys, you guys kind of frame it up for us. What are we,
00:14:59.960what are we talking about? Well, we wanted to talk about patriotism. We're recording. I'm not
00:15:06.360sure what the release date is on this, but we're recording pretty close to the celebration of
00:15:10.360Independence Day. That always raises lots of heat and sometimes not enough light in evangelical
00:15:17.800circles. And so pretty good time to give the right response to, you know, the need to honor
00:15:26.180our fathers appropriately without engaging in some kind of idolatry all right we'll start us
00:15:32.860start us off that's i mean that frames it up but uh what you know what what's the problem what in
00:15:38.140evangelicalism as a whole i'll pose it as a question do you think uh that evangelicalism
00:15:43.840as a whole is friendly towards things like independence day and honoring our founders
00:15:48.300and our fathers and those you know are they patriotic or is that something that is uh
00:15:53.760disappeared yeah i think that one of the things that has happened um in i mean the young we i'm
00:16:02.480sure we talked about this the last time we did a show together the young restless reform movement
00:16:07.100recognized a problem that existed which was you know the the robert jeffress kind of
00:16:14.320patriotism in church um and wanted to steer away from that but what it ended up becoming i think
00:16:21.980is almost an anti-American attitude. And I mean, certainly that's true among the left wing,
00:16:28.480but even what we would think of as, excuse me, what we would think of as like right wing,
00:16:34.580you know, the young restless reform movement, sort of the new Calvinists, they adopted a stance
00:16:41.140of hostility towards that kind of patriotism in the church. And what that ended up being was a
00:16:48.180rejection of patriotism at all we're now even loving america is seen as like an unchristian
00:16:53.700uh idolatrous sort of behavior and i think i think that's we've we've gone off the deep end
00:17:00.900like off the rails because actually it's it's good to love your country it's good to be thankful to
00:17:05.820god for what your fathers have built and um to appreciate that and celebrate what was done in
00:17:12.400passed by your forefathers which is so hypocritical because i mean how much how often do we hear about
00:17:18.480how it's good to love your city right you can you know in and for your city all day long and and in0.88
00:17:24.560and for the world right you know i'm a citizen of the world kind of like a bob marley evangelicalism
00:17:29.640you know like so i'm in you know in and for the world because you god so loved the world and
00:17:34.440that's true so i love all nations all people which is good and right and true um and i'm in and for
00:17:40.360my city. So it's like, um, locally, uh, there can be, um, there can be a local identity and a global
00:17:47.760identity, but there cannot be a national identity. And well, that's not true. Unless, unless you're
00:17:54.500Jewish, you know, uh, or, you know, or really to be fair and not just pick on Israel, but like you
00:18:00.600can have a national identity so long as you're a part of any nation except for America, you know,
00:18:06.220or maybe to be a little more specific, any non-Western nation, like you can, you know,
00:18:10.560you can have a national identity if you're a part of, you know, if you're a part of Israel or if
00:18:15.120you're a part of Palestine or if you're a part of, you know, of, uh, Uganda or the Sudan or
00:18:19.720any, anywhere, Brazil, they can have a national identity, but Americans can't. And in a larger
00:18:24.420scope, Europeans can't. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it.0.99
00:18:30.080I do. And I mean, I'll confess that, like, I remember being a young man.
00:18:35.260I think this name will ring a bell for people.
00:18:37.600Maybe you're watching Cassie Bernal, who was killed in the Columbine shootings.
00:18:42.640Her dad kind of went on a speaking tour and he came to my home church as a kid.
00:18:46.860And so service one on the Lord's Day was about Cassie and her, you know, her martyrdom, basically.
00:18:55.100And then service two that evening was in praise of the United States.
00:19:00.420And I remember recoiling from it and finding it very distasteful.
00:19:04.100So it's not like I don't understand these dynamics from within.
00:19:09.000I understand why the YRR kind of balked at some of that stuff.
00:19:13.700But I also think you've hit on something there, Joel, that as multiculturalism became the trendy thing to embrace among coastal elites, well, lo and behold, institutional evangelicalism also became very uncomfortable with patriotism.
00:19:33.700And it actually is now colonizing even local endeavors.
00:19:37.140You know, that's something Backwoods Belief really wants to be intentional about.
00:19:40.540But you think about some of these projects where guys are intentionally forming local communities to cultivate Christian communities.
00:19:48.100And now that's being seen as anathema and like a dangerous threat to society.0.51
00:19:52.080And so even, you know, the option that was once there that, yeah, you could love your city.0.52
00:19:57.600well you can love your city as long as nobody there is intentionally trying to be christian
00:20:01.700in in organized in organized fashion it's really you can really become you can love your city so
00:20:07.180long as your city hates jesus you can't you you can you can't love a lovely city uh you can only
00:20:14.540love and there's something to be said for loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute
00:20:19.240us but we do need proper theological categories but but still the general principle is there like
00:20:24.380we can love our enemies, but, but that was never, Jesus never said, you know, love your enemies
00:20:28.840and hate your friends, right? Like, I mean, even the, you know, the, the golden rules to love your
00:20:33.900neighbor as you love yourself, which isn't a commandment, a moral obligation to work on self
00:20:39.000love, you know, and self care, but it's, it's an assumption. Jesus was assuming just a universal
00:20:44.800truth that everybody loves himself at some level. Now that that might be misguided, misdirected,
00:20:50.260but even the person who, God forbid, commits suicide does it out of self-love. In fact,
00:20:54.880that's one of the most selfish decisions that you can make. It's to forego all consideration
00:20:59.260for anybody but self. And so it's, I'm so miserable and I'm in so much pain, but I love
00:21:04.260myself so much more than I love everyone else that I'm going to provide relief for myself at the cost
00:21:09.920of others. And so my point is that Jesus is assuming in the golden rule, love your neighbor
00:21:15.660as you love yourself. He's not saying you need to work on self-love so that you can therefore love
00:21:19.260others. No, he's saying you do love yourself, love yourself rightly in the right direction,
00:21:23.800the right ways, and then seek to love others in the way that you love yourself. But that wasn't,
00:21:30.320it's not just a commandment to love your enemies only. It's also, it's to also love your enemies
00:21:37.080with the assumption that you love yourself and you love your friends. But now it's become,
00:21:42.940you can, like you said, Jeff, you can absolutely love your city so long as your city loves0.97
00:21:48.280sodomites so long as your city you know loves um pagan idolatry but if your city if you're trying0.87
00:21:54.740to set up for instance a christian city you know a christian town like ridge runner then uh then
00:21:59.980that town that that only even exists in theory before it even exists in practice that that city
00:22:06.000christians should hate it before it even begins that which is just so i think i think the suicide
00:22:11.920example is actually really appropriate because that's really what this is it's a kind of0.97
00:22:17.140um cultural suicide like yes westerners are culturally suicidal they think that they
00:22:24.500their culture doesn't have the right to exist and so they're going to kill it by um you know
00:22:32.440various different means uh yeah but uh well and that's the crux of the city thing like you can0.95
00:22:38.360love your city as long as your city is constantly self-consciously yielding to multiculturalism
00:22:43.620Right. You know, at any point it has a distinct identity that's contrary to multiculturalism.0.86
00:22:49.000Well, now it's a threat to the public order. And I mean, you mentioned Ridge Runner.0.99
00:22:53.760Clearly, the world has an immune system to this.
