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

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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,

00:01:12.540 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,

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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

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00:02:22.980 in April of 2021. By God's grace, we are moving into a building. And so we're super excited about

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00:02:38.820 to the church building, and we'll actually have a little bit more physical square footage,

00:02:43.660 and we'll be able to do a little bit more.

00:02:45.580 We're constrained right now

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00:02:48.980 So we tried to, you know, still brush things up

00:02:51.580 and have a little bit of a new aesthetic

00:02:53.040 for the new year in 2025 and mid-year.

00:02:56.520 Lord willing, we'll be able to do a little bit more.

00:02:58.480 But today's topic, as you already saw in the cold open,

00:03:01.060 is categories and our very own Michael Belch

00:03:03.620 has outlined this episode for us.

00:03:05.120 So why don't you kick us off?

00:03:07.080 Well, Joel, this is actually a topic

00:03:10.040 that I'm doing because of feedback from listeners and people that we know who said, you guys

00:03:16.280 mentioned the idea of thinking in categories all the time. And it's true, we do. We mentioned this

00:03:20.400 all the time. I mean, probably every other episode we're talking about, well, that's the category,

00:03:25.340 that's not the proper category. And this is not really a new idea. It just kind of lost to a lot

00:03:31.820 of Christians. But the idea of having categories for thinking, the funny thing to me about it is

00:03:36.420 all of us do this naturally in every part of life right so for instance if you if you think about if

00:03:42.840 you come into your house and your kid is dumping water all over your couch you're going to be very

00:03:48.260 upset and preach the gospel but if but if your kid says actually uh you know um i was lighting

00:03:56.020 the candle for christmas and the candle fell on the couch and the couch was on fire and so what i

00:04:00.820 did then was i dumped a bucket of water on it to keep the house from burning down all of a sudden

00:04:05.240 and you're going to be happy with the kid.

00:04:06.440 Well, or you're going to correct your child and say,

00:04:09.240 why did you put water on the fire

00:04:10.500 instead of preaching the gospel?

00:04:12.900 Joel's anticipating where this episode is going.

00:04:14.840 I mean, the fire is,

00:04:16.180 it's a symbol of the fire of hell and the wrath of God. 0.87

00:04:21.300 The only antidote is preaching the gospel.

00:04:23.640 Joel Berry gets in, why can't we?

00:04:25.420 The answer is the gospel.

00:04:27.940 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.

00:04:33.940 You think about categories for an individual. A father might be kind and gracious with his

00:04:39.740 children, but if that man's a police officer, he's going to be very gruff and firm and aggressive

00:04:45.200 with a criminal. And so the idea of thinking in categories, number one, is not new. Number two,

00:04:52.200 everybody actually already does this. Where we are a little bit perplexed is that it seems to be a

00:04:58.400 lost art for Christians to think about categories of life and living and what is the gospel? What

00:05:04.720 is the law? What is the rest of life? How much does the law of nature and reason, all of these

00:05:11.380 things, how do they play in? And sadly, for a lot of Christians, there's one category when it comes

00:05:19.600 to how we should live, and that is simply, you know, what does the gospel say about this? What

00:05:24.540 does the gospel say about this? So what I thought we would do, first of all, and I'm curious what

00:05:29.480 you guys' opinion on this is, why do you think, and I have some thoughts here, but why is it

00:05:36.580 important to think in categories, right? Why is it important to have different categories for

00:05:41.760 thinking, but then also for how to behave as we go through life? I'm thinking theological

00:05:46.620 categories. I'm thinking as we seek to relate with the world, why is it so important that we

00:05:52.520 get this topic right, would you say? Well, part of it is, it may have been Pat Buchanan who said

00:05:57.980 this. I can't remember, but it's a quote that's been circulating around. It's an old quote, but

00:06:03.180 it's been circulating around recently. The idea of, you know, the town's on fire, or I'm sorry,

00:06:09.960 the town is flooded. There's a flood and you show up with fire extinguishers. So I think one reason

00:06:16.720 that it's helpful to be able to categorize properly is so that you actually have efficient

00:06:22.980 and effective solutions to problems. Because you have to, in order to have the proper solution,

00:06:31.020 you first have to be able to categorize the problem. What category does this particular

00:06:36.320 problem fit into? That way you can begin looking for proper solutions within that category. And if

00:06:44.400 not, then I think one of the problems is that you're going to be incredibly ineffective and

00:06:54.420 dealing with whatever kind of chaos, whatever problematic issue is going on at any given

00:07:00.440 moment. You're not going to be able to deal with it properly. Yeah. People will, I think a great

00:07:05.920 example of this is David Platt, who kind of takes this idea that when we talk about immigration and

00:07:10.100 other cultures and other religions coming, that that's the Great Commission coming to our doorstep.

00:07:13.940 like praise God, we don't even have to go to them. They're arriving here and you're blackpilling, 0.98

00:07:18.440 the nations are coming to us and you're blackpilling. But he takes a theological concept,

00:07:23.100 evangelism, the gospel, reaching individuals with it, and then a political national issue of

00:07:29.900 immigration. And in taking them, crashing them together, and in conflating them, he proposes a

00:07:35.140 solution that is ridiculous and not just ridiculous like, well, that's silly, but destructive. If you 0.97

00:07:40.580 don't properly parse out, this belongs to this domain. This is where God has this. This is where

00:07:45.260 this applies. You can go on and propose ideas and thoughts and pontificate all you want. Things that

00:07:50.720 are genuinely, not just ridiculous and you'll look silly, which is bad enough, but things that are 0.98

00:07:55.380 actually just would decimate you, your church, your people. And so it's not just thinking in 0.98

00:08:00.560 categories to avoid being a bad logician, like thinking logically or having bad reason. You need

00:08:06.860 to think in those categories so you don't make terrible terrible mistakes the irony here is that

00:08:12.280 in the name of kind of this missions god bringing the mission field to the doorstep

00:08:17.100 many christian churches and many christians um are are pulling back on a mission's emphasis

00:08:23.340 right now because they're saying wait we have done not irreparable but serious harm to our

00:08:28.080 nation to our culture to the to the christian worldview that used to exist in our culture

00:08:32.760 and because of some of this category.

00:08:36.020 Irreparable for this generation. 0.75

00:08:37.580 Irreparable for this generation.

00:08:38.560 I don't think this generation,

00:08:40.000 there's certain things we'll never get back

00:08:41.380 in our lifetime.

00:08:42.080 Yeah, I would agree.

00:08:43.320 And so if you don't have the proper categories,

00:08:46.940 you end up, I think, Wes, the way that you,

00:08:49.800 and we'll talk about this a little bit later on,

00:08:51.820 but when you clash and collide and overlap categories,

00:08:56.160 sometimes it can sound very good, right?

00:08:59.220 Like the idea of global missions on the doorstep,

00:09:02.760 and political, cultural, sociological considerations

00:09:05.460 of what is a nation, things like that.

