The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Escape Christian Chaos By Thinking In Categories

00:00:00.000 Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.

00:00:03.960 I get it. It's annoying. Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.

00:00:07.660 When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm

00:00:12.040 so that our podcast shows up on more people's newsfeeds.

00:00:16.260 You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.

00:00:21.820 We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.

00:00:26.780 There are a lot of debates going on in the Christian world right now.

00:00:31.000 Many of these, whether about politics, culture, or even doctrine, seem to spiral out of control

00:00:37.380 because people are talking past each other.

00:00:40.220 Often, the problem isn't the facts, it's the categories.

00:00:44.220 When we confuse what belongs to the individual versus the group, the gospel versus ethics,

00:00:50.420 or the church versus the state, we end up with chaos instead of clarity.

00:00:55.680 In today's episode, we'll explore how thinking in proper categories can transform not only

00:01:01.840 how we engage with the world, but also how we honor God in the process.

00:01:07.240 This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund,

00:01:12.520 as well as our Patreon members and donors.

00:01:15.520 You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries,

00:01:21.600 or you can donate at rightresponseministries.com forward slash donate. Tune in now as we discuss

00:01:29.960 this important topic. Here we are, GA, GA, GA. Welcome back. Widescreen, beautiful. This is our

00:01:45.880 new studio. We're stoked about it. We actually have some more changes that'll be coming out,

00:01:49.860 lord willing in may at the earliest probably june yeah very likely july maybe august september

00:01:57.540 october yeah december possible basically what's going on is by god's grace our church covenant

00:02:03.160 bible church uh if you're looking for a good church in the central texas area go to covenant

00:02:07.480 bible.org not covenant bible church because the domain name was not available but covenant bible.org

00:02:13.560 if you're in central texas looking for a good church but what's happening is our church which

00:02:18.200 is pretty new. It's only about, you know, three and a half years old as a church plant started in

00:02:23.240 April of 2021. By God's grace, we are moving into a building. And so we're super excited about that,

00:02:28.880 especially for a church plant as young as ours are, as ours is. God has been exceedingly kind

00:02:34.540 and generous and gracious towards us. And so we're going to be moving the right response studio to

00:02:39.340 the church building. And we'll actually have a little bit more physical square footage. And

00:02:43.940 we'll be able to do a little bit more. We're constrained right now by the physical size of

00:02:48.400 our space. So we, we tried to, you know, still brush things up and have a little bit of a new

00:02:52.660 aesthetic for the new year in 2025 and mid-year, um, Lord willing, we'll be able to do a little

00:02:58.000 bit more, but today's topic, as you already saw in the cold open is categories and our very own

00:03:03.040 Michael Belch has outlined this episode for us. So why don't you kick us off? Uh, well, Joel,

00:03:08.080 this is actually, um, a topic that I'm doing because, um, of feedback from listeners and

00:03:14.440 people that we know who said, you guys mentioned the idea of thinking in categories all the time.

00:03:18.960 And it's true. We do. We mentioned this all the time. I mean, probably every other episode we're

00:03:23.540 talking about, well, that's the category. That's not the proper category. Um, and this is not

00:03:28.540 really a new idea. It just kind of lost to a lot of Christians, but the idea of having categories

00:03:34.220 for thinking that the funny thing to me about it is all of us do this naturally in every part of

00:03:39.660 life right so for instance if you if you think about if you come into your house and your kid

00:03:44.680 is dumping water all over your couch you're going to be very upset and preach the gospel

00:03:49.720 but if but if your kid says actually uh you know um i was lighting the candle for christmas and

00:03:57.600 the candle fell on the couch and the couch was on fire and so what i did then was i dumped a

00:04:02.060 bucket of water on it to keep the house from burning down. All of a sudden, you're going to

00:04:05.540 be happy with the kid. Well, or you're going to correct your child and say, why do you put water

00:04:10.020 on the fire instead of preaching the gospel? Joel's anticipating where this episode is going.

00:04:14.840 I mean, the fire is, it's a symbol of the fire of hell and the wrath of God. The only antidote

00:04:22.280 is preaching the gospel. Joel Berry gets in, why can't we? The answer is the gospel.

00:04:26.680 My point is we all already actually think in categories.

00:04:31.640 In fact, that's the only way that you can get through life.

00:04:34.220 You think about categories for an individual.

00:04:37.060 A father might be kind and gracious with his children, but if that man's a police officer,

00:04:42.140 he's going to be very gruff and firm and aggressive with a criminal.

00:04:47.100 And so the idea of thinking in categories, number one, is not new.

00:04:51.500 Number two, everybody actually already does this. 0.95

00:04:54.200 Where we are a little bit perplexed is that it seems to be a lost art for Christians to think

00:05:00.560 about categories of life and living and what is the gospel? What is the law? What is, you know,

00:05:06.960 the rest of life? How much does the law of nature and reason, all of these things, how do they play

00:05:12.300 in? And sadly, for a lot of Christians, there's one category when it comes to how we should live,

00:05:20.660 And that is simply, you know, what does the gospel say about this?

00:05:24.340 What does the gospel say about this?

00:05:25.820 And so what I thought we would do, first of all, and I'm curious what you guys' opinion

00:05:30.220 on this is, why do you think, and I have some thoughts here, but why is it important to

00:05:37.500 think in categories, right?

00:05:38.880 Why is it important to have different categories for thinking, but then also for how to behave

00:05:44.360 as we go through life?

00:05:45.820 I'm thinking theological categories.

00:05:47.360 I'm thinking, um, as we seek to relate with the world, why is it so important that we get this

00:05:52.840 topic right? Would you say? Well, part of it is, um, it may have been Pat Buchanan who said this,

00:05:58.460 I can't remember, but it's a quote that's been circulating around. Um, it's an old quote,

00:06:03.100 but it's been circulate circulating around recently. Uh, the idea of, you know, the town's

00:06:07.920 on fire, um, or I'm sorry, there's, uh, the town is, uh, flooded. There's a flood and you show up

00:06:14.080 with fire extinguishers. So I think one, one reason that it's helpful to be able to categorize

00:06:19.560 properly is so that you actually have efficient and effective solutions to problems is because

00:06:28.440 you have to, in order to have the proper solution, you first have to be able to categorize

00:06:32.800 the problem. What category does this particular problem fit into? That way you can begin looking

00:06:40.280 for proper solutions within that category. And if not, then I think one of the problems is that

00:06:50.300 you're going to be incredibly ineffective in dealing with whatever kind of chaos, whatever

00:06:57.300 problematic issue is going on at any given moment. You're not going to be able to deal with it

00:07:02.540 properly. Yeah. People will, I think a great example of this is David Platt, who kind of

00:07:07.920 takes this idea that when we talk about immigration and other cultures and other religions coming,

00:07:12.020 that that's the great commission coming to our doorstep. Like, praise God, we don't even have 0.97

00:07:15.460 to go to them. They're arriving here and you're blackpilling. The nations are coming to us and

00:07:19.600 you're blackpilling. But he takes a theological concept, evangelism, the gospel, reaching

00:07:25.640 individuals with it, and then a political national issue of immigration. And in taking them,

00:07:31.720 crashing them together, and in conflating them, he proposes a solution that is ridiculous and not 0.98

00:07:37.120 just ridiculous like, well, that's silly, but destructive. If you don't properly parse out, 0.91

00:07:42.240 this belongs to this domain. This is where God has this. This is where this applies. You can go on

00:07:46.920 and propose ideas and thoughts and pontificate all you want. Things that are genuinely not just

00:07:52.100 ridiculous and you'll look silly, which is bad enough, but things that are actually just would 0.98

00:07:56.400 decimate you, your church, your people. And so it's not just thinking in categories to avoid 0.99

00:08:01.660 being a bad logician, like thinking logically or having bad reason, you need to think in those

00:08:07.360 categories so you don't make terrible, terrible mistakes. The irony here is that in the name of

00:08:13.620 kind of this missions, God bringing the mission field to the doorstep, many Christian churches

00:08:18.960 and many Christians are pulling back on a missions emphasis right now because they're saying, wait,

00:08:24.520 we have done not irreparable, but serious harm to our nation, to our culture, to the Christian

00:08:30.100 worldview that used to exist in our culture and because of some of this category irreparable for

00:08:36.700 this generation irreparable for this generation i don't think this generation there's certain

00:08:40.360 things we'll never get back in our lifetime yeah i would agree um and so if you don't have the

00:08:45.400 proper categories uh you end up i think west the way that you and we'll talk about this a little

00:08:50.720 little bit later on but when you clash and collide and overlap categories um sometimes it can sound

00:08:58.000 very good, right? Like the idea of global missions on the doorstep and political, cultural,

00:09:04.400 sociological considerations of what is a nation, things like that. Like it can sound very good.

