00:01:46.280And I'm like, why is the church not doing that?
00:01:48.980And so I really felt we needed to get in the game because I thought there were some things we weren't exactly getting right on that.
00:01:56.040So it started off as a newsletter. That's still the core of what I do.
00:01:59.440But I've been expanding. Again, there's a website now, TheMasculinist.com.
00:02:03.760So there's blogging there. There's podcasts. I'm even doing like live video interviews now, sort of like we're doing a video interview at the moment.
00:02:12.460So there's a lot going on as I'm trying to build out the platform.
00:02:15.200originally it was sort of an underground kind of like a little bit of an underground movement
00:02:19.160because prior to starting in on this full-time kind of late last year I'd been spending most
00:02:25.960of my career working on urban policy so I was a writer and researcher about cities and spent
00:02:32.040several years working at the Manhattan Institute in New York which is you know conservative think
00:02:36.840tank there and then before that spent a long time in corporate consulting so I've lived in Manhattan
00:02:42.520but I also grew up in a small town of about 50 people. So I grew up on a country road in rural
00:02:48.860Southern Indiana. So I've had quite an experience there. But right now, my focus is on reaching men
00:02:55.220and helping men and the church to succeed and thrive in a 21st century that's increasingly
00:03:01.300hostile and certainly very different than what most of us have experienced before.
00:03:05.840Yeah, there's a lot of challenges there. Real quick, you mentioned for 15 years,
00:03:10.880you're a consultant with urban policy and just kind of an expert on cities. And I remember there
00:03:16.960was one podcast on one of your episodes on the masculinist that I listened to that was
00:03:21.760it was just kind of a confirmation. It was encouraging to me because, as you know, me and
00:03:27.800my team, we just recently moved from San Diego, a church that I planted. I handed that over and we
00:03:34.280moved to the north side of austin texas um i i wanted to get out of crazy california and i always
00:03:41.680have to always have to clarify this because you know people will be in the comment section they'll
00:03:46.040be like does he know what austin is right he wanted to leave california you know but we're
00:03:51.240we're in williamson county so not travis county is where austin is and so we're just enough away
00:03:57.020from austin to where hopefully our police don't get defunded but close enough to austin to where
00:04:01.380there's opportunity and for ministry and for evangelism but also where we're close enough to
00:04:07.240the tech and the culture and the developments and we want to be able to benefit from that we also
00:04:12.700want to be able to influence and shape that but I remember listening to that episode where you
00:04:18.000were talking about cities and it just made me think about San Diego San Diego was rated I think
00:04:22.460it was back in 2015 but there was a study that was done it said it was the number one worst city
00:04:27.500in America to build wealth in terms of, obviously, there are not many, but a few cities with a higher
00:04:33.720cost of living in like San Francisco, Washington, DC. But San Diego topped the charts in terms of
00:04:40.900cost of living versus jobs and income being so low. And so it was the hardest city in America
00:04:48.020to build wealth. And being there for 11 years and pastoring the church, the turnover was immense.
00:04:54.460And I remember you talking about just those transient communities that are constantly turning over. And so it was very difficult to have long-term friendship. There was a core that stayed for that whole 11 years. But really, the church, you know, I mean, we grew up to about 180 adult members, starting with nothing. But the verdict was really still out.
00:05:17.340I remember being encouraged and thinking, man, we're really doing it. But then as I started to see a little bit more clearly, I realized that part of the reason we were doing it is because we're a bunch of young singles.
00:05:27.740And then, you know, towards the end, we were married and then everyone was starting to have their first and second kid.
00:05:33.900but but we never really got to that stage just that demographic as a church of having you know
00:05:39.720three four kids and and now in our our 40s and kids are starting to go to school and and and
00:05:45.820are we going to send them to public school or how are we going to you know so you're going to have
00:05:49.340to function on one income because mom's homeschooling or you're going to have to pay an
00:05:53.780additional price for private education and we you know the church is just now everybody who we left
00:05:59.540behind who took over the church they're just now kind of getting to that demographic and i'm
00:06:04.020curious to see how many people actually are able to stay long term so that was part of it we wanted
00:06:09.360to get out of crazy california but we also just my wife and i and our friends uh who came with us
00:06:14.760we we wanted to be able to be in a place where we could um well where we could have friendships for
00:06:20.04020 years instead of two to four and i remember listening to to what you were saying on that
00:06:25.120episode and it felt like kind of a confirmation that I did the right thing. And yet at the same
00:06:30.280time, urban areas and cities need churches. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, well, I did
00:06:36.860an entire podcast series I called Urban World, Urban Church that married kind of my urban, the
00:06:42.620urban side of my research with my experience in kind of that church world. And you're very right
00:06:47.520that especially the big global cities like in New York or a lot of the California cities,
00:06:53.280there are high transient populations there. So they're really, you know, not healthy places to
00:06:59.960live in a lot of ways. I mean, that may be good if you are young and single for a certain stage
00:07:04.980of your life. But the reality is most people are going to essentially age out of those places.
00:07:11.120And if you don't, if you stick around too long, you could really end up doing some damage to your
00:07:16.880life. There's a ton of people in these churches in New York who are now in their 30s and 40s and
00:07:24.080single and no prospect of finding a husband or a wife. And there's a lot of people who are very
00:07:30.820unhappy and a lot of pain there. So you can end up really doing damage to your life. There's a
00:07:36.400whole genre of leaving New York essays that people wrote. And the granddaddy of them all
00:07:43.760was Joan Didion's goodbye to all that, which she wrote in the sixties when she was leaving New York
00:07:48.340for LA. And she talks about that. It's like, it's like, you can go in and one of our lines is it's
00:07:52.780like going in a revolving door and coming out eight years older on the other side and not even
00:07:57.500knowing what's happening. And so that's, that's true. I think in a lot of these bigger cities,
00:08:03.660now I live in Indianapolis, which, you know, there's, you know, 900,000 or so people
00:08:07.940in indianapolis and it's a bit different though it's mostly people who are pretty rooted here
00:08:14.380and you can have those kind of uh long-term relationships yeah you look at these churches
00:08:20.140these big global city churches i think one of the things that characterizes them as a very high
00:08:25.020churn population and the people who stay long term are often people who are very wealthy or
00:08:31.740very affluent right and so if you're not in that category chances are you're not going to be hanging
00:08:36.860out with them. You tend to hang out with people who are more in your socioeconomic level. It's
00:08:45.060not that these are bad people, but you're not going to be going skiing in Vail with them every
00:08:49.900weekend. You're not going to all the same fundraisers with them. They're super busy people.
00:08:54.980They've only got so many cycles in the day. They can only spend so much time on younger,
00:09:01.220less high wattage people. I think it becomes very difficult to sustain long-term relationships
00:09:05.740in the city, in these places. And again, you have churches. It's sort of like the consulting
00:09:11.720business. I don't really like the consulting business in the sense that, you know, you sign
00:09:15.940a project and you do it, and then you have no revenue. Again, you have to sign a new project.