00:22:57.720How many times has the New York Times went after or some other kind of global news agency went after this smaller project?
00:23:05.800Like you just said, that only exists in theory at this point.
00:23:08.200But, you know, it immediately raises all the defense mechanisms and hackles that that post-war consensus has to bring to bear.
00:23:15.720Mm hmm. You know, you guys got me thinking with the multiculturalism.
00:23:21.480You said, Jeff, that you can love your city insofar as your city is multicultural.
00:23:27.140It's a multicultural metropolis. And that's that that part isn't said out loud, but that probably is instinctively.
00:23:34.020that's probably the the reason behind why it is proper and and permissible and even you know
00:23:40.720even an obligation to love your city because cities right because it wasn't love your town
00:23:46.660and and i think you know without trying to read into the phrase too much and just for the record
00:23:50.820and you know just the elephant in the room we're talking about tim keller he would have been you
00:23:54.100know one of the leader got leading guys with this and then beyond that the gospel coalition acts 29
00:23:59.520picked it up all the all the i call them the gospel centered centered gospel gospel movement
00:24:04.100you know so like all all those guys and we for the record we love gospel centrality and are
00:24:09.120actually gospel centered which presupposes that if the gospel is the center there's actually
00:24:13.780something around it and there's a difference between gospel centeredness which is good and
00:24:18.660then the gospel centered movement which actually become became gospel myoptic um gospel exclusivism
00:24:25.200at the point of antinomianism, a rejection of the law of God, anything that, you know, so
00:24:30.360anyways, all that being said, the gospel-centered, you know, movement, TM, you know, gospel myopticism,
00:24:36.120those guys, probably the reason why you heard in and for the city, love the city, and you never
00:24:41.760heard in and for the rural, you know, county, you know, or in and for the small town is, you know,
00:24:48.060in and for, you know, the country hillside is probably because the cities were the first places
00:24:53.700in america to embrace multiculturalism so loving loving the city there was a time what now like
00:25:01.180the whole country is multicultural yeah to a point that i think is unsustainable but um but there was
00:25:07.200a time where the nation probably was more of a monoculture and that's why you shouldn't love
00:25:13.060the nation whereas the city uh was um a multicultural hub so you could love the city0.51
00:25:20.340because loving the city was loving the world because the whole world had immigrated and moved
00:25:25.880to the city so you could love the city because loving the city was loving the world you couldn't
00:25:30.060love the nation because the nation would only be loving one part of the world and it happens to be
00:25:35.680the part that's oppressive and colonizing i mean the closest the closest you get to them saying it
00:25:42.640out loud is diversity is our greatest strength right and you know it's it's funny anybody who's
00:25:47.500visited a major metropolitan area realizes that immigrants don't think this way. We all know
00:25:52.780Chinatown. We all know the way they, you know, these immigrants wanting to be around people that
00:25:58.760they understand organize themselves into little communities within the city. But that, you know,1.00
00:26:05.260the Westerner was supposed to say, well, I love my city because look, I can go get Thai food and I
00:26:09.380can get Korean food. We have the recipes, Jeff. We have a recipe. Right. But it was always founded
00:26:16.580on this idea that self-dissolution as a people and as a culture was the you know the right goal
00:26:23.680for westerners you're right so we should love our nation right yeah i mean that's probably the thing
00:26:32.880we haven't said out loud um legitimate patriotism um is an extension of the fifth commandment right
00:26:39.860we've kind of referenced it but we have received good things that are hard to come by in a fallen
00:26:44.900world from our forefathers we're supposed to honor not only our forefathers but the good
00:26:48.980inheritance they've given us and so patriotism to whatever degree um it is good and there is
00:26:55.260goodness in patriotism it's grounded in a in a command to honor your your father and mother
00:27:00.000yeah you think about um the proverb a righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children's
00:27:06.880children uh well that's what our forefathers did right um so they left say what you want
00:27:12.380died and bled yeah for for their children's children or i thought they did it for strangers
00:27:18.220what is it the constitution of the declaration of independence that says that they're doing
00:27:24.200this for their progeny yeah for their posterity for us yeah for their posterity yeah yeah yeah
00:27:30.060um so yeah i mean our forefathers were righteous men in that way they left an inheritance to us
00:27:37.960that we have since squandered badly, which says something about us as well.
00:27:43.480Well, if you're going to critique our nation,
00:27:47.260I think about the resources of the continent that North America has.
00:27:52.500It could be that ingratitude is the fundamental sin of our nation,
00:27:57.440that we have been given such incredible resources and looked and said,
00:28:03.680We want really good Thai food or whatever.
00:28:07.960that's a really good point yeah i mean obviously there's multiple reasons for the success of our
00:28:12.660nation number one the grace of god just his providence and it being favorable according to
00:28:17.940his good pleasure that's what he determined at least during this this period of history and so
00:28:22.300you know god bless him god bless god beyond that the sovereign grace of god uh it would be i think
00:28:28.900the distinctly you know christian founding they could have been even more distinct i would have
00:28:32.960appreciated that, but it was clearly a Christian and clearly a Protestant project. And so I think
00:28:38.780obedience. So it's God's sovereign grace, but then it's also a blessing that came in response to a
00:28:45.660particular obedience. So I think the Christian founding of the nation, but then Jeff, you put
00:28:50.340your finger on another aspect. I would say that the third biggest aspect, so the grace of God,
00:28:54.540the obedience of our fathers. But then lastly, there is actually a strong geographic
00:29:00.480argument to be made that, that America, I mean, you look at the rest of the world
00:29:05.520and that America was, was really bound to succeed unless it was just a completely wicked,
00:29:14.860you know, rebellious people that, that God immediately placed under his judgment because
00:29:19.220with just half a brain, you know, and I think the founders had a lot more than just half a brain,
00:29:24.240but with half a brain, the rivers that the protection to the North, you've got snow to
00:29:29.880the South, you have, you know, with Mexico, it's not just like, oh, well, Mexico, you know, cartel0.92
00:29:35.800and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they're not really a threat. But let's say that Mexico was on its peak
00:29:40.600game, even with its peak game, Mexico is much, you know, much smaller than the United States.