00:09:09.620 And so I would say that one of the reasons why it's important to have categories is because

00:09:13.420 they protect you from things that sound like a good idea. It drives me crazy that we in the

00:09:20.960 modern church are so committed to reinventing everything, right? And so we come up with a lot

00:09:26.140 of things that sound like really good ideas. And part of what would protect us from that is

00:09:30.980 finding out what older saints said about this topic. But another thing that would protect us

00:09:36.260 from some of these ideas that sound good, but that are really terrible is having proper categories.

00:09:42.400 Yep. This kind of plays into, for those of you who were able to watch our live stream that we

00:09:48.200 did last Wednesday, our first week coming back in the new year.

00:09:52.600 This is going to be two, two Wednesdays ago or three Wednesdays ago now.

00:09:55.500 No, you're right.

00:09:56.780 You're right.

00:09:57.320 Yeah.

00:09:58.060 So that was two weeks ago.

00:10:00.360 So time flies when you're having fun.

00:10:02.500 But, but one of the things that we talked about was ideology and categories is kind

00:10:07.240 of almost in some sense, the antithesis to ideology steamrolls everything into, it's

00:10:13.800 my optic.

00:10:14.500 It's, it's, and I talked about how, you know, when you get into, now this is speculation

00:10:19.540 at some level, you know, you can't necessarily prove inward motives. But I think, because I've

00:10:26.900 been ideological, particularly, I think, younger men, it appeals to younger men. And so I know that

00:10:32.560 at least in my own personal life, I can speak for myself and some of my own motives and incentives

00:10:37.540 for why an ideological approach to life was appealing. Well, one reason is because it's

00:10:46.000 easier. It's lazy. It's easy. Thinking in categories in a multifaceted way requires

00:10:55.740 a higher degree of thinking. It involves more complexities. And so ideology versus thinking

00:11:03.580 in categories, in some ways, seems like two bookends, you know, like the two far, you know,

00:11:10.240 the antithesis of one another. And so with ideology, we talked about like, you know,

00:11:15.380 whether it's um you know it's it's this motive i think of um having a master key right because

00:11:22.000 sitting down and reading you know uh bovink systematics um and and reading calvin's institutes

00:11:27.700 and then reading you know political philosophy and learning latin if you're really going to get

00:11:31.760 into it you probably should learn latin or something right or learning latin exactly you

00:11:35.420 know and and reading aristotle and reading all this kind of stuff um is really really hard it's

00:11:40.900 it's not easy. Um, it's way easier to be able to say, you know, to find one thing and then fit

00:11:46.760 everything into that one my optic rubric. Right. So, uh, what are all the world's problems? The

00:11:52.500 juice, you know, like I figured it out, you know, and then it also becomes not only, um, the, the,

00:11:58.520 um, the master key for unlocking every door and solving every problem. And most of the time,

00:12:05.520 let's be honest, it doesn't solve any problem. It just, it's just explanatory power for, uh,

00:12:10.380 having this secret gnosis of, I know the problem and you've solved it. Well, no, I haven't solved

00:12:15.800 it. I just know what the problem is. And so me and my friends, you know, we're smarter than

00:12:19.280 everybody. We figured it out. So not only on the one hand is it ineffective often, but it's also,

00:12:26.680 it's far too simplistic. And I really do think that there's an apathy, a lethargy that's involved

00:12:34.100 uh, because, um, reading Mein Kampf, um, it's, it's edgy, right? Um, but, but take the edginess

00:12:43.800 and take, you know, whatever courage, or even if it's, you know, fake courage, or maybe it's

00:12:48.480 genuine. I think there are genuine reasons why somebody could read Mein Kampf. Um, and I think

00:12:52.960 there's plenty of bad reasons that somebody could read it, but here's the one bottom line that I'm

00:12:57.580 getting at, is reading Mein Kampf, and that being your full curriculum, is a lot easier than reading

00:13:05.460 Aquinas, Aristotle, Bavink, you know, all these. That's just a lot more work. And so I think

00:13:12.300 Christians are particularly susceptible to this, and you can do it as a Reformed Christian, right? 0.99

00:13:18.000 So Calvinism is the master key that unlocks every door, or being J-pilled, you know, or

00:13:24.100 post-millennialism right if we just had the right eschatology now i i've been there and i think

00:13:29.860 there is a lot of truth and i think dispensationalism did a number on the church

00:13:34.720 especially here in america i think 150 years dispensationalism i've been fond of saying

00:13:39.820 dispensationalism is a hell of a drug um and i think it did a number on the american church but

00:13:44.660 it's not the only problem um so i'm not i'm not i don't want to steamroll in the other direction

00:13:49.580 and say all problems are equal. Some are more significant. There are some problems that are

00:13:54.020 uniquely pernicious, and they actually infect and spread and actually cause all these other

00:13:59.580 problems that stem out from this source, this core problem. And I think that dispensationalism

00:14:08.160 would be an example of having a defeatist mentality, dispensational premillennialism,

00:14:12.640 not historic, but that is a pernicious problem. A revivalism, man-centered Arminian theology,

00:14:20.180 yeah, I think that that is not just one problem, but a source problem that spreads out and has

00:14:24.560 many other problems that stem from it. And I also think Judaism is, I would absolutely classify that 0.99

00:14:32.140 as a source problem, a root problem that stems out and has multiple different expressions that 0.98

00:14:37.640 come from that. Not that they come exclusively from that, but feminism would be an example. 1.00

00:14:41.880 Feminism doesn't exclusively derive from Judaism, but there is a line there. 1.00

00:14:49.600 There is a correlation. 1.00

00:14:51.000 And that should be something that we, as the kids say, notice and something that we're

00:14:56.160 able to address without being unhinged, but also with courage and integrity and all these

00:15:01.640 kinds of things.

00:15:02.220 So not being ideological.

00:15:03.840 I think ideology, in many ways, is the opposite of what we're focusing on today in terms of

00:15:10.720 categorical.

00:15:11.880 thinking in multiple different categories, the opposite is being ideological. And that seems to

00:15:18.000 be, Christians seem to especially fall prey to that. I was going to say, one of the forms sometimes 1.00

00:15:24.100 the ideology can take is a certain area, your expertise, then you'll get that to cover over.

00:15:29.400 So the Young Restless Reform Movement, we said the theologian is the king, and then he gets to

00:15:33.260 be expert. He gets to be expert in the home and on marriage and parenting, because he's an expert on

00:15:37.380 the Bible. So he has all the knowledge for that. And he's an expert on politics, because he has

00:15:41.720 the Bible. And so that expertise in that little area got to kind of stretch and cover everything

00:15:46.960 like that. And then it's like, well, we got to ask the theologian about this. We got to ask the

00:15:50.420 theologian about that. And no one in that would think, well, like my ideology is theology,

00:15:56.060 but it was conveniently used as kind of this, I know this. So now all of these things are also

00:16:01.640 my domain of expertise. When really thinking categorically, if you can exegete, if you've

00:16:06.440 studied, if you've gone to seminary, that's awesome. And you're a great theologian. None

00:16:10.200 that means you are necessarily qualified to give good counsel on parenting advice or to speak

00:16:14.840 informally on political matters i think part of the part of the trap that christians run into is

00:16:19.800 that in very broad strokes there are very cut and dry categories what is the problem with the world

00:16:26.280 the problem with the world is sin what is the solution to sin the solution to sin is the gospel

00:16:31.400 right and yes that's 100 right in very broad strokes but what we what we i think this is one

00:16:37.720 of the lessons that that i wanted to bring up within broad categories what's the problem with

00:16:44.200 the world sin what's the solution the gospel there are subcategories that we have missed okay well

00:16:49.960 does that mean that the gospel solves um you know a bad traffic flow that's causing me to lose my

00:16:57.320 temper on the way to to work well no like that takes social and social planning and engineering

00:17:04.680 It could, it could solve my temper.

00:17:07.480 But not the traffic.

00:17:08.140 That's right, yeah.

00:17:09.200 And so one of the things that we have forgotten

00:17:11.660 is that there are categories within

00:17:13.720 what the gospel is doing.

00:17:16.120 One of the very last things that Jesus says

00:17:18.140 at the end of Revelation is,

00:17:21.460 I make all things new,

00:17:23.220 but the grammar there is actually progressive.

00:17:25.200 I am making all things new.

00:17:26.920 So how is he doing that?

00:17:27.860 Well, obviously by the gospel, right?

00:17:29.460 Like that is the power of God for salvation.

00:17:31.000 That's a transform of hearts.

