The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Christian Patriotism, Mid Eva, & Voting For Trump with Backwoods Beliefs

00:00:00.000 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your host, Pastor Joel

00:00:03.380 Webin with Right Response Ministries, and in this episode, I was privileged to welcome back to the

00:00:07.640 show now, the second time, the co-host of Backwoods Belief. We've got Jeff and Ben. We're going to be

00:00:14.460 talking about patriotism, the fifth commandment, honoring our fathers. We talk a little bit about

00:00:20.360 abolitionism at the end of the video and some of the intramural debates back and forth between guys

00:00:26.840 who would agree ultimately on being an abolitionist, but disagree on some of the specific

00:00:34.120 applications of that conviction, like voting in a presidential election. This is a jam-packed

00:00:40.980 episode. A lot of really just helpful, relevant topics and questions that the average Christian

00:00:46.960 is thinking about. Can I celebrate the 4th of July? Why do people hate America? Why is Western

00:00:52.800 civilization under attack? This war on whiteness, is it just a war on Christianity or those two 0.99

00:00:58.440 distinct wars? All of that we get into. It's a jam-packed episode for the blue-collar everyday 0.71

00:01:04.820 Christian political commentary, theological commentary. It's a banger. So buckle up and enjoy.

00:01:14.180 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:22.800 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:01:27.540 I'm your host, Pastor Tull Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:01:30.240 In this episode, I am privileged to welcome back to the show one of my favorite podcasts

00:01:34.820 that used to actually put out episodes, but it's been a couple months now.

00:01:39.020 They've gotten busy with life because they're blue-collar folks who are good churchmen

00:01:45.040 and just good husbands, good fathers who are busy doing blue-collar type things.

00:01:50.020 So they are on a hiatus with their own platform.

00:01:53.200 So I figured, you know, we might as well force them to podcast by having them here at Right Response.

00:01:58.220 So Jeff and Ben, welcome to the show.

00:02:01.580 Thank you, Joel.

00:02:02.300 Thanks, Joel.

00:02:03.080 Glad to be here.

00:02:04.140 So real quick, go ahead and plug your channel, assuming, you know, Lord willing, one day you'll hop back on there.

00:02:11.640 Yeah.

00:02:12.040 So Backwoods Belief is a podcast that Jeff and I started.

00:02:15.980 Oh, man, I don't remember how long ago.

00:02:17.720 But 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.

00:02:38.360 and uh we've put out some episodes that i think have been helpful to people and uh we have been

00:02:44.000 lax in our releasing of episodes recently but i know we've both been pretty busy so it's been

00:02:50.460 hard to hard to find time to do it but nice jeff what would you say what do you feel like the the

00:02:56.140 vision of you and ben's podcast backwoods belief uh i think that christianity thrives on the margins

00:03:03.120 And we've been in a season where that vision has kind of been lost

00:03:07.900 We've assumed that the way for Christianity to thrive was by making inroads with elites

00:03:12.800 And, you know, in the Lord's providence and His blessing on our country

00:03:16.060 That did work for a while

00:03:17.660 But for the ruins of Christendom to be rebuilt

00:03:22.020 It'll have to come from a vigorous margin

00:03:25.000 That then returns to centers of cultural elites and power and whatnot

00:03:30.680 and shows them a better way forward. 0.94

00:03:33.400 So we're just kind of owning that Christianity does really well out in the sticks

00:03:37.460 and from the sticks has something to offer those in urban environments

00:03:42.520 that assume that they are in the places where power is held.

00:03:47.380 Amen. Yeah.

00:03:48.520 Yeah, it just depends where you are in history and what the Lord and His providence is doing.

00:03:52.200 And the conception of positive and neutral and negative world, I think, is helpful.

00:03:56.780 And, you know, we started off very much with a general positive view towards Christianity.

00:04:03.580 And then for a while, it was kind of like this neutral world where you didn't really

00:04:08.460 gain much by being a Christian, but you didn't really, you know, get penalized for it either.

00:04:13.080 And really, you know, for a while now, coming up on a decade, I would say, you know, probably 0.68

00:04:18.180 2015, Obergefell was kind of the nail in the coffin with officially being a negative world.

00:04:24.040 And we're not saying that the scenery of the United States towards Christianity is the most

00:04:34.000 negative that it could be. We're not claiming that at all, but we are saying that it has shifted to 0.69

00:04:40.180 where officially by being a biblical Orthodox Christian, you stand the promise of loss more 0.95

00:04:47.640 than gain. And that doesn't mean that there aren't faithful Christians losing more and more negative 0.89

00:04:53.100 places and more hostile places, but, um, it's not a persecution contest. Um, but you, you don't have

00:04:59.520 to be, um, you don't have to wait until your wife and children are beheaded to say that you're under

00:05:05.280 attack and to, uh, to try to do something about it. And so, and, and to say otherwise is just,

00:05:10.740 uh, foolishness. Mike, Mike Cosper, I think, didn't he say something recently about look at

00:05:15.820 how bad it is in Nigeria and, you know, so, so, but his point wasn't have gratitude in the Lord. 0.98

00:05:22.360 His 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

00:05:33.140 right cosper is a great uh he's a great example of the persecution fetish that's held by some of

00:05:41.700 our elite evangelical leaders and i couldn't use that term more loosely as applied to cosper and

00:05:47.260 christianity today but um the thing about cosper is he will constantly yield to whatever a pagan

00:05:55.680 culture wants and so he actually won't ever face persecution he'll just be a court evangelical for

00:06:01.920 whatever the spirit of the age demands.

00:06:04.140 And so it's easy for him to sit in isolation on an evangelical paycheck by

00:06:08.580 people who don't understand they're paying a betrayer and say, well, you know,

00:06:12.380 this isn't persecution. Of course, Mike,

00:06:14.680 you'll never experience it because there's nothing that you won't jettison

00:06:17.700 that the world demands of you.

00:06:19.860 Yeah. It's really not so bad for you because you never will.

00:06:22.900 You don't actually hold on to anything that matters.

00:06:25.320 Right. Yeah. I mean,

00:06:26.420 he'll be in the white house wearing a dress with a leash around his neck if

00:06:29.840 that's what they want.

00:06:31.920 That'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.

00:06:48.800 And 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.

00:07:03.760 yeah right not not joel barry uh but but wary so what what is what is wary's law because it is uh

00:07:11.560 man i mean there's there's a lot of you know predictions that could be made and you could

00:07:15.980 be right you could be wrong but wary's law is batting a thousand it's pretty amazing

00:07:20.680 yeah so i think it was at the beginning of this past year i posted a tweet that was basically

00:07:29.020 said something along the lines of, um, any woman, any woman with a, any conservative woman with a

00:07:36.480 public platform is on a trajectory towards liberalism. Um, and then I have since done

00:07:42.520 like a 45 minute video where I explained what I meant by that and why it's true. But essentially

00:07:47.380 what I was arguing is that, um, just by nature of the attempt to gain public favor, uh, a public

00:07:56.020 platform, to engage in the public discourse in a particular way, is in itself not a feminine

00:08:02.040 thing. And so by virtue of doing that, no matter what you're saying, you could be saying extremely

00:08:06.760 conservative things, but by virtue of engaging in that way, you are actually abandoning the nature

00:08:14.660 that God created you for, the purpose that God created you for. And so, you know, it's not an

00:08:19.840 attack on, I hate that I even have to say things like this, I really shouldn't, but it's not an

00:08:24.800 attack on um you know particular women like oh i hate these women or something like that it's

00:08:29.600 pointing out if you engage in this way you are already by virtue of engaging in this way putting

00:08:36.040 yourself on a bad trajectory and it's going to end up in really bad place and you know as i've

00:08:42.460 said to many of our friends let's just wait a year and we'll you know we'll see right tell me

00:08:47.420 about the exceptions exactly they'll say but you know yeah you might be generally right but there

00:08:51.940 exceptions and then they'll name you know somebody like it'll that'll never happen with so-and-so

00:08:56.720 you know they're they're true they're faithful they're conservative and uh and you yeah you

00:09:01.700 always respond by let's wait a year and goodness gracious uh it's disheartening you know but uh

00:09:07.900 but you're right because it really is an oxymoron you know it's kind of like uh jumbo shrimp you

00:09:12.680 know and what we're saying is not that a woman can't have conservative virtues and values of

00:09:17.380 course she can. Of course she can. Um, but it's, it's like a fish out of water. It's, um, it's an 1.00

00:09:23.540 oxymoron. It's, it's ironic and not in a good way. Um, that, you know, if a woman is conservative,

00:09:29.880 one conservative aspect would be a biblical conservative view of gender roles. And as we 0.57

00:09:35.300 look at gender roles, according to the scripture, a woman has a quiet and gentle spirit. So not,

00:09:40.320 not adoring herself with outward beauty, but an imperishable, that beauty will fade, right?