00:29:47.520It's so beneath you, you don't have a continent that's, you know, larger or a country that's
00:29:52.180larger than your country to the South, or even the same size comparable. But instead, you have
00:29:58.120this very narrow, much smaller country. Above, Canada is actually massive, but the conditions
00:30:03.800aren't sustainable, you know, to have a massive population. And then on the West and the East,
00:30:12.040you have oceans. You know, you think of, you know, just crossing a 15-mile, you know, waterway
00:30:19.660with, you know, in Europe and some of the wars that took place, you know, in the World War I
00:30:25.020and World War II and just this 15 mile, you know, wide waterway made it nearly impossible to invade
00:30:32.900another country, much less, you know, you throw the Atlantic Ocean into the mix. Like, and so
00:30:38.140there's, there was protection and then all the riverways, the Mississippi, you know, and being
00:30:42.940able, I think it's something like, I think I could be wrong on these numbers, but it's something
00:30:46.980around this, this will be ballpark. It's like 30 to 35,000 miles of navigable, um, uh, rivers
00:30:55.380in the whole world. And, uh, 17,000 of those 30 to 35,000 worldwide are found in the United States.
00:31:03.900You know, so there's just all these incredible resources and blessings. And, and we said,
00:31:11.060you know what? Our fathers died for us to have them as their posterity, but we will give them
00:31:18.920away because at the end of the day, there's just nothing like Mexican food.
00:31:27.940There's an intrinsic self-loathing that we've talked about this on our podcast. It seems like
00:31:33.240so many of the groups I'm a part of have this self-loathing and it's displaced the appropriate
00:31:38.600gratitude. You know, it is not wicked to receive an inheritance. If it's righteous for a man to
00:31:44.020leave an inheritance, it's righteous for a man to gratefully receive one. But that's where we broke.
00:31:49.600You know, there's a lot of criticism out there for the boomers about not wanting to leave anything
00:31:53.260for their children. You know, as a post-boomer generation, we've got to take stock of our
00:31:58.580constant signaling that we don't value anything you'll leave us. And so, you know, there is guilt
00:32:05.380in refusing to leave an inheritance but an ungrateful progeny that constantly tells their
00:32:10.780parents they hate them isn't exactly primed to receive an inheritance and that's who we are
00:32:15.940well said yeah so i something i've said in the past you know uh 2019 i came into post-millennial
00:32:23.860eschatology convictions that i i really do believe not necessarily in the short run right just like
00:32:29.120the stock market there are dips along the way but i thought that you know the overall trajectory was
00:32:33.720going to be up, that Christ is king now, which post-millennials are not the only ones who believe
00:32:40.100that. But with that, that Christ would usher in throughout human history in a gradual way,
00:32:45.500he would usher in tangible, physical elements of his kingdom through nations and in practical ways.
00:32:53.100And so instead of just setting it all right at the end, we'd have this gradual, you know,
00:32:57.080the mustard seed growing into the mustard you know into a tree and so um that's that's still
00:33:03.520my conviction i'm more convicted today than than before but what's changed for me is recognizing
00:33:09.160that um for a while there when i was you know you become a calvinist and you know and you have a
00:33:15.640cage stage and and i think you know post-millennialism might be a little bit similar so i i think i had
00:33:20.360a bit of a cage stage where it's just like how you know this is the only the only thing that works
00:33:25.880And then, you know, what changed for me was, one, just seeing over the last four years that post-millennials can be insufferable.
00:33:34.920And so that was a profound moment for me.0.95
00:33:38.920But then also seeing a lot of all-millennials and even pre-millennials, and not just historic, but even, you know, much to my astonishment, even some of the Dispy guys that I strongly disagree with.1.00
00:33:50.360But seeing that, you know, go fight win.1.00
00:33:53.000You know, they're like, hey, we'll be on the team.
00:33:54.640And I was like, well, and then I'll take you, you know, beggars can't be choosers.
00:36:29.460I think it's right, but it attracts, you know, pencil necks, you know, it attracts
00:36:33.720bean counters and bean counters don't have a lot of spine, you know?
00:36:37.920So the Calvinists actually did, you know, they had the theological framework to take the right action, but in terms of the actual men in that movement at the top in positions of leadership, they were some of the most, you know, spineless, feckless men you could possibly imagine.0.95
00:36:54.960So not only did they not do better than other theological camps, they were some of the worst.
00:37:00.180So all that being said, I'm trying to put my ecumenical hat on, and I think the movement that's growing, this new right or Christian nationalism, not everybody likes that, whether it's a mere Christendom or Christian nationalism or the dissident right or whatever you want to call it, but what I've realized is it's more than just reformed.
00:37:22.520it has some charismatics in there god bless them you know i disagree on some things but
00:37:27.900um there's it's not just it's not these clear cookie cutter theological lines of cessationism
00:37:33.700versus it's the charismatics are on the team disbies are on the team pre-mill and all mill
00:37:39.800is on the team so then what is the team and if i had to define it as simply as possible with two
00:37:45.180things the team is guys who don't hate our past and have hope for our future that's the team
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00:39:14.240call and get a free copy of the e-book protect your money now how to build multi-generational
00:39:20.360wealth outside of wall street and avoid the coming banking meltdown the danger of centralized power
00:39:26.800is often represented by the word king as americans we hate the word king civilian ownership of body
00:39:34.560armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals and so
00:39:42.100Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the
00:39:46.540honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the King of kings and he governs
00:39:51.160kings and he will judge them. This is Armored Republic and in a republic there
00:39:57.880is no king but Christ. We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your
00:40:12.100i think too um i agree with all of that but i think also another element is just the ability
00:40:24.320to think in political categories and not necessarily just theological categories i was
00:40:30.620just listening to um andrew and cj on their podcast earlier today and they were talking
00:40:36.000about this thing and man they were so right is you know one of the there are a lot of positive
00:40:42.780things about the sort of 20th century theonomist crowd um that they get a lot right but i think
00:40:47.920one of the things that i see a struggle with is just an incapability or an unwillingness to think
00:40:54.080in political categories or in political terms like what we're trying to accomplish for the nation
00:40:59.860is a political um like we're looking for a political answer to a problem to a political
00:41:07.120problem so yeah you know um the worship as warfare thing is it's a good sentiment but it doesn't
00:41:14.040actually accomplish political goals and it can't accomplish political goals because god didn't
00:41:19.180create the church to have the bear the sword you know the church has the keys of the kingdom
00:41:25.060The state has the sword, and those two, while they talk to one another, they're never mixed with each other.