00:09:07.260 Like it can sound very good.

00:09:09.600 And so I would say that one of the reasons

00:09:11.100 why it's important to have categories

00:09:12.500 is because they protect you

00:09:14.460 from things that sound like a good idea.

00:09:17.840 And it drives me crazy that we in the modern church

00:09:21.680 are so committed to reinventing everything, right?

00:09:25.040 And so we come up with a lot of things

00:09:26.440 that sound like really good ideas.

00:09:28.280 And part of what would protect us from that

00:09:30.560 is finding out what older saints said about this topic.

00:09:34.860 But another thing that would protect us

00:09:36.260 from some of these ideas that sound good,

00:09:38.780 but that are really terrible

00:09:39.540 is having proper categories.

00:09:42.400 Yeah, this kind of plays into,

00:09:44.680 for those of you who were able to watch our live stream

00:09:47.920 that we did last Wednesday,

00:09:49.960 our first week coming back in the new year.

00:09:52.680 This is gonna be two Wednesdays ago,

00:09:54.060 or three Wednesdays ago now.

00:09:55.520 No, you're right.

00:09:56.780 You're right, yeah.

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

00:09:59.480 um so time flies when you're having fun uh but but one of the things that we talked about was

00:10:04.660 ideology and uh categories is kind of almost in some sense the antithesis to uh ideology steam

00:10:11.160 rolls everything into um it's my optic it's it's um and and i talked about how you know when you

00:10:17.760 get into now this is speculation at some level you know you can't necessarily prove inward motives

00:10:22.800 Um, but I, I think, um, because I, because I've been ideological, um, particularly I think younger

00:10:29.880 men, it appeals to younger men. And so I know that at least in my own personal life, I can speak for

00:10:35.120 myself and some of my own motives and incentives for why, uh, um, an ideological approach to life,

00:10:41.600 uh, was appealing. Um, well, one, one reason is because it's easier. It's, it's, um, it's lazy.

00:10:49.400 it's easy um thinking in categories in a multi-faceted way uh requires a higher degree

00:10:57.180 of thinking it's it's uh it involves more complexities and so ideology versus thinking

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

00:11:09.880 you know the antithesis of one another and and so um 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, uh, and, and you've solved it. Well, no, um, I

00:12:15.340 haven't solved it. I just know what the problem is. And so me and my friends, you know, we're,

00:12:18.620 we're smarter than everybody. We figured it out. Um, so not only, uh, on the one hand is it

00:12:23.280 ineffective, um, often, uh, but it, but it's also, it's far too simplistic. And I, and I really do

00:12:29.480 think that there's, there's, uh, an apathy, uh, a lethargy that's involved, uh, because, um, reading

00:12:36.840 Mein Kampf, um, it's, it's edgy, right? Um, but, but take the edginess and take, you know, whatever

00:12:45.080 courage, or even if it's, you know, fake courage, or maybe it's genuine. I think there are genuine

00:12:49.700 reasons why somebody could read Mein Kampf. Um, and I think there's plenty of bad reasons that

00:12:54.680 somebody could read it, but here's the one bottom line that I'm getting at is, uh, reading Mein Kampf

00:13:00.400 and that being your full curriculum is a lot easier than reading Aquinas, Aristotle,

00:13:07.920 Bavink, you know, all these. That's just a lot more work. And so I think Christians are

00:13:13.060 particularly susceptible to this, and you can do it as a Reformed Christian, right? So Calvinism 0.98

00:13:18.860 is the master key that unlocks every door, or being J-pilled, you know, or post-millennialism,

00:13:25.260 right if we just had the right eschatology now i i've been there and i think there is a lot of

00:13:30.700 truth and i think dispensationalism did a number on the church especially here in america i think

00:13:36.520 150 years dispensationalism i've been fond of saying dispensationalism is a hell of a drug

00:13:41.520 and i think it did a number on the american church but it's not the only problem so i'm not

00:13:46.980 i'm not i don't want to steamroll in the other direction and say all problems are equal some

00:13:51.280 are more significant. There are some problems that are uniquely pernicious, and they actually

00:13:56.060 infect and spread and actually cause all these other, you know, problems that stem out from this

00:14:03.740 source, this core problem. And I think that, you know, dispensationalism would be an example of

00:14:09.500 having a defeatist mentality, dispensational premillennialism, not historic, but that is a

00:14:15.220 pernicious problem, a revivalism, man-centered Arminian theology. Yeah, I think that that is

00:14:21.240 not just one problem, but a source problem that spreads out and has many other problems that stem

00:14:26.440 from it. And I also think Judaism is, I would absolutely classify that as a source problem, 0.90

00:14:33.780 a root problem that stems out and has multiple different expressions that come from that. 0.97

00:14:38.460 Not that they come exclusively from that, but feminism would be an example. Feminism doesn't 1.00

00:14:42.800 exclusively derive from Judaism. But there is a line there. There is a correlation. And that 1.00

00:14:51.680 should be something that we, as the kids say, notice, and something that we're able to address

00:14:57.080 without being unhinged, but also with courage and integrity and all these kinds of things. So

00:15:02.220 not being ideological. I think ideology, in many ways, is the opposite of what we're focusing on

00:15:08.980 today in terms of categorical thinking in multiple different categories. The opposite

00:15:15.480 is being ideological. And that seems to be, Christians seem to especially fall prey to that.

00:15:22.500 I was going to say, one of the forms sometimes the ideology can take is a certain area,

00:15:26.800 your expertise, then you'll get that to cover over. So the Young Restless Reform Movement,

00:15:30.700 we said the theologian is the king, and then he gets to be expert. He gets to be expert in the

00:15:34.920 home and on marriage and parenting because he's an expert on the Bible, so he has all the knowledge

00:15:38.660 for that. And he's an expert on politics because he has the Bible. And so that expertise in that

00:15:43.720 little area got to kind of stretch and cover everything like that. And then it's like, well,

00:15:48.360 we got to ask the theologian about this. We got to ask the theologian about that.

00:15:51.600 And no one in that would think, well, like my ideology is theology, but it was conveniently

00:15:57.280 used as kind of this, I know this. So now all of these things are also my domain of expertise.

00:16:02.820 When really thinking categorically, if you can exegete, if you've studied, if you've gone to

00:16:07.320 seminary, that's awesome, and you're a great theologian. None of that means you are necessarily

00:16:11.180 qualified to give good counsel on parenting advice or to speak informally on political matters. 0.96

00:16:16.880 I think part of the trap that Christians run into is that in very broad strokes, there are very 0.94

00:16:23.260 cut-and-dry categories. What is the problem with the world? The problem with the world is sin.