00:09:21.660So part of the challenge of a consulting business is not only do you have to grow your business,
00:09:26.340but you have to be replacing your business every single year. Every single year, you essentially
00:09:31.040have to resell your whole book of business in a sense. It's like that for some of these big
00:09:35.060churches. Like if you go to Tim Keller's Redeemer New York City Church, I bet there's a very high
00:09:40.520percentage turnover there every year. So just to keep the church from shrinking, they have to be
00:09:46.520bringing a bunch of new people in the door. A ton of people. Now, of course, there are always new
00:09:52.280people moving into the city, and a lot of them are already Christian now, which, you know, that
00:09:57.800wasn't true, say, 30 years ago. You know, there's a lot of young, kind of hip, urban Christian types
00:10:04.200who want to live in a city. They come there out of college. So there is a sort of a natural inflow
00:10:09.060to draw from as well. And I think that's kind of one of the things I would say is that's kind of
00:10:13.880the dirty little secret of most of these churches now is that they are essentially attracting people
00:10:19.340who are already Christians. They're not as many people who are becoming converted to Christianity
00:10:25.780as there may have been, say, in the 1990s when some of these places were getting started. So
00:10:31.140it's a lot of people it's a place for people who are already christian who moved to the big city
00:10:35.460which i don't think is bad necessarily but you know i think you can you can you know maybe have
00:10:41.320some you know wrong ideas about how these churches function based on the place that you're from
00:10:45.660because you probably have you know longer longer term relationships more rooted populations
00:10:51.380um you know etc maybe more evangelistic outreach that's just less the case in a lot of these
00:10:57.760cities. That's not all these churches, but that's a lot of them. I completely agree. And I think
00:11:02.000part of it depends on your local church and its theology as well as its ministry philosophy. And
00:11:10.700so I think for me, for the 11 years that I was there, I think I just was continuing to
00:11:16.420semper reformanda, reformed and always reforming and continuing to grow in my doctrine and learning
00:11:23.540how to apply my theology in all of life but also on the lord's day when the saints gather together
00:11:31.140and so with this evolution in in theology and ministry philosophy what i noticed was that the
00:11:39.380church as it was becoming more theologically conservative and as we were even on on sunday
00:11:44.660morning when we would gather together as i was becoming more more persuaded of a regulative
00:11:49.460principle of worship rather than a normative principle of worship and so more more traditional
00:11:54.660practices on Sunday morning that were just kind of less less attractive to the to the average
00:12:01.220person you know so Sunday morning became a little bit more traditional a little bit more conservative
00:12:07.220both in the content both I think John Owen would say the matter and the manner right the matter of
00:12:14.880our worship in terms of the doctrine the tenets the content but also the manner the method and
00:12:19.220how we would do worship and and a little bit more of a liturgical style more pastoral prayers a
00:12:24.480prayer of confession and a declaration of pardon and maybe a you know a creed that we would recite
00:12:30.320together and and so as as a church i would just say as the church kind of grew up it became a
00:12:36.240little bit less attractional and one of the challenges was exactly what you're saying
00:12:39.460because there's there's such a there's such a a a large back door uh if that front door is not at
00:12:48.140least the same size as the back door, then you're constantly shrinking. It's not sustainable. And so
00:12:53.700we had a massive front door in the beginning because the service was just, the way that we
00:13:00.340did things, it was just more palatable. Our doctrine wasn't super offensive. It didn't
00:13:05.940really surprise people. But as we came into more convictions, now COVID kind of helped us because
00:13:10.280everybody became family integrated in their convictions because you couldn't do child
00:13:16.480care and things like that but um but but as as that began you know as that changes and and you
00:13:22.060know people want children's uh programs on sunday and and i'm a little bit more persuaded of you
00:13:27.020know i'm okay with a nursery perhaps or things like that but i i want children to go to church
00:13:31.400like if you ask me you know to just say in one sentence what's your conviction for children on
00:13:35.580sunday my conviction is that children should go to church and when we send them to another room
00:13:40.380where the lord's supper is not administered where they're not hearing the preached word from their
00:13:44.640pastor where they're not sitting with their parents and worship um then they're not going
00:13:48.660to church where the parents are going to church and dropping their kids off at a christian child
00:13:53.300care center on the way and then picking them up after and so for me i'm convicted that children
00:13:58.440should go to church and that they're a child part of the reason i think kids fall away from the faith
00:14:03.580when they go to college is because you know if they're part of a big mega church that's had a
00:14:08.160sunday morning it's wednesday night or something like that it's totally different but um supplemental
00:14:12.700I think is great but but when it's a substitute for Sunday morning and some things it goes all
00:14:17.620the way up through high school so you're talking about an 18 year old who for me convictionally
00:14:21.720has never been to church they're now 18 years old they're a legal adult and then we send them to
00:14:26.540college and and they're trying to find out how to go to church for the first time in their life
00:14:32.340and we wonder why they're not doing so well so anyway but things like that my point is in a
00:14:37.900smaller town or even like you said there are some large towns that aren't quite as transient like
00:14:42.960Houston Texas right because the cost of living is lower there's lots of jobs and so even though
00:14:47.060it's a large city there's still more long-term residents but but in a place with that high
00:14:52.600churn rate that high turnover part of what I realized is I've only got if the city is an
00:14:58.480average lifespan of its citizens like three to four years then I really only have three to four
00:15:02.800years to disciple people into the the the matter and the manner the content and the method of of
00:15:10.580our church and i realized that as i was growing in my convictions um three to four years just wasn't
00:15:17.100enough time to like if somebody showed up to san diego san diego and was looking for a church and
00:15:23.660the person even is already a christian uh because we're getting plenty of people who are already
00:15:28.400followers of Jesus, but still they would, they would visit our church on a Sunday. And, and
00:15:34.000there's, it's like, if there's one thing that's new to them, that maybe is a little bit of a
00:15:38.480turnoff, maybe, maybe they can get over that. But if there's three or four things that they're like,
00:15:42.700I've never, I've never seen this before. There's no childcare. And, and the pastor really, you know,
00:15:47.640he preaches pretty intensely his philosophy of the pulpit, you know, and if there's a couple
00:15:53.000things like that, and then, you know, but maybe I could win them over, over time. But I've only got
00:15:57.920three or four years to do it so I realized I kind of had a choice to make if I wanted to
00:16:02.880keep to my convictions I just realized I was going to need more time so like Doug Wilson
00:16:07.180controversial figure we had him as a guest recently I I'm a big fan of Doug Wilson but a lot
00:16:12.980of people don't like him but one thing that you have to admit that he's done well is I mean he's
00:16:16.740taken over a town a small town albeit but I mean he's he's taken over that town for Jesus and I
00:16:22.100think part of the success is that he's had 20 30 40 years with with the residents of moscow idaho
00:16:30.400to to try to win them over and to disciple them into the convictions of christ church the church
00:16:36.460that he pastors there but if you're in that high turnover place you you kind of almost by by default
00:16:43.000it's like you're forced to have less convictions or at least less visible uh convictions that might