00:41:33.660And so that's something that the two kingdoms guys, like the radical Westminster West two kingdoms guys, take that to an extreme.
00:41:41.800But we do need to recognize there is a distinction between these two ways in which Christ rules, one being the kingdom, the keys of the kingdom in the church, and one being the civil powers that he has given authority.
00:41:54.320And I think when we're talking about civil problems, we have to be thinking in political terms to an extent and an unwillingness to do that leads you to like I don't remember how to pronounce his last name.
00:42:08.600So I'm just going to butcher Scott annual today, I think tweeted about, uh, you know, Stephen said in his talk, um, his one talk at the New Jerusalem press conference, he said, um, you know, we don't have any place to, that's our own besides America talking about, uh, wasps and Scott posted, it was like, well, that's not true.
00:42:30.600we have you know a heavenly kingdom well yeah but that's clearly not what he's talking about he's
00:42:35.720talking about a political problem which is where does this people live where is their home on this
00:42:41.240earth i don't have any food or clothing we'll be right and well yeah right be blessed and get off
00:42:46.800and get off my place right yeah go get out of here yeah that's not a helpful that's not a helpful
00:42:52.660answer to a problem that is not a spiritual not entirely i'll say a spiritual problem because0.65
00:42:59.200obviously there are spiritual aspects to the problem of what's happening to the United States
00:43:03.280of America, but largely it's a political problem as well. And you're not going to answer a political
00:43:08.000problem with a purely, you know, spiritual pie in the sky kind of answer. Hopefully that all
00:43:15.420makes sense. Well, and we're even just bizarre as a generation to think that political categories
00:43:22.180have to be antithetical to theological categories. That's not what the reformed tradition thought.
00:43:28.220It's not what our actual enemies think.
00:43:31.300Materialists don't think that political goals can be separable from spiritual.
00:43:48.260These guys know, you know, you talk to some of the Hindus online.0.98
00:43:54.180They know Christianity is in their way.
00:43:55.780but for some reason we're the only people who tend to think that politics has to be pitted against
00:44:00.940theology and it's i mean we're just historically disconnected from any not just uh christian group
00:44:07.920thinking that way but basically every other ideology out there they all know there's a
00:44:12.280spiritual component even the ones who would deny a spiritual reality right now that's a great point
00:44:17.180and what what you were saying ben about the you know the reconstructionist so for the listener if
00:44:22.480if that's a new term, um, it's the theonomy guys, um, the guys, you know, theonomy being
00:44:27.940God's law. And so, uh, some of the, so I would identify as a general equity theonomist, but I
00:44:34.080would break on, on some issues from some of the, the OG theonomist guys that were known as the
00:44:40.260reconstructionist. So that'd be, you know, guys like Rush Denny or Greg Bonson or Gary North
00:44:45.120and those guys to be fair to them. And you said this, Ben, they got a lot right. And, and honestly,
00:44:51.460they also got separation of church and state right. Now they would have been more of an Abraham1.00
00:44:56.640Kuyper, you know, a Kuyperian persuasion. So they would have referred to that concept
00:45:01.080with like a framework of spheres rather than kingdoms. And so instead of, you know, the
00:45:07.220sacred and the secular common kingdom and that kind of being the church and state respectively,
00:45:13.460that's an oversimplification, but, you know, state civil kind of things are common things.0.86
00:45:18.960And to be fair to the reformed two kingdom, the classical two kingdom guy, not the retarded two kingdom, you know, Westminster, but the true, you know, two kingdom guy, a guy like Stephen Wolf, he would say Christ is ruling now, even as an all millennial, he would absolutely affirm that he's ruling now.0.86
00:45:35.060He's ruling here and he is ruling.0.92
00:45:38.160There are two kingdoms and he's the king of both of them, but he is ruling in different, in these two kingdoms, he rules through different means.0.98
00:45:45.460He's king still of both of them, but he has different means of executing his kingly rule in these two kingdoms.
00:45:54.080The common one being, you know, state would be, you know, one of the big examples there, and the sacred one being the church.0.79
00:46:00.640And so all that being said, the Reconstructionists, they had those categories too.
00:46:04.820They would have called them sphere, you know, referred to them as spheres more than kingdoms necessarily.