00:16:28.160 What is the solution to sin? The solution to sin is the gospel, right? And yes, that's 100% right,

00:16:34.020 in very broad strokes but what we what we i think this is one of the lessons that that i wanted to

00:16:39.140 bring up within broad categories what's the problem with the world sin what's the solution

00:16:45.940 the gospel there are subcategories that we have missed okay well does that mean that the gospel

00:16:51.700 solves um you know a bad traffic flow that's causing me to lose my temper on the way to

00:16:58.500 to work. Well, no, like that takes social and social planning and civic engineering. It could.

00:17:06.080 It could solve my temper. But not the traffic. That's right. Yeah. And so one of the things

00:17:10.840 that we have forgotten is that there are categories within what the gospel is doing.

00:17:16.100 One of the very last things that Jesus says at the end of Revelation is, I make all things new,

00:17:23.220 but the grammar there is actually progressive. I am making all things new. So how is he doing that?

00:17:27.800 Well, obviously by the gospel, right?

00:17:29.440 Like that is the power of God for salvation.

00:17:30.900 That's a transform of hearts.

00:17:31.820 But that doesn't mean that the gospel teaches us how to be good stewards of our land or

00:17:36.900 any of those other things.

00:17:38.120 And so my point is within broad categories of Christians, we have subcategories.

00:17:42.780 And I think that just speaking from personal history and looking back at my own life and

00:17:47.820 what I was taught, sometimes we are not told there are subcategories that are very, very

00:17:53.620 important to keep straight within big huge kind of meta categories so aristotle's four causes just a

00:18:01.780 quick plug very helpful because you talked about traffic and flow like why did the world trade

00:18:06.100 centers collapse gravity well no a plane ran into them well the plane was the cause well no gravity

00:18:11.540 there's material his four causes material formal efficient final parsing out what is the final root

00:18:18.260 cause underneath this what's the efficient cause the material cause etc and the question that you're

00:18:22.180 you're trying to ask or answer, the solution that you're trying to find might depend on which one

00:18:29.160 of those answers you pin down. Exactly. You might not need to know the final cause of it. You might

00:18:34.600 need to know the efficient cause of it while it was the fact that the steel wasn't strong enough

00:18:38.620 or whatever. I'm not going to go into conspiracy theories right now. But you would even focus on

00:18:43.320 different types of causes in order to solve different kinds of problems. Right. And you're

00:18:48.380 reductionistic if all you can fall back to is the final cause. Like, why did this person not

00:18:52.860 convert to Christianity? Well, just in eternity past, God passed over them or actively elected.

00:18:59.080 Like, okay, but there's actually efficient causes that God ordained to why this individual did this

00:19:04.120 or responded in that way. 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.

00:19:13.820 Yes, exactly.

00:19:15.200 But it's not the exhaustive truth.

00:19:17.760 The way I would say it is, it's not the exhaustive truth, but it is the ultimate truth. 0.57

00:19:23.260 And I think that that's kind of where Christians are at right now,

00:19:26.000 is answering every complexity, every question with the ultimate truth. 0.90

00:19:31.960 But then convincing ourselves that the ultimate truth is synonymous with the exhaustive truth.

00:19:42.520 when um that's simply not the case like i mean even just take like what you already did but

00:19:47.100 salvation as an example um the ultimate truth is like what's the difference between you know

00:19:52.900 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 um well the difference is um the good

00:20:04.200 perfect pleasure of the lord because he chose one and not the other for jacob i loved and

00:20:10.240 you saw I hated that that is that is a true answer that's a true answer and within the realm

00:20:15.920 of the truth that's the ultimately true answer but it's not the exhaust there are other true

00:20:22.340 things that you can say and here's here's the beauty of categorical thinking is if you give

00:20:27.700 if we say that there's a particular question and and somebody offers a solution they offer an answer

00:20:33.840 and we say it's correct it's right it's true then if anybody gives any other answer

00:20:39.560 that contradicts, or not even contradicts, but that is separate, other than the answer that's

00:20:45.380 already been provided, that we've already labeled and decided is true, then any other answer outside

00:20:50.200 of that answer that's already been offered would have to be a false answer. But what categories

00:20:55.500 allow is for multiple things to be true at once without embracing relativism. Relativism is the

00:21:02.200 idea that you can have multiple true statements that are contradictory. We're not advocating for

00:21:07.340 that. But what we're saying is that there can be multiple true answers that are distinct from one

00:21:13.540 another. They are separate answers, but they're not contradicting answers. So again, using the

00:21:18.760 example of salvation, why is this guy saved and this other guy lives his whole life and never

00:21:25.220 comes to saving faith in Jesus? Well, one, because of the purpose and election of God. Two, that's

00:21:32.980 that's the ultimate end, the ultimate answer in God's election. Two, in terms of not just the

00:21:37.780 ends of grace, but now speaking about the means of grace, because this person heard the gospel

00:21:44.220 preached to him. This other person never heard the gospel, okay? And then you can go even further

00:21:48.420 and say, 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 so there's, and all of those

00:22:07.200 are true answers, right? So it's not like, well, the only answer is the purpose and election of

00:22:14.120 God, and all these other answers are therefore false. Now, the other ones, the purpose and

00:22:19.060 election of God being the true, the ultimately true answer, does not relegate these other answers

00:22:24.040 as being false answers. It only relegates other answers as being false answers if they are

00:22:28.960 contradicting answers. But if they come alongside in their own separate category, then not only is

00:22:37.920 it permissible, but it then becomes actually even helpful for understanding multiple facets

00:22:43.840 of a particular question and solving a problem. You've probably heard the language where people

00:22:51.080 say, we have a multiple-pronged solution, or a three-fold solution, or two-fold solution.

00:22:56.940 We're going to come at this in several different ways. That makes no sense if the multiple

00:23:07.800 different solutions are at war with one another, if they're contradicting one another. Then just

00:23:14.180 go with the one that works. But it does make sense if there's actually, within this problem,

00:23:23.300 there are multiple facets of the problem, and therefore multiple facets of the solution,

00:23:27.800 like poverty. Well, education absolutely helps, but also just laws and legislation absolutely

00:23:37.200 helps. Another one, again, the ultimate solution is a regenerate heart that wants to work hard

00:23:43.180 doing your work as unto the Lord, and not just man-pleasing, and these kinds of things, and then

00:23:47.120 being a wise steward of your money. Then also, for those who are already regenerate, generosity,

00:23:52.740 and those kind of, like, so all those are right answers. It's not just generosity, and it's also

00:23:58.600 not just 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

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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.

00:26:21.760 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

00:26:32.800 citizen of the nation that he's in and he's a neighbor.

00:26:35.740 He lives in the neighborhood.

00:26:36.600 He's got people around him, people that God puts in front of him.

00:26:39.920 Well, as a father, he's called to discipline with love, right?

00:26:44.100 And he has a kind of action, responsibility that God has given him within the category

00:26:51.400 of father, right?