00:17:31.820 But that doesn't mean that the gospel

00:17:33.440 teaches us how to be good stewards of our land or any of those other things. And so my point is

00:17:39.000 within broad categories of Christians, we have subcategories. And I think that just speaking

00:17:44.100 from personal history and looking back at my own life and what I was taught, sometimes we are not

00:17:50.980 told there are subcategories that are very, very important to keep straight within big, huge kind

00:17:57.740 of meta categories so aristotle's four causes just a quick plug very helpful because you talked about

00:18:04.000 traffic and flow like why did the world trade centers collapse gravity well no a plane ran into

00:18:09.600 them well the plane was the cause well no gravity there's material his four causes material formal

00:18:14.420 efficient final parsing out what is the final root cause underneath this what's the efficient

00:18:19.740 cause the material cause etc and the question that you're trying to ask or answer the the

00:18:24.600 solution that you're trying to find um might depend on which one of those answers you pin down

00:18:31.200 exactly um you might not need to know the final cause of it you might need to know the efficient

00:18:35.440 cause of it while it was the fact that the steel wasn't strong enough or whatever you know i'm not

00:18:39.460 going to go into conspiracy theories right now um but you you would even focus on different

00:18:43.700 types of causes in order to solve different kinds of problems right and you're reductionistic if you

00:18:49.420 all you can fall back to is the final cause right why did this person not convert to christianity

00:18:53.860 Right. Well, just in eternity past, God passed over them or actively elected. Like, okay, but

00:18:59.720 there's actually efficient causes that God ordained to why this individual did this or

00:19:04.240 responded in that way. Right. And reducing it all to that is, again, a flattening of the different

00:19:09.220 ways and means in which people work, change, act, respond, et cetera. And it's still a true answer.

00:19:13.940 Yes, exactly. But it's not the exhaustive truth. It's the way I would say it is it's not the

00:19:20.520 exhaustive truth, but it is the ultimate truth. And I think that that's kind of where Christians

00:19:25.140 are at right now, is answering every complexity, every question with the ultimate truth. But then

00:19:32.940 convincing ourselves that the ultimate truth is synonymous with the exhaustive truth,

00:19:43.040 when that's simply not the case. Like, I mean, even just take like what you already did,

00:19:46.940 but salvation as an example, the ultimate truth is like, what's the difference between, you know,

00:19:52.980 the person who converts to Christ and the reprobate who never does and spends eternity

00:19:57.740 in the conscious torments of the wrath of God forever? Well, the difference is the good and

00:20:04.320 perfect pleasure of the Lord, because he chose one and not the other. For Jacob I loved, and

00:20:10.240 Esau I hated. That is a true answer. That's a true answer. And within the realm of the truth,

00:20:16.500 that's the ultimately true answer. But it's not the exhaustive. There are other true things that

00:20:22.760 you can say. And here's the beauty of categorical thinking. If we say that there's a particular

00:20:30.060 question and somebody offers a solution, they offer an answer, and we say it's correct, it's

00:20:36.100 right, it's true, then if anybody gives any other answer that contradicts, or not even contradicts,

00:20:42.620 but that is separate other than the answer that's already been provided that we've already labeled

00:20:47.260 and decided is true, then any other answer outside of that answer that's already been offered

00:20:51.940 would have to be a false answer. But what categories allow is for multiple things to

00:20:58.140 be true at once without embracing relativism. Relativism is the idea that you can have multiple

00:21:03.740 true statements that are contradictory. We're not advocating for that. But what we're saying

00:21:09.060 is that there can be multiple true answers that are, they're distinct from one another. They are

00:21:14.160 separate answers, but they're not contradicting answers. So again, using the example of salvation,

00:21:20.160 why is this guy saved and this other guy lives his whole life and never comes to saving faith

00:21:26.260 in Jesus? Well, one, because of the purpose and election of God. Two, that's the ultimate end,

00:21:34.000 the ultimate answer in God's election. Two, in terms of not just the ends of grace,

00:21:38.460 but now speaking about the means of grace, because this person heard the gospel preached

00:21:44.560 to him. This other person never heard the gospel, okay? And then you can go even further and say,

00:21:49.100 within the means of grace, and say, this person had Christian parents. This person did not. 0.90

00:21:52.860 This person was born in a Christian nation, in a Western nation, where the gospel was more

00:21:56.280 prevalent. This person was not. This person had access to books and the internet. And this person

00:22:03.260 was born in an impoverished place where the gospel had never gone. And all of those are true 0.99

00:22:08.100 answers, right? So it's not like, well, the only answer is the purpose and election of God, and

00:22:14.540 all these other answers are therefore false. Now, the other ones, the purpose and election of God

00:22:19.580 being the true, the ultimately true answer, does not relegate these other answers as being false

00:22:25.160 answers. It only relegates other answers as being false answers if they are contradicting answers.

00:22:30.680 But if they come alongside in their own separate category, then it's not only is it permissible, but it then becomes actually even helpful for understanding multiple facets of a particular question and solving a problem.

00:22:46.660 Like you, you've probably heard this, you know, the, the, um, the language where, you know,

00:22:50.900 people say, uh, we, we have a multiple pronged solution, you know, or a threefold solution

00:22:56.200 or two folds that like, we're going to, um, we're going to come at this, um, in several

00:23:00.980 different ways.

00:23:02.200 Um, well, that makes no sense if, um, if, if the multiple different solutions are at

00:23:10.300 war with one another, if they're contradicting one another, then just go with the one that

00:23:15.000 works. But it does make sense if there's actually, within this problem, there are multiple facets of

00:23:24.680 the problem, and therefore multiple facets of the solution, like poverty. Well, education

00:23:30.640 absolutely helps, but also just laws and legislation absolutely helps. Another one,

00:23:39.400 again, the ultimate solution is a regenerate heart that wants to work hard doing your work

00:23:43.900 is unto the Lord, and not just man-pleasing, and these kinds of things, and then being a wise

00:23:47.600 steward of your money. Then also, for those who are already regenerate, generosity, and those

00:23:52.980 kind of, like, so all those are right answers. It's not just generosity, and it's also not just

00:23:59.620 better laws, and it's not just, you know, it's multiple different solutions, and it's not,

00:24:07.640 that doesn't mean we're embracing relativism, so long as these multiple answers don't contradict

00:24:12.240 one another. We're not embracing relativism. We're embracing categories. So let's go to our

00:24:17.540 first commercial break, and then we'll come right back. Our sponsor, Private Family Banking, wants

00:24:21.840 to help you with one money move that'll implicate itself in multi-generational wealth building

00:24:27.740 starting the first day. They help you to avoid taxation and to draw compound interest to your

00:24:33.800 money. Now, if you're a high net worth individual, someone who has maybe even $10 million in net

00:24:39.980 worth, then they can help you even more. W-2 workers, contract workers, business owners,

00:24:46.320 it's all about cash flow and making tax-deferred gains on all your money for the rest of your life.

00:24:53.640 Don't avoid this. It's a big move, but it's a great time to make it. Click the link below and

00:24:58.860 you can get on Chuck DeLaterante's calendar and he'll go over your background and what you want

00:25:04.080 to accomplish, and he's going to help model a program that exactly fits your needs. So go ahead

00:25:10.200 and send an email to chuckatprivatefamilybanking.com. Again, that's chuckatprivatefamilybanking.com,

00:25:18.400 or you can click the link below. Make a free discovery call now.

00:25:23.260 America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty

00:25:26.640 before God and not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.

00:25:30.340 Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall,

00:25:36.300 but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.

00:25:41.780 Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.

00:25:46.460 We want to find manufacturing businesses and use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.

00:25:53.300 Reese Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.

00:25:57.840 Okay, welcome back.

00:25:59.440 Well, what I want to do is I want to give one or two charts here.

00:26:03.520 I'm trying to think of ways that I can help people have some principles when it comes to categories.

00:26:09.640 So, Nate, let's take a look at the first chart.

00:26:13.480 The first chart here is the categories of roles, right?

00:26:17.020 And so this is just an example of a man.

00:26:21.820 And he's one man, but he has different roles.

00:26:26.880 Let's say he is a father and his job is that he's a judge, but at the same time, he's a citizen of

00:26:33.260 the nation that he's in, and he's a neighbor. He lives in the neighborhood. He's got people around

00:26:37.340 him, people that God puts in front of him. Well, as a father, he's called to discipline with love,

00:26:43.800 right? And he has a kind of action, responsibility that God has given him within the category of

00:26:51.700 father. As a judge, he has a slightly different kind of role and responsibility. He's to give

00:26:59.900 impartial justice. As a citizen, he doesn't make all the laws and he still votes and participates

00:27:06.800 in civic life. So he's supposed to support just laws, vote wisely. And then as a neighbor,

00:27:12.740 maybe he would have the role of showing compassion to individuals in need. Now,

00:27:18.520 where this gets a little bit interesting is let's say that he chooses to exercise. Let's say someone,

00:27:24.680 um, crashes into his car, Joel, this happened not too well, a little while ago for you,

00:27:28.940 but someone just crashes into his car at night or, um, you know, no one was in the car.

00:27:34.460 No one was in the car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's say this, this particular man is out,

00:27:39.460 uh, playing with his kids in the front yard and someone comes by and careens into the side of his

00:27:44.200 car, right? Now, this man, what role is he wearing there? Well, he's not on the bench. He's not going

00:27:53.420 to sentence the man at this point. It's also not his child. He's not going to discipline the man

00:27:59.080 or give him a spanking or, you know, give him a stern talking to or something like that. You keep

00:28:02.760 saying the man, but just for the sake of accuracy, the woman. Fair enough. And in my case, it was a 1.00

00:28:08.600 woman. Go ahead and continue. Um, no, actually here he's, he's probably a neighbor, right? And

00:28:13.540 so it's within, what's that? I just said based, I based myself right there. Go ahead. Sorry.