00:46:09.740but this is where i think they were wrong is um they were insistent relentlessly insistent
00:46:18.400that they recognize there's two spheres there's the church and gospel preaching word and sacrament
00:46:23.320and then there's you know the state and they recognize that the state has to legislate morality
00:46:28.620it has to bear the sword it needs laws it needs you know there's voting there's they knew that
00:46:34.640and they talked about it all the time but here's the deal they thought that the only way that that
00:46:38.940could really get better is with a 50% majority plus one regenerate hearts. So they thought that
00:46:46.280they did see a distinction between, they would have said spheres instead of kingdoms, but the
00:46:51.980church and the state, but they thought that the church's task, they didn't see these as two tasks
00:46:58.420to be simultaneously pursued. They saw it as step one, step two, that the church had to complete
00:47:05.120its task first. So God would have to send revival. Um, and then, uh, then if there was enough
00:47:12.600revival and out of that enough regeneration, um, then we could elect our way into righteous laws
00:47:20.000in the civil sphere. And, and, and with that, a lot of them actually had a kind of, you know,
00:47:25.540so step one, you can't do it both at the same time, you know, pursuing word and sacrament
00:47:29.940with the church and also pursuing righteous laws with the state. You can pursue them and they did
00:47:34.800to be fair to them. They did pursue it, but they didn't think it would be ultimately successful
00:47:38.540until the church was, was substantially more successful in its, in its role, you know,
00:47:44.220God sending revival. And they also thought that God would have to send revival through the church
00:47:49.480and he would also have to, uh, kind of, so like bringing up the church with regenerate hearts,
00:47:55.560gospel preaching, revival, that kind of stuff. And, and simultaneously he would have to bring down,
00:48:00.240but in a spiritual supernatural sense bring down the state so a lot of them were actually looking0.74
00:48:05.520to you can read about this uh they put a lot of stock in y2k you remember that they put like they
00:48:11.100were really like like the only way this is going to happen is one revival through the church more
00:48:16.020regenerate hearts we have to have a majority population of christians you can't do it with
00:48:19.980a minority must be a it must be a bottom up grassroots restoration of the country uh so it's
00:48:26.560got to be bottom up. It'll never be top down. Whereas it's like, well, but less than 3% of0.75
00:48:31.720the population was LGBT. And in 40 years, they organized, they were vigilant, and they replaced0.93
00:48:38.540the literal American flag with a rainbow in 40 years. They didn't have a majority. They didn't
00:48:43.400wait for a majority. And so anyway, so they thought the church has to be successful in a
00:48:48.700supernatural sense. God has to send revival. And then also the state has to be supernaturally
00:48:53.820unsuccessful, you need some kind of apocalypse scenario like Y2K or whatever and for the state
00:49:02.000to be disrupted. But if the state is disrupted over here and Christians have been preaching1.00
00:49:08.000faithfully over there and you got 51% of the population being Christian and they also happen0.69
00:49:15.000to be, as good Christians, they happen to be preppers and homesteaders, then and only then
00:49:21.820will america change and we would just say so so to be fair they did have the distinction of church
00:49:26.980and state um but we would just say no that distinction of church that that's good um but
00:49:33.140but by god's grace we could actually have a this is what's crazy we could have i know it sounds
00:49:38.540like blasphemy to to some of the the anabaptist type guys but we could have a christian nation
00:49:44.420in the political sphere long before we had a distinctly Christian revival in the church and
00:49:52.120spiritual sphere. We could actually have a Christian nation long before, it could be 40
00:49:57.840years after we officially had a Christian nation with Christian laws and adopting, for instance,
00:50:03.260the Apostles' Creed as a preamble to the Constitution. You could have a Christian nation,
00:50:07.140truly, in terms of legislation and the judicial systems and all this kind of stuff,
00:50:13.180a Christian nation 40 years before actually having half of the population being actual Christians
00:50:20.980in the true regenerate eternal sense. It's like, well, where in the heck are you getting that from,
00:50:25.400Joel? Well, history, Constantine, Alfred, but then also Bible, right? It's not like Israel was
00:50:33.480like, you know what, we have preachers who've been preaching the gospel faithfully, and we've
00:50:38.760now achieve 51% of the population of Israel is now officially regenerate and loves the Lord.
00:50:44.740And because of that, now we will see to it that we get a good king. No, you have a bunch of
00:50:48.960idolaters. Then Josiah comes in and says, you know what? I'm not going to wait for your hearts to
00:50:54.320change. God will or will not do that as he sees fit according to his sovereignty. But even if
00:51:01.020you're wicked internally at the level of the heart, um, externally, especially in public0.86
00:51:07.720there, the, the, the, uh, Molech sacrifice will stop immediately. The high places will come down,0.96
00:51:16.340you know, and that's, I think that's the stuff that Stephen Wolf talks about. That's the stuff
00:51:20.720that where medieval loses its mind. Owen Strand cannot comprehend that concept. It just, he just,
00:51:28.500he's like cannot compute it just it makes him crazy you think about like the king of nineveh
00:51:34.140jonah shows up and he's like all right guys we're all going to repent now and they did like the
00:51:39.560nation did um so you don't you don't need now some might argue that's a national revival but i i think
00:51:46.160it was more of the king said we're going to do this so we're going to do it well and and being
00:51:50.700that's the thing there can be catastrophic revival or you catastrophic to use tolkien's category
00:51:56.100There can be. There absolutely can be. But the thing that's been jettisoned is that the law teaches.
00:52:01.660The law restrains evil so good can flourish. And it teaches people what is good.
00:52:06.660You said, you know, the government can't enforce morality. That's all it can do.
00:52:11.120It can only say this is good and that's bad. So it's easy to look at our own country, right?
00:52:16.580When there are blue laws for Sunday, Christianity does a little bit better0.70
00:52:22.840because people have this sort of enforced honoring of the Lord's Day.0.95
00:52:27.640Obergefell comes in, and it teaches people, no, sodomy is normal.0.72
00:52:32.280It's completely acceptable, and you have San Francisco's Pride Parade this year0.99
00:52:36.380where people are performing oral sex in the street.0.99
00:52:38.880The law teaches, and it's bizarre to me to watch evangelicals forget0.57
00:52:43.060and even have a visceral hostility towards the idea that one of the things
00:52:47.800God ordains the state to do through the sword is to teach people what is good.
00:52:52.840And it actually does shape a people to be more virtuous, to have categories of virtue, or to be less virtuous and to repudiate virtue.
00:53:03.100So, again, we're just such a weird people historically as evangelicals in this generation.
00:53:15.780The role of the state is to reward the righteous, punish the evildoer, to bear the sword.
00:53:21.560But that punishment, it's not only punishment, but a good, righteous civil magistrate also, you know, what makes him good is he is accurately reflecting in his earthly legislation, in political terms, it's accurately reflecting God's eternal moral standards.
00:53:40.220And so insofar as he legislates righteously and then enforces that legislation with righteous penalties, appropriate penalties for those who do evil, he's not only restraining outward expressions of evil among the populace, but he is also instructing, not only restraining, but instructing and teaching.
00:54:02.440um and and that's why you know like that that's why i said that you know we could have a christian
00:54:08.300nation um you know in terms of our laws and these kinds of things 40 years before and i was being
00:54:15.580intentional in saying that because i don't think we would have a christian nation indefinitely
00:54:19.640without having a truly regenerate christian populace i think that the christian nation
00:54:24.520what it would inevitably uh produce is a regenerate people because because what it would
00:54:31.680do is it would be a constant reminder. It would, you'd have two preachers, you'd have the church
00:54:37.560preaching, but then you would have the Christian prince. And in our case with an American, you
00:54:43.260know, system like Christian princes, plural, many of them, and they too would be preaching
00:54:49.260rightly within their sphere, not, not administering the sacraments or, you know, or preaching a sermon
00:54:54.540per se, but they would be preaching God's law. And, and what the law of God does is it functions
00:55:01.240as a mirror. It reveals to us the holiness of God and by way of consequence, our sinfulness and our
00:55:06.400need for a savior. So like a righteous civil magistrate would be revealing to the general
00:55:11.460population that they're evil. Even those who don't commit crimes, but have the desire inwardly to
00:55:17.260commit those crimes. And the only thing that restrains them is, is the threat of punishment,
00:55:21.380but they know in their hearts that they do want to break the law, that they do want to steal.