00:16:49.700turn people off in order to keep that front door large enough to keep up with the back door. Would
00:16:55.980you agree with that? Yeah, I think there's probably something to that. I mean, I haven't had as much
00:17:01.160experience with what you're talking about, but I think you're absolutely right. When you only
00:17:06.460have someone for a limited period of time, then you can't be thinking about, oh, I'm going
00:17:14.080someplace over the next five, 10 years, or that kind of maturity path, it's like, what's the
00:17:19.280impact I'm going to make in their life right now, I think it does become, you know, a much more
00:17:24.320challenging situation in a lot of these churches for people. Yeah. So real quick, you mentioned,
00:17:32.100well, you mentioned just as far as, you know, biblical masculinity, as you were, as you were
00:17:37.320entering yourself and saying, I do this, and I've done that. And I kind of picked up on the whole
00:17:42.400urban policy in cities. But then you also talked about, you know, men and what it's like to be a
00:17:48.480man in America in 2021. And so I wanted to pick your brain on that for a moment. One of the
00:17:54.320thoughts that I've had, and I think I heard you speak about this on your podcast, or maybe it was
00:17:59.400Man Rampant with Doug Wilson. I know you were a guest on that show. But one of the difficulties
00:18:04.800is it seems like with the rise of feminism and women in the workplace and, you know, all in the
00:18:11.500name of equality um it seems as though a lot of employers have realized that they could pay people
00:18:16.420um half of the salary that they used to like like the idea you know what i mean like because what
00:18:21.880you know why is it you know uh your wife working and so the idea that like you know you you you're
00:18:27.380applying for a job as a man it's like i i i want you know we want to have a big family we want to
00:18:32.000have multiple kids we want to homeschool or something like that and um and so mom's going
00:18:36.380to stay home, we can't do two incomes. Our family needs to be provided for off of one income. And it
00:18:44.080doesn't seem like there's a lot of businesses and a lot of places that think in terms of a fair wage
00:18:51.900for this job is going to be a one income household. It just seems like because of the
00:19:00.360rise of feminism and the fact that it's been normalized, that both men and women should both
00:19:06.300be in the workplace working it seems like wages in some sense when you think of wages as it relates
00:19:11.680to cost of living that they've kind of gone down and and so there's a lot of men that that i've
00:19:17.100spoken with young men who they feel they seem exasperated i think of you know like jesus says
00:19:22.860fathers do not exasperate your children or fathers don't provoke your sons to wrath and i think
00:19:28.680there's a lot of men who they're just they're exasperated they feel angry and i think part of
00:19:33.700it is because you know they look at their parents generation and they look at what their dad was
00:19:37.860able to do and providing for their family and mom was able to stay at home and it feels as though
00:19:42.940it is just objectively more difficult is that is that me as a young guy just making excuses or
00:19:49.420would you say that from from you know the last 30 years or so if we think of like the 1990s or even
00:19:57.42080s, and then we look at 2021, would you say that men are just more lazy and apathetic? I know
00:20:04.900there are problems with men. There's sin that we need to repent of, but would you say that maybe
00:20:10.200circumstantially it actually is a more difficult world for a man to be the single income breadwinner
00:20:16.640for a home today? Oh, sure. It's undoubtedly the case. I mean, we have essentially a two-tier
00:20:23.200economy today, whereas if you're part of the knowledge economy class of, say, the top 20%
00:20:35.340But if you're someone who, say, doesn't have a college degree, which is, you know, well over
00:20:41.880half the population, I mean, like, you know, two thirds of the population. And that's not just
00:20:45.560because we have a lot of old people who didn't go to college. You know, even younger people,
00:20:50.540you know, fewer than half the fewer than half of millennials are going to college and getting a
00:20:54.920degree, then you're in a situation where you're in a much more, you know, income constrained
00:21:00.540environment, because a lot of those old well paid kind of blue collar jobs, let's say old union jobs
00:21:06.860in the Ford plant, you know, those jobs don't exist anymore. They may exist for the people who
00:21:13.860still have them because they got them a long time ago. But even if you got a job at the Ford
00:21:18.900plant today you're on a two-tier wage scale where younger workers are getting paid much much much
00:21:23.500less than the previous workers did a lot of the benefits like pensions are not there like they
00:21:30.140used to be so yeah so since the 70s essentially incomes you know real incomes that is to say
00:21:35.940adjusted for inflation in the country have kind of stagnated there's you know a lot of things
00:21:41.840started going wrong in 1970 and there's a lot of debates about why that may that may be but
00:21:48.040definitely the idea that companies, you know, no longer have this idea of a family wage,
00:21:54.040you know, might be one of them. You know, even the unions wanted to bargain for a family wage
00:21:59.460so that you could support a family on one income. And now the unions are weaker. And we have
00:22:04.840corporations that are essentially committed to driving down labor costs. You know, you should,
00:22:10.500you know, in a lot of ways, you could consider yourself fortunate if you have a job that pays
00:22:15.340low wages rather than your job having been shipped off to, you know, India, Mexico, China,
00:22:21.260someplace like that. You know, I worked in the IT consulting industry, you know, and the company I
00:22:26.280went for, I worked for, went from like less than a thousand employees in India in 2000 to now I
00:22:31.920think they have over 200,000 employees in India. And so you start looking, you start looking at
00:22:38.640that, you know, you know, certainly, you know, corporations today have, you know, since the 80s
00:22:43.960probably have become much more ruthless in driving down costs. And it's complicated. I don't
00:22:49.360want to say that it's, you know, it's too facile to say it's feminism's fault. There's a lot of
00:22:53.960thing going on there. But it's certainly the case that it's a lot harder to support a family on one
00:22:59.140income today than it used to be. There's an outfit called American Compass run by a guy named Oren
00:23:05.200Cass, a former colleague of mine. And they've published research on this. I'm like, here's what
00:23:10.840one income in America will buy today versus what it used to buy back in the day. And that has
00:23:18.200become something that they're trying to resurrect, that sort of analysis. Can you actually support a
00:23:22.440family on this income? And in many cases, the answer is just flat out no. On the other hand,
00:23:27.900I think we can complain about the world, but we also have to live in it. And I think a lot,
00:23:33.600I mean, a lot of us today, we have become a very consumer-driven society, and we probably do spend
00:23:42.200way too much money in general. I know I spend too much money. I spend a lot less money than I used
00:23:48.500to, and I have a wife who stays home with our son right now, but if I hadn't made those painful
00:23:54.500reductions in my lifestyle and in my spending over the course of close to a decade, I would
00:24:00.520never have been able to do that so we just have to you know our parents generation when they were
00:24:05.320raising kids were not drinking starbucks lattes i can tell you that they weren't drinking micro
00:24:10.540brew beers they weren't having you know the proverbial avocado toast we hardly ever went
00:24:15.920out to eat when i was a kid you know when we were getting like you know my mom got whatever brand of
00:24:21.600soda was on sale that week that's what we got and so you know it wasn't like you know i had a great
00:24:26.360childhood, but it wasn't like, when you think back about it, it's like, man, in the 1970s and 80s,
00:24:31.060when I was growing up, family life was much, spending in the homes were much more simple,
00:24:36.220much more primitive. And I think we have to start thinking about how we take cost out of our lives,
00:24:43.100because that's the other thing we can do. Our incomes are probably not going to go up. That's