00:28:19.860 He, he probably, he now has some leeway. How do I treat this person that just ran into my car?

00:28:26.340 Well, you could call the police, get the insurance involved. That's fine. You could say, look,

00:28:30.720 this is someone who, um, I just want to work something out privately with. Um, you could

00:28:35.040 extend a measure of compassion or a measure of strictness. The point is he might find

00:28:40.720 disciplinary, quote unquote, disciplinary actions in his different roles. And because those are

00:28:48.420 different categories, he's going to live and act differently within all of those roles.

00:28:55.600 I think people have a hard time with this when it comes to, well, a Christian, if he's in politics

00:29:01.940 at all. He has to be a Christian. He's got to be compassionate, kind, loving. He's got to...

00:29:08.680 He does have to be a Christian.

00:29:10.000 He does have to be a Christian, but I'm saying they're defining his role as a Christian in

00:29:15.640 politics merely as maybe they would say a father or a neighbor at best. And we forget that

00:29:23.080 individuals or organizations can have different roles because they're occupying a different

00:29:30.760 category in different situations one of the best amen well done uh one of the best examples that i

00:29:35.880 always think of is uh when some of the roman centurion centurions came to jesus um and and

00:29:42.520 by god's grace he had given them saving faith and they came to jesus they wanted to be his followers

00:29:46.280 his disciples and they asked him um they essentially what they're asking is uh um is the gospel is it

00:29:54.040 exhaustive enough? Is the Christian faith wide enough in its breadth to include us also? Are we

00:30:01.700 beyond the saving grace of God? Or is there a place for us within your kingdom? And the answer

00:30:08.660 that Jesus gives makes it, you know, people have read, you know, this passage a million times. So

00:30:14.380 nobody really balks at it within the Christian world. But if people slowed down and thought

00:30:20.580 about it for a second and they behaved consistently with all their myopic views, uh, on everything

00:30:26.040 else, then, then they really would have to admit that, um, that it's jarring. It's shocking. It's,

00:30:31.260 it's, it's a bit surprising because what I think a lot of Christians, especially American Christians

00:30:36.160 today, what they would expect Jesus to say, um, you know, when they say, uh, can we be your

00:30:43.280 disciples? How, how can we follow you? They would expect Jesus to answer by saying, uh, you can,

00:30:48.400 but there's an ultimatum. And the ultimatum is that you have to get a new job. You can be my

00:30:53.440 disciples, but you cannot work for Rome. You cannot be Roman centurions. You can't, you can't

00:30:58.960 be soldiers. But that's not what Jesus says, actually. You know, because that's a, and this

00:31:05.060 matters because that's a question that people ask, you know, all the time today. Like, can,

00:31:09.340 can I serve in the military and be a Christian? Well, not if you're a gay pacifist, you know, 1.00

00:31:15.400 but if you're a biblical historic christian then absolutely you can serve in the military 0.59

00:31:19.180 um because pacifism isn't christian it's not biblical um and it's like well yeah but what

00:31:24.740 about the american military in the year of our lord 2025 when there's so much corruption i think

00:31:29.220 um okay but what about rome these guys were roman centurions and they come to jesus and jesus you

00:31:37.660 know they say what what must we do to follow you and a lot of us if we were being honest we would 1.00

00:31:42.480 say, well, we kind of expect Jesus to say, you got to quit your job. But he doesn't. Instead,

00:31:48.560 he says, don't extort people and be content with your wages. And that's it. That's his full answer.

00:31:54.900 He doesn't go any further than that. He doesn't say, oh, and also you can't flog anyone.

00:32:00.240 He also doesn't say when you're out on the battlefield, you can't kill your opponent.

00:32:02.860 Right. You can't, oh, you can't fight anymore. You can't do this anymore. You can't,

00:32:06.460 or you can't work for, you know, for Rome because they employ Pilate, you know, and Caesar. And

00:32:12.120 these guys and they're, and they're terrible, you know, and they're about to crucify me and

00:32:15.360 all these, like, he doesn't say any of that. Um, instead he, uh, he sticks to the main and plain

00:32:20.920 and he says, um, don't rob people, uh, and be content with your wages. And then, yeah, follow

00:32:28.480 me while being, uh, Roman centurions. And so, so yeah. And so these kinds of things I think are

00:32:35.940 important in understanding, um, you know, so what does the Christian politician do? Well,

00:32:41.740 yeah, he's got to be a Christian, but he has to be a Christian politician. He doesn't need to be 0.92

00:32:46.580 a husband to the state within his role in the state. He doesn't need to be a father. He doesn't

00:32:53.480 need to be a neighbor. His job is not to make sure that the sojourner, you know, is at the

00:33:01.040 expense of his own citizens, you know, with tax-funded policies to make sure that the 0.82

00:33:05.540 sojourner has a $150,000 down payment for his home as an illegal immigrant in the state of

00:33:11.080 California, you know, meanwhile, also defunding the fire department so that, you know, half the 0.91

00:33:15.260 state burns to the ground. Like, no, that's not, that's actually not what he needs to do. What he

00:33:19.740 needs to do is execute justice. But then what he needs to do in his home, when he comes home and

00:33:25.020 he hangs up his hat at the end of the day, what he needs to do with his wife and kids is a little

00:33:28.860 bit different. He does not need to behave with his three-year-old child in the same manner that

00:33:34.920 he does in his vocation. Yeah. Grace doesn't destroy those natural categories. So those four

00:33:39.680 you mentioned the father, judge, citizen, and neighbor. Those are all kind of properties of

00:33:43.460 man as man, man as a father, man as occupation. And grace doesn't come in, sweep them all the way

00:33:48.400 and just give him a new spiritual designation as Christian. Rather grace elevates those natural

00:33:53.360 roles. So he's a good Christian citizen, a good Christian father, but those categories still

00:33:57.680 remains. He's still the father. He's still the judge. He's still all of those things.

00:34:01.120 And grace is what actually just enables him to be the best version of those things instead of

00:34:05.840 taking them, sweeping them all away, and just making him this blob that's now Christian,

00:34:11.080 that just does Christian things, does Christian politics, whatever. And that works with our 0.80

00:34:14.740 various vocations, all within one individual. It also works at a corporate level with various

00:34:20.980 nations. So what happens when an American is converted? Well, instead of being an American,

00:34:26.520 he becomes a Christian. No, he becomes an American Christian, just like you can have a 0.70

00:34:32.040 sudanese christian and a chinese christian a canadian christian you know like and so nationality

00:34:37.720 still remains gender still remains um ethnicity in addition to which is separate from nationality

00:34:44.820 but that also still remains um vocation still remains and paul talks about this even in i think

00:34:50.940 of first corinthians i believe it's chapter seven now the specific case study in view in this

00:34:56.620 particular text has to do with marriage and singleness. But the principle, I think, absolutely,

00:35:03.440 it's by way of implication, applies further. Paul says that each man should remain in whatever

00:35:09.820 station, as some translations say, they use the word station. He should remain in whatever station 0.97

00:35:16.180 of life he was in when the Lord called him. Meaning that if he's single, if he can, if he has

00:35:22.000 the gift of celibacy, if he's not burning with passion, because Paul offers all the qualifications

00:35:25.680 later. But if he can, not that he has the gift of singleness, which is not a gift, but really it's

00:35:31.100 a curse and suffering, but he has the gift of celibacy that makes singleness tolerable, bearable.

00:35:36.400 Then in that case, if the Lord called him as he was a single man, then he should seek to remain

00:35:40.700 single. If he's married, even married to an unbeliever, this is where he gets into being 0.97

00:35:44.760 unequally yoked. If you're a Christian and you're single and yet you don't have the gift of celibacy 0.96

00:35:50.200 and you're pursuing marriage, then you better not be pursuing an unbeliever. But if God saves you 0.98

00:35:54.980 and you were already married and God for whatever reason and his providence saves you, but not your

00:35:59.180 spouse. Well, if your spouse is content to remain with you, to be at peace with you, then you should

00:36:04.280 also remain in the marriage, even though your spouse is an unbeliever. If they refuse to be 0.99

00:36:09.140 with you because of this change of heart and you're now a new man, then you should allow them

00:36:13.320 to go. You don't send them away, but if they leave you, you allow them to go in order to remain at

00:36:18.260 peace at all costs. But that principle, my point is, I think it goes further. I think you can

00:36:23.280 stretch that, um, without being far-fetched at all, um, in a responsible way, uh, and apply that

00:36:28.820 also to vocation. I think you can also apply it to, uh, ethnicity. If God called you and you were

00:36:33.940 an Ethiopian, well, you're still an Ethiopian. You're just now a Christian Ethiopian. And that 1.00

00:36:38.820 has implications and changes and all these wonderful, glorious things. Um, but grace does