00:55:25.400They do. And it would be constantly reinforcing. Righteous laws would be reinforcing in their
00:55:30.320hearts and minds that they are not a righteous people, and therefore they need the perfect
00:55:35.260righteousness of Christ, which is received by grace through faith. And many of them would go
00:55:39.860to church. They'd end up going to church. And so it's just, this is what God, we always ask,
00:55:47.380what could God do? Well, God could send revival. It just happens one day. God could. But I think
00:55:55.620a more helpful question is not what can God do, but what has God done? And historically for the
00:56:03.020last 2,000 years and biblically, as you see with Israel for a millennia and a half, what God has
00:56:11.080done, if we were to actually, it's not just every now and then. No, the majority of the time,
00:56:17.220If we were to put statistics on it, percentages, it is far more common that you see biblically and historically top-down revival than you see bottom-up.
00:56:33.840We have far more examples, certainly in the Old Testament, of the Christian prince coming in when the people are actually far, their hearts are far from the Lord.
00:56:44.020But the Christian prince comes in and then the hearts of the people eventually catch up and follow.
00:56:49.160You see that example actually far more than you see the people coming to the Lord within their hearts and then, you know, getting better rulers in the civil realm.
00:57:02.280Well, you're getting at how unquestioning we are about the principles of democracy.
00:57:06.460We've just assumed that the world is organized according to democratic principles.
00:57:10.560and that that's it you know this is kind of something i want to come back to that you laid
00:57:14.740out with your two principles of sort of having hope for the future and honor honor for your
00:57:21.140fathers you know ultimately what we're talking about with patriotism and even uh sort of civics
00:57:26.340is an assault on patriarchy you know that it ultimately comes down to father rule um but we
00:57:33.800have assumed democratic principles and then just quickly contrast that with what you laid out there
00:57:38.920in sort of that historical sketch, you know, in what you're proposing, what we saw for a time in
00:57:43.220America, we saw it for a time in Britain, is that the sword of a just ruler is actually a plow.
00:57:49.540It makes the soil tender for the planting of the gospel. You know, and so we all sort of look
00:57:56.040forward to that day when the swords will be beaten into plowshares. A just civic ruler helps do that.
00:58:02.480It makes the ground tender for the reception of the seed of the gospel. But again, we just
00:58:08.480Because we've assumed democratic principles all the way up, we forget these things intentionally, and we come to despise the thought of them in a way that is historically very aberrant.
00:58:45.580But that society developed into a society where many regenerate people came out of it because they were being discipled, because they were being catechized, because they were surrounded by a culture that was focused on Jesus Christ.
01:00:39.480You've got the transgender madness with minors.1.00
01:00:43.980And then you're a Christian leader or even a Christian pastor.1.00
01:00:47.680And you have a platform that reaches thousands of people.
01:00:51.380and you think you know what time it is it's time to tell people in incessantly that christian
01:00:58.820culture would actually be worse what like walk me through that like what what has to happen
01:01:05.460to someone to think that i have a thought why a thought on that and that is um steven wolf tweeted
01:01:11.740out a while ago in a ginocracy their categories of ethics are not good and evil they are safe
01:01:18.460and scary and christian nationalism is really scary well safetyism man that's such a that's
01:01:25.120such a perfect encapsulation and again women are made with glorious category distinctions from men
01:01:31.460right but society cannot inherently in a fallen world be safe there has to be antagonism there
01:01:39.240has to be agony and conflict and so once you do have sort of i mean i see this as a southern
01:01:45.180baptist we constantly cater to the feminine perspective and so once safety becomes the idol
01:01:51.740safety becomes the god of the system uh men particularly men who are willing to acknowledge
01:01:59.840and oppose evil that is a very unsafe um occupation you know dynamic right right it represents
01:02:08.840something that is unsafe. But, you know, if safety is the high good, it can't ultimately work that
01:02:15.720way. But there's this time where you feel like, well, anything that's dangerous, we can just
01:02:19.060tamp down. And it only really works with Westerners because we have this Christian ethic.0.66
01:02:26.020Eastern societies don't value safety the way that we do. And so they're happy to kind of fill that0.95
01:02:33.000vacuum with, um, I don't, I don't, you know, if not violence, at least aggression, which again,
01:02:38.960feels very unsafe, but they're happy to take advantage of a, of a playing field where opponents
01:02:44.840have been emasculated and taken off the field who would oppose them because they were told that
01:02:49.740aggression, ambition, and, uh, conflict are, well, that just can't be part of a civil society.