00:09:45.780 beauty fades and charm is deceptive. But a woman who fears the Lord is to be pleased. And so not 1.00

00:09:51.500 this outward perishable beauty, but an imperishable beauty of the heart, which is pleasing in the

00:09:56.420 sight of God, which is characterized by a gentle and quiet spirit. And so in public discourse,

00:10:02.420 we're saying that in many ways, it's not even just the public square of this idea that we're

00:10:11.760 let, let the best idea win where there's discourse between, you know, different philosophies and

00:10:16.700 worldviews. Um, but, but social media, especially Twitter, not, not necessarily every single

00:10:22.140 platform. Facebook, you know, is, is maybe a little bit more for, you know, the, the 65 year

00:10:27.660 old grandma to see pictures of the grandkids, you know, like there, there are different purposes,

00:10:31.920 but Twitter, especially X, whatever. Um, it's not really the public square. There's guys who

00:10:37.940 said 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

00:10:45.540 it's designed for a fight and uh and so putting a woman in a context to fight saying i'm a 0.53

00:10:52.940 conservative woman who holds to that women should be feminine and i'm going to fight you um until

00:10:59.260 until you agree with me it's just it's just silly you know that's that's you know so it's like uh

00:11:05.540 uh it's like saying uh women women are the weaker vessel and uh and i'm going to if you don't agree

00:11:13.760 with me um let's have a bench press competition whoever wins uh gets to be right you know so a 0.93

00:11:20.560 woman proving that she's weaker by outbenching men um it's kind of what we did with the woke 1.00

00:11:25.580 wars in like 2020 right you know it's like well let's get let's find a black guy and and have him

00:11:30.540 say, you know, the thing that, you know, the white guys are, you know, no is true, but, but we're

00:11:36.460 afraid to say. And so, you know, we've kind of done that with, with women and we're grateful for

00:11:41.820 these women who have, you know, stood the test of time. But really I would say the last thing I'll

00:11:45.680 say is, and you guys tell me if you disagree, but I think there are two outcomes. One is that if

00:11:50.680 there's a woman holding to, you know, this public voice and this, you know, and it's, and it's not

00:11:55.400 just every now and then, but it's really a part of their MO. It's, it's, it's what they do. It's

00:11:59.860 they're living, it's, you know, they're in the public discourse as a conservative voice, as a

00:12:05.460 woman. Um, the two outcomes, one is that, um, that it's an oxymoron and, and that inevitably they 0.88

00:12:12.120 drift left and become more progressive. Uh, the other outcome though, is that they actually could

00:12:17.600 trend right, in which case they won't continue to have a platform. They'll become so conservative

00:12:26.280 that 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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00:14:47.200 we want. I don't relish that my predictions have come true often. Right, right. Okay. Well, um,

00:14:56.120 let's go ahead and hop into it. You guys, you guys kind of frame it up for us. What are we,

00:14:59.960 what are we talking about? Well, we wanted to talk about patriotism. We're recording. I'm not

00:15:06.360 sure what the release date is on this, but we're recording pretty close to the celebration of

00:15:10.360 Independence Day. That always raises lots of heat and sometimes not enough light in evangelical

00:15:17.800 circles. And so pretty good time to give the right response to, you know, the need to honor

00:15:26.180 our fathers appropriately without engaging in some kind of idolatry all right we'll start us

00:15:32.860 start us off that's i mean that frames it up but uh what you know what what's the problem what in

00:15:38.140 evangelicalism as a whole i'll pose it as a question do you think uh that evangelicalism

00:15:43.840 as a whole is friendly towards things like independence day and honoring our founders

00:15:48.300 and our fathers and those you know are they patriotic or is that something that is uh

00:15:53.760 disappeared yeah i think that one of the things that has happened um in i mean the young we i'm

00:16:02.480 sure we talked about this the last time we did a show together the young restless reform movement

00:16:07.100 recognized a problem that existed which was you know the the robert jeffress kind of

00:16:14.320 patriotism in church um and wanted to steer away from that but what it ended up becoming i think

00:16:21.980 is almost an anti-American attitude. And I mean, certainly that's true among the left wing,

00:16:28.480 but even what we would think of as, excuse me, what we would think of as like right wing,

00:16:34.580 you know, the young restless reform movement, sort of the new Calvinists, they adopted a stance

00:16:41.140 of hostility towards that kind of patriotism in the church. And what that ended up being was a

00:16:48.180 rejection of patriotism at all we're now even loving america is seen as like an unchristian

00:16:53.700 uh idolatrous sort of behavior and i think i think that's we've we've gone off the deep end

00:17:00.900 like off the rails because actually it's it's good to love your country it's good to be thankful to

00:17:05.820 god for what your fathers have built and um to appreciate that and celebrate what was done in

00:17:12.400 passed by your forefathers which is so hypocritical because i mean how much how often do we hear about

00:17:18.480 how it's good to love your city right you can you know in and for your city all day long and and in 0.88

00:17:24.560 and for the world right you know i'm a citizen of the world kind of like a bob marley evangelicalism

00:17:29.640 you know like so i'm in you know in and for the world because you god so loved the world and

00:17:34.440 that's true so i love all nations all people which is good and right and true um and i'm in and for

00:17:40.360 my city. So it's like, um, locally, uh, there can be, um, there can be a local identity and a global

00:17:47.760 identity, but there cannot be a national identity. And well, that's not true. Unless, unless you're

00:17:54.500 Jewish, you know, uh, or, you know, or really to be fair and not just pick on Israel, but like you

00:18:00.600 can have a national identity so long as you're a part of any nation except for America, you know,

00:18:06.220 or maybe to be a little more specific, any non-Western nation, like you can, you know,

00:18:10.560 you can have a national identity if you're a part of, you know, if you're a part of Israel or if

00:18:15.120 you're a part of Palestine or if you're a part of, you know, of, uh, Uganda or the Sudan or

00:18:19.720 any, anywhere, Brazil, they can have a national identity, but Americans can't. And in a larger

00:18:24.420 scope, Europeans can't. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. 0.99

00:18:30.080 I do. And I mean, I'll confess that, like, I remember being a young man.

00:18:35.260 I think this name will ring a bell for people.

00:18:37.600 Maybe you're watching Cassie Bernal, who was killed in the Columbine shootings.

00:18:42.640 Her dad kind of went on a speaking tour and he came to my home church as a kid.

00:18:46.860 And so service one on the Lord's Day was about Cassie and her, you know, her martyrdom, basically.

00:18:55.100 And then service two that evening was in praise of the United States.

00:19:00.420 And I remember recoiling from it and finding it very distasteful.

00:19:04.100 So it's not like I don't understand these dynamics from within.

00:19:09.000 I understand why the YRR kind of balked at some of that stuff.

00:19:13.700 But 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.

00:19:33.700 And it actually is now colonizing even local endeavors.

00:19:37.140 You know, that's something Backwoods Belief really wants to be intentional about.

00:19:40.540 But you think about some of these projects where guys are intentionally forming local communities to cultivate Christian communities.

00:19:48.100 And now that's being seen as anathema and like a dangerous threat to society. 0.51

00:19:52.080 And so even, you know, the option that was once there that, yeah, you could love your city. 0.52

00:19:57.600 well you can love your city as long as nobody there is intentionally trying to be christian

00:20:01.700 in in organized in organized fashion it's really you can really become you can love your city so

00:20:07.180 long as your city hates jesus you can't you you can you can't love a lovely city uh you can only

00:20:14.540 love and there's something to be said for loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute

00:20:19.240 us but we do need proper theological categories but but still the general principle is there like

00:20:24.380 we can love our enemies, but, but that was never, Jesus never said, you know, love your enemies

00:20:28.840 and hate your friends, right? Like, I mean, even the, you know, the, the golden rules to love your

00:20:33.900 neighbor as you love yourself, which isn't a commandment, a moral obligation to work on self

00:20:39.000 love, you know, and self care, but it's, it's an assumption. Jesus was assuming just a universal

00:20:44.800 truth that everybody loves himself at some level. Now that that might be misguided, misdirected,

00:20:50.260 but even the person who, God forbid, commits suicide does it out of self-love. In fact,

00:20:54.880 that's one of the most selfish decisions that you can make. It's to forego all consideration

00:20:59.260 for anybody but self. And so it's, I'm so miserable and I'm in so much pain, but I love

00:21:04.260 myself so much more than I love everyone else that I'm going to provide relief for myself at the cost

00:21:09.920 of others. And so my point is that Jesus is assuming in the golden rule, love your neighbor

00:21:15.660 as you love yourself. He's not saying you need to work on self-love so that you can therefore love

00:21:19.260 others. No, he's saying you do love yourself, love yourself rightly in the right direction,

00:21:23.800 the right ways, and then seek to love others in the way that you love yourself. But that wasn't,

00:21:30.320 it's not just a commandment to love your enemies only. It's also, it's to also love your enemies

00:21:37.080 with the assumption that you love yourself and you love your friends. But now it's become,

00:21:42.940 you can, like you said, Jeff, you can absolutely love your city so long as your city loves 0.97

00:21:48.280 sodomites so long as your city you know loves um pagan idolatry but if your city if you're trying 0.87

00:21:54.740 to set up for instance a christian city you know a christian town like ridge runner then uh then

00:21:59.980 that town that that only even exists in theory before it even exists in practice that that city

00:22:06.000 christians should hate it before it even begins that which is just so i think i think the suicide

00:22:11.920 example is actually really appropriate because that's really what this is it's a kind of 0.97

00:22:17.140 um cultural suicide like yes westerners are culturally suicidal they think that they

00:22:24.500 their culture doesn't have the right to exist and so they're going to kill it by um you know

00:22:32.440 various different means uh yeah but uh well and that's the crux of the city thing like you can 0.95

00:22:38.360 love your city as long as your city is constantly self-consciously yielding to multiculturalism

00:22:43.620 Right. You know, at any point it has a distinct identity that's contrary to multiculturalism. 0.86

00:22:49.000 Well, now it's a threat to the public order. And I mean, you mentioned Ridge Runner. 0.99

00:22:53.760 Clearly, the world has an immune system to this.

00:22:57.720 How many times has the New York Times went after or some other kind of global news agency went after this smaller project?

00:23:05.800 Like you just said, that only exists in theory at this point.

00:23:08.200 But, you know, it immediately raises all the defense mechanisms and hackles that that post-war consensus has to bring to bear.

00:23:15.720 Mm hmm. You know, you guys got me thinking with the multiculturalism.

00:23:21.480 You said, Jeff, that you can love your city insofar as your city is multicultural.

00:23:27.140 It's a multicultural metropolis. And that's that that part isn't said out loud, but that probably is instinctively.