00:36:43.580 not destroy nature or replace nature or eradicate it, but rather elevates and restores. And, and

00:36:49.920 that's across the whole board. And the funny thing right now that I'm noticing with the

00:36:54.560 complementarian, neoconservative, you know, classical liberal types, I think, you know,

00:37:04.720 Babylon Bee is a great example. But one of the things that I'm noticing is, you know, they want

00:37:10.140 to keep their complementarian card, you know, while being, you know, as egalitarian as you

00:37:14.660 absolutely possibly can be except for um you know a woman preaching on the two hours on sunday

00:37:20.740 yeah for two hours on spot they hold back exactly yeah so it might be 35 minutes on sunday yeah

00:37:24.940 yeah um you're talking about the whole service but even that maybe a grant she's leading worship

00:37:29.860 for the hour and a half right the 35 minutes she'll be doing the announcements maybe running

00:37:34.600 through some of the you know quasi liturgy and um maybe doing some of the bible reading before

00:37:38.860 the pastor comes on preach and she won't be an elder now she'll be she will be in she'll actually

00:37:44.940 have a higher status than the elders we call them the shadow elders right like when you get done

00:37:49.500 with an elders meeting and all the men are in agreement you've prayed about it you've sought

00:37:53.180 the lord you hashed it out you're all in agreement and and you go home and it was a monday night

00:37:57.860 elders meeting and on wednesday you start getting the you know like clockwork you start getting the

00:38:02.060 phone calls from each of the elders and they're like you know what i've been thinking about it

00:38:05.040 more. I've prayed about it more. I don't know if I agree with this. And in those moments,

00:38:09.000 sometimes it's good to just say, you know what, go ahead and let's put the decision maker on the

00:38:14.000 phone. Could you hand the phone to your wife? Yeah. Let's get the person in the household who 0.80

00:38:18.160 wears the pants. We call that the shadow elders, AKA the wives of elders who often run churches 1.00

00:38:23.900 more than the husbands. And this is in complementarian churches. It's prevalent, 0.87

00:38:28.820 prevalent. So anyways, all that being said, I cannot harp on complementarians enough. Any chance

00:38:35.160 to, if I can shame you out of the complementarian position by the grace of God for the good of your

00:38:40.620 soul and his glory into a biblical patriarchy position, then yes, I will lay the shame and

00:38:46.820 sarcasm on as thick as I possibly can. That said, the quintessential go-to verse is going to be,

00:38:52.020 you know, Galatians 3, right? Galatians 3, I believe it's verse 27 and 28 that says, you know,

00:38:57.860 there's neither, you know, therefore, for anyone who's put on Christ, there's now either male or

00:39:02.960 female, Jew or Greek, you know, or Jew or Gentile, and also slave or free. Now, we look at that, 0.61

00:39:10.420 and, you know, again, I gotta, you know, for those of you who are just listening, I'm doing

00:39:15.160 air quotes as intensely as my fingers will allow me to do, but for the complementarian, you know,

00:39:20.720 conservative, you know, Bible-based churches out there that are absolutely liberal by any church

00:39:30.060 Christian standard here in America just 60 years ago. You think you're conservative. You're not.

00:39:35.480 You're not. The women would have been aghast. The women of the 1940s here in America, the average 1.00

00:39:44.420 American church, they would have walked into your conservative, complementarian church, and they 0.99

00:39:49.920 would have been incredibly offended where are the head coverings uh paul says in first corinthians 0.98

00:39:55.660 14 i believe it's verse 35 explicitly um it is shameful for a woman to speak in church she's up 0.95

00:40:01.160 there doing the announcements what what where are the armed guards to take people away yeah

00:40:06.620 where are the armed guards ma'am uh sir this uh this woman has lost her composure please take

00:40:13.100 take her away um and so like everybody would have been right like you you do not understand

00:40:18.000 how liberal we are. You do not understand how liberal we are. You think you're conservative,

00:40:23.500 that's cute. You are liberal. Now, all that being said, the complementarian conservative,

00:40:29.360 aka, let's be honest, liberal churches today, they will point to Galatians and they'll say,

00:40:36.600 well, you know, being in Christ Jesus doesn't change your gender. There is still male and

00:40:42.900 female. What that's referencing, we're all one in Christ Jesus, one baptism, one spirit, one Lord.

00:40:47.580 what that's referencing is our standing at the foot of the cross. It means that in the eternal

00:40:52.220 sense, right, that a wife now is still the weaker vessel and the husband is still the head of his 0.98

00:40:57.060 wife. And yet at the same time, speaking in categories, the wife is also a co-heir in grace.

00:41:04.760 She's a joint heir with it. There's not salvation for men and then some kind of sub-salvation for

00:41:10.920 women. So she still gets a full salvation, the same as her husband's co-heirs in grace. That's 0.59

00:41:16.680 one category, the eternal category, the level of the soul. But in temporal, earthly categories,

00:41:22.420 she's still a weaker vessel. He's still head and all these other things of Ephesians 5, right?

00:41:27.260 Galatians 3 does not eradicate Ephesians 5. And the complementarian, neocon, you know, guy can do

00:41:34.700 all of that categorical, exegetical thinking. But he won't finish the verse. Galatians 3, 28 doesn't

00:41:42.640 just talk about there's neither male nor female. There, he's able to have categories and say,

00:41:46.080 there is neither male nor female it's a true verse it's the bible it means something it's not lying

00:41:51.320 right this seemingly contradicts but it actually doesn't contradict if we put each in their proper

00:41:56.720 categories and and he can do that because he's complimentary and he doesn't think women should

00:42:01.440 preach on the lord's day so he can do it with gender he can't do it with ethnicity or nationality

00:42:07.060 jew or greek and he also can't do it with slavery yeah yeah right slave or free um but it's the

00:42:14.880 same hermeneutic applied to all three of those examples in these multiple different categories.

00:42:21.300 Eternal category, level of the soul, slave, right? I mean, whether you've got Lee, Robert E. Lee,

00:42:30.780 taking the Lord's Supper with slaves, praise God, and viewing the joint heirs in Christ.

00:42:36.100 Yep.

00:42:36.240 I'm going to worship with them before the throne of God for eternity. Brothers,

00:42:40.820 brothers in christ absolutely and then on monday morning he's master their slave and he's going to

00:42:50.160 go to ephesians chapter in this case it would be chapter six we're still chapter five chapter six

00:42:55.640 now yeah wait isn't that i mean it's galatians gives the principle in the category of the eternal

00:43:01.620 the the level of the soul but then ephesians five and six actually gives the same three things

00:43:07.500 mentioned in Galatians, but now in a separate category. So how do we, in a temporal plane,

00:43:14.480 how do we behave? Husband, behave like this. Wife, behave like that. Master, like this. Slave,

00:43:20.360 like that. Parent, father, mother, like this. Son, like that. And so all that being said, 0.95

00:43:27.540 with the Galatians 3, ethnicity still exists. There's neither Jew nor Greek. Yeah, that's right. 0.62

00:43:33.740 at the foot of the cross, as it pertains to eternal salvation and the innate dignity and

00:43:39.620 value of the human soul that has been saved by the blood of Jesus. There's no difference than

00:43:45.840 a regenerate soul in Ethiopia and an eternal regenerate soul in Canada. Praise God. That's

00:43:52.540 wonderful. In this temporal life, there is a difference between those two nations and those

00:43:58.880 two peoples that make up those nations and to ignore that um well you you ignore it at the risk

00:44:07.800 of your own detriment and the west has been right mess around and uh find out find out we've been

00:44:13.220 finding out real hard for a few decades now uh west do you have any further thoughts i was gonna

00:44:18.820 say so much of the resistance to it because what you just did it's not complicated it's not hard

00:44:23.100 most conservatives they they wouldn't go so far as transgenderism but if you take there's neither

00:44:27.660 male nor female in there you would have no problem with a surgery to change that right so they all

00:44:31.660 knowingly reject that but but when you get to those conclusions again about ethnicity and about

00:44:36.560 slavery and all of that they don't like i've been taking steven wolf's formal logic class which is

00:44:41.060 really good he's on patreon you should take it but he talks about if you don't like a conclusion

00:44:45.400 did you just plug someone else's patreon i didn't give the link or the url so i'll be respectful

00:44:50.480 dr steven wolf we will be sending you an invoice expecting the mail absolutely any signups from

00:44:55.820 to stay on um but but he talks about if the premise is solid but you don't like the conclusion

00:45:01.040 you don't get to walk back and be like yeah but i really don't like what that leads to because it

00:45:06.000 leads to the continuing categories greek and jew of ethnicity and slave and free and so i think you 0.71

00:45:10.720 have a lot of evangelicals and they know it and they'll do it with one of the three right gender

00:45:14.540 they really don't like what those other two end up leading to they barely do it with gender true 0.73

00:45:19.660 They only do it with one out of three categories, slave-free, Jew-Greek. 0.80

00:45:24.940 So it's ethnicity. 0.76

00:45:26.700 And then the other, I would say, is a measure of like economic status.