01:02:56.360That's a really good point. It makes me think of, um, this is a silly thought, but this is how I
01:03:02.540thing it makes me think of uh bruce wayne and uh you know i like you know his parents you know and
01:03:10.100the infamous scene you know of them getting mugged outside of the theater you know and and it's it's
01:03:15.240the the mother you know who's uh just just give him what he wants just give you know the thief
01:03:20.500what he wants so that he'll leave us alone and that's kind of the sentiment you see like videos
01:03:25.160of like elderly old women in france you know a few months back you know like um like just just
01:03:31.480kowtowing to um to to violent young men who who hate their country and and hate their heritage
01:03:39.340and um you know when there was mobs and and things like that in the street you know and
01:03:44.700and you don't see you know the the the native french people rising up you see them uh bowing0.89
01:03:54.520down and it's not because they think it's good right they'll say that because same thing c.a
01:03:59.560right it's it would be unsafe to publicly say that you think this is bad you know so so but
01:04:05.580in their heart of hearts they absolutely know that it's bad but they think that if they concede
01:04:11.420it'll simply go away and so the same way that statistically it would be you know the woman
01:04:16.920who you know if she's held at gunpoint you know she would be the one who would be more likely to
01:04:24.320give the assailant what they want, thinking that if I just give them what they want, they'll go
01:04:30.540away. And so that safety reflex that is uniquely feminine, it is in general more feminine than it
01:04:38.540is masculine. So it's not even saying this is right. It's just saying to concede to this thing,0.66
01:04:48.200which is actually wrong um is safe so concession is safe um not that it's right but it's safe1.00
01:04:55.500and so then you know the question is just at that point just who's in charge you know so if women0.93
01:05:01.500are in charge then you're going to see um there's going to be constantly a push towards conceding
01:05:07.860and uh if men are in charge are in charge you know and the enemy's at the gates and they say
01:05:13.900you know you've got to you know bring out your firstborn and we're gonna we're gonna mutilate0.98
01:05:19.260their genitals you know and if you don't uh then we're gonna do something even worse well if men1.00
01:05:24.260are in charge they say um well okay sounds like i'm gonna have to kill you you know and if women1.00
01:05:31.540are in charge they say well sounds like um our firstborn is gonna lose their genitals you know0.99
01:05:38.000that's that's just the difference between men and women well and that was the uh that was the
01:05:43.080rhetorical play for the, uh, pro-trans movement, right? Would you rather your kid be mutilated or0.79
01:05:49.240commit suicide because you won't let them be their authentic self. And so who did that appeal to?0.99
01:05:53.800Right. The feminine instinct is it'd be better to have the child, uh, mutilated than to, uh,1.00
01:06:01.100you know, risk the danger of losing the life. Again, this, these are corrupt aspects of what's0.93
01:06:07.880uniquely glorious about a woman she is supposed to create a safe domain for her family but it1.00
01:06:13.440comes within the umbrella of a father who draws the kind of boundaries and guards them that that
01:06:20.160kind of safety for her family can exist in but once it's taken out of that context and becomes
01:06:24.460the guiding principle of society it just yields the it yields the conflict to the people are still
01:06:30.520willing to be violent yeah that's good yeah that's it i mean that's i think that's it so
01:06:36.200you answered the question again like i said the disclaimer is this is speculation but we're trying
01:06:42.400to answer a question that you know what's it we're not just being mean it's an important question
01:06:46.380why is the church our leaders in the church um saying things like christian culture uh is bad
01:06:57.440i mean that's just an asinine statement you know and so what why why would why you know what what's
01:07:04.140behind that and we're saying well maybe it's because these christian leaders even if they're0.77
01:07:07.700men they're beholden to to women that in an informal sense and sadly it's becoming formal
01:07:14.460but in an informal sense women have been at the the helm of evangelicalism for for a while now
01:07:21.140right let me let me throw another possibility out there which is we we started this episode
01:07:28.620talking about patriotism and the sort of anti-American attitude that a lot of sort of
01:07:35.400young, restless reformed, our generation of guys has had. And what if the disdain for a Christian
01:07:45.460nation is actually a disdain for Western culture and Western culture is Christian. And these people0.94
01:07:56.480are so against Western culture that they hate Christianity.
01:08:02.880So some people might say, I'm getting this backwards,
01:08:05.500that they hate Western culture because it is Christian.
01:08:08.380And I'm saying, what if they hate Christianity so much
01:08:11.720because they really hate European Western culture0.91
01:08:14.460and have been taught that it is an oppressive, evil regime,
01:08:17.960and so they need to reject any kind of culture that looks like that,0.88
01:08:22.860which would be a Christian culture?0.99
01:08:24.480I'm just throwing this idea out here.1.00
01:08:26.480No, I agree. I've said for a while now is, you know, as that, that conversation has been happening publicly with guys who I would consider to be friends, you know, the guys who are not, you know, they're not enemies by any stretch.
01:08:38.120Um, but you know, there has been kind of an intramural debate in terms of, you know, is
01:08:44.560it, um, is, is it a war on Christianity and therefore a war on whiteness, a war on, you
01:08:51.620know, Western civilization, or is it, uh, what, what I would say is, um, you and you're0.89
01:08:57.420proposing, you know, the, the other way around and my, my proposals, I, I just think there
01:09:01.700are two wars and I think it, I think it's important.
01:09:04.580I think it's a, it's a difference that matters.
01:09:06.700I think there are two wars. There really is a war on whiteness on Europeans. And then there's a war0.77
01:09:12.600on Christianity. And so I don't think it's just one circle. There's a war on Christianity. And
01:09:17.840that happens to affect Westerners most because they come from a Christian heritage. No, I think
01:09:22.400there's two wars. There's a war on white people and there's a war on Christian people. And it's0.88
01:09:27.140not just one circle. It's a Venn diagram. And there is, I admit, a ton of overlap there,
01:09:32.280but they are two distinct circles with, I'd say, probably a 90%, you know, 85, 90% overlap,
01:09:39.660but there's still some level of distinction. The reason why I think, here's just one case study.
01:09:44.340This isn't the only reason, but just as an example for why that distinction matters,
01:09:49.340because you have to do something with the virtually universal hatred of Israel,
01:09:55.740the modern nation state of Israel. And so if it is just, it's because they hate Christ,
01:10:00.940then you start getting the rhetoric of like, well, it's because Israel has a whiff of Christ,
01:10:05.580right? Because their Torah observance is, you know, is, so then you have to start carving out
01:10:10.600this position that Israel is Christian adjacent. Yes, we recognize, you know, that there's no0.79
01:10:15.320salvation apart from, you know, by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. So we're
01:10:18.900not going to go so far, we're not going to, you know, be heretics, you know, and say that Israel,
01:10:23.460you know, can, has a second path to salvation some other way besides Christ. We're not, you know,
01:10:28.100we know better than that. We're not doing that and praise God, you know, none of our friends
01:10:31.660are doing that. But we will say that although they are not Christian, it's not just believer
01:10:36.840and unbeliever, light and darkness of which there's no fellowship, but there actually is
01:10:41.400this third category. There's light and light, there's light, there's darkness, and then there's
01:10:46.200light adjacent. There's Christian, there's unbeliever, and there's Christian adjacent.0.95