00:24:45.820going to be, that's a hard thing to adjust. But we can look at taking costs out, because I do
00:24:50.840think we want to create margin, create margin for taking risks for ministry, create margin for,
00:24:56.760you know, having your wife stay home with the kids, create margin for lots of things. And so
00:25:01.120I think that's, that's where I would sort of be looking at it today. Yep. That's, that's super
00:25:05.480helpful. I think it is, I think you're right. I think it is more difficult. I think it is
00:25:08.960challenging on the, on the income side of things, but you're right. I, I, I think back to my
00:25:13.960childhood and yeah, everything was Hill Country Fair from H-E-B Hill Country Fair was the generic
00:25:20.700brand i think it's still around i think my wife now that we're in texas is she's excited about
00:25:25.180heb and we're buying hill country fair for our kids yeah yeah our parents were just they were
00:25:29.980frugal they were they were more frugal and they you know they had to be you know they had to be
00:25:34.020now again there's not to say i mean things there were a lot of things that were cheaper back then
00:25:37.580there were a lot of things you know that were different but i think we have become we have
00:25:41.800definitely there's a lot more expensive things to buy today than there were back in the 80s in the
00:25:48.92080s you had three tv stations you know or four tv stations you were drinking miller butter coors
00:25:55.680you know you were drinking maxwell house or folgers those were your choices you didn't have
00:25:59.800a lot of choices to spend a lot of money now you had a lot of choice you had a lot of opportunities
00:26:04.420to spend a lot of money you're right all right so shifting gears here um kind of into the political
00:26:10.920realm you you said something on on one of the episodes of your podcast the masculinist again
00:26:16.320that i i thought was really really insightful um so i've i was you know a pastor in the acts 29
00:26:22.580network for a little while and been a part of that gospel center gospel center everything's
00:26:26.260gospel center which i have grown to resent a little bit um i i absolutely believe that the
00:26:31.500gospel is the center the problem is i think in a lot of gospel centrality churches um the gospel
00:26:37.520it's it's not gospel centrality it's gospel myopticism it's gospel everything there's only
00:26:42.360the gospel um whereas for me if we're saying gospel center that implies if it's the center
00:26:48.200there's something around it and i would argue that what's around the gospel is the law that
00:26:52.480god loves his law just as much as he loves his gospel and we don't it's not our obedience to
00:26:57.000the law that merits salvation we're saved by grace through faith in christ but uh but that
00:27:02.160the law matters it reveals to us our sin our need for a savior and then for the christian upon
00:27:06.620salvation upon conversion um we delight the law of god it's a lamp unto our feet it's that compass
00:27:12.020that shows us where we should go, not to earn God's favor, but this response of gratitude for
00:27:18.180the free favor we've received through faith in Jesus Christ. And so all that being said,
00:27:23.920in these gospel-centered, gospel-everything churches, and a lot of them being urban city
00:27:29.200churches, and it's all about, you know, in the city, in the city. And you hear the phrase, you
00:27:33.960know, from Jeremiah, in the city and for the city, right? If the city prospers, you too will prosper.
00:27:39.940seek the welfare of the city exactly in the city for the city love your city um but then but then
00:27:46.820when you hear guys talk about loving your country all those kind of churches that are all about
00:27:54.380being in the city and loving the city love new york but but uh if you love america then we're
00:28:01.520pretty suspicious or we're just going to outright frown upon that and it really seems like like
00:28:07.280hypocritical, a disconnect, and you picked up on that, and I thought it was really insightful,
00:28:11.860so could you speak to that, flesh that out, and tell us what you meant by that, and maybe some
00:28:16.840of the reasons why you think that's become a thing, not just in the culture, right? We can
00:28:21.520expect that in the culture, but in churches, it's cool to love your city, but it's not cool to love
00:28:27.160your country. What's up with that? Yeah, you know, that's one of those things. I just noticed it.
00:28:31.840Actually, my wife was the one that first noticed it. It's like, man, they always seem to be telling
00:28:36.260you to love your country less and uh yeah you know love love your city more and i thought about that
00:28:42.180as like this idea of you know we're here we're all about the city and yet at the same time kind
00:28:47.340of nationalism or thinking about your country like that's considered bad it's parochial don't
00:28:52.540you know that we're you know there's neither jew nor greek there's not there's no distinctions we're
00:28:57.380all just one body of christ and all that and you know you can go to go to some of these you know
00:29:02.540kind of new Calvinist websites like the gospel coalition and search on nationalism and see what
00:29:07.040they have to say you know try to find them say anything about making an idol out of your city
00:29:11.620or you know identifying too much with your city and you just really can't find it and I think this
00:29:17.280is just you know that it's never described why you know and again there's like a lot of it it's
00:29:23.440like it's presented but unless you kind of put two and two together you don't necessarily think
00:29:28.840about it and that's what i've i have noticed the rhetoric of a lot of these pastors is like that
00:29:33.540they tell you things that sound great like oh seek the welfare of the city all this stuff
00:29:38.300so everything individually sounds correct but there's a lot of things they're not saying
00:29:42.980all right so there's a lot of things they're not saying and like when you start putting these
00:29:47.620things together you start saying well why is the city what the place why is the city the locus of
00:29:53.640identity and not the nation for example and i think that's i think that's really interesting
00:29:59.420i think it's very obvious that the the bible is much friendlier to call them particularized
00:30:06.260loyalties than um the the a lot of these churches seem to be and in fact the one thing i think that
00:30:13.760the bible is does not really advocate is loyalty to your city i mean i don't think that's something
00:30:18.780that necessarily comes to win the bible you know but um i think about for example some loyalty to
00:30:25.320jerusalem because the temple is located you know like what it symbolizes but apart from that yeah
00:30:31.040it's yeah i mean in the old level not a city level it's israel it's yeah it's israel it's
00:30:36.940your tribe right you know and i think about uh paul i think it's in romans 9 where he talks
00:30:43.080about he would be willing to give up his own salvation for the sake of his people you know
00:30:48.220the jewish people and even though he was the apostle the flesh right yeah it's like he's like
00:30:52.220man my heart breaks because my people have rejected the gospel even though i'm the apostle
00:30:56.840so he never made that offer to the whole planet but he's like for my people yeah you know you know
00:31:03.560i i care about that so i you know i don't think that there's this idea that you can't care about
00:31:07.860your own people that you can't care about your own family um again is it is it is it titus or
00:31:13.860first timothy i can never remember what it says he who uh does not provide for his own family has
00:31:18.620denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever right do good to all men but especially to the
00:31:23.900household of the faith so this idea that we have not just you know universal kind of one universal
00:31:29.760community but we have sort of particular communities that we have um we have you know
00:31:37.100responsibilities to i think is very biblical and again oddly the city is not one of them
00:31:42.160And I do think, you know, I see this like pretty much everything else in the church today, unfortunately, as a reflection of sort of the cultural kind of prejudices and biases of the people who are who are promoting it.
00:31:56.280Because in essence, right, the the the elite classes of the city, the knowledge economy classes of the cities view themselves as very when they view themselves as very at one level, they view themselves as very cosmopolitan and transcultural.