00:45:31.180 So it's ethnicity, it's economic status, because this would also apply to employer-employee, right?

00:45:38.620 So as an employer, it's like, well, this is your brother in Christ.

00:45:41.260 Why are you going in there on a Monday morning and tell him,

00:45:45.560 How do you have the audacity to tell him a dress code?

00:45:50.280 You're going to tell him what he has to wear 40 hours a week and then go in there and also

00:45:55.480 send him an email where you dictate his schedule?

00:45:59.400 Yes, because I'm still employer.

00:46:02.580 He's still employee.

00:46:03.900 Brothers in Christ, if I'm a Christian, he's a Christian in the eternal sense, in the innate

00:46:07.740 dignity of our souls before God.

00:46:10.800 But on Monday morning, I'm boss.

00:46:13.980 He's not.

00:46:14.660 and you can apply that to husband and wife.

00:46:17.780 You're going to, as a husband, tell your wife what to wear? 0.64

00:46:22.020 Well, every woman's being told to wear 40 hours a week 0.96

00:46:24.880 when she goes to her boss babe job. 1.00

00:46:28.120 McDonald's tells women what to wear. 0.52

00:46:30.800 The only person in this whole world that it's shocking

00:46:34.540 and just absurd that if he tells a woman what to wear,

00:46:39.860 the only person that we balk at is a husband.

00:46:42.600 yes, a husband actually does have that authority. The same way that that male employer has the

00:46:48.960 authority with his employee, so too a male husband could also say to his wife, he shouldn't be 0.99

00:46:54.180 domineering, he shouldn't be a jerk about it. I think there's a way of being overly particular 0.98

00:46:58.980 that's unhelpful and unbearable. But in grace and in kindness, if he says to his wife, you know

00:47:06.840 what, sweetheart, I'd like to see you wear more dresses. We've got young daughters, and our whole

00:47:12.580 world has just taken away femininity from women. And I would like for you to model that. And I 0.75

00:47:19.800 think that dresses are more conducive to modeling femininity than pants. So I'm not making a hard,

00:47:29.260 fast rule against pants, but I'd like to see more dresses. Now, here's the thing. I'll get a little

00:47:33.740 crazy here. He could make a hard, fast rule against pants. He actually does have that authority.

00:47:39.260 and so and all these different things people my point is the the average evangelical today um

00:47:45.960 it's it's on paper he'll keep his complementarian card and say yeah men should be elders and

00:47:54.140 husbands are the head of the home but in practice the husband basically has zero authority and the

00:47:59.900 elders have less authority than the shadow elders we've already covered that the wives um and then

00:48:05.220 on paper over here with slave and free with that one the example that paul gives um that one he

00:48:11.220 said oh well that doesn't uh happen anymore because the gospel abolished slavery um but

00:48:16.220 also on paper that one he's going to say that one no way um but then in practice that one he

00:48:21.880 actually gives the most credence to with it's just no longer slave or free but you actually have

00:48:25.820 employer and employee and employers he's fine with them having um the same kind of power uh that you

00:48:33.700 would expect from the king some kind of 60 hours a week of just you will be here 60 hours a week

00:48:37.940 dictating every moment of your schedule this exact dress code down to the color of your socks

00:48:44.140 um and that he won't blink an eye he'll say yeah that totally makes sense you know it's amazon

00:48:48.340 right like husband but um jeff bezos now we're talking right because now i found a man that i

00:48:56.100 respect do i do i as an evangelical complementarian pastor respect the god-given dignity and authority

00:49:02.880 given to the men in my church as husbands and fathers you bet i don't do i respect uh the

00:49:09.580 limitless virtually limitless monarchical power given to jeff bezos over every single employee

00:49:16.960 he has uh even to the level which there's been you know articles about this where they can't

00:49:22.020 even go to the bathroom right there's like um yeah i i support that so anyways that's enough

00:49:28.800 said, I just, you, you've got to be able to open your eyes and see that. Cause I'm not talking

00:49:35.120 right now. I'm not talking about LGBT friendly churches, right? I'm not talking about churches 1.00

00:49:40.160 where the pastor you're, you know, the pastor is a woman I'm talking. I'm talking about John

00:49:47.380 MacArthur churches. That's what I'm talking about. I am talking about Bible churches.

00:49:53.380 I'm talking about, I I'm talking about reform Baptist churches. I'm talking about PCA churches.

00:49:58.800 i'm talking about opc churches never forget amy bird happened in the opc i'm like carl truman

00:50:08.240 there is no amy bird without carl truman so uh i'm talking about your conservatives who can serve

00:50:14.340 nothing conservatives are simply enshrining uh the battles won by progressives last week

00:50:22.640 and so um yeah you got to learn how to think in categories and also stop being effeminate okay

00:50:31.400 that that's all i got let's let's go to our last commercial break we'll come back we'll give it to

00:50:35.380 michael and uh for some concluding thoughts all right the clock is running out you need to go

00:50:41.300 and register now for our christ is king how to defeat trash world conference it's happening the

00:50:47.460 Year of Our Lord, 2025, April 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

00:50:51.760 That's a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

00:50:54.400 And by God's grace, we're able to provide for you an all-star lineup.

00:50:58.780 We've got Steve Dace, Calvin Robinson, Oren McIntyre, Dr. Stephen Wolfe, Eric Kahn, David

00:51:04.980 Reese, Andrew Isker, John Harris, A.D. Robles, Dan Burkholder, Dusty Devers, Ben Garrett,

00:51:11.960 C.J. Engel, and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webin.

00:51:15.280 Come on out. Join us April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2025, Thursday through Saturday. Go to

00:51:22.480 rightresponseconference.com to register today. Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.

00:51:30.140 Listen, guys, you probably listen to Right Response Ministries because

00:51:33.560 you take the Dominion mandate offered to us in Scripture seriously. Well, unsurprisingly,

00:51:40.000 so does Dominion Wealth Strategist. As the only distinctly reformed financial consulting firm,

00:51:47.580 they help Calvinistic, covenantal, and confessional Christians to steward their

00:51:52.900 resources faithfully in a way that actually aligns with God's Word. Dominion Wealth leverages

00:51:58.780 all corners of the financial service industry as independent brokerage agents, matching you

00:52:05.100 with suitable products and services from dozens of top industry providers. Their mission is to

00:52:11.740 equip believers to secure their family's future and build a legacy that glorifies God by building

00:52:19.160 holistic financial strategies that include budgeting, insurance, debt management, retirement

00:52:26.100 planning, estate planning, and more. In order to make wealth Christian again with a portfolio that

00:52:32.520 might even put King Solomon to shame, go and take dominion over your finances today by visiting

00:52:39.540 www.reformed.money and book an introductory overview right now. All of Christ for all of life

00:52:48.980 and all of finance for Christendom. All right, welcome back. What I want to do is I want to show

00:52:54.840 one chart. It's going to be common to a lot of people perhaps, but if not, then it'll be super

00:53:00.800 helpful just to start you thinking about some proper categories. So this is just spheres of

00:53:07.320 sovereignty as kind of outlined and articulated by some of what Abraham Kuyper said. But then

00:53:12.780 what I want to do after I explain this chart is I want to tackle one particular issue that people

00:53:17.660 have a lot of difficulty with. So here are some categories that are really helpful to think about.

00:53:22.920 There's the individual, there's the family, there's the church, and then there's the government. I mean

00:53:27.080 like the civil magistrate government. So individuals are responsible for their own

00:53:31.320 personal holiness, charity, forgiveness, personal holiness, et cetera. The family

00:53:35.680 nurtures children. But notice here, the family is also primarily in charge of the health and

00:53:42.180 education of their children. And we could go on a long thing about that, but we've done that before.

00:53:47.160 But again, the education and the health of children is not welfare. It's not food stamps.

00:53:54.240 It's not even public school, although I'm not opposed to the idea of a community having a school that they help fund together on local levels.

00:54:01.840 I mean, the civic education is important, but ultimately it's the father's and the family's responsibility to provide and oversee the education of their children.

00:54:12.280 Church, preaching the gospel, spiritual discipline, the keys of the kingdom, training, instruction in godliness and righteousness.

00:54:19.080 and then the government who has a rule and responsibility of establishing just laws,

00:54:26.720 protecting the innocent, punishing the evil, promoting what is good, and bearing the sword

00:54:33.140 against what is evil. This is pretty standard. So if you have heard this before, it won't be

00:54:38.720 necessarily new. But if you haven't thought about thinking in categories before, this is a really

00:54:43.240 good place to get started. What I want to do is I want to ask you guys about a situation,

00:54:49.820 not a situation, but one that a lot of Christians are thinking about a lot right now. And it's

00:54:54.580 the relationship of the nation or the civil government and the individual Christian. And 0.79

00:55:02.260 one of the problems that we run into when we think about categories is that we, there are

00:55:07.140 some categories that are in opposition to each other. But what, and we alluded to it already,

00:55:13.620 one of the things that Christians do is they think that the term Christian is in opposition

00:55:20.520 to some things like magistrate or governor or things like that. Really, if you want to talk 0.97

00:55:28.380 about what's in opposition to the category of Christian, it's actually non-Christian. 0.90

00:55:32.320 It's child of God, child of Satan, right? 0.57

00:55:35.980 And so the idea of a Christian, 0.99

00:55:39.040 you said it earlier, Wes, it informs,

00:55:42.140 it helps an individual who is a Christian

00:55:45.580 understand what the role and purpose

00:55:48.100 of each of those categories is.