00:26:52.720 as a judge, he has a slightly different kind of role and responsibility. He's to give impartial

00:27:00.340 justice. As a citizen, he doesn't make all the laws and he still votes and participates in civic

00:27:07.160 life. So he's supposed to support just laws, vote wisely. And then as a neighbor, maybe he would

00:27:13.800 have the role of showing compassion to individuals in need. Now, where this gets a little bit

00:27:19.480 interesting is let's say that he chooses to exercise. Let's say someone, um, crashes into

00:27:26.020 his car, Joel, this happened not too well, a little while ago for you, but someone just

00:27:29.900 crashes into his car at night or, um, you know, no one was in the car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's

00:27:37.160 say this, this particular man is out, uh, playing with his kids in the front yard and someone comes

00:27:42.180 by and careens into the side of his car. All right. Now this man, what, what role is he wearing

00:27:50.260 there? Well, he's not on the bench. He's not going to sentence the man at this point. It's also not

00:27:56.500 his child. He's not going to discipline the man or give him a spanking or, you know, give him a

00:28:01.500 stern talking to or something like that. You keep saying the man, but just for the sake of accuracy,

00:28:05.080 the woman. Fair enough. And in my case, it was a woman. Go ahead and continue. No, actually here 1.00

00:28:11.400 he's he's probably a neighbor right and so it's within what's that i just said based i based myself

00:28:17.920 right there go ahead sorry he he probably he now has some leeway how do i treat this person that

00:28:25.400 just ran into my car well you could call the police get the insurance involved that's fine

00:28:29.220 you could say look this is someone who um i just want to work something out privately with

00:28:34.180 um you could extend it a measure of compassion or a measure of strictness the point is he might

00:28:39.900 find disciplinary, quote unquote, disciplinary actions in his different roles. And because

00:28:47.900 those are 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

00:29:01.920 at all, he has to be a Christian. He's got to be compassionate, kind, loving. He's got to-

00:29:08.660 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.

00:29:20.560 And we forget that individuals or organizations can have different roles because they're occupying

00:29:30.120 a different category in different situations.

00:29:32.660 One of the best, amen, well done.

00:29:34.360 One of the best examples that I always think of is when some of the Roman centurions came to Jesus, and by God's grace, he had given them saving faith, and they came to Jesus, they wanted to be his followers, his disciples, and they asked him, essentially what they're asking is, is the gospel, is it exhaustive enough?

00:29:55.640 Is the Christian faith wide enough in its breadth to include us also?

00:30:00.660 Are we beyond the saving grace of God, or is there a place for us within your kingdom?

00:30:08.060 And the answer that Jesus gives makes it, you know, people have read, you know, this

00:30:12.320 passage a million times, so nobody really balks at it within the Christian world, but

00:30:17.480 if people slowed down and thought about it for a second, and they behaved consistently

00:30:22.960 with all their myopic views on everything else, then they really would have to admit

00:30:28.140 that um that it's jarring it's shocking it's it's it's a bit surprising because what i think a lot

00:30:34.020 of christians especially american christians today what they would expect jesus to say um you know

00:30:41.440 when they say uh can we be your disciples how how can we follow you they would expect jesus to answer

00:30:46.440 by saying uh you can but there's an ultimatum and the ultimatum is that you have to get a new job 0.94

00:30:52.060 you can be my disciples but you cannot work for rome you cannot be roman centurions you can't you

00:30:58.800 can't be soldiers uh but that's not what jesus says actually um you know because that's a and

00:31:04.540 and this matters because that's a question that people ask you know all the time today like can

00:31:08.820 um can i serve in the military and be a christian well not if you're a gay pacifist you know but if

00:31:15.680 you're a biblical historic christian then absolutely you can serve in the military 0.55

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 we kind of expect jesus to say you got to quit your job uh but he doesn't instead

00:31:48.160 he says don't extort people and be content with your wages and that's it that's his full answer

00:31:54.480 he doesn't go any further than that he doesn't say oh and also uh you can't flog anyone he also

00:32:00.500 doesn't say when you're out on the battlefield you can't kill your opponent you can't oh you

00:32:03.700 can't fight anymore you can't do this anymore you can't um or you can't work for you know for

00:32:09.040 rome because they employ pilot you know and caesar and these guys and they're and they're

00:32:13.200 terrible you know and they're about to crucify me and all these like he doesn't say any of that

00:32:17.500 um instead he uh he sticks to the main plane and he says um don't rob people uh and be content 0.87

00:32:25.500 with your wages and then yeah follow me while being uh roman centurions and so so yeah and

00:32:34.380 so these kinds of things i think are important in understanding um you know okay so what does

00:32:40.160 the christian politician do well yeah he's got to be a christian but he has to be a christian

00:32:44.460 politician. He doesn't need to be a husband to the state within his role in the state. He doesn't

00:32:52.240 need to be a father. He doesn't need to be a neighbor. His job is not to make sure that the

00:32:59.140 sojourner, you know, is at the expense of his own citizens, you know, with tax-funded policies to 0.91

00:33:04.920 make sure that the sojourner has a $150,000 down payment for his home as an illegal immigrant in

00:33:10.680 state of california you know meanwhile also defunding the fire department so that you know 0.85

00:33:14.820 half of the state burns to the ground like no that's not that's actually not what he needs to

00:33:19.160 do what he needs to do is execute justice uh but then what he needs to do in his home when he comes

00:33:24.600 home and he hangs up his hat at the end of the day what he needs to do with his wife and kids

00:33:28.100 is a little bit different um he does not need to behave with his three-year-old child in the same

00:33:34.540 manner that he does in his vocation yeah grace doesn't destroy those natural categories so those

00:33:39.500 four, 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. And grace

00:34:01.840 is what actually just enables him to be the best version of those things instead of taking them,

00:34:06.360 sweeping them all away and just making him this blob that's now christian that just does christian

00:34:12.000 things does christian politics and that works with our various vocations uh all within one

00:34:17.620 individual it also works at a corporate level with uh various nations right so like what happens

00:34:23.180 when an american is converted well instead of being an american he becomes a christian no

00:34:27.700 he becomes an american christian just like you can have a sudanese christian and a chinese

00:34:33.780 christian and canadian christian you know like and so uh nationality still remains gender still

00:34:39.640 remains um ethnicity in addition to which is separate from nationality but that also still

00:34:46.020 remains um vocation still remains and paul talks about this even in i think of first corinthians i

00:34:52.100 believe it's chapter seven now the specific case study in view in this particular text is has to

00:34:58.560 do with marriage and singleness. But the principle, I think absolutely, by way of implication,

00:35:05.140 applies further. Paul says that each man should remain in whatever station, as some translations

00:35:12.900 say, they use the word station. He should remain in whatever station of life he was in when the

00:35:17.540 Lord called him. Meaning that if he's single, if he can, if he has the gift of celibacy, if he's

00:35:23.160 not burning with passion, because Paul offers all the qualifications later, but if he can,

00:35:27.200 not that he has the gift of singleness which is not a gift but but really it's a curse and suffering

00:35:32.040 but he has the gift of celibacy that makes singleness tolerable bearable then in that case

00:35:37.360 if the lord called him as he was a single man then he should seek to remain single if he's married

00:35:41.940 even married to an unbeliever this is where he gets into being unequally yoked if you're a 0.86

00:35:46.640 christian and you're single and and and yet you don't have the gift of celibacy and you're pursuing 0.81

00:35:50.740 marriage then you better not be pursuing an unbeliever but if god saves you and you were

00:35:55.360 already married and God for whatever reason and his providence saves you, but not your spouse.

00:36:00.060 Well, if your spouse is content to remain with you, to be at peace with you, then you should 0.95

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 B 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

00:37:38.840 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? Get your wife. Yeah. Let's get the person in 0.80

00:38:17.560 the household who wears the pants. We call that the shadow elders, AKA the wives of elders who 1.00

00:38:22.700 often run churches 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 same

00:42:15.080 hermeneutic applied to all three of those examples in these multiple different categories. Eternal

00:42:21.800 category, level of the soul, slave, right? I mean, whether you've got Robert E. Lee taking the Lord's

00:42:31.600 Supper with slaves, praise God, and viewing the joint heirs in Christ. I'm going to worship with

00:42:37.160 them before the throne of God for eternity. Brothers, brothers in Christ, absolutely.

00:42:43.740 And then on Monday morning, he's master, they're slave.

00:42:49.160 And he's going to go to Ephesians chapter, in this case, it would be chapter 6 or still chapter 5?

00:42:55.140 Chapter 6 now.

00:42:55.800 Six, yeah.

00:42:56.360 Wait, isn't that, I mean, it's, Galatians gives the principle in the category of the eternal, the level of the soul.

00:43:03.420 But then Ephesians 5 and 6 actually gives the same three things mentioned in Galatians, but now in a separate category.

00:43:11.760 so how do we, in a temporal plane, how do we behave? Husband, behave like this. Wife, behave

00:43:18.100 like that. Master, like this. Slave, like that. Parent, father, mother, like this. Son, like that. 1.00

00:43:25.860 And so, all that being said, with the Galatians 3, ethnicity still exists. There's neither Jew 0.99

00:43:32.400 nor Greek. Yeah, that's right. At the foot of the cross, as it pertains to eternal salvation, 0.97

00:43:37.140 and the innate dignity and value of the human soul that has been saved by the blood of Jesus.

00:43:44.020 There's no difference than a regenerate soul in Ethiopia and an eternal regenerate soul in Canada.

00:43:51.160 Praise God. That's wonderful. In this temporal life, there is a difference between those two

00:43:57.640 nations and those two peoples that make up those nations. And to ignore that, well, you ignore it

00:44:06.900 at the risk of your own detriment.

00:44:09.200 And the West has been, right?

00:44:10.840 Mess around and find out.

00:44:12.700 We've been finding out real hard

00:44:14.960 for a few decades now.

00:44:16.460 West, do you have any further thoughts?

00:44:18.480 I was going to say so much of the resistance to it

00:44:20.660 because what you just did, it's not complicated.

00:44:22.720 The most conservatives, they wouldn't go so far

00:44:25.180 as transgenderism.

00:44:26.660 But if you take, there's neither male nor female in there. 0.57

00:44:28.640 You would have no problem with the surgery to change that.

00:44:31.100 So they all knowingly reject that.

00:44:33.420 But when you get to those conclusions again

00:44:35.060 about ethnicity and about slavery and all of that they don't like i've been taking steven wolf's

00:44:39.840 formal logic class which is really good he's on patreon you should take it but he talks about if

00:44:44.160 you don't like a conclusion did you just plug someone else's patreon i didn't give the link

00:44:48.660 or the url so i'll be respectful doctor steven wolf uh we will be sending you an invoice expecting

00:44:54.060 the mail absolutely any signups from this day on um but but he talks about if the premise is solid

00:44:59.780 but you don't like the conclusion you don't get to walk back and be like yeah but i really don't

00:45:04.100 like what that leads to because it leads to the continuing categories greek and jew of ethnicity

00:45:08.880 and slave and free and so i think you have a lot of evangelicals and they know it and they'll do it

00:45:13.220 with one of the three right but they really don't like what those other two end up leading to they

00:45:18.080 barely do it with gender true they only do it with one out of three categories uh slave free 0.54

00:45:22.740 um jew greek so it's ethnicity um and then the other i would say is a measure of like economic

00:45:30.000 status. Um, so it's, it's, uh, ethnicity, it's economic status, um, because this would also

00:45:36.020 apply to employer employee, right? So as an employer site, well, this is your brother in

00:45:40.500 Christ. Why are you, uh, why are you going in there on a Monday morning and tell him, how do

00:45:45.860 you have the audacity to tell him, um, a dress code, right? You're going to tell him what he

00:45:51.640 has to wear 40 hours a week and then go in there and also send him an email where you dictate his

00:45:58.180 schedule? Yes. Because I'm still employer. He's still employee. Brothers in Christ, if I'm a

00:46:05.100 Christian, he's a Christian in the eternal sense, in the innate dignity of our souls before God.

00:46:10.800 But on Monday morning, I'm boss. He's not. And you can apply that to husband and wife.

00:46:17.780 Well, you're going to, as a husband, tell your wife what to wear, what every woman's being told 0.89

00:46:23.160 to wear 40 hours a week when she goes to her boss babe job. McDonald's tells women what to wear. 0.76

00:46:30.740 The only person in this whole world that it's shocking and just absurd that if he tells a

00:46:39.240 woman what to wear, the only person that we balk at is a husband. Yes, a husband actually does have

00:46:45.440 that authority. The same way that that male employer has the authority with his employee, 0.61

00:46:50.040 so too a male husband could also say to his wife he shouldn't be domineering he shouldn't be a jerk 0.96

00:46:55.480 about it um i think there's a way of being overly particular that's unhelpful and uh on unbearable 0.93

00:47:02.540 but in grace and in kindness if he says to his wife you know what sweetheart um i'd like to see

00:47:09.220 you wear more dresses we've got young daughters and uh our whole world has just taken away femininity 1.00

00:47:15.380 from women. And I would like for you to model that. And I think that dresses are more conducive 1.00

00:47:21.660 to modeling femininity than pants. So I'm not making a hard fast rule against pants,

00:47:30.420 but I'd like to see more dresses. Now, here's the thing. I'll get a little crazy here. He could

00:47:35.460 make a hard fast rule against pants. He actually does have that authority. And so, and all these

00:47:40.960 different things people my point is the the average evangelical today um it's it's on paper

00:47:48.840 he'll keep his complementarian card and say yeah men should be elders and husbands are the head

00:47:54.820 of the home but in practice the husband basically has zero authority and the elders have less

00:48:01.200 authority than the shadow elders we've already covered that the wives um and then on paper over

00:48:06.620 here with slave and free with that one the example that paul gives um that one he said oh well that

00:48:12.000 doesn't uh happen anymore because the gospel abolished slavery um but also on paper that one

00:48:17.560 he's going to say that one no way um but then in practice that one he actually gives the most

00:48:22.560 credence to with it's just no longer slave or free but you actually have employer and employee

00:48:27.200 and employers he's fine with them having um the same kind of power uh that you would expect from

00:48:34.320 the king some kind of 60 hours a week of just you will be hours a week we'll dress this way

00:48:38.660 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

00:48:48.320 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

00:49:02.860 given to the men in my church as husbands and fathers you bet i don't do i respect uh the

00:49:09.560 limitless virtually limitless monarchal 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 byrd happened in the opc i'm like carl truman

00:50:08.240 there is no amy byrd 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 are you a christian struggling to find companies that

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00:51:34.940 All right. Welcome back. What I want to do is I want to show one chart. It's going to be common to

00:51:39.300 a lot of people perhaps, but if not, then it'll be super helpful just to start you thinking about

00:51:45.400 some proper categories. So this is just spheres of sovereignty as kind of outlined and articulated

00:51:52.120 by some of what Abraham Kuyper said. But then what I want to do after I explain this chart is I want

00:51:57.260 to tackle one particular issue that people have a lot of difficulty with. So here are some categories

00:52:03.240 that are really helpful to think about. There's the individual, there's the family, there's the

00:52:08.000 church, and then there's the government. I mean like the civil magistrate government. So individuals

00:52:12.380 are responsible for their own personal holiness,

00:52:14.720 charity, forgiveness, personal holiness, et cetera.

00:52:17.300 The family nurtures children,

00:52:19.980 but notice here the family is also primarily in charge

00:52:23.740 of the health and education of their children.

00:52:26.360 And we could go on a long thing about that,

00:52:28.340 but we've done that before.

00:52:29.620 But again, the education and the health of children

00:52:32.780 is not welfare, it's not food stamps,

00:52:36.780 it's not even public school.

00:52:38.300 Although I'm not opposed to the idea of a community

00:52:41.460 having a school that they help fund together on local levels. I mean, the civic education is

00:52:46.220 important, but ultimately it's the father's and the family's responsibility to provide and oversee

00:52:52.460 the education of their children. Church, preaching the gospel, spiritual discipline, the keys of the

00:52:57.960 kingdom, training, instruction, and godliness and righteousness. And then the government who has a

00:53:03.980 role and responsibility of establishing just laws, protecting the innocent, punishing the evil,

00:53:11.460 promoting what is good and bearing the sword against what is evil. This is pretty standard,

00:53:18.440 so if you have heard this before, it won't be necessarily new, but if you haven't thought

00:53:23.340 about thinking in categories before, this is a really good place to get started. What I want to

00:53:27.880 do is I want to ask you guys about a situation, not a situation, but one that a lot of Christians

00:53:35.260 are thinking about a lot right now, and it's the relationship of the nation or the civil government

00:53:40.800 and the individual Christian.

00:53:44.360 And one of the problems that we run into

00:53:46.680 when we think about categories is that we,

00:53:49.180 there are some categories that are in opposition

00:53:51.100 to each other.

00:53:53.220 But what, and we alluded to it already,

00:53:56.080 one of the things that Christians do

00:53:57.700 is they think that the term Christian 0.94

00:54:00.680 is in opposition to some things like magistrate

00:54:06.100 or governor or things like that.

00:54:09.440 really, if you want to talk about what's up in opposition to the category of Christian,

00:54:13.400 it's actually non-Christian. It's child of God, child of Satan, right? And so the idea of a 0.70

00:54:19.900 Christian, you said it earlier, Wes, it informs, it helps an individual who is a Christian

00:54:28.040 understand what the role and purpose of each of those categories is. So here's the situation or

00:54:34.720 kind of the category error that I think gets made a lot that I want some feedback on here.

00:54:39.440 we would say, and when we look at America's history, this has happened. And I would say

00:54:46.100 in some ways, rightfully so. We would say the distinctions of a Christian are that he is kind,

00:54:52.580 compassionate, merciful to the needy. You know, it's even the heart of God all through the

00:54:58.700 prophets. He wants to establish justice for the fatherless. He wants to rescue the oppressed.

00:55:03.940 And so we would say on an individual level, a Christian man ought to have a degree of

00:55:10.040 compassion, kindness, generosity, mercy, all of these things.

00:55:14.600 What I hear from Christians is the idea that if a Christian is supposed to be some of those

00:55:20.260 things, at least a lot of the time, why isn't a Christian nation or a Christian government

00:55:26.240 supposed to be compassionate, kind, et cetera, in the same way towards, you know, you've

00:55:33.180 got a country in the Caribbean who's in our backyard that a hurricane comes through and

00:55:38.180 devastates. Well, shouldn't a Christian nation have a sense of come, you know, come here, 1.00

00:55:44.720 we will take care of you, we will provide for you. I think there's a disconnect or difficulty 0.98

00:55:50.880 that some people have when they look at some of the Christian virtues that an individual man or

00:55:56.780 woman ought to have. And then they say, but it sounds like you guys are saying America just for

00:56:01.880 America and, you know, screw the rest of the world. So I'm, this is, this is one that I think

00:56:07.440 a lot of people really struggle with. What are the categories here? What are the right ways to

00:56:12.480 think about the categories here? What does it mean to be a Christian nation in relation to other

00:56:17.320 nations? So that's, that's kind of, at least in my plan, that was what we would spend a couple 0.73

00:56:22.620 minutes closing out, trying to parse out here. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. You go, Wes. I've

00:56:28.420 thoughts uh i think one of the big ones is the tiers of responsibility so working down you would

00:56:32.980 say like love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and strength man's first and

00:56:36.980 greatest allegiance is always to god not even family not even wife not even nation nothing comes

00:56:42.980 over and above your first responsibilities to god and then you have those those natural

00:56:46.820 responsibilities of the family having to provide having to protect and then the spiritual ones as

00:56:51.220 it relates to your local church body the church universal etc so if you go down the list so we

00:56:56.420 We think family, and then we expand that out.

00:56:58.300 You could say tribe or even state.

00:56:59.820 I'd have more of an allegiance here in Texas than I would to Illinois.

00:57:03.840 And you get that out and you get to the level of a nation.

00:57:06.420 So be that, be you in the United States, which is very large, be you in Japan, Switzerland,

00:57:10.340 what have you.

00:57:11.160 That's a category of responsibility that you have a duty to, and that ranks above the

00:57:16.720 universal neighbor that would be outside of that.

00:57:18.960 If you think of the family as the, or the nation, as the family writ large, as Stephen

00:57:23.720 Wolf would say, it's kind of a gathered family.

00:57:26.420 your responsibility to that is first. And so, all right, hurricane strikes, there's damage,

00:57:32.060 there's needs, there's things that have to be done. It is totally permissible, not required,

00:57:37.360 but permissible to send aid, to send workers, to come in and do your best. Now it is not required

00:57:43.480 because there could be situations where the duty to that family and that nation, you just have

00:57:48.600 bigger needs at home. Right now, Los Angeles is, it's on fire. If you were a Christian magistrate

00:57:55.020 california which praise god hopefully that happens someday it would be a dereliction if your duty if 0.97

00:57:59.420 a tsunami hit hawaii los angeles is burning and you're taking supplies and you're taking food

00:58:04.380 and you're taking water and you're shipping them off you'd have taken the higher responsibility

00:58:08.780 and subsumed it under a lower one for those that are farther from you so that would be one thing i

00:58:12.780 would say is what is your primary responsibilities and these have to be completed before you can

00:58:17.580 actually start going down the list being more generous looking out beyond the horizon who can

00:58:21.900 help who needs me what can i give them etc but what's important about that is my contention is

00:58:29.500 that what west just articulated is a christian way of thinking about it right this is not um

00:58:36.940 when we say a nation ought to be christian well yes it ought to have christian priorities right

00:58:41.260 like augustine talked about the order of maris um that is a christian conception of ranking

00:58:47.740 priorities and so to the person who wants to say a christian nation must be compassionate to the

00:58:54.060 the hurricane uh the nation that was hit by the hurricane over and above its own citizens

00:59:01.180 that that's it's unchristian actually to do that and that is i think in west's example what people

00:59:09.100 have a hard time with and what they maybe overlook is there's different there's different

00:59:13.980 requirements for different levels of organization to act in a christianly way right i mean that

00:59:19.980 that literally just happened um and is in no small part one of the reasons maybe not the exclusive

00:59:26.940 reason but one of the reasons why uh kamala just lost an election 100 is because um appalachia was

00:59:34.700 underwater and fema had already spent all their money on ukraine yeah that literally just happened

00:59:41.740 And so it's not saying that a father, a familial father in the home, should be compassionate.

00:59:47.260 But when we get into the other role of a civil father, when it comes to the state, that compassion

00:59:52.060 has no place. No, it's actually saying that compassion is part of the job. It's different.

00:59:59.820 It's going to be dispersed in different ways, executed in different ways. But his pseudo-compassion

01:00:08.460 to the foreigner on the other side of the world, when that comes at the expense of genuine

01:00:15.600 compassion that he's firstly obligated to, to his own citizens, then it's not that we're saying

01:00:22.420 that the civil magistrate is not supposed to be compassionate and therefore shouldn't help

01:00:28.080 Ukraine. No, what we're saying is that all the help and billions of dollars that we've given to

01:00:33.820 Ukraine is actually not compassionate. It's actually hating our own citizens. Gavin Newsom, 0.79

01:00:41.720 his compassion to the illegal immigrants is now being viewed rightly for what it actually is, 0.97

01:00:51.620 hatred towards his actual residence. So in Appalachia, at the federal level, our compassion 0.82

01:00:57.700 Ukraine meant drowning Appalachians. And at the state level, Newsome, Nusolemi, his compassion

01:01:06.220 to Mexico is now being rightfully viewed for what it actually is, hatred towards Californians.

01:01:15.460 So Appalachia was drowning, and now California is burning. And it's a perfect picture of,

01:01:21.940 first and foremost, of course, Democrats. It's what they do. If they can't drown their own

01:01:27.920 citizens, they burn them. That is what Democrats do, is they kill their own citizens. They kill 1.00

01:01:34.020 them in the womb, or they try to pass bills for euthanasia so they can kill them when they're 0.99

01:01:38.060 elderly. Or if they can't kill them at all, then they cut off their fruitfulness so that they can 0.99

01:01:42.780 kill their posterity, right? So with transgenderism and gender reassignment surgeries, Democrats 1.00

01:01:49.700 kill people. That's what they do. So the point is, it's not that we're saying the civil magistrate 1.00

01:01:58.480 shouldn't be compassionate. What we're saying is that all your billions to Israel, and all your

01:02:04.400 billions to Ukraine, and all your billions to illegal immigrants coming up through Mexico,

01:02:10.440 we're not saying that, oh, you're a civil magistrate, you shouldn't be compassionate.

01:02:15.320 we're saying, no, you should be compassionate. And what you're doing as a pseudo-compassion

01:02:19.980 is actually the opposite of true compassion. It is hatred towards the proper object that you've

01:02:27.040 been ordained and positioned by God to be compassionate towards. So I can do the same

01:02:32.520 thing. To give a biblical example, you can do the same thing with Jesus. I remember people when I

01:02:37.140 started getting a little red-pilled back in the day and preaching sermons about Jesus.

01:02:42.740 And one of the things that I talked about was I was talking about the attributes of God.

01:02:46.040 And I was talking about how that relates to us, obviously different, but as it relates to like the fruit of the Spirit.

01:02:52.000 And I was saying, you know, the fruit of the Spirit, it's not like a toolkit.

01:02:54.920 It's not like where you take one out at a time and then you swap it out for something else.

01:02:59.420 It's not as though faithfulness is like a hammer, you know, and goodness is like a drill bit, you know.

01:03:06.360 and this, and depending what job I have, I, you know, I'll, I'll take love or I'll take joy or

01:03:11.800 I'll take peace, you know, and until the job gets done. That's not how the fruit of the spirit

01:03:16.480 works. Fruit of the spirit simply means the fruit, meaning the evidence or manifestations,

01:03:21.440 the visible outward manifestations of the spirit who is invisible, right? The invisible God,

01:03:27.240 God, the father and God, the Holy spirit are most pure spirits without spirit and one divine

01:03:34.200 essence, but without body parts and passions. God is invisible. John chapter four, God is

01:03:40.820 invisible. He is, God is a spirit. Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in

01:03:44.800 truth. So the Holy Spirit is a spirit. You can't see him, but what you can see of the Holy Spirit,

01:03:50.100 what you can see is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the manifestations. So it's not nine different

01:03:55.560 tools as an exhaustive list in a toolkit where you take one out at a time, love, joy, peace,

01:03:59.960 patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. No, these are

01:04:03.960 all—think of it like this, if we actually use literal fruit for a second, right? So bananas and

01:04:07.780 oranges and apples. The fruit of the Spirit would not be nine different fruit—bananas, oranges,

01:04:12.920 apples, pineapple, whatever, you know, five more. No, instead, it would be four different

01:04:18.100 characteristics of one fruit. So the fruit of the Spirit, if we're likening the Spirit himself to

01:04:23.300 an apple, it would be the fruit of an apple, which is a fruit, but the fruit of an apple,

01:04:28.240 the characteristics of this particular fruit is it's crunchy, it's crisp, it's sweet, it's tart,

01:04:34.120 it's, you know, all the nine different characteristics, that's what the fruit of the

01:04:37.800 Spirit is like. And Jesus, as the God-man in his incarnation, in his earthly ministry,

01:04:42.640 perfectly modeled all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Now, that being said, because Jesus was

01:04:48.820 full of the Holy Spirit, there was no lack, in full measure, full of the Holy Spirit,

01:04:54.240 then the full fruit, evidence, visibility, manifestations, outward manifestations of the

01:04:59.980 fruit of the Spirit were always present in the life of Jesus. Therefore, here's the concluding

01:05:04.760 thought. There was never a time that Jesus wasn't being gentle. There was always love, always joy,

01:05:12.140 always peace, always faithfulness, always, and always gentleness, which means in John chapter 2

01:05:16.680 at the temple, when Jesus is fashioning a whip out of cords to begin whipping people,

01:05:24.240 and driving out the money changers and flipping over their tables and releasing all the pigeons

01:05:32.260 and the doves and all these kinds of things, Jesus is modeling for us in that moment gentleness.

01:05:39.220 Perfect gentleness. Now, here's how it gets to our topic today. Well, that doesn't look like

01:05:44.400 gentleness. It looks like harshness. No, it looks like harshness to the people in the temple,

01:05:49.360 the religious rulers of the day, the Jewish rulers, who were extorting financially, robbing 0.99

01:05:56.060 and ripping off the people, particularly not just Jewish citizens, but all these Gentile who had come 1.00

01:06:04.780 from the other side of the earth in order to worship the triune God, because they were 0.99

01:06:10.740 Christians in the Old Testament sense. They were Christians who loved God, the triune God, wanted

01:06:16.720 to worship him but they knew that in order to worship him they couldn't come into you know

01:06:21.400 fully into the temple but they could come to the outer courts but but here's what they were doing

01:06:26.060 it's like a chuck e cheese they had to do you had to buy temple currency and they had changed the

01:06:31.420 currency exchange the rates so high to where people would already the amount of time off of

01:06:37.260 work i mean travel took forever forever the amount of time money they lost from not being able to

01:06:41.880 work the amount of money they had to spend just to make the trip and now they finally come they're

01:06:46.100 at the bottom of their purse. They've got very little left. And they're doing like a dollar

01:06:51.080 gets you a quarter, basically. Like, oh, so you want to buy pigeons or doves to make a dove

01:06:57.800 offering. Or you want to buy a goat or a lamb to make a burnt offering. Or you want to buy grain

01:07:03.460 for a grain offering or whatever it is. Well, your Gentile dirty money, it's no good here. 1.00

01:07:09.120 Although, of course, it was good because they were more than happy to take it and they wanted 1.00

01:07:11.860 to take even more of it. It's no good here. You have to buy holy money, a temple currency. And

01:07:17.840 what's the current exchange rate? Well, it basically comes out to about all of your money

01:07:23.380 is worth about a quarter of what it would be anywhere else. And these are people who just

01:07:29.980 traveled across land and sea to worship God. And these are the Jewish religious rulers of the day,

01:07:35.560 classic this is what they're doing so is jesus putting gentleness aside back into the toolkit 0.96

01:07:42.400 to take out you know the sledgehammer of some other fruit of the spirit courage or zeal or

01:07:47.060 whatever um no jesus is modeling all the fruit of the spirit because he's full of the spirit

01:07:53.300 all the manifestations are there and he's modeling them all in full measure and simultaneously

01:07:58.220 including gentleness. Who is he being gentle to? The Gentile believers. He's being gentle to them.

01:08:05.920 So too, all the way back, the civil magistrate. When he says no, when he says no to Zelensky,

01:08:12.640 when Zelensky comes for the 151st time to the United States to stand before our Congress and

01:08:21.240 ask for his next check of another $50 billion, if our civil magistrates tell him no, it is not at

01:08:30.420 the expense of compassion. It is in the full service of compassion, that they would be able

01:08:35.960 to look that man, an actor, a literal actor, he's doing a great job, you got to give it to Zelensky,

01:08:42.080 it's just not good for America, but they need to be able, our leaders need to be able to look

01:08:46.820 him in the eye and say, I'm sorry, we cannot drown any more appellations for you. I'm sorry,

01:08:53.300 we can't do it. And then likewise, when the champion, the true winner of every American

01:08:59.280 election for the last 70 years, Bibby, comes to town, and he starts to insult those loved ones

01:09:06.960 who lost their lives in 9-11 by saying, well, a tragedy in Israel is like 20 times a tragedy in

01:09:14.620 America. Our tragedies are real tragedies because we're real people and you're just the goy. 0.52

01:09:20.860 We need to be able, our leaders, civil leaders, not at the expense of a compassion to Israel, 0.92

01:09:26.620 but in the name of compassion to Americans, our American leaders need to be able to look him in

01:09:32.060 the eye and say, you're done. No more AIPAC handlers, no more dual citizenship in our Congress.

01:09:38.140 get off of our land, get out of our country, and stop taking our money. We love Americans.

01:09:47.760 Israel can fend for itself. That's not the absence of compassion in the name of courage.

01:09:53.660 That's both compassion and courage. Jesus modeled it for us. A father can do it,

01:10:00.480 the same principle in the home. A civil father can do it in the state. It's not hard,

01:10:06.300 but it does require a little bit of categorical thinking the only thing i would add on to that

01:10:12.160 is to go along with it is for the christian who thinks the u.s government should pass laws so that

01:10:19.280 many immigrants come here so that we can have the gospel on our doorstep the irony is they're

01:10:25.120 actually getting something right one of the purposes of the state is to provide a conducive

01:10:31.080 conducive environment for the church to flourish. However, what I would say to those Christians is 1.00

01:10:36.800 in every other law, the government is making it more and more impossible for the church to

01:10:43.620 flourish. And so this goes to first principles, order of priority. The government of the United

01:10:50.160 States or the government of Texas or whatever group you want to look at ought to be, first of

01:10:55.900 all, passing laws that prioritize the proclamation of the gospel by the church of that nation to

01:11:02.560 the people of that nation. If that's going swimmingly and they want to say, okay, how could

01:11:07.400 we exert our political pressure to create stability in another country so that missionaries can go

01:11:13.400 there and not be killed? Fantastic, right? But the idea that we should pass laws so that the

01:11:21.020 nations come here, but we've missed the idea that the government before God has an obligation to

01:11:26.520 privilege Christianity for the American church to American people, first of all. Well said. 0.91

01:11:33.660 Any thoughts? All right, that's it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in.

The NXR Podcast - April 25, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Escape Christian Chaos By Thinking In Categories - ICYMI

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