00:32:10.140so they see themselves as very much having a lot in common with the similar class of people in
00:32:15.880london or buenos aires or tokyo or wherever the place may be they view themselves as very very
00:32:20.880cosmopolitan and and and yet at the same time they view themselves as very many of them not all of
00:32:26.620them but quite a few of them see themselves as very attached to their cities you know i lived
00:32:31.540in chicago for a long time and you know you would see on people's arms a chicago flag tattoo i mean
00:32:38.260the Chicago flag is everywhere. People are so into being in Chicago or they'll have like a
00:32:42.060Chicago star. There's like a star style of star on their flag here in Indianapolis. And I actually
00:32:47.800helped launch this. I'm afraid. I'm not afraid. It's good. It's a great thing. We have a great
00:32:52.500city flag here. So you go around the neighborhood where I live. I live in the center city of
00:32:56.640Indianapolis. You will see much more likely to see a city of Indianapolis flag hanging off of a
00:33:01.900house than an American flag or certainly than a state flag. And so you have this situation where
00:33:07.580the people who live in these places are very cosmopolitan in outlook. And to the extent that
00:33:13.020they have particularized loyalties, it's a loyalty to the city where they live. Often in opposition
00:33:19.680to the state where they live. I'm from Austin. I'm a good Blue City progressive Austin resident.
00:33:26.040I'm not like those people out there. And I think this attitude has been mapped directly onto the
00:33:34.260church. I mean, that attitude effectively is the whole deprioritize the nation, you know,
00:33:40.040deprioritize your state, you know, elevate, you know, have this kind of cosmopolitan transnational
00:33:46.060view, you know, of the family of God and have a parochialized attachment to the city. It is
00:33:51.500directly secular. And I think that's, you know, that's been the downside of contextualization.
00:33:58.540You know, they always say you have to contextualize your ministry to where you are. And I'm a believer
00:34:02.600in that i mean as i say if you want to go into pizza business you better know if you're in
00:34:06.840chicago or new york right yeah and so you got to know what that what the genres are i'm a big
00:34:12.300believer in that but you can take it too far and essentially go native yeah you know and um it's
00:34:18.240like you know that's the danger of consultants right if you have the same client for a long time
00:34:21.660you you go native and the client's culture and you lose your detachment and and it comes from
00:34:26.960it and i think a lot of these people have over contextualized yeah the cities are in and have
00:34:31.620taken in a lot of these, a lot of these ideas. And so, yeah, I did a whole, again, I did a whole
00:34:35.820podcast series on my little observations like that about the urban church. Yeah, it was really
00:34:41.940insightful. And the contextualization, I completely agree with you. You can over-contextualize where
00:34:46.200really you're being influenced more by the city than the city's being, you know, shaped and
00:34:50.520influenced by the church. And I think, you know, with contextualization, the importance, the point
00:34:57.880In my assessment, as I look at just the New Testament, I look at Paul, I look at the book of Acts, and it seems as though the point of contextualizing is to make the gospel message more clear, not more ambiguous.
00:35:20.060And so it seems like what the Apostle Paul is often doing, you know, where he, at Athens, you know, I see that you're a very religious people.
00:35:27.500You've got, you know, this idol, this idol, this God, and this God. And I see there's one, you know, to the unknown God, and I'm here to make him known. And he's playing off of that. But it's not for palatability. It's not an attractional method, so much as it's a point of clarity.
00:35:45.840And so I think when you come into a city or you come into any new people group, if it's, you know, shame and honor based, you know, and knowing that about the culture and being able to play off of those shame and honor themes in the scripture and in the gospel.
00:36:01.520But the point of that is not so that they'll like you necessarily.
00:36:04.460The point of that is to be able, again, it's clarity, so that they would understand the word of God, because you're walking into a culture that already has virtues, and it already has vices, it already has things that are deemed as good and things that are deemed as bad.
00:36:20.380And because we're all sinners, every single culture is going to be right about some of those things, and they're going to be wrong about some of those things.
00:36:28.260And wherever they're right, then yeah, that's common ground, right? Because of God's common grace, there can be a culture of people who, plenty of people who are not Christian, and yet they still, there's something in the culture that they value that God values, simply because they're image bearers of the living God, made in his image, and they got something right.
00:36:45.660And we can highlight that. But the point of highlighting that is, again, it's not just to find common grounds that they'll like us, but I think the point is to start with something that they understand so that we can gain understanding, so that we can gain clarity.
00:37:01.300And I think a lot of young hipster pastors have used contextualization as a means of gaining the approval of the people that they're ministering to, rather than a means of gaining clarity with the gospel message so that the people they're ministering to will better understand.
00:37:20.760And so I see the Apostle Paul contextualizing for the purpose of clarity, not for the purpose of the approval of man.
00:37:29.460Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting. You know, people love to quote that Mars Hill speech from Paul in Athens. But, you know, I think it's interesting that Paul's Athens mission appears to have been a failure. I mean, in contrast to many other places, we don't hear that he made a lot of converts or that he established a church there.
00:37:49.760it would seem to be that he went into the intellectual centers he kind of tried this
00:37:54.900approach it actually didn't work so that might be you might want to pick a more successful
00:37:59.780a more successful uh one there yeah i i do think there's uh but i do think i like this idea of
00:38:07.080getting more clarity you know more clarity to the gospel but uh you know not trying to overly
00:38:14.400synchronize you know overly synchronized with the culture yep because i think without question
00:38:19.620without question the urban culture had more impact on the church than the church had on
00:38:24.800urban culture i mean that's just questionable and you're not talking about paul you're at this
00:38:29.940point you're talking about today i'm talking about today you know and again i don't know i i don't
00:38:34.840know how much i don't know how much impact paul had on the urban culture i mean uh and this is
00:38:41.100where, you know, I think, maybe we don't want to get us off track here, but Paul, like, does not,
00:38:46.460I don't see Paul as, a cultural transformation mission is part of Paul's mission. It doesn't
00:38:51.320come through to me in reading Paul. I think he's very concerned about two things. One is making
00:38:58.040converts, transferring people from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the sun. And secondly,
00:39:02.740how establishing and the community life talking about the community life within the church so
00:39:11.360much of what he talks about within the church very few of his commands were a deal with the
00:39:15.520world outside the church uh right he seemed he seemed to like you know it's like in corinth it's
00:39:21.140like they're like this you don't be like this here's how you're going to behave but it isn't
00:39:26.100like okay you got to go out and like change the sexual practices of corinth you know so i i'm i'm
00:39:31.560not, I would say, this is where I differ from the Kellers and the Wilsons. I'm not a
00:39:35.120transformationalist. Okay. So see, and I am, I would be Kuyperian. And so I would push back
00:39:42.420and I would say, I think you're right. But I think, you know, you're describing motive or goals
00:39:49.020of Paul, you know, I mean, and both of us, of course, are ultimately assuming. And you're
00:39:53.920saying, man, it seems like the goal was, you know, it was converts, it was disciples, and it was the
00:39:58.060church. And, and whereas I would look at that, and I would say, yeah, that, that I think is
00:40:02.440absolutely a goal that was in the mind of Paul. But I would also see that as, it's not just the
00:40:08.540goal, it's not just the end, but it is the means. Because if you make enough converts, and you make
00:40:13.280enough disciples, and the church gets large enough, then, then just by default, the culture
00:40:17.420does begin to change. So I think of an example would be Paul and his ministry, I believe it was
00:40:23.280Ephesus, where everybody is getting together, they want to arrest Paul and get rid of him, because
00:40:27.900he's had so much success and i i believe ephesus is where for for three years temple of artemis
00:40:35.140uh yeah the the hall of tyrannius uh that he's he's you know he's got this block and it seems
00:40:41.360like it was just like this hall that was used for thinkers and philosophers and he gets the um
00:40:46.400the you know the cheapest it seems like he gets the cheapest time slot um where it's the hottest
00:40:51.280inside you know but for it's most most biblical scholars and historians would say it was like a
00:40:55.980three-hour slot from noon uh to 3 p.m in the hall tyrannius and i think he's there for either a
00:41:01.460year and a half or three years and he's teaching uh just publicly teaching in the public square
00:41:06.620if you will it's not a synagogue you know it's not a church and he's doing that for a very long time
00:41:11.000and eventually the result is um that that even like the blacksmiths and and silversmiths and
00:41:17.240and people are getting together and they say you know we're in danger of of uh you know um of
00:41:24.040Artemis, you know, and the great God losing her, you know, her reputation and our very trade is being threatened by extinction.
00:41:35.040And so basically, my point is, Paul's message was so effective that people were buying significantly less idols to the point where the merchants, you know, and the people who that was their trade was working with silver and gold and different, you know, precious metals to make idols.
00:41:51.380they were losing their jobs and losing their livelihood because because the city the culture
00:41:57.100seemed like it was beginning to shift beginning to change and they were it was he was so successful
00:42:03.380that they were upset about it upset about it enough to whereas I feel like if it's just the
00:42:07.800church if it's just what we do in the church then well I mean I say I think you're if you're if you
00:42:14.320convert the whole if you convert the whole town then obviously that's going to have an impact on
00:42:18.240i just think you know it's an outworking it's an outworking of i agree you know the process of that
00:42:24.860it's not you know we're coming in here to trans we're coming in here to transform the culture
00:42:28.860no you're right i think okay i think that's where that's where i kind of feel like it's
00:42:32.760like we're going in here we're on a mission for culture transformation right and uh you know i
00:42:37.680just think that and and certainly in today's world it just hasn't worked in these urban areas their
00:42:43.340culture has not been transformed the culture of the church is what's been transformed right and
00:42:47.620that's, I completely agree with that. And it's frustrating to, you know, to continue to hear
00:42:52.420people in the church talk about, you know, we're, you know, we're going against the grain. We're
00:42:57.940counter-cultural, counter-cultural. And they say we're counter-cultural as they hold their next
00:43:03.500big conference that solely focuses on whatever the culture was talking about five to 10 years
00:43:11.100before they start talking about it you know like when when when i see a church conference and and
00:43:17.400the title of the conference and the whole theme of the conference is is verbatim the same thing
00:43:22.540that i find on on my amazon fire stick on the you know when i when looking at the screen you know
00:43:27.400about black lives mattering or stopping injustice you know or um then i just i'm struggling to
00:43:34.460understand how are you counter-cultural and if this was such a big deal if this is such a big
00:43:39.420deal and there's inequality and it just then then then why wasn't the church talking about it before
00:43:45.260it was cool why why wasn't you know what i mean because because i i mean for i i think we have to
00:43:52.020stop kidding ourselves i think we just have to call a spade a spade and just admit that like
00:43:55.820the church is not counter-cultural uh that sadly the church is continually in in my experience it
00:44:02.960seems as though the church is about five years behind the culture and all the church does that's
00:44:07.960distinct from the culture is if the culture hops on to you know if the culture labels anything as
00:44:14.100a virtue that's that's blatantly not a virtue according to scripture then the church just
00:44:19.580sits that play out but anything that the culture deems as virtuous that the bible could even get
00:44:26.080close to affirming as virtuous the church hops on that about five years after the culture has
00:44:31.620already begun to work right and to say that that's leading culture or shaping culture i think i i
00:44:37.260I don't know. I think we need to repent and admit that we're just we're not doing so hot.
00:44:42.940Yeah. I mean, you never see these you never see these churches speak prophetically about, you know, about the sins of the city that they're in, you know, greed on Wall Street or something like that.
00:44:51.800If they were speaking prophetically, they would probably get a lot more pushback because, I mean, even Jesus said, was there ever a prophet that your forefathers did not kill?
00:44:59.700prophets seemed you know typically one of one of the clear you know telltale signs of a prophet is
00:45:06.040is that they're persecuted because they're a leader there you could say it like that i mean
00:45:10.860a prophet obviously in old testament times was they're not you know i was going to say a thought
00:45:14.920leader well thought leader thought leader and um well prophet old testament times they weren't a
00:45:20.160thought leader so much it was god's thoughts and they were simply speaking for god but but in new
00:45:25.200testament times i mean a prophet is somebody who you know i i think a prophet is somebody who just
00:45:30.360simply has an open bible and common sense and i think um a a you know like frodo baggins he had a
00:45:37.100you know he had a unusual resilience to the power of the ring i think a prophet in today's times has
00:45:43.000an unusual resilience to the power of the approval of man they they seem to not care so much about
00:45:49.360what people think so they just have an open bible they have some common sense and they don't really
00:45:53.580care what people think and there's there's your new testament you know prophet if you will and
00:45:57.860and for those individuals they're the actual thought leaders they're the people who are saying
00:46:03.060things when it's not okay to say it you know before it becomes mainstream before it becomes
00:46:08.580accepted prophets tend to be ridiculed prophets are rarely praised or applauded and and so i think
00:46:16.920whenever the church is being applauded um nine times out of ten it's probably because the church
00:46:22.680is not being prophetic um if the church is being prophetic i think then the church would be more
00:46:28.140ridiculed the church would be less light and so um anyways that being said what is the difference
00:46:34.720because um with it going back to love your country you know and not just your city what's the
00:46:39.940difference between nationalism and patriotism because i think that's one of the the hang-ups
00:46:44.260because i've seen gospel coalition write you know some articles about nationalism
00:46:47.600and and how that's wrong um but but what is the actual distinction between nationalism
00:46:53.980and patriotism and and why do you think why do you think christians in this nation you know are
00:46:59.300trending away from being patriotic and why is that why does that keep getting wrapped up into
00:47:04.220nationalism yeah i mean i you know i don't have precise definitions of any of these terms and
00:47:09.280neither does anyone else it's just like you know nationalism is like a negative identifier today
00:47:14.200and patriotism, I guess, for some is a positive identifier, although other people don't like
00:47:18.200patriotism either. So, you know, the only thing I can say is like, you know, to them, like
00:47:24.000nationalism is just a bad, it's just a bad thing. Calling someone a nationalist is just like calling
00:47:28.560them, you know, a xenophobe or anything else. It's just, it's just a general purpose epithet
00:47:33.700of negativity that they apply to something. And so I mean, one of the things you find, you rarely
00:47:38.340find really crisp definitions of what these people are talking about uh you know if you're
00:47:45.260gonna if you are you know if you are going to critique nationalism then i think you should
00:47:50.380define you know what what you mean by that if you're going to critique it you know uh so i you
00:47:56.180know i don't even spend time thinking about that stuff because i think getting down in the weeds
00:47:59.860of content on those sorts of things is um you know uh just a little bit uh you know it's just
00:48:08.700not you're never going to convince these people by coming up with a better definition no you if
00:48:13.940you just understood the proper definition of nationalism or patriotism you would think
00:48:18.080differently i mean it's what they're saying it's pure rhetoric and that's just what i think one of
00:48:22.520the most important things i would just tell people is everything these people say is pure rhetoric
00:48:27.800The content is almost incidental to its rhetorical function.
00:48:32.940And you can't, you can't, if you're trying to engage in a substantive debate, one of
00:48:37.500my rules with them is if you're engaging in substance, you've already lost.
00:48:41.780If you're trying to get into some kind of a, you know, a logical, you know, dialectical,
00:48:46.700you know, debate with people, you're going to get crushed because that's not the level
00:48:53.220You know, you can do, you can do that.
00:48:55.520Certainly not. If you're in a position of cultural supremacy, if you're in the incumbent position, then you can maybe do things a little differently. But if you're sort of in the challenger position, then talking about facts is kind of a waste of time. I hate to say it. Not that facts aren't important. It's important to have it right. But you're never going to convince other people through a superior logical argument about facts.
00:49:21.720which is sad but um okay well then let me phrase the question like this so terms aside and
00:49:27.380definitions aside nationalism patriotism um what let me ask this uh what what level of love for
00:49:34.660one's country is too far at what point you know for the christians speaking from a christian
00:49:40.140worldview uh at what point would it become actually idolatrous or sin or what what what
00:49:46.640is too much love for one's country yeah that's a good question i mean i really you know i haven't
00:49:51.800thought about i think i think it's less about love of one's own than it becomes hate for other
00:49:56.160people i mean i think we certainly if we cross the boundary line into hatred for other people
00:50:01.020then that's sinful because that that is a sin um you know i think when you become you know when it
00:50:06.940becomes you know a a sort of you know ethno superiority uh to to an extent i think there's a
00:50:14.640i think there's a you know kind of a health a kind of healthy view of superior like you always
00:50:19.520love your own kids and think your own kids are better than other people's kids right and that's
00:50:23.880normal and natural so you could you should mostly i think feel good about the place where you are
00:50:28.600and maybe oh our country's the best we're the greatest but like maybe it's like oh we should
00:50:33.120like rule over people other people are terrible uh you know you get into that sort of thing
00:50:38.200yep you know i think i think we have to start i do think we have to start with the recognition
00:50:43.380that there are very few, you know, kind of culture-free individuals, right, that we were all
00:50:49.180born into a community of flesh and blood people, you know, with, you know, sort of shared history,
00:50:58.640shared traditions, you know, shared language, shared culture, and it is not wrong to identify
00:51:06.060yourself with that any more than it is wrong to identify yourself with the family that you were
00:51:11.540born into and it doesn't mean you know uh you know you know my country right or wrong or something
00:51:17.500like that because i think we could recognize i look at the analogy to the family we can recognize
00:51:21.540that people in our family are sinful that maybe they've done wrong to us or others and yet that
00:51:27.760doesn't stop us from still being in in a family relationship with them right you know that we
00:51:33.380you know and i think this is one of the things that people they try to undermine
00:51:36.960they try to undermine your love of country by essentially pointing out its flaws well don't
00:51:44.720you know that these people did this don't you know this person here was bad did these bad things
00:51:50.700i'm like so what i mean ultimately this idea like if the standard for caring about someone or
00:51:57.140something or having identity them is that they were perfect and didn't have any sins and didn't
00:52:00.940do bad things you know we're not going to have anybody on there so i think they're always trying
00:52:05.400to like you know and i think you know the reality is sort of the the you know uh call them you know
00:52:12.340very patriotic this is probably an example of bad patriotism you know and it's and it's really it's
00:52:17.020like the the 80s christianity i grew up in you know this america is the new israel and like we're
00:52:22.780god's chosen vessel and like america's this perfect nation it's like i so i do think we've
00:52:28.180overly, we've overly lionized America as this, you know, perfect, unique, exceptional country.
00:52:37.020Whereas I think we can acknowledge the idea that like somehow acknowledging the flaws in America,
00:52:42.880acknowledging what's went wrong, somehow would keep you from not feeling an American,
00:52:48.960identifying with America and being America. Well, I don't think that's so any more than our,
00:52:52.540you know, defects in our family necessarily keep us from loving them or being in relationship.
00:52:57.520We just realized that's, that's our family. That's who we are. Right. And so I, you know,
00:53:02.740I think that we can be, we should be honest about the failures of the country, but that doesn't
00:53:06.760mean that we should say, oh, we're so horrible, you know, and just, you know, and again, these
00:53:11.940things are never, these things are never applied. These things are never applied, you know, evenly
00:53:16.620across the board. Right. It's only applied to the United States. It's only applied to like white
00:53:21.540people it's only applied and it's like it's i mean it's a joke yep it really is woke is a joke
00:53:28.500um all right well let's go ahead and just round out the episode so this is the final question
00:53:33.320this gets to the title that i said all the way at the beginning i apologize to the listeners who
00:53:37.120are like hey i clicked on this video to get to the joe biden unity thing so here we go president
00:53:42.640joe biden he continues to call for unity the nation needs to be united let's all come together
00:53:47.560Let's all just get along, you know, now that that divisive Donald Trump is out of here, you know, and I'm here, let's just, let's bring back, you know, love and everybody love everybody.
00:54:16.640I do think that the New Testament, one of the key themes of the New Testament is unity within the church, and I think that there's, you know, I think a lot of the talk about unity in the New Testament is specific to the church community, that there's this new kind of community that has been inaugurated, and the way that we live within that community is to be different than the way that people have lived, I think, in the world.
00:54:44.480we see Ephesians, it's right, you know, it's like three chapters of the gospel, three chapters of
00:54:49.380how we're supposed to live in response to that as a community, as a church. I also think this idea,
00:54:55.640you know, there is this idea that like Christ is reconciling all things to himself, which I can't
00:55:00.900begin to explain. You know, Biden's unity is basically, you know, surrender to me, you know,
00:55:07.400go along with me. And I do think, and this is where I think, you know, I do think as Christians,
00:55:13.820we need to be careful because you know i have a very i think the bible takes a very high view of
00:55:18.200authority and you know you know we are called to be into you know submission to the authorities
00:55:25.520even you know you look at like first peter it's like even when they are evil authorities right
00:55:30.840in many respects and so um you know i don't think you know again it's you know it's a little you
00:55:39.260know it's not like you know okay we have to go along with biden because he's the president you
00:55:42.600You know, the Pharisees were the authorities.
00:56:06.840And additionally, within our, within our culture and our system of government, dissent and
00:56:12.020protests and things like that are certainly valid parts of what it means to be under the authority
00:56:16.860of the united states so there's that's right there's an explicit legalized room for dissent
00:56:20.160but i you know i do think this you know i do think we need to be careful uh you know not to
00:56:26.200overly reject you know overly reject the you know the authorities that are there just because we
00:56:31.560don't like them so the reality is joe biden is the president that's right and so we need to you
00:56:37.160know we need to you know honor honor the king right in the sense that we're called to pay give
00:56:41.740taxes to who taxes is due etc but you know i certainly think you know joe biden you know just
00:56:46.900like all politicians this call for unity is basically do what i want and uh you know i don't
00:56:51.940think right you have to go along with that yeah so let me pick up on that you said do what i want
00:56:56.540you know and earlier you said uh you know biden's unity is surrender to me basically and i thought
00:57:01.540i think that's great because so this is this is kind of you know as you were saying that it just
00:57:05.900got me thinking but i i think biden's unity is in many ways ironically i think it is similar to god's
00:57:12.320unity um or christ unity because that's christ unity surrender to me and i think you know like
00:57:19.320you said like the you know the unity in the church um i kept thinking as you were talking i kept
00:57:23.660thinking like the reason that we should and we don't always have it because we're sinners and
00:57:28.060we fail but but the reason why there's at least the hope or the opportunity the potential of unity
00:57:33.320within the church is because as christians and followers of jesus we are all supposed to be
00:57:38.320surrendered to christ and what he thinks his virtues his values his priorities his commandments
00:57:43.180and and so the reason we even stand a chance at unity it seems is because our commander in chief
00:57:49.820within the church jesus christ the head of the church um that the way that he tries to gain
00:57:55.400unity the way that he is gaining he doesn't just try but he is gaining unity in his body his bride
00:58:01.320is um is by forming more and more by his grace through sanctification by the power of the spirit
00:58:07.640he is forming more and more of himself his virtues his values his righteousness within his body from
00:58:15.040the head is flowing all the blessings of god to the body of christ and we're becoming more like
00:58:20.400him and we're because we are increasingly uh sharing in his virtues his values his thoughts
00:58:26.840thinking god's thoughts after him you know and and i think like biden wants that unit it's funny
00:58:33.860because i i just i haven't thought like this before but just as you were talking i was thinking
00:58:37.960i think biden's calling for the that same type of unity think the way i think um have the same
00:58:44.460virtues as i have i think the problem is um from a christian perspective i just don't know if we're
00:58:49.420supposed to have unity in in a nation with with filled with christians but also pagans i keep
00:58:56.600thinking of scripturally like there is no fellowship what fellowship does light have
00:58:59.640with darkness what like so as christians i think we can we can have like a unity i've heard some
00:59:03.980some people say two types of biblical unity one is a unity of common care and one is a unity of
00:59:09.060common conviction right so there's that unity of common conviction that we have the same doctrine
00:59:13.980the same tenets the same you know that ephesians 4 talks about that we uh that the unity of the
00:59:18.780faith but then there's also the unity of love the unity of common care that you know that even those
00:59:24.240people who are less mature and have some wrong views that we bear with those who are weaker in
00:59:30.420the faith and who get under our skin and mistreat us we're bearing with them we're long suffering
00:59:35.480we're patient we're loving and so i think when it comes to the nation it seems like we can we can
00:59:40.000aspire to have what you're saying you know honor the emperor honor the king we can aspire to have
00:59:44.660that unity of common care but biblically we can never have that unity of common conviction we're
00:59:50.540never going to agree with abortion we're never going to agree with you know uh well i would hope
00:59:55.740that christians would never agree with socialism uh that's my perspective you know i i you know
01:00:00.020because we would see these as things that are against the ten commandments it's murder and
01:00:04.640it's theft and just because it's civil theft doesn't mean it's not theft and so uh these
01:00:08.860kind of things we we cannot have unity of common conviction unity of thought um but but we can
01:00:14.440still strive to have a unity of common care, unity of love, bearing with one another, being
01:00:20.500patient, long suffering, those kinds of things. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think if you
01:00:25.200look at the Bible, right, unity in the church is possible because of two things. One, in theory,
01:00:32.220everyone in the church has placed their highest allegiance to Christ. So everybody has the same,
01:00:37.840the same thing. And secondly, there's the power of the Holy Spirit that's at work to make it
01:00:43.560possible and even then even just in the new testament these apostolic planted churches you
01:00:48.720know by people who are you know better ministers than you or i'll ever be it was a constant struggle
01:00:54.500unity i mean a lot of those letters were written they still couldn't get it to work right and so
01:00:59.620i think when you start looking at the the difficulties of unity within the church and
01:01:04.520you know i think it's almost impossible kind of outside of it again in biden's unity i don't think
01:01:11.100there's anything particularly nefarious to it that's what all politicians will say that's what
01:01:15.400trump said when he got elected and you know biden his guys they didn't they didn't unify around trump
01:01:20.940yeah they declared themselves the resistance and so uh you know it's what every president's
01:01:27.060going to do i don't you know i don't put too much uh you know i don't put too much stock and
01:01:30.360and that sort of pull those kind of political statements and you're right we're not going to
01:01:33.660have you know you're not going to have um unity and i think that actually you know shows that the
01:01:40.420more you know that that is uh you know this common convictions and sort of things when you have a
01:01:46.480more diverse society unity becomes progressively more difficult to achieve that's right yeah because
01:01:52.320there's less to unite around yeah you have less kind of you know you know less common cause
01:01:57.340uh but and i use the term diversity and kind of the broadest sense and that is just you know
01:02:02.380people of all sorts of different inclinations ideas etc you know it's just going to be very
01:02:08.360hard to create create unity around those things right you have different religions you have
01:02:12.800cultures you have different you know ethnicities all these things in america and the sad thing the
01:02:17.940ironic thing is um you know with all those differences there's there's not a whole lot
01:02:21.740for us to unite around in terms of commonality the one thing that we had that we could unite
01:02:27.280around was love for the country and now that one got taken away too so it's like what do you
01:02:32.160you know what what do i have to unite over with you know my nigerian neighbor you know who is
01:02:38.680american they live in america they're american citizen but like culturally we don't have a whole
01:02:42.740lot but but typically what we would have is they're here for a reason and nine times out of
01:02:47.660ten the reason is because in some sense they love america they view this is a wonderful place to be
01:02:52.980that's why i moved my family here and i can say hey i love america too but now you can't even say
01:02:57.880that anymore. So there's just not a lot of, not a lot of items left to unite around, but we got to
01:03:03.500go. We went a little long. I apologize to you and to the listeners, but let's go ahead and conclude
01:03:08.860the episode. So this is the bonus question. If you are listening and you're not yet one of our club
01:03:14.040members, we call them our responders. I encourage you to go ahead and sign up. We have a bonus
01:03:18.320material from each of our episodes of Theology Applied. We also have, we have an entire other
01:03:23.420podcast called Lionheart. We also have my entire audio series from the Gospel of John. It's about
01:03:29.16072 to 75 sermons in the Gospel of John. So there's a lot of material that you can grab
01:03:35.400by becoming a responder, and it helps to support the ministry. And so this is our bonus question
01:03:40.780for our responders. Aaron's going to stay on for just a little bit longer, our after hours
01:03:45.860episodes. So the question is this, Aaron, you had another one of your episodes. You're like me.
01:03:51.940Sometimes you just got to shamelessly use that clickbait title to get people to listen to the material.
01:03:57.440But you titled it this and you even confessed, I think, in the episode and admitted, all right, you know, I did a little bit of the clickbait thing.
01:04:03.540But the title was Why the Republican Party Hates Your Guts.
01:04:07.560And so I just wanted to hear, you know, a little bit, what is your assessment of the Republican Party today?
01:04:14.560And what's your prediction for what the Republican Party is going to be in the next five years?
01:04:19.780And more generally, what do you think the future of conservatism is in our nation?