00:23:34.020 that's probably the the reason behind why it is proper and and permissible and even you know

00:23:40.720 even an obligation to love your city because cities right because it wasn't love your town

00:23:46.660 and and i think you know without trying to read into the phrase too much and just for the record

00:23:50.820 and you know just the elephant in the room we're talking about tim keller he would have been you

00:23:54.100 know one of the leader got leading guys with this and then beyond that the gospel coalition acts 29

00:23:59.520 picked it up all the all the i call them the gospel centered centered gospel gospel movement

00:24:04.100 you know so like all all those guys and we for the record we love gospel centrality and are

00:24:09.120 actually gospel centered which presupposes that if the gospel is the center there's actually

00:24:13.780 something around it and there's a difference between gospel centeredness which is good and

00:24:18.660 then the gospel centered movement which actually become became gospel myoptic um gospel exclusivism

00:24:25.200 at the point of antinomianism, a rejection of the law of God, anything that, you know, so

00:24:30.360 anyways, all that being said, the gospel-centered, you know, movement, TM, you know, gospel myopticism,

00:24:36.120 those guys, probably the reason why you heard in and for the city, love the city, and you never

00:24:41.760 heard in and for the rural, you know, county, you know, or in and for the small town is, you know,

00:24:48.060 in and for, you know, the country hillside is probably because the cities were the first places

00:24:53.700 in america to embrace multiculturalism so loving loving the city there was a time what now like

00:25:01.180 the whole country is multicultural yeah to a point that i think is unsustainable but um but there was

00:25:07.200 a time where the nation probably was more of a monoculture and that's why you shouldn't love

00:25:13.060 the nation whereas the city uh was um a multicultural hub so you could love the city 0.51

00:25:20.340 because loving the city was loving the world because the whole world had immigrated and moved

00:25:25.880 to the city so you could love the city because loving the city was loving the world you couldn't

00:25:30.060 love the nation because the nation would only be loving one part of the world and it happens to be

00:25:35.680 the part that's oppressive and colonizing i mean the closest the closest you get to them saying it

00:25:42.640 out loud is diversity is our greatest strength right and you know it's it's funny anybody who's

00:25:47.500 visited a major metropolitan area realizes that immigrants don't think this way. We all know

00:25:52.780 Chinatown. We all know the way they, you know, these immigrants wanting to be around people that

00:25:58.760 they understand organize themselves into little communities within the city. But that, you know, 1.00

00:26:05.260 the Westerner was supposed to say, well, I love my city because look, I can go get Thai food and I

00:26:09.380 can get Korean food. We have the recipes, Jeff. We have a recipe. Right. But it was always founded

00:26:16.580 on this idea that self-dissolution as a people and as a culture was the you know the right goal

00:26:23.680 for westerners you're right so we should love our nation right yeah i mean that's probably the thing

00:26:32.880 we haven't said out loud um legitimate patriotism um is an extension of the fifth commandment right

00:26:39.860 we've kind of referenced it but we have received good things that are hard to come by in a fallen

00:26:44.900 world from our forefathers we're supposed to honor not only our forefathers but the good

00:26:48.980 inheritance they've given us and so patriotism to whatever degree um it is good and there is

00:26:55.260 goodness in patriotism it's grounded in a in a command to honor your your father and mother

00:27:00.000 yeah you think about um the proverb a righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children's

00:27:06.880 children uh well that's what our forefathers did right um so they left say what you want

00:27:12.380 died and bled yeah for for their children's children or i thought they did it for strangers

00:27:18.220 what is it the constitution of the declaration of independence that says that they're doing

00:27:24.200 this for their progeny yeah for their posterity for us yeah for their posterity yeah yeah yeah

00:27:30.060 um so yeah i mean our forefathers were righteous men in that way they left an inheritance to us

00:27:37.960 that we have since squandered badly, which says something about us as well.

00:27:43.480 Well, if you're going to critique our nation,

00:27:47.260 I think about the resources of the continent that North America has.

00:27:52.500 It could be that ingratitude is the fundamental sin of our nation,

00:27:57.440 that we have been given such incredible resources and looked and said,

00:28:02.400 well, those are to be despised.

00:28:03.680 We want really good Thai food or whatever.

00:28:07.960 that's a really good point yeah i mean obviously there's multiple reasons for the success of our

00:28:12.660 nation number one the grace of god just his providence and it being favorable according to

00:28:17.940 his good pleasure that's what he determined at least during this this period of history and so

00:28:22.300 you know god bless him god bless god beyond that the sovereign grace of god uh it would be i think

00:28:28.900 the distinctly you know christian founding they could have been even more distinct i would have

00:28:32.960 appreciated that, but it was clearly a Christian and clearly a Protestant project. And so I think

00:28:38.780 obedience. So it's God's sovereign grace, but then it's also a blessing that came in response to a

00:28:45.660 particular obedience. So I think the Christian founding of the nation, but then Jeff, you put

00:28:50.340 your finger on another aspect. I would say that the third biggest aspect, so the grace of God,

00:28:54.540 the obedience of our fathers. But then lastly, there is actually a strong geographic

00:29:00.480 argument to be made that, that America, I mean, you look at the rest of the world

00:29:05.520 and that America was, was really bound to succeed unless it was just a completely wicked,

00:29:14.860 you know, rebellious people that, that God immediately placed under his judgment because

00:29:19.220 with just half a brain, you know, and I think the founders had a lot more than just half a brain,

00:29:24.240 but with half a brain, the rivers that the protection to the North, you've got snow to

00:29:29.880 the South, you have, you know, with Mexico, it's not just like, oh, well, Mexico, you know, cartel 0.92

00:29:35.800 and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they're not really a threat. But let's say that Mexico was on its peak

00:29:40.600 game, even with its peak game, Mexico is much, you know, much smaller than the United States.

00:29:47.520 It's so beneath you, you don't have a continent that's, you know, larger or a country that's

00:29:52.180 larger than your country to the South, or even the same size comparable. But instead, you have

00:29:58.120 this very narrow, much smaller country. Above, Canada is actually massive, but the conditions

00:30:03.800 aren't sustainable, you know, to have a massive population. And then on the West and the East,

00:30:12.040 you have oceans. You know, you think of, you know, just crossing a 15-mile, you know, waterway

00:30:19.660 with, you know, in Europe and some of the wars that took place, you know, in the World War I

00:30:25.020 and World War II and just this 15 mile, you know, wide waterway made it nearly impossible to invade

00:30:32.900 another country, much less, you know, you throw the Atlantic Ocean into the mix. Like, and so

00:30:38.140 there's, there was protection and then all the riverways, the Mississippi, you know, and being

00:30:42.940 able, I think it's something like, I think I could be wrong on these numbers, but it's something

00:30:46.980 around this, this will be ballpark. It's like 30 to 35,000 miles of navigable, um, uh, rivers

00:30:55.380 in the whole world. And, uh, 17,000 of those 30 to 35,000 worldwide are found in the United States.

00:31:03.900 You know, so there's just all these incredible resources and blessings. And, and we said,

00:31:11.060 you know what? Our fathers died for us to have them as their posterity, but we will give them

00:31:18.920 away because at the end of the day, there's just nothing like Mexican food.

00:31:27.940 There's an intrinsic self-loathing that we've talked about this on our podcast. It seems like

00:31:33.240 so many of the groups I'm a part of have this self-loathing and it's displaced the appropriate

00:31:38.600 gratitude. You know, it is not wicked to receive an inheritance. If it's righteous for a man to

00:31:44.020 leave an inheritance, it's righteous for a man to gratefully receive one. But that's where we broke.

00:31:49.600 You know, there's a lot of criticism out there for the boomers about not wanting to leave anything

00:31:53.260 for their children. You know, as a post-boomer generation, we've got to take stock of our

00:31:58.580 constant signaling that we don't value anything you'll leave us. And so, you know, there is guilt

00:32:05.380 in refusing to leave an inheritance but an ungrateful progeny that constantly tells their

00:32:10.780 parents they hate them isn't exactly primed to receive an inheritance and that's who we are

00:32:15.940 well said yeah so i something i've said in the past you know uh 2019 i came into post-millennial

00:32:23.860 eschatology convictions that i i really do believe not necessarily in the short run right just like

00:32:29.120 the stock market there are dips along the way but i thought that you know the overall trajectory was

00:32:33.720 going to be up, that Christ is king now, which post-millennials are not the only ones who believe

00:32:40.100 that. But with that, that Christ would usher in throughout human history in a gradual way,

00:32:45.500 he would usher in tangible, physical elements of his kingdom through nations and in practical ways.

00:32:53.100 And so instead of just setting it all right at the end, we'd have this gradual, you know,

00:32:57.080 the mustard seed growing into the mustard you know into a tree and so um that's that's still

00:33:03.520 my conviction i'm more convicted today than than before but what's changed for me is recognizing

00:33:09.160 that um for a while there when i was you know you become a calvinist and you know and you have a

00:33:15.640 cage stage and and i think you know post-millennialism might be a little bit similar so i i think i had

00:33:20.360 a bit of a cage stage where it's just like how you know this is the only the only thing that works

00:33:25.880 And then, you know, what changed for me was, one, just seeing over the last four years that post-millennials can be insufferable.

00:33:34.920 And so that was a profound moment for me. 0.95

00:33:38.920 But 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

00:33:50.360 But seeing that, you know, go fight win. 1.00

00:33:53.000 You know, they're like, hey, we'll be on the team.

00:33:54.640 And I was like, well, and then I'll take you, you know, beggars can't be choosers.

00:33:58.740 I want to win, you know?

00:33:59.720 And so, uh, there's nothing more ironic than a post mill guy who thinks we're going to

00:34:04.160 win sending away non post mill guys that would hurt your chances of winning. 0.61

00:34:07.800 That just, that seems ridiculous.

00:34:09.340 So anyway, so all these guys saying, I think, you know, things, things can get better, uh,

00:34:15.240 by the grace of God, not that they, he hasn't promised it, but, but they could, if we, you

00:34:19.560 know, if we would call upon his name and humble ourselves and repent of our sins, like things

00:34:24.420 could get better. And so all that being said, uh, I realized now it, I don't want to be so specific

00:34:29.600 and say you got to be post-mill, but I do think you guys tell me if this is fair. I think there's

00:34:33.240 two things that the evangelical has to embrace. And I think you can do this as an Arminian or a

00:34:38.540 Calvinist. I think you don't have to be reformed. I think you can do it as pre-mill, all-mill,

00:34:43.920 post-mill. I think, you know, I think you could even do it as a dispensationalist by golly. And

00:34:50.020 And so here are the two things.

00:34:51.560 I think you have to have hope for the future and honor for our fathers.

00:34:56.420 Honor for our fathers, hope for the future.

00:34:58.080 And I think that evangelicals have been psyoped into thinking.

00:35:01.840 And I think part of it was dispensationalism.

00:35:04.120 And that's why I'm kind of hard on the theology, although there's some of the most precious

00:35:08.560 people who hold to it.

00:35:10.200 But my point is, I think dispensationalism was part of the psyop, but it's more than

00:35:14.720 just that.

00:35:15.320 that ultimately evangelicalism,

00:35:17.760 I would say for at least the past four to seven decades

00:35:21.020 in America specifically has had the opposite

00:35:24.540 when it comes to the past and when it comes to the future,

00:35:27.840 that they've had disdain for fathers

00:35:30.060 and despair for the future,

00:35:32.180 disdain for fathers and despair for the future.

00:35:36.320 And I think what we need, and again, C.A.,

00:35:39.120 I think you could have a lot of different theological convictions

00:35:42.000 and still agree on these two things.

00:35:43.900 we're not going to have disdain for our fathers. We're going to have honor for our fathers and

00:35:49.080 we're not going to have despair for the future. We're going to have hope for the future. And I

00:35:53.060 think any way you slice that theologically, I think there's a lot of different roads that can

00:35:58.080 lead to Rome and where you can get behind those two positions. And that seems to me to be the

00:36:04.260 movement. If you had asked me in 2020, I'd say it's a post-millennial movement. But between COVID,

00:36:11.180 It's like, I'd like, I'd like to say it was all the reformed churches that stood their

00:36:14.580 ground against tyranny, you know, and lockdowns and vaccinated, but it wasn't, man. 0.97

00:36:18.580 The Calvary Chapel guys made us look dumb, you know? 0.96

00:36:21.360 So a bunch of Arminians, you know, had more spine than, you know, partly because the Calvinist 0.98

00:36:27.480 movement attracts that theology.

00:36:29.460 I think it's right, but it attracts, you know, pencil necks, you know, it attracts

00:36:33.720 bean counters and bean counters don't have a lot of spine, you know?

00:36:37.920 So 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

00:36:54.960 So not only did they not do better than other theological camps, they were some of the worst.

00:37:00.180 So 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.

00:37:22.520 it has some charismatics in there god bless them you know i disagree on some things but

00:37:27.900 um there's it's not just it's not these clear cookie cutter theological lines of cessationism

00:37:33.700 versus it's the charismatics are on the team disbies are on the team pre-mill and all mill

00:37:39.800 is on the team so then what is the team and if i had to define it as simply as possible with two

00:37:45.180 things the team is guys who don't hate our past and have hope for our future that's the team

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00:39:20.360 wealth outside of wall street and avoid the coming banking meltdown the danger of centralized power

00:39:26.800 is often represented by the word king as americans we hate the word king civilian ownership of body

00:39:34.560 armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals and so

00:39:42.100 Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the

00:39:46.540 honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the King of kings and he governs

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00:39:57.880 is no king but Christ. We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your

00:40:03.700 Armorsmith choice.

00:40:12.100 i think too um i agree with all of that but i think also another element is just the ability

00:40:24.320 to think in political categories and not necessarily just theological categories i was

00:40:30.620 just listening to um andrew and cj on their podcast earlier today and they were talking

00:40:36.000 about this thing and man they were so right is you know one of the there are a lot of positive

00:40:42.780 things about the sort of 20th century theonomist crowd um that they get a lot right but i think

00:40:47.920 one of the things that i see a struggle with is just an incapability or an unwillingness to think

00:40:54.080 in political categories or in political terms like what we're trying to accomplish for the nation

00:40:59.860 is a political um like we're looking for a political answer to a problem to a political

00:41:07.120 problem so yeah you know um the worship as warfare thing is it's a good sentiment but it doesn't

00:41:14.040 actually accomplish political goals and it can't accomplish political goals because god didn't

00:41:19.180 create the church to have the bear the sword you know the church has the keys of the kingdom

00:41:25.060 The state has the sword, and those two, while they talk to one another, they're never mixed with each other.

00:41:33.660 And so that's something that the two kingdoms guys, like the radical Westminster West two kingdoms guys, take that to an extreme.

00:41:41.800 But 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.

00:41:54.320 And 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.

00:42:08.600 So 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.

00:42:30.600 we have you know a heavenly kingdom well yeah but that's clearly not what he's talking about he's

00:42:35.720 talking about a political problem which is where does this people live where is their home on this

00:42:41.240 earth i don't have any food or clothing we'll be right and well yeah right be blessed and get off

00:42:46.800 and get off my place right yeah go get out of here yeah that's not a helpful that's not a helpful

00:42:52.660 answer to a problem that is not a spiritual not entirely i'll say a spiritual problem because 0.65

00:42:59.200 obviously there are spiritual aspects to the problem of what's happening to the United States

00:43:03.280 of America, but largely it's a political problem as well. And you're not going to answer a political

00:43:08.000 problem with a purely, you know, spiritual pie in the sky kind of answer. Hopefully that all

00:43:15.420 makes sense. Well, and we're even just bizarre as a generation to think that political categories

00:43:22.180 have to be antithetical to theological categories. That's not what the reformed tradition thought.

00:43:28.220 It's not what our actual enemies think.

00:43:31.300 Materialists don't think that political goals can be separable from spiritual.

00:43:35.420 I mean, who do the materialists hate?

00:43:38.260 They hate Christians and they want to see Christian influence driven from society.

00:43:42.100 You know, there's that famous example of Marx collaborator who said, who do you hate most? 0.74

00:43:47.080 And he said, Spurgeon.

00:43:48.260 These guys know, you know, you talk to some of the Hindus online. 0.98

00:43:54.180 They know Christianity is in their way.

00:43:55.780 but for some reason we're the only people who tend to think that politics has to be pitted against

00:44:00.940 theology and it's i mean we're just historically disconnected from any not just uh christian group

00:44:07.920 thinking that way but basically every other ideology out there they all know there's a

00:44:12.280 spiritual component even the ones who would deny a spiritual reality right now that's a great point

00:44:17.180 and what what you were saying ben about the you know the reconstructionist so for the listener if

00:44:22.480 if that's a new term, um, it's the theonomy guys, um, the guys, you know, theonomy being

00:44:27.940 God's law. And so, uh, some of the, so I would identify as a general equity theonomist, but I

00:44:34.080 would break on, on some issues from some of the, the OG theonomist guys that were known as the

00:44:40.260 reconstructionist. So that'd be, you know, guys like Rush Denny or Greg Bonson or Gary North

00:44:45.120 and those guys to be fair to them. And you said this, Ben, they got a lot right. And, and honestly,

00:44:51.460 they also got separation of church and state right. Now they would have been more of an Abraham 1.00

00:44:56.640 Kuyper, you know, a Kuyperian persuasion. So they would have referred to that concept

00:45:01.080 with like a framework of spheres rather than kingdoms. And so instead of, you know, the

00:45:07.220 sacred and the secular common kingdom and that kind of being the church and state respectively,

00:45:13.460 that's an oversimplification, but, you know, state civil kind of things are common things. 0.86

00:45:18.960 And 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

00:45:35.060 He's ruling here and he is ruling. 0.92

00:45:38.160 There 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

00:45:45.460 He's king still of both of them, but he has different means of executing his kingly rule in these two kingdoms.

00:45:54.080 The 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

00:46:00.640 And so all that being said, the Reconstructionists, they had those categories too.

00:46:04.820 They would have called them sphere, you know, referred to them as spheres more than kingdoms necessarily.

00:46:09.740 but this is where i think they were wrong is um they were insistent relentlessly insistent

00:46:18.400 that they recognize there's two spheres there's the church and gospel preaching word and sacrament

00:46:23.320 and then there's you know the state and they recognize that the state has to legislate morality

00:46:28.620 it has to bear the sword it needs laws it needs you know there's voting there's they knew that

00:46:34.640 and they talked about it all the time but here's the deal they thought that the only way that that

00:46:38.940 could really get better is with a 50% majority plus one regenerate hearts. So they thought that

00:46:46.280 they did see a distinction between, they would have said spheres instead of kingdoms, but the

00:46:51.980 church and the state, but they thought that the church's task, they didn't see these as two tasks

00:46:58.420 to be simultaneously pursued. They saw it as step one, step two, that the church had to complete

00:47:05.120 its task first. So God would have to send revival. Um, and then, uh, then if there was enough

00:47:12.600 revival and out of that enough regeneration, um, then we could elect our way into righteous laws

00:47:20.000 in the civil sphere. And, and, and with that, a lot of them actually had a kind of, you know,

00:47:25.540 so step one, you can't do it both at the same time, you know, pursuing word and sacrament

00:47:29.940 with the church and also pursuing righteous laws with the state. You can pursue them and they did

00:47:34.800 to be fair to them. They did pursue it, but they didn't think it would be ultimately successful

00:47:38.540 until the church was, was substantially more successful in its, in its role, you know,

00:47:44.220 God sending revival. And they also thought that God would have to send revival through the church

00:47:49.480 and he would also have to, uh, kind of, so like bringing up the church with regenerate hearts,

00:47:55.560 gospel preaching, revival, that kind of stuff. And, and simultaneously he would have to bring down,

00:48:00.240 but in a spiritual supernatural sense bring down the state so a lot of them were actually looking 0.74

00:48:05.520 to you can read about this uh they put a lot of stock in y2k you remember that they put like they

00:48:11.100 were really like like the only way this is going to happen is one revival through the church more

00:48:16.020 regenerate hearts we have to have a majority population of christians you can't do it with

00:48:19.980 a minority must be a it must be a bottom up grassroots restoration of the country uh so it's

00:48:26.560 got to be bottom up. It'll never be top down. Whereas it's like, well, but less than 3% of 0.75

00:48:31.720 the population was LGBT. And in 40 years, they organized, they were vigilant, and they replaced 0.93

00:48:38.540 the literal American flag with a rainbow in 40 years. They didn't have a majority. They didn't

00:48:43.400 wait for a majority. And so anyway, so they thought the church has to be successful in a

00:48:48.700 supernatural sense. God has to send revival. And then also the state has to be supernaturally

00:48:53.820 unsuccessful, you need some kind of apocalypse scenario like Y2K or whatever and for the state

00:49:02.000 to be disrupted. But if the state is disrupted over here and Christians have been preaching 1.00

00:49:08.000 faithfully over there and you got 51% of the population being Christian and they also happen 0.69

00:49:15.000 to be, as good Christians, they happen to be preppers and homesteaders, then and only then

00:49:21.820 will america change and we would just say so so to be fair they did have the distinction of church

00:49:26.980 and state um but we would just say no that distinction of church that that's good um but

00:49:33.140 but by god's grace we could actually have a this is what's crazy we could have i know it sounds

00:49:38.540 like blasphemy to to some of the the anabaptist type guys but we could have a christian nation

00:49:44.420 in the political sphere long before we had a distinctly Christian revival in the church and

00:49:52.120 spiritual sphere. We could actually have a Christian nation long before, it could be 40

00:49:57.840 years after we officially had a Christian nation with Christian laws and adopting, for instance,

00:50:03.260 the Apostles' Creed as a preamble to the Constitution. You could have a Christian nation,

00:50:07.140 truly, in terms of legislation and the judicial systems and all this kind of stuff,

00:50:13.180 a Christian nation 40 years before actually having half of the population being actual Christians

00:50:20.980 in the true regenerate eternal sense. It's like, well, where in the heck are you getting that from,

00:50:25.400 Joel? Well, history, Constantine, Alfred, but then also Bible, right? It's not like Israel was

00:50:33.480 like, you know what, we have preachers who've been preaching the gospel faithfully, and we've

00:50:38.760 now achieve 51% of the population of Israel is now officially regenerate and loves the Lord.

00:50:44.740 And because of that, now we will see to it that we get a good king. No, you have a bunch of

00:50:48.960 idolaters. Then Josiah comes in and says, you know what? I'm not going to wait for your hearts to

00:50:54.320 change. God will or will not do that as he sees fit according to his sovereignty. But even if

00:51:01.020 you're wicked internally at the level of the heart, um, externally, especially in public 0.86

00:51:07.720 there, the, the, the, uh, Molech sacrifice will stop immediately. The high places will come down, 0.96

00:51:16.340 you know, and that's, I think that's the stuff that Stephen Wolf talks about. That's the stuff

00:51:20.720 that where medieval loses its mind. Owen Strand cannot comprehend that concept. It just, he just,

00:51:28.500 he's like cannot compute it just it makes him crazy you think about like the king of nineveh

00:51:34.140 jonah shows up and he's like all right guys we're all going to repent now and they did like the

00:51:39.560 nation did um so you don't you don't need now some might argue that's a national revival but i i think

00:51:46.160 it was more of the king said we're going to do this so we're going to do it well and and being

00:51:50.700 that's the thing there can be catastrophic revival or you catastrophic to use tolkien's category

00:51:56.100 There can be. There absolutely can be. But the thing that's been jettisoned is that the law teaches.

00:52:01.660 The law restrains evil so good can flourish. And it teaches people what is good.

00:52:06.660 You said, you know, the government can't enforce morality. That's all it can do.

00:52:11.120 It can only say this is good and that's bad. So it's easy to look at our own country, right?

00:52:16.580 When there are blue laws for Sunday, Christianity does a little bit better 0.70

00:52:22.840 because people have this sort of enforced honoring of the Lord's Day. 0.95

00:52:27.640 Obergefell comes in, and it teaches people, no, sodomy is normal. 0.72

00:52:32.280 It's completely acceptable, and you have San Francisco's Pride Parade this year 0.99

00:52:36.380 where people are performing oral sex in the street. 0.99

00:52:38.880 The law teaches, and it's bizarre to me to watch evangelicals forget 0.57

00:52:43.060 and even have a visceral hostility towards the idea that one of the things

00:52:47.800 God ordains the state to do through the sword is to teach people what is good.

00:52:52.840 And it actually does shape a people to be more virtuous, to have categories of virtue, or to be less virtuous and to repudiate virtue.

00:53:03.100 So, again, we're just such a weird people historically as evangelicals in this generation.

00:53:08.840 We're untethered.

00:53:09.940 Yeah, no Christian thought the way that post-war Western Christians think today. 0.98

00:53:14.660 But you're absolutely right, Jeff. 0.76

00:53:15.780 The role of the state is to reward the righteous, punish the evildoer, to bear the sword.

00:53:21.560 But 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.

00:53:40.220 And 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.

00:54:02.440 um and and that's why you know like that that's why i said that you know we could have a christian

00:54:08.300 nation um you know in terms of our laws and these kinds of things 40 years before and i was being

00:54:15.580 intentional in saying that because i don't think we would have a christian nation indefinitely

00:54:19.640 without having a truly regenerate christian populace i think that the christian nation

00:54:24.520 what it would inevitably uh produce is a regenerate people because because what it would

00:54:31.680 do is it would be a constant reminder. It would, you'd have two preachers, you'd have the church

00:54:37.560 preaching, but then you would have the Christian prince. And in our case with an American, you

00:54:43.260 know, system like Christian princes, plural, many of them, and they too would be preaching

00:54:49.260 rightly within their sphere, not, not administering the sacraments or, you know, or preaching a sermon

00:54:54.540 per se, but they would be preaching God's law. And, and what the law of God does is it functions

00:55:01.240 as a mirror. It reveals to us the holiness of God and by way of consequence, our sinfulness and our

00:55:06.400 need for a savior. So like a righteous civil magistrate would be revealing to the general

00:55:11.460 population that they're evil. Even those who don't commit crimes, but have the desire inwardly to

00:55:17.260 commit those crimes. And the only thing that restrains them is, is the threat of punishment,

00:55:21.380 but they know in their hearts that they do want to break the law, that they do want to steal.

00:55:25.400 They do. And it would be constantly reinforcing. Righteous laws would be reinforcing in their

00:55:30.320 hearts and minds that they are not a righteous people, and therefore they need the perfect

00:55:35.260 righteousness of Christ, which is received by grace through faith. And many of them would go

00:55:39.860 to church. They'd end up going to church. And so it's just, this is what God, we always ask,

00:55:47.380 what could God do? Well, God could send revival. It just happens one day. God could. But I think

00:55:55.620 a more helpful question is not what can God do, but what has God done? And historically for the

00:56:03.020 last 2,000 years and biblically, as you see with Israel for a millennia and a half, what God has

00:56:11.080 done, if we were to actually, it's not just every now and then. No, the majority of the time,

00:56:17.220 If 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.

00:56:33.840 We 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.

00:56:44.020 But the Christian prince comes in and then the hearts of the people eventually catch up and follow.

00:56:49.160 You 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.

00:57:02.280 Well, you're getting at how unquestioning we are about the principles of democracy.

00:57:06.460 We've just assumed that the world is organized according to democratic principles.

00:57:10.560 and that that's it you know this is kind of something i want to come back to that you laid

00:57:14.740 out with your two principles of sort of having hope for the future and honor honor for your

00:57:21.140 fathers you know ultimately what we're talking about with patriotism and even uh sort of civics

00:57:26.340 is an assault on patriarchy you know that it ultimately comes down to father rule um but we

00:57:33.800 have assumed democratic principles and then just quickly contrast that with what you laid out there

00:57:38.920 in sort of that historical sketch, you know, in what you're proposing, what we saw for a time in

00:57:43.220 America, we saw it for a time in Britain, is that the sword of a just ruler is actually a plow.

00:57:49.540 It makes the soil tender for the planting of the gospel. You know, and so we all sort of look

00:57:56.040 forward to that day when the swords will be beaten into plowshares. A just civic ruler helps do that.

00:58:02.480 It makes the ground tender for the reception of the seed of the gospel. But again, we just

00:58:08.480 Because 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.

00:58:22.060 That's good.

00:58:23.240 The sword functions also as a plow.

00:58:26.200 I will steal that, Jeff.

00:58:30.240 I was thinking about the example we used earlier of Constantine.

00:58:36.340 And I think this is a great example of what you're talking about, Joel.

00:58:39.300 Like when Constantine said, we're all Christians now, it's not as though everybody suddenly became regenerate.

00:58:44.760 Right. We're not.

00:58:45.580 But 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.

00:58:59.000 You couldn't avoid it.

00:58:59.840 And so certainly more people became Christian as a result of that than if they had remained a pagan nation, a pagan empire. 0.94

00:59:07.100 Like, that's certainly the case.

00:59:09.340 And, you know, I'm not being non-reformed because I believe God uses means and that was one of the means he used.

00:59:15.560 But, yeah, I mean, it's so obvious and so clear from history that that's what happens.

00:59:21.500 It's just abnormal that we think that that can't happen.

00:59:25.700 so then why let's get to the heart of it here and we'll admit that this this would be speculation

00:59:30.920 speculation i think can be helpful as long as it's named for what it is and there's you know

00:59:36.220 acknowledgement that this is not definitive um but my question is this everything that we've just 0.63

00:59:42.880 said it seems so obvious um so then why in 2024 when they're chopping off the genitals of children

00:59:53.100 Why would church leaders in 2024 publicly countersignal Christian culture? 0.69

01:00:03.120 Can you imagine being a Christian leader and countersignaling Christian culture in our current moment in history? 0.85

01:00:14.640 For me, it's like, couldn't it be me? 0.98

01:00:18.260 That's insane.

01:00:19.160 I mean, it's absolutely insane.

01:00:20.800 So imagine that.

01:00:22.100 And how fast the Overton window has moved from Obergefell and all these things. 0.82

01:00:28.340 And so it's like you've got BLM riots and burning down the country. 0.73

01:00:33.040 You've got lockdowns with COVID. 0.68

01:00:35.440 You've got Drag Queen Story Hour. 1.00

01:00:39.480 You've got the transgender madness with minors. 1.00

01:00:43.980 And then you're a Christian leader or even a Christian pastor. 1.00

01:00:47.680 And you have a platform that reaches thousands of people.

01:00:51.380 and you think you know what time it is it's time to tell people in incessantly that christian

01:00:58.820 culture would actually be worse what like walk me through that like what what has to happen

01:01:05.460 to someone to think that i have a thought why a thought on that and that is um steven wolf tweeted

01:01:11.740 out a while ago in a ginocracy their categories of ethics are not good and evil they are safe

01:01:18.460 and scary and christian nationalism is really scary well safetyism man that's such a that's

01:01:25.120 such a perfect encapsulation and again women are made with glorious category distinctions from men

01:01:31.460 right but society cannot inherently in a fallen world be safe there has to be antagonism there

01:01:39.240 has to be agony and conflict and so once you do have sort of i mean i see this as a southern

01:01:45.180 baptist we constantly cater to the feminine perspective and so once safety becomes the idol

01:01:51.740 safety becomes the god of the system uh men particularly men who are willing to acknowledge

01:01:59.840 and oppose evil that is a very unsafe um occupation you know dynamic right right it represents

01:02:08.840 something that is unsafe. But, you know, if safety is the high good, it can't ultimately work that

01:02:15.720 way. But there's this time where you feel like, well, anything that's dangerous, we can just

01:02:19.060 tamp down. And it only really works with Westerners because we have this Christian ethic. 0.66

01:02:26.020 Eastern societies don't value safety the way that we do. And so they're happy to kind of fill that 0.95

01:02:33.000 vacuum with, um, I don't, I don't, you know, if not violence, at least aggression, which again,

01:02:38.960 feels very unsafe, but they're happy to take advantage of a, of a playing field where opponents

01:02:44.840 have been emasculated and taken off the field who would oppose them because they were told that

01:02:49.740 aggression, ambition, and, uh, conflict are, well, that just can't be part of a civil society.

01:02:56.360 That's a really good point. It makes me think of, um, this is a silly thought, but this is how I

01:03:02.540 thing it makes me think of uh bruce wayne and uh you know i like you know his parents you know and

01:03:10.100 the infamous scene you know of them getting mugged outside of the theater you know and and it's it's

01:03:15.240 the the mother you know who's uh just just give him what he wants just give you know the thief

01:03:20.500 what he wants so that he'll leave us alone and that's kind of the sentiment you see like videos

01:03:25.160 of like elderly old women in france you know a few months back you know like um like just just

01:03:31.480 kowtowing to um to to violent young men who who hate their country and and hate their heritage

01:03:39.340 and um you know when there was mobs and and things like that in the street you know and

01:03:44.700 and you don't see you know the the the native french people rising up you see them uh bowing 0.89

01:03:54.520 down and it's not because they think it's good right they'll say that because same thing c.a

01:03:59.560 right it's it would be unsafe to publicly say that you think this is bad you know so so but

01:04:05.580 in their heart of hearts they absolutely know that it's bad but they think that if they concede

01:04:11.420 it'll simply go away and so the same way that statistically it would be you know the woman

01:04:16.920 who you know if she's held at gunpoint you know she would be the one who would be more likely to

01:04:24.320 give the assailant what they want, thinking that if I just give them what they want, they'll go

01:04:30.540 away. And so that safety reflex that is uniquely feminine, it is in general more feminine than it

01:04:38.540 is masculine. So it's not even saying this is right. It's just saying to concede to this thing, 0.66

01:04:48.200 which is actually wrong um is safe so concession is safe um not that it's right but it's safe 1.00

01:04:55.500 and so then you know the question is just at that point just who's in charge you know so if women 0.93

01:05:01.500 are in charge then you're going to see um there's going to be constantly a push towards conceding

01:05:07.860 and uh if men are in charge are in charge you know and the enemy's at the gates and they say

01:05:13.900 you know you've got to you know bring out your firstborn and we're gonna we're gonna mutilate 0.98

01:05:19.260 their genitals you know and if you don't uh then we're gonna do something even worse well if men 1.00

01:05:24.260 are in charge they say um well okay sounds like i'm gonna have to kill you you know and if women 1.00

01:05:31.540 are in charge they say well sounds like um our firstborn is gonna lose their genitals you know 0.99

01:05:38.000 that's that's just the difference between men and women well and that was the uh that was the

01:05:43.080 rhetorical play for the, uh, pro-trans movement, right? Would you rather your kid be mutilated or 0.79

01:05:49.240 commit suicide because you won't let them be their authentic self. And so who did that appeal to? 0.99

01:05:53.800 Right. The feminine instinct is it'd be better to have the child, uh, mutilated than to, uh, 1.00

01:06:01.100 you know, risk the danger of losing the life. Again, this, these are corrupt aspects of what's 0.93

01:06:07.880 uniquely glorious about a woman she is supposed to create a safe domain for her family but it 1.00

01:06:13.440 comes within the umbrella of a father who draws the kind of boundaries and guards them that that

01:06:20.160 kind of safety for her family can exist in but once it's taken out of that context and becomes

01:06:24.460 the guiding principle of society it just yields the it yields the conflict to the people are still

01:06:30.520 willing to be violent yeah that's good yeah that's it i mean that's i think that's it so

01:06:36.200 you answered the question again like i said the disclaimer is this is speculation but we're trying

01:06:42.400 to answer a question that you know what's it we're not just being mean it's an important question

01:06:46.380 why is the church our leaders in the church um saying things like christian culture uh is bad

01:06:57.440 i mean that's just an asinine statement you know and so what why why would why you know what what's

01:07:04.140 behind that and we're saying well maybe it's because these christian leaders even if they're 0.77

01:07:07.700 men they're beholden to to women that in an informal sense and sadly it's becoming formal

01:07:14.460 but in an informal sense women have been at the the helm of evangelicalism for for a while now

01:07:21.140 right let me let me throw another possibility out there which is we we started this episode

01:07:28.620 talking about patriotism and the sort of anti-American attitude that a lot of sort of

01:07:35.400 young, restless reformed, our generation of guys has had. And what if the disdain for a Christian

01:07:45.460 nation is actually a disdain for Western culture and Western culture is Christian. And these people 0.94

01:07:56.480 are so against Western culture that they hate Christianity.

01:08:02.880 So some people might say, I'm getting this backwards,

01:08:05.500 that they hate Western culture because it is Christian.

01:08:08.380 And I'm saying, what if they hate Christianity so much

01:08:11.720 because they really hate European Western culture 0.91

01:08:14.460 and have been taught that it is an oppressive, evil regime,

01:08:17.960 and so they need to reject any kind of culture that looks like that, 0.88

01:08:22.860 which would be a Christian culture? 0.99

01:08:24.480 I'm just throwing this idea out here. 1.00

01:08:26.480 No, 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.

01:08:38.120 Um, but you know, there has been kind of an intramural debate in terms of, you know, is

01:08:44.560 it, um, is, is it a war on Christianity and therefore a war on whiteness, a war on, you

01:08:51.620 know, Western civilization, or is it, uh, what, what I would say is, um, you and you're 0.89

01:08:57.420 proposing, you know, the, the other way around and my, my proposals, I, I just think there

01:09:01.700 are two wars and I think it, I think it's important.

01:09:04.580 I think it's a, it's a difference that matters.

01:09:06.700 I think there are two wars. There really is a war on whiteness on Europeans. And then there's a war 0.77

01:09:12.600 on Christianity. And so I don't think it's just one circle. There's a war on Christianity. And

01:09:17.840 that happens to affect Westerners most because they come from a Christian heritage. No, I think

01:09:22.400 there's two wars. There's a war on white people and there's a war on Christian people. And it's 0.88

01:09:27.140 not just one circle. It's a Venn diagram. And there is, I admit, a ton of overlap there,

01:09:32.280 but they are two distinct circles with, I'd say, probably a 90%, you know, 85, 90% overlap,

01:09:39.660 but there's still some level of distinction. The reason why I think, here's just one case study.

01:09:44.340 This isn't the only reason, but just as an example for why that distinction matters,

01:09:49.340 because you have to do something with the virtually universal hatred of Israel,

01:09:55.740 the modern nation state of Israel. And so if it is just, it's because they hate Christ,

01:10:00.940 then you start getting the rhetoric of like, well, it's because Israel has a whiff of Christ,

01:10:05.580 right? Because their Torah observance is, you know, is, so then you have to start carving out

01:10:10.600 this position that Israel is Christian adjacent. Yes, we recognize, you know, that there's no 0.79

01:10:15.320 salvation apart from, you know, by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. So we're

01:10:18.900 not going to go so far, we're not going to, you know, be heretics, you know, and say that Israel,

01:10:23.460 you know, can, has a second path to salvation some other way besides Christ. We're not, you know,

01:10:28.100 we know better than that. We're not doing that and praise God, you know, none of our friends

01:10:31.660 are doing that. But we will say that although they are not Christian, it's not just believer

01:10:36.840 and unbeliever, light and darkness of which there's no fellowship, but there actually is

01:10:41.400 this third category. There's light and light, there's light, there's darkness, and then there's

01:10:46.200 light adjacent. There's Christian, there's unbeliever, and there's Christian adjacent. 0.95

01:10:51.140 And so, you know, Israel is receiving so much hostility from so much of the world

01:10:56.540 because, again, if you only have one war, if you don't have a war on whiteness and a war on

01:11:02.480 Christianity, and it's a Venn diagram, and yes, there's a lot of overlap, but it is two distinct

01:11:07.140 wars. If you reject that paradigm, you say, no, it's just a war on Christianity, and that, you

01:11:11.820 know, happens by way of consequence to predominantly affect white people because of their Christian

01:11:16.820 heritage. If you go that route, one of the reasons why I think this is a difference that matters 0.81

01:11:21.140 is because then you have to, and there's other examples that be given, but just using 0.75

01:11:26.360 Israel as one example, you therefore have to rope Israel into the war on Israel is the war on

01:11:32.860 Christians. Whereas I would say, no, Israel is not Christian adjacent. In fact, out of every 0.82

01:11:38.220 major world religion, we could find some sects and niche cults. But in terms of Hinduism, Buddhism,

01:11:45.300 Islam, and Judaism, every single major world religion outside of Christianity still has a

01:11:52.700 fairly, a fairly fond view of Jesus. They deny his divinity and therefore it is blasphemy. 0.98

01:11:59.160 Therefore it is heresy and it will send you to hell. But, but Muslims think Jesus was pretty 1.00

01:12:04.340 good. You know, Buddhists think he was pretty good. Hindus think he was pretty good. Talmudic 1.00

01:12:08.700 Judaism is uniquely hostile towards Jesus out of every major world religion. And it's not even 0.94

01:12:14.740 close. So not only are they not Christian adjacent, if anything, and I just, I'm happy

01:12:19.680 to just categorize them as a false major world religion that hates Jesus, just like Islam and 1.00

01:12:25.260 everything. But if I was to be technical, not only would they not be, you know, Christian adjacent, 0.89

01:12:30.180 they would be the farthest from, they would be, there's Christians and then there's enemies of 0.85

01:12:35.100 Christ. And then over here, even more animosity towards Christ is Talmudic Judaism in a category 0.81

01:12:43.040 all its own. So not only is it not Christian adjacent, it is, so I'm happy with just two 1.00

01:12:47.520 categories, you know, light and darkness. But if we, you know, this idea of light, darkness and 0.96

01:12:52.140 light adjacent, well, if you want to go that route, then that kind of tempts me. It's my

01:12:55.780 personality to say, well, no, really there's, there's light, there's darkness. And then there's,

01:13:00.480 there's a pitch black darkness where, you know, what, you know, and, and that would be Israel. 0.96

01:13:05.380 So all that being said, my point is just to say, I think that I think it does matter to say it's 0.79

01:13:10.800 two distinct wars, one on whiteness, one on Christianity, and yes, a lot of overlap, because 0.51

01:13:16.340 then what you can say is that the war on Israel, I would say the war on Israel, people's hostility

01:13:21.540 towards Israel is not because Israel has a whiff of Christ and they lump them in the Christian

01:13:26.020 category. I think it's because they have a whiff of whiteness and they get lumped in the white 0.82

01:13:29.620 category. And the reason why they have a whiff of whiteness is not because of a lighter skin pigment.

01:13:35.280 That's not what I'm saying. Not in terms of their physical, the way they look. But what I'm saying 0.88

01:13:42.280 is they get roped into the war on whiteness 0.77

01:13:46.620 because in their context, in the Middle East,

01:13:50.300 it's a Marxist paradigm,

01:13:53.540 a neo-Marxist paradigm of oppressors and oppressed. 1.00

01:13:57.980 So Palestine is good. 0.99

01:13:59.880 Why? 1.00

01:14:00.320 Because Palestine is Muslim 1.00

01:14:01.960 and Israel's good because Israel's Christian-ish. 1.00

01:14:05.920 No, Palestine's good because they're poor 0.97

01:14:09.060 and weaker and have less stuff. 1.00

01:14:11.700 and israel is bad because they're richer and have more bombs and more you know and uh it's it's 0.86

01:14:19.720 because they are in the white they're the white guy they're western they're so it's i would say 0.64

01:14:25.460 that israel if i pose it like this as a question what do you think is more plausible israel

01:14:29.640 talmudic judaism being christian adjacent or the nation state of israel being western adjacent

01:14:35.200 come on do you guys think i'm crazy what do you think jeff well there's uh there's a credibility 0.97

01:14:43.580 to it in the way that asians are now kind of roped into the whiteness right right by the by

01:14:48.300 the woke and you're white adjacent and and you've had cultural success and therefore you're kind of 0.77

01:14:53.220 the oppressor also and um that paradigm that paradigm makes sense of real world dynamics

01:15:01.840 that we're watching play out and you know i think part of the reason that the narrative of like

01:15:07.200 christianity adjacent israel is um credible in some minds among evangelicals is that we have

01:15:14.740 read the old testament we've read the new testament we see the way that paul honors his

01:15:19.780 heritage but we have not read um you know the the further developments that you're talking about

01:15:25.500 where like jesus is in hell being boiled in filth because of his blasphemies we we've not read post

01:15:31.720 second temple Judaism. Uh, and so it seems like, well, you know, we kind of want to be with Paul, 0.60

01:15:37.500 um, not realizing where the tradition went. That's a great point. Cause people,

01:15:41.920 the average evangelical thinks that the Judaism is the Bible minus the new Testament. So they

01:15:47.480 think the problem and they'll admit it's a problem and it's a big enough problem to where

01:15:51.700 you will go to hell. There's no salvation apart, apart from Christ. And so they rightly recognize

01:15:57.000 that. But they think that the difference between Judaism and Christianity is that they're half of 0.98

01:16:04.600 the Christian religion because they have half of the Bible. They have the Old Testament and we have

01:16:08.160 the New. But what they don't realize is that our New Testament, it's not just that we have two

01:16:12.320 parts of the Bible, right? We're not Andy Stanley. We're not, you know, unhitching. We view the New

01:16:17.400 Testament as, in many ways, it's the lens by which we read the Old Testament. It doesn't replace,

01:16:25.100 It's not that there was the Old Testament and then the New Testament replaces it, right?

01:16:28.840 Like the Quran, you know, it's the more recent passages will directly contradict older passages.

01:16:34.720 And when in doubt, when there's a contradiction, well, the new ones, they override. 0.97

01:16:38.620 Well, that's not the Christian faith.

01:16:39.860 We believe that it's a seamless stream, you know, from Genesis to Revelation.

01:16:43.540 But what the New Testament does is it doesn't override the Old Testament, but it brings it to bear.

01:16:48.540 It reveals it.

01:16:49.500 There was one theologian who said the Old Testament is a richly furnished room, but dimly lit.

01:16:54.540 And the New Testament is the light that allows the illumination to appreciate it.

01:17:00.040 So in that sense, my point is people, I wish evangelicals would begin to view Talmudic

01:17:06.440 modern Judaism.

01:17:08.560 It should be viewed.

01:17:10.140 I think this is a helpful analogy is it should be viewed very similar to Mormonism.

01:17:15.500 The Book of Mormon is not an addendum to the Bible, but it's the lens through which the

01:17:23.180 Bible is now read. And what it does is it overrides the Bible. That's what the Talmud does to the

01:17:29.060 Torah. So it's not, so Christians, it's not that, well, Judaism is just Christianity minus half. 0.85

01:17:35.280 We have old and new and they just have old. No, they have a New Testament. Their New Testament 0.95

01:17:39.760 is the Talmud. So our New Testament, we read the Old Testament in light of the new. They read the 0.97

01:17:46.640 Old Testament, the Torah, in light of their New Testament, which is the Talmud, which what does

01:17:50.680 that amount to? It amounts to the Old Testament being completely perverted. So it's not that they 0.81

01:17:57.120 only have the Old Testament. They don't have anything because what they do have, it's not

01:18:03.060 that we have the whole Bible, they have half. The half that they do have is eradicated by their New 1.00

01:18:08.480 Testament equivalency, which is the Talmud. And if people in the same way, it's the same way that 0.65

01:18:14.100 the Book of Mormon works with the Bible, so too the Talmud works that way with the Torah. And I

01:18:19.900 think of that and that's really basic but a lot of christians haven't been taught that i didn't

01:18:23.820 learn that until the last like three years i i'm ashamed to say and but but that's super basic and

01:18:29.560 a super defensible position that you know like nobody's going to be able to say no actually like

01:18:34.420 no that's just true and when you figure that out then then i think it becomes much easier to 0.79

01:18:40.100 recognize okay um judaism is not like uh our second cousin this is like they're not on the team

01:18:47.560 and uh and and then what does that mean so therefore hate him no therefore um we need

01:18:53.280 like any other false doctrine we need to preach christ and him crucified and pray that god would

01:18:57.480 save them you know but but that this this third category of christian adjacent that that one

01:19:03.380 that dog don't hunt so all right well any any other thoughts about patriotism or you know

01:19:10.340 we're a long ways from patriotism we got into israel but but the point the point is just to

01:19:16.300 say that like you know there's we were talking about honoring our fathers honoring the in our

01:19:21.240 case you know as united states citizens that being honoring you know the founding and and

01:19:26.280 honoring this anglo-protestant tradition honor honoring western civilization the great books

01:19:32.100 the classical tradition these kinds of things and there's a war on that that's how we got there

01:19:37.940 and that war is a war on christianity but i think it's also that i think there's two wars

01:19:42.460 what so what what do you guys that's how we got there but any final thoughts on that

01:19:47.420 well the the one thing that we kind of talked about preparing for the episode is what do you

01:19:53.340 do with celebrating holidays and if you do if you see patriotism as a patriarchal endeavor

01:20:00.440 which i think you should the question of what the church celebrates becomes pretty relevant

01:20:04.880 and so here again enemies of the faith understand this that's why you know we've done

01:20:10.760 an episode on how pride is becoming a new national identity um holidays mark out your identity in the

01:20:18.540 same way that family traditions help mark out your family's identity right so like there's an

01:20:24.420 inner regulative principle for me that would balk at the idea of having sort of a patriotic

01:20:29.660 robert jefferson style lord's day service about the united states of america i think it's really

01:20:35.800 good for a church to get together and celebrate independence day you know in the parking lot or

01:20:40.360 church member's house with hot dogs. Something that I've been negligent within our own church,

01:20:46.800 but I've tried to do is incomplete as it is. I think one of the things we should celebrate as

01:20:53.560 a holiday is the fall of Roe and the overturning of a national black mark on our spiritual resume.

01:21:01.560 So like we want to celebrate those things. I'm not going to do it on Lord's Day corporate worship,

01:21:06.680 But I'm happy for our church family to do it as sort of a voluntary act.

01:21:11.600 Probably wouldn't do that with Labor Day.

01:21:13.900 And 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.

01:21:23.540 You can do it as a civic thing.

01:21:25.400 I am an American with my fellow Americans celebrating the fall of an evil law.

01:21:29.840 Well, the one thing I want to do, though, is as a Christian, thank God for that.

01:21:34.900 As an American, thank God for it.

01:21:37.300 Both, right?

01:21:38.120 I know that as an American, I should thank God for this because I'm a Christian.

01:21:42.700 And my Christianity is not separate from my civic life.

01:21:45.680 And so I don't want to pick too much of a fight here.

01:21:49.340 I don't think that we're in substantial disagreement.

01:21:50.800 But as a Christian, I know that Roe is bad.

01:21:54.840 And as a Christian, I know that we need more than the fall of Roe.

01:21:57.660 But I also want to say thank you, God, as a gift to my people that you have given us this gift.

01:22:03.520 And I want to celebrate that.

01:22:04.580 And again, in a way that I'm not going to pay any attention to Labor Day as our church.

01:22:09.360 But 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.

01:22:19.160 That's good.

01:22:20.480 Ben, any thoughts?

01:22:22.400 No, I think I've got all of mine out.

01:22:25.940 Yeah, no, that's good.

01:22:27.100 If we have more time, the whole Roe thing just made me think of, dare I breach the topic?

01:22:33.520 I, you know, just in terms of, you know, intramural debates and, uh, with, with friends

01:22:40.100 that we love, but man, it's just, uh, that's a tough thing is, uh, you know, being able

01:22:45.800 to say that, uh, on, on one hand, um, there is a sense in which Roe, um, is, uh, unjust 0.60

01:22:57.080 and wrong and that it's it's not a state's issue it's uh abortion is murder and it should be

01:23:04.180 outlawed at the federal level and then outlawed at the state level not just you know conceding it

01:23:09.680 to the states but then on the other hand i'm with you jeff that like uh i think we absolutely still

01:23:15.940 should uh just celebrate in god's providence what he did um in in overturning row and and

01:23:23.040 adamantly working you know for more and then when it comes to you know bills and things like that

01:23:27.920 that's a can of worms but like i but i but i am of the persuasion that you know it should only be

01:23:32.940 just bills it should be equal protection uh the second victim narrative is from from the depths

01:23:38.760 of hell and and so uh equal protection bills uh the abortion should be treated as a homicide not

01:23:44.980 just with the doctor but also with the mother and the father if there's any coercion and he's 0.99

01:23:48.700 involved. All those things, yes and amen. And I don't think you can present an unjust bill that

01:23:54.480 says it's okay to murder on Wednesday, but not on Thursday. But all that being said, I think you can

01:24:00.420 be an abolitionist in terms of the abolitionist position for the goal of where we're heading.

01:24:06.540 You definitely should hold to that. And even in terms of tactics, when it comes to presenting

01:24:11.240 and voting on bills, I think you can do it there. And even when it comes to primaries and things

01:24:16.420 like that like we we will only support in terms of our our primary and an abolitionist candidate

01:24:22.180 from the for this position um at all those levels but then that but then it's like we're losing

01:24:28.000 friendships over so we agreed on 99.9999 percent like and but um but then uh but then to take it

01:24:36.100 you know further and say uh and um to be an abolitionist also uh once you're done with the

01:24:42.420 primaries in a general presidential election you can only like that that's where i'm just like okay

01:24:49.460 man i would man i love you and i was with you i was with you like you you you you persuaded me

01:24:57.360 i publicly repented of of any kind of you know pro-life inc you know and and and i just got done

01:25:05.840 buying the hat and the t-shirt that says proud abolitionist and then i hear you say that if you

01:25:13.600 celebrate roe you should step down from being an elder that's the only reason i brought this up

01:25:18.520 because you you know you're talking like i mean like what you just suggested jeff there are a

01:25:23.120 couple guys who would say like you're disqualified from pastoral ministry for what you just said

01:25:27.500 and that's where i'm like man so we're so we're going for the full two hours here today well just

01:25:32.120 I'm just like, when you get to that level of beautiful loser, you know, where it's like,

01:25:37.300 I can do a triple axel into my face plant, then I'm just like, oh my gosh, man, you're on the team.

01:25:42.080 I love you. You're a brother. I love you. But my wife and I, here it is. So, I think we should

01:25:48.060 repeal the 19th Amendment. You know what I'm going to be doing on November 3rd? Me and my wife, 0.83

01:25:53.680 noses unplugged, will be going down, voting for Donald J. Trump and sleeping like babies.

01:25:59.660 and none of that being a contradiction to my convictions yeah i mean i know the guys you're

01:26:05.980 talking about and i love them the same way you do and i get i mean i've learned a lot

01:26:09.980 in the last three or four years uh and consider myself an abolitionist but again you got to go

01:26:14.680 back to what we started with i think our primary sin may be ingratitude and so you know when we

01:26:21.720 celebrate Roe, there has to be, excuse me, celebrate the overturning of Roe. The sentence

01:26:31.980 that has to express your gratitude is, thank you, Father, now more, please. You want to honor

01:26:40.340 gratitude and you also want to acknowledge that it's far from over. And so I don't think that'll

01:26:45.560 probably appease some of the people we have in mind here. But as a guy who's thinking about how

01:26:50.940 to be grateful and ambitious aggressively ambitious thank you father please more let this snowball let

01:26:58.900 this go further it's inadequate in and of itself but i still think there has to be a place for

01:27:03.520 gratitude for uh the federal government you know no longer being an active or as active i guess uh

01:27:10.840 you know promoter of of atrocity amen ben were you gonna say something uh only that um

01:27:20.920 um hold on i lost it uh i i totally agree with what you guys are saying also one of the things

01:27:30.220 i appreciate so much about my abolitionist friends of which i'm not and i've made that clear but i'm

01:27:34.220 not gonna you know i don't want to attack them because they are my friends and i 100 agree with

01:27:38.900 their goals um but there are real problems with the pro-life inc like those those guys are not

01:27:46.620 our friends no they're not in many cases like the the all of the money involved it's just bad news

01:27:52.660 and so i'm totally with them on that kind of thing like yeah this is we need to do something

01:27:57.300 different than pro-life inc because they're making a lot of money off of an issue and they would like

01:28:02.540 to continue to do that right but pro-life that's all i know that's good well said pro-life inc it's

01:28:07.320 important for for the christian to be aware that um it's not just that they're not doing enough

01:28:11.900 it's far more sinister than that they uh the last thing they want is for abortion to be abolished

01:28:18.900 they don't want abortion to be done uh they they need abortion they want abortion they never would

01:28:25.900 verbalize it or say that publicly but um it's you know it's splitting the penny a million different

01:28:31.380 ways but but what you're at the end of the day what you are most committed to is not so much the

01:28:36.660 splitting of the penny but what you're most committed to is that some of the penny remains

01:28:41.280 um because because the penny remaining is what ensures that the dollar keeps coming into your

01:28:47.580 pocket you know and so that's your bread and butter yeah so uh yeah so pro-life inc the

01:28:52.480 abolitionists even and it's not all abolitionists but even the more extreme type of abolitionists

01:28:58.380 that would you know say that uh voting for donald trump is a sin you know or or um to to celebrate

01:29:04.800 in the parking lot, you know, with your church, you know, the overturning of, of, uh, row is a

01:29:09.840 sin. Uh, number one, I want to say that's not all abolitionists. It is some, and they're very vocal

01:29:15.320 about it. So, you know, it is some, and I would have defended and said, nobody thinks that, but

01:29:19.340 they made it, they made it impossible for me to defend. I was like, no abolitionists would say

01:29:23.920 that. So anyway, so there are some, uh, much to my disappointment, but even those, my point is,

01:29:31.340 those guys are our friend.

01:29:33.180 Pro-Life Inc., those guys are not our friends.

01:29:35.700 So we want to be clear about

01:29:36.940 which side of the aisle we're on here.

01:29:41.000 They're here.

01:29:41.780 Well said.

01:29:42.520 Any final thoughts for today's episode?

01:29:45.460 I mean, I know it was all over the place,

01:29:47.200 but I think it was great.

01:29:48.380 I think so.

01:29:49.760 I think people like it.

01:29:51.520 Who needs topics anyway?

01:29:54.740 I mean, honestly, the best podcasts are really,

01:29:56.780 it's just like like-minded guys

01:29:58.660 who have a friendship,

01:30:00.240 you know talking and and you just happen to allow you know 5 000 other people to listen

01:30:05.940 to the conversation so any final thoughts jeff ben oh just thanks for having us on joel appreciate

01:30:11.800 what you're doing keep it up man all right listen to backwards belief if they ever come out with new

01:30:15.760 episodes yes sir all right cool well thank you guys god bless you and uh thank you to the the

01:30:21.060 listener for tuning in.

The NXR Podcast - July 08, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Christian Patriotism, Mid Eva, & Voting For Trump with Backwoods Beliefs

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