00:55:49.500 So here's the situation or kind of the category error

00:55:53.980 that I think gets made a lot

00:55:55.120 that I want some feedback on here.

00:55:58.160 We would say, and when we look at America's history,

00:56:01.880 this has happened. And I would say in some ways, rightfully so. We would say the distinctions of

00:56:07.340 a Christian are that he is kind, compassionate, merciful to the needy. You know, it's even the

00:56:14.960 heart of God all through the prophets. He wants to establish justice for the fatherless. He wants

00:56:20.360 to rescue the oppressed. And so we would say on an individual level, a Christian man ought to

00:56:26.020 have a degree of compassion, kindness, generosity, mercy, all of these things. What I hear from

00:56:33.620 Christians is the idea that if a Christian is supposed to be some of those things, at least a

00:56:38.620 lot of the time, why isn't a Christian nation or a Christian government supposed to be compassionate,

00:56:46.240 kind, etc., in the same way towards, you know, you've got a country in the Caribbean who's in

00:56:53.460 our backyard that a hurricane comes through and devastates. Well, shouldn't a Christian nation 1.00

00:56:58.760 have a sense of come, you know, come here, we will take care of you, we will provide for you.

00:57:06.200 I think there's a disconnect or difficulty that some people have when they look at some of the

00:57:11.120 Christian virtues that an individual man or woman ought to have. And then they say, but it sounds

00:57:17.280 like you guys are saying America just for America, and you know, screw the rest of the world. So I'm

00:57:23.380 This is one that I think a lot of people really struggle with.

00:57:26.980 What are the categories here?

00:57:28.740 What are the right ways to think about the categories here?

00:57:31.960 What does it mean to be a Christian nation in relation to other nations?

00:57:35.960 So that's kind of, at least in my plan, that was what we would spend a couple minutes closing out, trying to parse out here.

00:57:43.040 Okay.

00:57:43.520 Yeah.

00:57:43.820 Yeah, that's a good one.

00:57:44.960 You go, Wes.

00:57:45.800 I've got thoughts.

00:57:46.540 I think one of the big ones is the tiers of responsibility.

00:57:49.660 So working down, you would say like,

00:57:51.160 love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

00:57:53.820 Man's first and greatest allegiance is always to God,

00:57:56.980 not even family, not even wife, not even nation.

00:57:59.360 Nothing comes over and above.

00:58:01.240 So your first responsibility is to God.

00:58:03.060 And then you have those natural responsibilities of the family,

00:58:05.920 having to provide, having to protect,

00:58:07.720 and then the spiritual ones as it relates to your local church body,

00:58:10.480 the church universal, et cetera.

00:58:12.060 So if you go down the list, so we think family,

00:58:14.720 and then we expand that out, you could say tribe or even state.

00:58:17.400 I'd have more of an allegiance here in Texas

00:58:18.980 than i would to to illinois and you get that out you get to the level of a nation so be that be you

00:58:24.820 in the united states which is very large be you in japan switzerland what have you that's a category

00:58:29.700 of responsibility that you have a duty to and that ranks above the universal neighbor that would be

00:58:35.620 outside of that if you think of the family as the or the nation as the family writ large as stephen

00:58:41.140 wolf would say it's kind of a gathered family your responsibility to that is first and so

00:58:46.580 all right hurricane strikes there's there's damage there's needs there's things that have to be done

00:58:52.020 it is totally permissible not required but permissible to send aid to send workers to

00:58:58.340 come in and do your best now it is not required because there could be situations where the duty

00:59:03.380 to that family in that nation you just have bigger needs at home right now los angeles is it's on fire

00:59:10.500 um if you were a christian magistrate in california which praise god hopefully that

00:59:14.020 that happens someday, it would be a dereliction if your duty, if a tsunami hit Hawaii, Los Angeles

00:59:19.140 is burning and you're taking supplies and you're taking food and you're taking water and you're

00:59:23.400 shipping them off. You'd have taken the higher responsibility and subsumed it under a lower one

00:59:28.240 for those that are farther from you. So that would be one thing I would say is what is your primary

00:59:31.920 responsibilities? And these have to be completed before you can actually start going down the list,

00:59:36.820 being more generous, looking out beyond the horizon. Who can I help? Who needs me? What can

00:59:41.160 I give them, et cetera. But what's important about that is my contention is that what Wes just

00:59:48.400 articulated is a Christian way of thinking about it, right? This is not, when we say a nation

00:59:55.660 ought to be Christian, well, yes, it ought to have Christian priorities, right? Like Augustine

01:00:00.040 talked about the order of Morris. That is a Christian conception of ranking priorities. And

01:00:06.080 And so to the person who wants to say a Christian nation must be compassionate to the, the hurricane,

01:00:13.000 the nation that was hit by the hurricane over and above its own citizens, that that's, it's 0.51

01:00:20.680 unchristian actually to do that.

01:00:22.900 And that is, I think in Wes's example, what people have a hard time with and what they

01:00:28.520 maybe overlook is there's different, there's different requirements for different levels

01:00:33.640 of organization to act in a christianly way right i mean that that literally just happened um and

01:00:40.040 is in no small part one of the reasons maybe not the exclusive reason but one of the reasons why

01:00:46.600 uh kamala just lost an election 100 is because um appalachia was underwater and fema had already

01:00:55.280 spent all their money on ukraine yeah that literally just happened and so and so it's not

01:01:00.820 saying that, you know, a father, a familial father in the home should be compassionate. But when we

01:01:05.340 get into the other role of a civil father, when it comes to the state, that compassion has no place.

01:01:11.440 No, it's actually saying that, no, compassion is part of the job. It's different. It's going to be

01:01:18.200 dispersed in different ways, executed in different ways. But his pseudo-compassion to the foreigner 1.00

01:01:27.440 on the other side of the world,

01:01:29.900 when that comes at the expense of genuine compassion

01:01:34.000 that he's firstly obligated to, to his own citizens,

01:01:37.540 then it's not that we're saying,

01:01:40.620 it's not that we're saying that the civil magistrate

01:01:42.800 is not supposed to be compassionate

01:01:44.380 and therefore shouldn't help Ukraine.

01:01:46.440 No, what we're saying is that all the help

01:01:49.580 and billions of dollars that we've given to Ukraine

01:01:51.760 is actually not compassionate. 0.76

01:01:54.320 It's actually hating our own citizens. 1.00

01:01:57.760 Gavin Newsom, his compassion to the illegal immigrants is now being viewed, rightly for 0.88

01:02:07.880 what it actually is, hatred towards his actual residence. 0.81

01:02:11.360 So in Appalachia, at the federal level, our compassion to Ukraine meant drowning Appalachians. 0.79

01:02:18.880 And at the state level, Newsome, Nusolemi, his compassion to Mexico is now being rightfully

01:02:28.240 viewed for what it actually is, hatred towards Californians.

01:02:33.060 So Appalachia was drowning, and now California is burning.

01:02:37.760 And it's a perfect picture of, first and foremost, of course, Democrats.

01:02:41.620 It's what they do.

01:02:43.380 If they can't drown their own citizens, they burn them. 0.99

01:02:47.600 That is what Democrats do, is they kill their own citizens. 1.00

01:02:51.140 They kill them in the womb, or they try to pass bills for euthanasia so they can kill 1.00

01:02:55.160 them when they're elderly. 0.98

01:02:56.420 Or if they can't kill them at all, then they cut off their fruitfulness so that they can 1.00

01:03:00.320 kill their posterity, right? 1.00

01:03:02.900 So with transgenderism and gender reassignment surgeries, Democrats kill people. 1.00

01:03:09.520 That's what they do. 0.80

01:03:11.360 So the point is, it's not that we're saying the civil magistrate shouldn't be compassionate.

01:03:17.000 What we're saying is that all your billions to Israel, and all your billions to Ukraine,

01:03:23.640 and all your billions to illegal immigrants coming up through Mexico, we're not saying

01:03:29.340 that, oh, you're a civil magistrate, you shouldn't be compassionate.

01:03:32.820 We're saying, no, you should be compassionate.