01:10:51.140And so, you know, Israel is receiving so much hostility from so much of the world
01:10:56.540because, again, if you only have one war, if you don't have a war on whiteness and a war on
01:11:02.480Christianity, and it's a Venn diagram, and yes, there's a lot of overlap, but it is two distinct
01:11:07.140wars. If you reject that paradigm, you say, no, it's just a war on Christianity, and that, you
01:11:11.820know, happens by way of consequence to predominantly affect white people because of their Christian
01:11:16.820heritage. If you go that route, one of the reasons why I think this is a difference that matters0.81
01:11:21.140is because then you have to, and there's other examples that be given, but just using0.75
01:11:26.360Israel as one example, you therefore have to rope Israel into the war on Israel is the war on
01:11:32.860Christians. Whereas I would say, no, Israel is not Christian adjacent. In fact, out of every0.82
01:11:38.220major world religion, we could find some sects and niche cults. But in terms of Hinduism, Buddhism,
01:11:45.300Islam, and Judaism, every single major world religion outside of Christianity still has a
01:11:52.700fairly, a fairly fond view of Jesus. They deny his divinity and therefore it is blasphemy.0.98
01:11:59.160Therefore it is heresy and it will send you to hell. But, but Muslims think Jesus was pretty1.00
01:12:04.340good. You know, Buddhists think he was pretty good. Hindus think he was pretty good. Talmudic1.00
01:12:08.700Judaism is uniquely hostile towards Jesus out of every major world religion. And it's not even0.94
01:12:14.740close. So not only are they not Christian adjacent, if anything, and I just, I'm happy
01:12:19.680to just categorize them as a false major world religion that hates Jesus, just like Islam and1.00
01:12:25.260everything. But if I was to be technical, not only would they not be, you know, Christian adjacent,0.89
01:12:30.180they would be the farthest from, they would be, there's Christians and then there's enemies of0.85
01:12:35.100Christ. And then over here, even more animosity towards Christ is Talmudic Judaism in a category0.81
01:12:43.040all its own. So not only is it not Christian adjacent, it is, so I'm happy with just two1.00
01:12:47.520categories, you know, light and darkness. But if we, you know, this idea of light, darkness and0.96
01:12:52.140light adjacent, well, if you want to go that route, then that kind of tempts me. It's my
01:12:55.780personality to say, well, no, really there's, there's light, there's darkness. And then there's,
01:13:00.480there's a pitch black darkness where, you know, what, you know, and, and that would be Israel.0.96
01:13:05.380So all that being said, my point is just to say, I think that I think it does matter to say it's0.79
01:13:10.800two distinct wars, one on whiteness, one on Christianity, and yes, a lot of overlap, because0.51
01:13:16.340then what you can say is that the war on Israel, I would say the war on Israel, people's hostility
01:13:21.540towards Israel is not because Israel has a whiff of Christ and they lump them in the Christian
01:13:26.020category. I think it's because they have a whiff of whiteness and they get lumped in the white0.82
01:13:29.620category. And the reason why they have a whiff of whiteness is not because of a lighter skin pigment.
01:13:35.280That's not what I'm saying. Not in terms of their physical, the way they look. But what I'm saying0.88
01:13:42.280is they get roped into the war on whiteness0.77
01:13:46.620because in their context, in the Middle East,
01:17:10.140I think this is a helpful analogy is it should be viewed very similar to Mormonism.
01:17:15.500The Book of Mormon is not an addendum to the Bible, but it's the lens through which the
01:17:23.180Bible is now read. And what it does is it overrides the Bible. That's what the Talmud does to the
01:17:29.060Torah. So it's not, so Christians, it's not that, well, Judaism is just Christianity minus half.0.85
01:17:35.280We have old and new and they just have old. No, they have a New Testament. Their New Testament0.95
01:17:39.760is the Talmud. So our New Testament, we read the Old Testament in light of the new. They read the0.97
01:17:46.640Old Testament, the Torah, in light of their New Testament, which is the Talmud, which what does
01:17:50.680that amount to? It amounts to the Old Testament being completely perverted. So it's not that they0.81
01:17:57.120only have the Old Testament. They don't have anything because what they do have, it's not
01:18:03.060that we have the whole Bible, they have half. The half that they do have is eradicated by their New1.00
01:18:08.480Testament equivalency, which is the Talmud. And if people in the same way, it's the same way that0.65
01:18:14.100the Book of Mormon works with the Bible, so too the Talmud works that way with the Torah. And I
01:18:19.900think of that and that's really basic but a lot of christians haven't been taught that i didn't
01:18:23.820learn that until the last like three years i i'm ashamed to say and but but that's super basic and
01:18:29.560a super defensible position that you know like nobody's going to be able to say no actually like
01:18:34.420no that's just true and when you figure that out then then i think it becomes much easier to0.79
01:18:40.100recognize okay um judaism is not like uh our second cousin this is like they're not on the team
01:18:47.560and uh and and then what does that mean so therefore hate him no therefore um we need
01:18:53.280like any other false doctrine we need to preach christ and him crucified and pray that god would
01:18:57.480save them you know but but that this this third category of christian adjacent that that one
01:19:03.380that dog don't hunt so all right well any any other thoughts about patriotism or you know
01:19:10.340we're a long ways from patriotism we got into israel but but the point the point is just to
01:19:16.300say that like you know there's we were talking about honoring our fathers honoring the in our
01:19:21.240case you know as united states citizens that being honoring you know the founding and and
01:19:26.280honoring this anglo-protestant tradition honor honoring western civilization the great books
01:19:32.100the classical tradition these kinds of things and there's a war on that that's how we got there
01:19:37.940and that war is a war on christianity but i think it's also that i think there's two wars
01:19:42.460what so what what do you guys that's how we got there but any final thoughts on that
01:19:47.420well the the one thing that we kind of talked about preparing for the episode is what do you
01:19:53.340do with celebrating holidays and if you do if you see patriotism as a patriarchal endeavor
01:20:00.440which i think you should the question of what the church celebrates becomes pretty relevant
01:20:04.880and so here again enemies of the faith understand this that's why you know we've done
01:20:10.760an episode on how pride is becoming a new national identity um holidays mark out your identity in the
01:20:18.540same way that family traditions help mark out your family's identity right so like there's an
01:20:24.420inner regulative principle for me that would balk at the idea of having sort of a patriotic
01:20:29.660robert jefferson style lord's day service about the united states of america i think it's really
01:20:35.800good for a church to get together and celebrate independence day you know in the parking lot or
01:20:40.360church member's house with hot dogs. Something that I've been negligent within our own church,
01:20:46.800but I've tried to do is incomplete as it is. I think one of the things we should celebrate as
01:20:53.560a holiday is the fall of Roe and the overturning of a national black mark on our spiritual resume.
01:21:01.560So like we want to celebrate those things. I'm not going to do it on Lord's Day corporate worship,
01:21:06.680But I'm happy for our church family to do it as sort of a voluntary act.
01:21:11.600Probably wouldn't do that with Labor Day.
01:21:13.900And Jeff, I think, too, sorry to interrupt you, but I think what you can do is you don't necessarily need to celebrate that as a religious thing.
01:22:04.580And again, in a way that I'm not going to pay any attention to Labor Day as our church.
01:22:09.360But Independence Day, Roe, yeah, I'm going to celebrate those things as sort of marks of our family identity under the lordship of our father.