01:03:34.880 And what you're doing as a pseudo-compassion is actually the opposite of true compassion

01:03:40.220 it is hatred towards the proper object that you've been ordained and positioned by god

01:03:46.640 to be compassionate towards so i i can do the same thing to give a biblical example you can do the

01:03:51.980 same thing with jesus i remember you know people when i you know when i started getting a little

01:03:56.720 red-pilled back in the day and um preaching sermons about jesus and one of the things that

01:04:01.360 i talked about was i was talking about the attributes of god and i was talking about how

01:04:04.380 that relates to us uh obviously different but as it relates to like the fruit of the spirit and i

01:04:09.640 saying, you know, the fruit of the Spirit, it's not like a toolkit. It's not like where you take

01:04:13.640 one out at a time, and then you swap it out for something else. It's not as though faithfulness

01:04:18.860 is like a hammer, you know, and goodness is like a drill bit, you know, and depending what job I

01:04:25.920 have, you know, I'll take love, or I'll take joy, or I'll take peace, you know, until the job gets

01:04:31.660 done. That's not how the fruit of the Spirit works. Fruit of the Spirit simply means the fruit,

01:04:36.480 meaning the evidence or manifestations, the visible outward manifestations of the Spirit

01:04:41.400 who is invisible, right? The invisible God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are most pure

01:04:47.800 spirits without spirit and one divine essence, but without body parts and passions. God is

01:04:55.420 invisible. John chapter 4, God is invisible. He is, God is a spirit. Those who worship him must

01:05:01.160 worship him in spirit and in truth. So the Holy Spirit is a spirit. You can't see him, but what

01:05:05.940 you can see of the Holy Spirit, what you can see is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the manifestations.

01:05:11.320 So it's not nine different tools as an exhaustive list in a toolkit where you take one out at a

01:05:16.660 time, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

01:05:20.880 No, these are all, think of it like this, if we actually use literal fruit for a second, right?

01:05:24.660 So bananas and oranges and apples. The fruit of the Spirit would not be nine different fruit,

01:05:29.500 bananas, oranges, apples, pineapple, whatever, you know, five more. No, instead, it would be

01:05:34.760 four different characteristics of one fruit. So the fruit of the Spirit, if we're likening the

01:05:40.020 Spirit himself to an apple, it would be the fruit of an apple, which is a fruit, but the fruit of

01:05:45.380 an apple, the characteristics of this particular fruit is it's crunchy, it's crisp, it's sweet,

01:05:50.260 it's tart, it's, you know, all the nine different characteristics, that's what the fruit of the

01:05:55.360 Spirit is like. And Jesus, as the God-man in his incarnation, in his earthly ministry, perfectly

01:06:00.500 modeled all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Now, that being said, because Jesus was full of the

01:06:07.320 Holy Spirit, there was no lack in full measure, full of the Holy Spirit, then the full fruit,

01:06:14.260 evidence, visibility, manifestations, outward manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit were

01:06:18.620 always present in the life of Jesus. Therefore, here's the concluding thought. There was never a

01:06:24.520 time that Jesus wasn't being gentle. There was always love, always joy, always peace, always

01:06:30.640 faithfulness, and always gentleness, which means in John chapter 2, at the temple, when Jesus is

01:06:37.700 fashioning a whip out of cords to begin whipping people and driving out the money changers and

01:06:45.460 flipping over their tables and releasing all the pigeons and the doves and all these kinds of

01:06:51.160 things. Jesus is modeling for us in that moment, gentleness. Perfect gentleness. Now, here's how

01:06:58.840 it gets to our topic today. Well, that doesn't look like gentleness. It looks like harshness. No,

01:07:03.600 it looks like harshness to the people in the temple, the religious rulers of the day, 0.99

01:07:08.320 the Jewish rulers, who were extorting financially, robbing and ripping off the people, particularly 1.00

01:07:16.660 not just Jewish citizens, but all these Gentile who had come from the other side of the earth 0.97

01:07:24.800 in order to worship the triune God, because they were Christians in the Old Testament sense. They 0.51

01:07:30.200 were Christians who loved God, the triune God, wanted to worship him, but they knew that in 0.90

01:07:36.240 order to worship him, they couldn't come fully into the temple, but they could come to the outer

01:07:41.200 courts. But here's what they were doing. It's like a Chuck E. Cheese. You had to buy temple

01:07:46.860 currency. And they had changed the currency exchange, the rates, so high to where people

01:07:52.400 would already, the amount of time off of work, I mean, travel took forever, forever. The amount

01:07:57.440 of time, money they lost from not being able to work, the amount of money they had to spend just

01:08:01.160 to make the trip. And now they finally come. They're at the bottom of their purse. They've

01:08:05.120 got very little left. And they're doing like a dollar gets you a quarter, basically. Like,

01:08:10.740 oh, so you want to buy pigeons or doves to make a dove offering, or you want to buy a goat or a

01:08:18.060 lamb to make a burnt offering, or you want to buy grain for a grain offering, or whatever it is. 1.00

01:08:23.320 Well, your Gentile dirty money, it's no good here. Although, of course, it was good because 1.00

01:08:27.680 they were more than happy to take it, and they wanted to take even more of it. It's no good here.

01:08:31.620 You have to buy holy money, a temple currency. And what's the current exchange rate? Well,

01:08:37.400 it basically comes out to about, uh, all of your money is worth about a quarter of, of what it

01:08:43.780 would be, uh, anywhere else. And these are people who just traveled across land and sea to worship

01:08:50.180 God. And these are the Jewish religious rulers of the day. Classic. This is what they're doing.

01:08:55.820 So is Jesus putting gentleness aside back into the toolkit to take out, you know, the sledgehammer

01:09:01.480 of some other fruit of the Spirit, courage or zeal or whatever. No. Jesus is modeling all the

01:09:08.620 fruit of the Spirit because he's full of the Spirit. All the manifestations are there. And

01:09:12.660 he's modeling them all in full measure and simultaneously, including gentleness. Who is

01:09:18.560 he being gentle to? The Gentile believers. He's being gentle to them. So too, all the way back, 1.00

01:09:25.360 the civil magistrate. When he says no, when he says no to Zelensky, when Zelensky comes,

01:09:31.480 for the 151st time to the United States to stand before our Congress and ask for his next check

01:09:41.260 of another $50 billion. If our civil magistrates tell him no, it is not at the expense of

01:09:48.720 compassion. It is in the full service of compassion that they would be able to look that man,

01:09:54.540 an actor, a literal actor. He's doing a great job. You got to give it to Zelensky.

01:10:00.120 It's just not good for America.

01:10:01.680 But they need to be able, our leaders need to be able to look him in the eye and say,

01:10:05.780 I'm sorry, we cannot drown any more appellations for you.

01:10:10.440 I'm sorry, we can't do it.

01:10:12.080 And then likewise, when the champion, the true winner of every American election for

01:10:17.480 the last 70 years, Bibby, comes to town and he starts to insult those loved ones who lost

01:10:25.000 their lives in 9-11 by saying, well, a tragedy in Israel is like 20 times a tragedy in America. 0.60

01:10:32.940 Our tragedies are real tragedies because we're real people and you're just the goy.

01:10:38.340 We need to be able, our leaders, civil leaders, not at the expense of compassion to Israel, 0.73

01:10:44.180 but in the name of compassion to Americans, our American leaders need to be able to look

01:10:49.380 him in the eye and say, you're done. No more AIPAC handlers. No more dual citizenship in our

01:10:55.280 Congress. Get off of our land. Get out of our country and stop taking our money. We love 1.00

01:11:03.860 Americans. Israel can fend for itself. That's what, that's not the absence of compassion in 0.99

01:11:10.540 the name of courage. That's both compassion and courage. Jesus modeled it for us. A father can do

01:11:17.800 it the same principle in the home a civil father can do it in the state it's not hard but it does

01:11:25.080 require a little bit of categorical thinking the only thing i would add on to that is um to go

01:11:30.940 along with it is for the christian who thinks the the u.s government should pass laws so that many

01:11:37.320 immigrants come here so that we can have the gospel on our doorstep the irony is they're 0.99

01:11:42.660 actually getting something right. One of the purposes of the state is to provide a conducive 1.00

01:11:48.600 environment for the church to flourish. However, what I would say to those Christians is in every 1.00

01:11:55.560 other law, the government is making it more and more impossible for the church to flourish.

01:12:02.360 And so this goes to first principles, order of priority. The government of the United States or

01:12:08.240 the government of texas or whatever whatever group you want to look at ought to be first of all

01:12:13.740 passing laws that prioritize the proclamation of the gospel by the church of that nation to the

01:12:20.280 people of that nation if that's going swimmingly and they want to say okay how could we exert our

01:12:26.280 political pressure to create stability in another country so that missionaries can go there and not

01:12:31.340 be killed. Fantastic. Right. But the, the idea that, um, we should pass laws so that the nations

01:12:38.880 come here, but we've missed the idea that the, the government before God has an obligation to

01:12:44.060 privilege Christianity for the American church to American people, first of all. Well said. 0.82

01:12:51.200 Any thoughts? All right. That's it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in.

01:13:01.340 We'll be right back.

The NXR Podcast - January 20, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Escape Christian Chaos By Thinking In Categories

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript