The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The “Adoption Tweet” Heard Round The World

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00:00:24 review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. So apparently, Eric Kahn hates adoption. That

00:00:31 notorious troublemaker on the Twitter streets? Or does he? Well, we'll find out in today's episode

00:00:37 of Theology Applied. Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:00:45 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:54 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin, and today I am privileged to welcome to the show for,

00:00:59 I don't know, the 17th, 18th time.

00:01:01 It's not that many, but it's a lot.

00:01:03 We've got Eric Kahn from the Hard Man Podcast.

00:01:05 Eric, thanks for coming on.

00:01:07 Awesome, Joel.

00:01:08 Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:01:09 Always a pleasure to be back.

00:01:11 I feel like, you know, a fellow troublemaker.

00:01:14 Fellow troublemaker, yeah.

00:01:16 Speaking of trouble, so I've prepared from the outset of this show.

00:01:20 I didn't want to forget any of my notes, so I've actually got it on my phone.

00:01:24 But there's some questions I don't want to read.

00:01:25 They're simple, they're short.

00:01:26 And so I'd like to just try to get all of them out and then let you respond.

00:01:30 The first one that I have is, why are you the way that you are?

00:01:34 And then also, what gives you the right?

00:01:39 And then, who do you think you are?

00:01:41 If you could just respond to those, Eric, and just let our listeners, you know, why

00:01:45 are you the way that you are and what gives you the right and why do you hate adoption?

00:01:49 You know, so go ahead.

00:01:50 Everything that you love, I hate.

00:01:54 You just need to know that.

00:01:55 Yeah.

00:01:56 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

00:01:57 Some of us are just like Toby from The Office.

00:01:59 Right.

00:01:59 And we can't help it.

00:02:00 We were born this way.

00:02:01 Love is love.

00:02:02 We were born this way.

00:02:03 You can't hate us.

00:02:05 Yeah, but people do.

00:02:06 People hate me because, you know, the fact of the matter is that my wife has never been

00:02:13 permitted in the course of our marriage to read a single book, right?

00:02:17 You know, and that's what 750,000 people think online, you know, and likewise, as it comes

00:02:24 to your particular situation, people think that you hate adoption.

00:02:28 So explain yourself.

00:02:30 I know you don't.

00:02:30 I was adopted.

00:02:31 I like to, at some point in this episode, I'm going to share my story with that, but

00:02:34 I knew what you were getting at because I know how to read and do other things good too uh you

00:02:38 know for the center for kids who don't read good and want to do everything's good too so I I know

00:02:42 how to read and but I think you know to be fair I also it's not just that I know how to read and

00:02:46 read in a charitable light and not the worst possible you know way you know but it's it's

00:02:52 also I know you and you know some people some you know a lot of people probably just don't know you

00:02:57 and they're like oh he's hating on adoption and this and that like what were you getting at with

00:03:01 that tweet, the infamous tweet? Yeah, so a big part of it, you know, we addressed it a little

00:03:07 bit in a forthcoming King's Hall episode, but really so much of what I address and what Brian

00:03:14 has addressed, the things on modesty, most of it comes from either something in, you know, that we

00:03:19 see online among a Christian community or that we are dealing with in counseling or conversations

00:03:25 with friends across the country. Usually there's some personal element to it. So particularly with

00:03:30 adoption um i have over the years dealt with a lot of people uh we were all young in the oos

00:03:38 and part of the young restless and reformed and particularly in the sbc and we were in kentucky

00:03:43 uh in you know 07 to 2012 uh the emphasis and the push for adoption was so great yes that you

00:03:51 actually had people who would forsake natural children biological children they would forsake

00:03:57 having children so that they could adopt you know two black kids from uganda right it was just like

00:04:01 almost uh a just such a designer thing to do that it was very common and part of the reason when you

00:04:09 say forsake like because i know some of these stories like people literally getting vasectomies

00:04:13 when they're perfectly healthy and able to conceive yeah but yeah that's right or or they

00:04:18 say hey we're gonna go on the birth control pill for five years so we can adopt first

00:04:22 yep um but but yeah i was talking to a friend the other day in response to this and he said

00:04:27 no no no it's this is true he said i have multiple friends who have said we've we've gotten permanently

00:04:32 fixed there's too many orphans in the world right uh and and it's irresponsible to have children

00:04:37 is what they were saying so i've seen a lot of this going on talking to people in counseling

00:04:43 situations and quite frankly uh talking to people who have got burned by the rhetoric of the of the

00:04:49 young, restless, and reformed about adoption. So adopting kids and it going very, very poorly,

00:04:56 what people didn't see in all the fiasco on Twitter was there were scores of people emailing,

00:05:02 sending direct messages, going on Facebook to message me saying, you're so right. My family

00:05:07 was destroyed by adopting three teenage black girls and it tore our family apart. And you're 1.00

00:05:14 absolutely right. And we felt like we had a moral obligation to do it because that's really what

00:05:18 these guys are saying. And they didn't want to go. The one guy told me, he said, I don't want

00:05:23 to go online and share this because I know I'm going to be crucified for saying that adoption

00:05:28 isn't a sacrament of the church. Okay. And that's how a lot of people are actually treating this

00:05:33 subject. I actually equated it to the Crusades. I happened to be studying this and they were told,

00:05:40 the Crusaders were told, if you go on a crusade, all your past sins will be forgiven. You'll be

00:05:43 in an elite class, just like the monks and some of the priests. You'll be an elite class of

00:05:48 christian and i think adoption for many people it was treated that way like you'll be in the upper

00:05:53 tier of christian christianity and christendom if you are one of these you know almost like

00:05:58 sainted people who've adopted and i also think joel this is why it it blew up because number

00:06:04 one misreading but there are a lot of moms and a lot of dads who have adopted and they thought i

00:06:09 was saying adoption is bad you did a dumb unwise thing which of course isn't isn't uh isn't the

00:06:15 case. I don't think that, but I just think it's an issue that we shouldn't place moral obligation

00:06:19 on. We should say, if you want to do this, that can be a good and righteous thing. It is not

00:06:25 mandated by scripture. And that's the point. Right. Amen. Yep. You said it's not mandated

00:06:31 by scripture. It's not mandated by the gospel. And, you know, even with that, like I'm able to

00:06:36 parse out, you know, because again, I'm able to read and, and also, you know, again, you know,

00:06:40 the animosity, it is a bias. And so I'll admit that like one, I'm able to read, but it's not

00:06:45 just that I'm just so wonderfully objective. Um, it's also that I don't hate you. And a lot of

00:06:49 people do like that. I mean, that is what it comes down to. Like a lot of people, it's, it's not

00:06:53 that there's two kinds of people. There are stupid people who can't read, but, but it's not 0.99

00:06:57 just stupidity. It's also, um, people who actually can read, um, but, but are unwilling. They won't, 1.00

00:07:04 um, because they've already made up their mind about the individual who wrote a particular

00:07:08 tweet, in this case, you, and they've decided that anything that comes from you is terrible

00:07:13 because they really don't like you at the end of the day. So anyways, but you said, you know,

00:07:18 it's not mandated. Adoption is not mandated by the gospel. And so I'm able to, you know,

00:07:22 to parse that out and say, um, adoption is not mandated by the gospel. And yet when it happens

00:07:28 by the grace of God, it can be a picture of the gospel.

00:07:32 Sure. Absolutely.

00:07:33 In the same way that we could say marriage is not mandated by the gospel, but it's a picture of the gospel.

00:07:39 And that we could say, I think, more strongly because it's explicit in Scripture, thinking of, you know, Ephesians 5.

00:07:44 But even then, like if it's mandated by the gospel, then, you know, then the Apostle Paul was in rebellion to the gospel.

00:07:51 And I don't believe that's the case.

00:07:53 You know, Jesus himself is in rebellion to the gospel.

00:07:55 So something can be a display or a picture of the gospel without being a gospel imperative in and of itself.

00:08:02 And so now the imperative that we would say comes from scripture is that the church as an entity, collective, does have a moral obligation under God.

00:08:11 It is a command that they care for orphans and widows.

00:08:15 But I think that's part of the problem also is that when you take a universal command given to the body of Christ, but then it becomes particularly applied and imposed on individual Christian families.

00:08:29 um there is a way to uh for you as an individual member of a local body of christ and then that

00:08:37 local body of christ being a member of the larger universal body of christ um diligently and lovingly

00:08:44 caring for orphans and widows without you personally as a household having ever adopted one

00:08:49 and well yeah big time and i i think the other thing is james 127 that was one of the things

00:08:55 that people were saying is oh you reject james 127 of course not um but i think even historically

00:09:00 you can look at the church uh great men like george mueller they had orphanages in fact if

00:09:06 you have troubled teens particularly when there's uh you know delinquency and sexual misconduct it

00:09:12 might actually be more beneficial this gets to the wisdom part of it it might actually be more

00:09:17 beneficial to put boys in an all boys orphanage and girls you know in texas i know is one big

00:09:23 place where this happens they do have boys and girls homes and there's a reason that they do

00:09:27 that and it would actually be unwise and detrimental to bring them into many homes it would disrupt

00:09:33 birth order and this was the other thing that a lot of people missed you always hear the positive

00:09:39 stories about adoption right but when when i'm counseling and i'm talking to people and they're

00:09:46 like you know there's when you have teenage daughters and you have an adopted child who is

00:09:51 the same age, there become sexual problems in the home, particularly if there was abuse

00:09:57 in the adopted child's childhood and there's like severe sexual problems.

00:10:03 So it's like these are issues that have to be thought through with wisdom.

00:10:08 Even one of the things that got brought up was, well, the early church was adopting,

00:10:12 quote unquote, babies who are being outcasts, thrown away by the Romans.

00:10:18 I'd be curious to know if there was a $70,000 per child adoption fee in major agencies who

00:10:23 are making a lot of money off of it in that day.

00:10:25 I'm guessing it was probably free.

00:10:27 Like you went out there and you took them into your home and you cared for them.

00:10:29 That's one thing.

00:10:31 But a lot of the wisdom related to it is not only your family, but very interesting.

00:10:38 A lot of people don't know this.

00:10:39 Adoption is an industry.

00:10:40 It's business.

00:10:41 A $24 billion a year business.

00:10:44 And a lot of the people who are writing for these major outlets, whether it's, you know, the ERLC, First Things had some articles about it, adoption being a moral or secondary moral obligation.

00:10:56 These people work for adoption agencies.

00:10:58 They're in the industry.

00:10:59 They make their livelihood from this.

00:11:00 So I'm sure many of them have good motives and good intention.

00:11:03 But it's wise for us to know, like, they actually benefit from this message that I think what's happened is basically you have a message that is the gospel equals adoption, full stop.

00:11:17 And that becomes very problematic.

00:11:20 One of the things we've talked about here in our church is Westminster Confession, Chapter 20.

00:11:26 we want to not bind the conscience with the commandments of men where scripture does not

00:11:32 warrant either explicitly or by good and necessary consequence and the thing i find so interesting

00:11:38 about adoption is you do not have a clear command that says thou thou shalt adopt thou must adopt

00:11:44 it i think you can the same people though the same people told me you know weeks ago steven

00:11:52 outro which was written for the gospel coalition and for desiring god when i say that it's wrong

00:11:58 to be a dink and that married christians have an obligation to pursue children he said you are 0.83

00:12:03 binding the consciences of christians so why the double standard like you're all for adoption but

00:12:09 not for natural children that's a great point yeah yeah and i would say there is a difference

00:12:14 and i know you would say this as well like the cultural mandate is actually a moral imperative

00:12:20 And that is a scriptural command to be fruitful and multiply.

00:12:25 And, you know, so the one who takes a wife, if the Lord does give to a man a wife, he's found a good thing.

00:12:32 And if they are able to conceive, I do believe that they have a moral obligation to have children. 0.82

00:12:38 Now, I'm not, I wouldn't go as far as some of the quiverful camp and saying that, you know, you must have as many children as you physically can without dying.

00:12:46 Um, you know, I, but I do think that, uh, that you should have children, uh, that you should

00:12:52 seek to multiply. Um, and that the man who has many is blessed the quiver being full. Uh, but

00:12:59 I do think that there can be some wise family planning in there, uh, in ethical ways, uh,

00:13:04 nothing that would be, uh, risk, uh, any abortive, um, you know, any abortive, uh, implications or

00:13:10 anything like that. Um, but all that being said, uh, the point is that there actually is a command

00:13:15 in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply. So the irony is the couple that is willfully choosing

00:13:24 not to biologically conceive children because they've opted for adoption instead, I think

00:13:31 actually is foregoing a clear command in favor of this imposed, created, manufactured command

00:13:41 that's not actually in scripture. So the Bible says that we should care for orphans, but it

00:13:45 doesn't tell us particularly how, but the Bible does tell us that we should have kids. And it's

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00:15:41 King's Ridge Elderberries. Again, that's tkrfarm.com. Yeah, it's very clear. And I've said

00:15:49 with James 127 as well, just like the passage is not calling us to adopt all children, it's not

00:15:55 calling us to marry all widows and even scripturally when Paul tells Timothy that whoever

00:16:03 does not provide for his own house is worse than an unbeliever and he says in the NASB 95 your own 0.56

00:16:09 which is where I got the phrase loving your own literally the words of you know the Paul says 0.99

00:16:15 that so but what's interesting is that passes it actually about contextually about widows so his

00:16:22 whole point was, if you have widows who have living relatives, the relative before the church

00:16:27 has a primary responsibility to care for her. I think it's interesting in America that you have

00:16:35 something like the adoption industry, which again, can be a good thing. It's worked out for a lot of

00:16:40 people. I'm really grateful for that. Praise God. However, it's a pretty high percentage. I think

00:16:45 it's over half of orphans, quote unquote, who have living parents. Well, why are we not saying

00:16:53 to them, like, hey, you need to take care of your child. You have an obligation. But I think in

00:17:00 America, the bigger problem, sort of at the heart of all of this, and you run into this when you're

00:17:06 doing abortion ministry, right? The typical thing is you say, you cannot kill your child. You cannot

00:17:11 murder your child. And they will say to you, well, if I can't murder him, then you have to 0.92

00:17:15 take all the kids that would be born. No, I don't. That's not my moral

00:17:19 responsibility to do that. It's yours. And so I think in a lot of these

00:17:23 conversations, what you're getting at is we've lost

00:17:27 traditional historic reform doctrine on like,

00:17:31 what is the natural family? I mean, anymore, and this is part of the discussion

00:17:35 too, if you say your own or your natural family,

00:17:39 William Gouge will talk this way.

00:17:40 The Puritans will talk this way.

00:17:42 Calvin will talk this way.

00:17:43 If you say the natural family, you immediately get called a racist or a kinnist. 1.00

00:17:47 Right. 0.80

00:17:48 And you're like, well, no, these should be clear categories in the mind of the Christian.

00:17:52 They're clear in scripture.

00:17:54 I actually don't have an obligation to love every neighborhood kid in my neighborhood

00:17:58 the same way that I have to love my child.

00:18:00 Right.

00:18:01 Like these should be clear categories, but unfortunately they're not.

00:18:03 So I think what we have to do is continually be pointing back to who has the primary moral responsibility in these situations.

00:18:11 Yep, well said.

00:18:12 Yeah, we're not good at thinking in categories, the church today.

00:18:16 But in addition to that, it's funny, we're not good at thinking in categories.

00:18:21 And yet, instinctively, I think that there are a lot of Christians that do have a pretty clear sense of one particular category.

00:18:31 and maybe it's subconscious and they couldn't even articulate this, but there's one category

00:18:35 that they just instinctively are able to carve out from all of the categories and they've

00:18:40 designated it to be despised. And that is the category of nature. What I've noticed over the

00:18:48 last few months, you know, so now panning out, getting the 30,000 foot view, taking the heat

00:18:53 off of just Eric Kahn, we'll throw it, you know, I'll take a little bit of it myself, you know,

00:18:58 and other guys. But there is one common denominator. I don't know if you've noticed this,

00:19:02 there's a thread, right? There is a thread. There is a common denominator in many of the things on

00:19:08 social media that have been despised by the reform camp, not just last week, but over the past,

00:19:14 this whole past year of 2023. And to me, the theme, the name of the game is nature, right? So

00:19:21 So the kind of tweets that you can expect massive pushback on, you know, I preached a sermon just a few weeks ago, and it wasn't the whole point of the sermon, but there was a portion of the sermon I was talking about soft men.

00:19:37 And then I was talking about, you know, biblical masculinity and wanting to be a hard man who is also a good man, a hard man with a soft heart, you know.

00:19:45 And so I was talking about that and I was saying, you know, the part of the problem is this Gnostic disposition that completely severs and divorces the spiritual from the physical. 0.90

00:19:55 That what we've done is in defining, you know, biblical masculinity, at least in the past few decades, we've completely severed that from anything physical whatsoever. 0.95

00:20:06 Anything that, you know, that a lot of our ancestors would have just instinctively thought of being when they thought of masculinity.

00:20:14 So it has nothing to do with working on cars, nothing to do with your ability to fix something when it's broken, nothing to do with physical strength, vitality, nothing to do with being formidable or the ability to hunt or owning weaponry for the purpose of self-defense and protecting others, nothing to do, you know, being a man is, you know, I don't know, it's something to do with this ethereal, spiritual sense of godliness, but it's nothing physical, nothing rooted in nature.

00:20:41 and and so so whether we're talking about masculinity and i just mentioned and i and i

00:20:45 was really actually ironically soft about it i'm talking about soft men and condemning them but i

00:20:49 was soft about it and using my own ailments my own shortcomings and saying you know what like i've

00:20:54 got a white collar job i'm a pastor right so i'm like preaching and you know for me a lot of my

00:20:59 physical exertion you know my my greatest risk on a day-to-day basis is that my hand you know my

00:21:04 wrist starts to cramp as i'm turning a page of a book you know like you know and so like i i was

00:21:09 like dogging on myself. I was admitting like, and I said, you know, but I've got a son now

00:21:13 and I'm thinking about maybe starting a very part-time business. It could be even five hours

00:21:18 a week or something like that, but something that's, that's a painfully practical blue collar,

00:21:23 you know, hands in the dirt, physical exertion type of work. If nothing else, not as a, an extra

00:21:28 stream of revenue, cause I could come up with another idea, but here's the deal. I could come

00:21:33 up with another idea of a stream of, of revenue if I wanted added revenue. But, but it would

00:21:38 probably once again be something in that white collar vein it would be something uh that would

00:21:42 um it would be something that would preclude my son he wouldn't be able his involvement uh wouldn't

00:21:49 wouldn't be uh possible but i want something where like me and my boy like assembling trampolines

00:21:54 you know like and having a little service or whatever or installing uh you know tv mounts

00:21:58 you know or i i don't just little ideas that i've had whatever it is but it's something where like

00:22:03 we have to lift something, pick something up, move something, maybe get outside, get a little

00:22:09 bit of sun. And I was thinking for him, for his sake, and then in the sermon I was talking about

00:22:13 just that there is a connection with people who are, it's good for the soul, for lack of a better

00:22:22 way of saying it. I remember reading a study where it literally showed the statistics of

00:22:28 people's voting patterns and show the comparison of how people vote in comparison with how far

00:22:36 they live, in a literal sense, how far they live from the ground, from the dirt. And you think of

00:22:44 it, it's like, okay, big cities, of course, they're progressive, of course, you know, this and that.

00:22:47 But is there something like, I mean, is there a connection with living on the 23rd floor

00:22:52 in Manhattan, New York, and literally not being able to touch grass, you know, maybe once a week,

00:22:58 you know, when you go to Central Park, you've got no yard, you've got no dirt, you've got no

00:23:02 trees, you've got no grass. You don't even know what nature is. Right. And you vote for baby

00:23:07 killers. Like maybe that's not a coincidence. Maybe there's actually a real straight line there 0.97

00:23:11 between someone who is so far removed from nature that it actually degrades the soul.

00:23:18 Maybe that's not God's design. Maybe there's something, maybe there's something off there.

00:23:22 So anyways, my point is, you know, with your tweet, I didn't see it as despising adoption.

00:23:27 I saw it as a clarion call to caring for our own.

00:23:33 And so whether it's masculinity or patriarchy or, you know, like a few weeks ago, here's

00:23:38 another example, the, you know, the working out thing, right?

00:23:41 So that got like so much attention online, you know, like, and it's so silly seeing pastors

00:23:47 come out and thinking that this is like, like they're dunking, like, you know, a pastor

00:23:51 coming out and say, well, you know, like godliness is, has nothing to do with working out.

00:23:56 And I, you know, I have a steady diet of pizza and Dr. Pepper and haven't lifted a weight in 40 years.

00:24:02 You know, it's like, I really?

00:24:04 Diabetes for 17 years.

00:24:06 Right.

00:24:07 It's like, this is like, and they're saying it also like it's a brag. 0.70

00:24:11 But my point is, if you want to upset reformed Christians online right now, name of the game. 0.74

00:24:18 If that's your goal, all you have to do is just say something practical. 0.70

00:24:23 Say something rooted in nature.

00:24:24 Men should be strong.

00:24:26 Women should ordinarily should have babies and love their children. 0.99

00:24:32 You should take care of your own, your kin. 1.00

00:24:34 Like say anything.

00:24:35 And I was reading about it after your tweet.

00:24:37 The church has historically cared for orphans, but primarily the line of defense in terms of triage was it was always it's always starting closest to home.

00:24:46 So like, you know, First Timothy five, Paul's primarily talking about widows, but the principle applies with orphans as well.

00:24:53 The first line of defense is not the church.

00:24:54 It's the nuclear family, then the extended family.

00:24:57 So do you have any of your kin, any of your family?

00:25:00 The obligation falls on them first so that the church would not be burdened.

00:25:05 The church is the final backstop, and the state wasn't even on their radar.

00:25:10 But the church would be the final backstop, but it's working out.

00:25:13 So first, take care of your children.

00:25:15 Second, do you have a niece, and her parents died in an accident?

00:25:19 Okay, there's the next step.

00:25:22 Do you have a grandson?

00:25:23 And it's just working out within your family.

00:25:27 So it's your immediate household first, then the members of your family extended.

00:25:32 So I think of that even with like snowflakes, you know, like people who have a sister or

00:25:36 a brother who did in vitro, you know, and they've got, you know, this many frozen kids.

00:25:42 First, preach to your family members that you've got kids on ice.

00:25:45 You have incarcerated children who have not done anything wrong.

00:25:49 This is against the law of God.

00:25:51 This is an atrocity.

00:25:52 you need to do everything you can physically. If you're physically able to do it, I understand

00:25:58 there's strain and all these things, but whatever you can to get those children off of ice and into

00:26:03 your home. If they can't though, I would say that's a great example of the Christian duty.

00:26:08 This is my sister or my brother who did this wicked thing in their foolishness or in their 1.00

00:26:14 selfishness. And for whatever reason, they're no longer able to, maybe their womb is now closed.

00:26:19 they're unable to take these children so i i'm gonna seriously and prayerfully consider that

00:26:25 you know but but that's if you look at church history adoption that's i mean even world war

00:26:31 one and world war two it's yours the kids you know dad dies in war and they're going to aunt

00:26:35 and uncle they're it's all but it's all family your own it's this natural your own family kind

00:26:41 of mentality the idea of adopting um uh two two chinese girls from the other side of the world

00:26:48 is a foreign concept. Again, not prohibited. And can it be good? Yes. And when it happens in a

00:26:55 God-glorifying way, is it a picture of the gospel? Yes. But mandated by the gospel and a first line

00:27:01 of defense and the thing that should be heralded as the sainthood of all Christian faith? No.

00:27:06 And I agree with you. I think that's done a number on the church. And that's coming from a guy

00:27:10 who was adopted and was not extended family with my adoptive parents. And if I wasn't adopted,

00:27:15 my life would have been worse. And I'm incredibly grateful for it. But I know how to read and do 1.00

00:27:21 other things good, too. Well, yeah, it's interesting, too. I looked this up. So this

00:27:26 is orphanages, bear in mind. But this is according to Catholic Relief Services, up to 90%. So 80 to

00:27:34 90% of children living in orphanages across the world have at least one living parent.

00:27:39 and then and you find the same thing in adoption where it's like there's living parents right

00:27:45 there's other family it's also interesting because in the latino communities like if you

00:27:50 get pregnant as a teenager the grandparents are going to raise that child right like they have

00:27:54 an obligation the other thing that's interesting um you you were talking about physical strength

00:28:00 i didn't even put two and two together until you're mentioning this but this week has been

00:28:04 adoption everybody and their brother has been dunking on that post and you know um not really

00:28:10 refuting it i think it's more like you know ad hominem you're a racist it's the question that i

00:28:15 started this episode with it's not yeah it's not dealing with the argumentation of the substance

00:28:18 it's just no why are you the way that you are what gives you the right yeah we by the way we

00:28:24 hate you but but it is interesting because like last week literally last week uh i think it was

00:28:30 like a sunday i posted a picture shooting a pistol and i said you know worship the lord keep your

00:28:36 powder dry something like that and um what was interesting is all the responses for like days

00:28:43 afterwards were like shame on these men who say that being a godly man is about shooting a gun

00:28:50 and blah blah but i think one of the biggest issues going on is there is straw manning and

00:28:55 there's just straight up lying happening so this was really apparent with the the the adoption post

00:29:02 was you have people who are bearing false witness repeatedly without restraint and so i think part

00:29:10 of this is that goes back to the like we hate you um why did cain kill abel because his offering

00:29:19 was not righteous and his brothers was and he hated him he was righteous um and you know it's

00:29:25 easy for any of us to be like, well, I'm clearly the righteous one here. And I don't mean it that

00:29:29 way, but I just think that when you look around and you see a lot of straw manning and you see

00:29:34 people not taking any of the actual arguments seriously, that it's like, well, I think more

00:29:41 and more of these group of people are proving themselves unreliable and untrustworthy. And

00:29:46 And, you know, I mean, again, nobody is saying nobody is saying, hey, you know, the way that you be become a man, you have to actually bench press 300 pounds.

00:29:58 If you can't bench press 300, you're not a man.

00:30:00 Like, this is what I mean by a straw man.

00:30:02 Like, nobody said that, though.

00:30:04 Meanwhile, the guys who are refuting that it's like you're weak, frail or obese.

00:30:07 and you know again zooming out to the 30 000 foot level i think what's ultimately happening is people

00:30:15 are realizing sort of like a tight economy makes companies realize like wow we really have to

00:30:21 compete over the same things i think there are certain people who view it as a zero-sum game

00:30:26 and they're like oh well for me to have mine i've got to go annihilate these other people who are

00:30:30 doing well right which i have the crazy thing to me is like before this all started the people who

00:30:36 were taking shots i'm like i had no issue with them like we can disagree you know that as christians

00:30:41 we can disagree and i do my best to not you know lie about you not straw man you not uh put words

00:30:49 in your mouth that you didn't say um but i i felt like for the most part um that's you know

00:30:55 very few people was their honest interaction yep agreed yeah it does it does seem and we've we've

00:31:05 talked about this before you and i online offline we've talked about this but uh it it definitely

00:31:10 does seem as though um it's a turf war you know just that i don't know everybody you know there's

00:31:20 been a lot of discrediting of institutions the church sadly is no exception the reformed church

00:31:24 is no exception um people are asking questions 2020 ripped back the veil um and everybody's

00:31:33 kind of just you know a lot of people left a lot of people have deconstructed you know a lot of

00:31:37 this a lot of that and those who are still left within the realm of biblical orthodoxy it's like

00:31:43 it kind of is a small pool and that's you know and and then it's just being fighting you know

00:31:49 we're fighting over it and so well and I think it's also interesting Joel because uh uh when

00:31:55 you think about what's going on this came up kind of randomly in a conversation with Joe Rigney

00:32:01 and uh i was asking about actually about young restless and reform i said what happened with

00:32:06 it we're all trying to figure that out right like what happened with young restless and reform

00:32:10 and he said well actually i think a lot of the current debates even with christian nationalism

00:32:15 can be related to that i'm like what do you mean and he's like well what happened was young

00:32:19 restless and reform and guys like john piper they introduced us to classical reform theology

00:32:24 and then we started reading it and then and then that was great when you were talking about

00:32:29 soteriology what happens when you start reading hooker on political theology what happens when

00:32:34 you start reading rutherford on political theology um and so what i think what certain doctrines

00:32:40 which were actually classically reformed stephen wolf being a good example when we started

00:32:44 unearthing those parts i think that's where it really caused a lot of people angst yeah um and

00:32:51 to say you know i'm not sure that i can swallow this i also think that in in a christendom context

00:32:58 a positive world uh to use aaron wren's phraseology right when it when you're in christendom

00:33:05 you're allowed you can have a view where you basically don't have a political theology other

00:33:10 than like democratic pluralism and things seem to go pretty well for a while right but again as we

00:33:16 shift a negative world i think the problem then becomes like oh man 2020 if you didn't have a

00:33:21 political theology you're getting cooked right and so now i think people are starting to figure

00:33:26 that out try try to figure it out uh but it it's we do the protestant thing we infight you know

00:33:33 um and and i think largely uh probably i don't see that dying down um i certainly don't intend

00:33:42 to the funny thing is like i thought i was tweeting about adoption i was like i didn't

00:33:48 see it as a oh let's draw battle lines with the same folks again um again just born out of

00:33:56 counseling and saying, I think this is true. Um, you know, when you get the, like your, uh, you

00:34:02 know, outrage farming, it's like, I think you're giving me too much credit. I just was talking to

00:34:06 somebody and thought something and said, I think this is true. I had no idea that it would be what

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00:36:01 Yeah. Yeah. And that's happened to me a few times, but that's, you know, going back to what I said

00:36:05 previously, I think I'm starting to, now I'm, now I can predict it a little bit more. At first I was

00:36:11 more surprised like hey i think you know this is just a tweet about adoption or hey i think this 0.96

00:36:15 is just a tweet about um you know the the danger of certain women's bible studies you know or this

00:36:20 is just a tweet about you know personal care or you know even dressing came into you know like

00:36:25 should we dress up for the lord's day you know how you know should we dress like slobs you know

00:36:28 whatever um or you know second amendment rights you know you know should you own a gun should you

00:36:33 know how to to operate that gun you know and you think it's just you know i'm it's just a topic

00:36:38 like and this is a different topic we were arguing over something this this you know

00:36:42 is completely a separate you know discussion and you throw something out there and it blows up in

00:36:48 your face and that's how it felt for a while but now i feel like you know you're able it's actually

00:36:55 quite predictable you you're able to um to you know to to see ahead of time you know which which

00:37:03 things are going to get the vitriol which things are going to get the pushback and i think like i

00:37:08 said earlier, I think the things that are going to get the pushback are the things that deal with

00:37:13 nature, the things that are practical. Because I really do think for decades now, everything has

00:37:21 been, we have all been pietists and I'm including myself. We have all, whether it was intentional

00:37:27 or not, whether we recognize it or not, all that mattered was the spiritual and the eternal. We

00:37:33 did not really have, I think, a proper biblical view of this world. The view of this world is

00:37:41 that the whole thing is going to disintegrate, right? The new heavens and the new earth is not

00:37:47 restorative. It's not the heavens coming to this earth and making it new at the end of the age,

00:37:53 but it's actually a new, meaning another earth. Like I think we all hook, line, and sinker,

00:37:58 we bought that narrative. We believe that the earth is going to be dissolved in fire, literally

00:38:04 dissolved, disintegrated, annihilated, that the creation is crying out with eager groans and

00:38:10 expectations for a mercy killing from the Lord to be taken out back behind the woodshed and put

00:38:16 down. The trees want to, not to see the sons of God being revealed, but to give way to the sons

00:38:22 of God being revealed and annihilated so that the sons of God might be revealed. And so in all these

00:38:29 things, your view of the end of the world, your view of eschatology, your view of the cosmos,

00:38:35 of the created order, all of these things for decades now have been absolutely, they're just

00:38:43 irrelevant. We wouldn't be able to say, as the apostle Paul does, this spiritual or physical

00:38:50 training has some value we would say you know it has no value uh no value whatsoever and so so to

00:38:55 this world you know so like andrew risker says in boniface option you know like you're you know

00:39:00 burning a pile of tires in the backyard to own the libs you know like that's it like conservatives

00:39:04 just kind of we just we just took uh the op you know the opposite position just to to own the

00:39:10 libs you know so um the libs you know we don't want to be a a patagonia you know wearing um

00:39:17 crunchy, granola-eating hiker. So instead, we're going to just eat triple-decker cheeseburgers

00:39:25 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, burn tires in the backyard, and think that somehow that must

00:39:30 be the right position because these guys who kill babies are on the other side. And yeah,

00:39:34 they do kill babies, and their logic is flawed all the way down. But even a blind squirrel can

00:39:39 find a nut from time to time. A broken clock can be right. And that doesn't mean that all we can

00:39:44 eat is granola. You know, I don't think you need to be vegan. And I could make a biblical argument

00:39:48 for meat being on the menu. I think God's intention, even before the new covenant and

00:39:53 all those kinds of things. But the point is, the point is physical health does not belong to the

00:39:58 libs. It belongs to God and his people. Physical strength belongs to God. The physical creation,

00:40:05 it belongs to God. We're called to exercise dominion in such a way that the cosmos flourish

00:40:11 underneath the leadership and dominion of mankind, not that they disintegrate and are ruined. And so

00:40:17 I think for a while, it was just kind of what's like, you know, for six months, it was like,

00:40:22 what is happening right now? Like you say something and I see a clip of me over here and

00:40:27 750,000 people are watching it. You know, somebody put it in. I'm like, what is happening?

00:40:33 Like things that were shocking. I was like, I thought, but we agree on this. I know you agree

00:40:39 with me. Why is this happening? But then I realized that I really think that the line

00:40:46 is, it's the nature, it's the line of nature, it's the line of practicality, right? So

00:40:53 complementarianism, that's, you know, fine, the husband's the head of the wife. And we can say 0.95

00:40:56 that all day long. But when you actually start talking about the practical elements of headship,

00:41:03 no, no, I mean, he actually is the head of his wife, not the tiebreaker three times over the

00:41:08 course of a 50-year marriage. But no, he actually is the head of his wife. And here are some

00:41:12 practical ways that he exercises that headship in function, not just in theory. Right. You're in

00:41:18 trouble. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Here's a workout plan. Boom, you're in trouble.

00:41:25 You've been commissioned as a provider and a protector. We live in a dark time. We live in

00:41:29 a negative world. People are breaking into homes. These things happen. Here's a gun. Here's how to

00:41:34 operate it for the glory of God and the good of your family, boom, you're in trouble.

00:41:38 You know, like all these things are, you know, you should care for your own children and

00:41:43 seek to have children and get into a vasectomy when you're able to conceive so that you can 0.59

00:41:47 adopt people on the other side of the world who actually have living parents, but are

00:41:51 refusing their obligation to the children.

00:41:53 Maybe isn't the best idea.

00:41:54 Boom, you're in trouble.

00:41:55 So all, but all these things are connected.

00:41:57 And I think the connection piece is the Christian world, some of us, you know, but it's growing.

00:42:04 is waking up and saying, the world matters. The world matters. It's not just stuff. We're not

00:42:11 materialist, but we're also not Gnostics. It's both. The world matters. This creation matters. 0.68

00:42:19 The dirt matters. The trees matter. Your family, your posterity, it matters. Your health, it

00:42:27 matters. How you dress, it matters. All these things. And yes, there is a fine line. There is

00:42:34 a way of overstepping into the realm of vanity or into the realm of materialism. But for the

00:42:39 longest time, we have been pietistic monks. It's this monastic kind of John Piper poverty gospel

00:42:47 kind of thing where you give away all your money. To be poor is godly. To adopt from the other side

00:42:52 of the world is godly. To be fat or skinny and gaunt and not healthy is godly. To be a weak man 0.77

00:43:00 is godly all of it and i think people are waking up but there's a group that wants to keep us

00:43:05 asleep yeah i mean i was thinking about that even the stories i remember of like mark driscoll would

00:43:12 tell early in his ministry um where they were it was sort of like they weren't saying like you

00:43:18 you have to absolutely be poor but what they would do is they would use a story and they'd be like

00:43:23 there was this guy in our church and he selfishly went and bought a new pickup truck and he came to

00:43:29 church and he felt convicted and him and his wife went back to the dealership and they returned it

00:43:34 and they gave that money to the church have you ever heard the story of ananias and sapphira

00:43:38 and you're just like yeah like uh it was just such a thing for so long that like if you have

00:43:45 money if you do well in business any of that stuff was bad and i agree with you this is actually kind

00:43:50 of an interesting uh again corrective a book that joe rigney and i were talking about was the things

00:43:56 of earth his book and he was saying the same thing like we have to get back to like you know

00:44:03 when i was in a lot of like the i guess like kind of fundy baptist churches growing up and then you

00:44:09 know even in the sbc it was stuff like you know people would like stand up and repent for drinking

00:44:14 coffee and i'm like why are you quote-unquote repenting from drinking well i just realized

00:44:20 that every morning i wake up and i pour myself a cup of coffee and i enjoy it and i needed to

00:44:27 repent of my idolatrous enjoyment of car and it's like man you must be fun at parties i mean but but

00:44:34 it became like a false view of holiness it's it's a false standard of what it is to be holy and that

00:44:39 just like you could watch a football game on saturday night for your favorite college team

00:44:44 and like enjoy it and not be sinning and football isn't inherently sinful although certainly the

00:44:49 modern manifestations have been hijacked by crazies all that stuff but yeah it's fake and 0.96

00:44:55 gay i mean we're doing black national anthem and all this stuff but um i do think that you could 0.99

00:45:01 watch the rangers crush the diamondbacks who were not gay the only team not gay yeah the rangers are 0.91

00:45:08 the one team that refused to do gay nights so good on them for winning but but i do think it 0.68

00:45:13 just gets back to this whole thing of um even i would say this as a as a guy who grew up even with

00:45:20 theonomy that one of the things one of the errors of that camp can be kind of a disregard for natural

00:45:26 law even um so i have a greater appreciation thanks to guys like steven wolf where i'm like

00:45:31 you know what i think there's a place somewhere in here for some of the classical natural law

00:45:36 theory and uh maybe we don't have to be quite as antithetical to that as possible because as you

00:45:43 said like this is where we're actually getting in trouble is when you start applying things like

00:45:49 what does paul say how do you know that homosexuality is wrong doesn't nature teach you 0.99

00:45:55 right right it it actually you're being instructed uh by these things and and that can be a good

00:46:01 locus for a lot of the conversation i mean even the non-tenant years ago said this uh he and i

00:46:07 were talking and he was like yeah of course men should be you know their body should be hard i

00:46:12 I mean, think about what happens when a man goes and works in a field.

00:46:14 His muscles get bigger and his body physically gets harder, right?

00:46:20 You actually see nature teaching you something about the height of man's function.

00:46:26 When men are lazy or they're eating the wrong foods or they're sedentary or any combination of those things, what happens to their body?

00:46:34 It gets very soft and flabby and they have a hard time breathing, walking upstairs, right?

00:46:40 that isn't peak masculinity. Like we could say this about a lot of these issues. Doesn't nature

00:46:45 teach you that a pastor shaped like a giant pumpkin is not good? Doesn't nature teach you

00:46:52 that? And, you know, I think because we've had a generation of people who you've said this before,

00:46:59 like the missing ingredient in preaching is the applicational part, right? Everybody's good with

00:47:04 the principle. Everybody's good with a little bit of exegesis. But when you say, therefore,

00:47:10 and then you fill in the blank for people,

00:47:13 therefore you shouldn't be obese, you shouldn't be lazy.

00:47:19 Men should have some measure of physical strength

00:47:21 or they should be pursuing it.

00:47:23 Then everybody loses their mind.

00:47:26 The whole world loses their mind.

00:47:28 You're absolutely right. 0.99

00:47:29 Yeah, it's a pietistic thing. 0.96

00:47:31 It's a Gnostic thing.

00:47:32 And it is monastic. 0.52

00:47:33 I think that we've, in a weird way,

00:47:36 we've uh we've retracted back to you know the monks that would sleep on slats of wood and

00:47:43 they'd leave cracks in between each slat so that cold gusts of wind could you know come on their

00:47:48 bare backs and they'd sleep naked you know or just wearing undercloths and you know so that 0.52

00:47:52 their sleep would be miserable you know the desert father is living in caves and you know 0.82

00:47:57 and we we really have um i think gone back to that in our own 21st century western way 0.75

00:48:03 but gone back to this idea of um everything must be spiritual everything must be miserable

00:48:10 um everyone needs to be poor everyone needs to be fat or skinny you could go either way you just

00:48:17 you know not not muscular just make sure you you're not muscular and so you know and you need

00:48:24 to be a pushover in your home and yes you're technically the head of the wife but what does

00:48:27 that mean your headship solely exists in order to serve every single one of your wife's, not her

00:48:35 needs, but her basis wants. So at every single level, it is a despising of nature. And I am in

00:48:44 the theonomist camp, but I'm also in the biblical camp. I'm in the reform camp and I see no reason 0.71

00:48:51 of a rejection of natural law. I don't think that natural law and natural revelation, special

00:48:56 revelation god wrote two books and they're not opposed to one another it's the same book um you

00:49:01 know so i you know my when i say i'm a theonomist what i always tell people that well what about

00:49:05 natural law of course natural law but i just i think i can go to the civil magistrate and i can

00:49:09 say well you see the migration patterns of this you know white tail axis deer over here you see

00:49:13 the constellation the stars you see the way these crops you know and flowers are blooming over there

00:49:18 and this teaches us that and that and also also exodus 20 also psalm 2 kiss the sun you know like

00:49:26 I just, when I say I'm a theonomist, all I mean is at the end of the day, we can use the book.

00:49:32 God is, he didn't give natural revelation to all people and the book to some people. I think he

00:49:38 gave natural revelation to all people and the book to his people, but to preach from that book,

00:49:43 special revelation to all people and say, Exodus 20 applies to you. It's not just to the church.

00:49:48 It applies to all people. So when I say I'm a theonomist, a general equity theonomist,

00:49:52 it's in that vein. And I think, you know, some of the best of the theonomists and things that

00:49:55 were written it didn't it wasn't coming as a substitute for natural revelation so yeah no

00:50:01 exactly yeah all right well eric i i gotta go you gotta go any final words for our listeners

00:50:08 yeah i just want to say since i'm here for people watching the video if you don't wear

00:50:14 red flannels in the fall and winter at least some that you're not a real man and so joel i don't

00:50:20 know if you wear red flannels i do i was wearing one yesterday okay good i was gonna have nathan

00:50:26 like intervene maybe intervention in your life otherwise so you're good you're covered good

00:50:31 looking out brother yep that's a great way to end the episode at the end of the day everything that

00:50:35 we've said all the nuances let's let's just go ahead and throw something if you don't do this 0.69

00:50:40 exactly um you're going to hell god bless yeah that's exactly right god bless you don't even

00:50:46 needed anything well we were laughing we were laughing because brian brian was preaching the 0.80

00:50:50 other day and he was talking about women and uh a series on men and women and then he he like gets

00:50:56 to the closing he realizes his timer is running out and he's like by the way he's like what about

00:51:01 the 19th amendment and i we were all like wait you have two minutes you have two minutes brian

00:51:06 then you see him pause and then on we go yeah yeah yeah what about the 19th amendment

00:51:12 no explanation necessary let's pray and not for the benediction that's what happened too yeah

00:51:18 that's funny all right good to see you thanks for coming on the show awesome thanks brother

00:51:23 appreciate you all right

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The NXR Podcast - November 07, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The “Adoption Tweet” Heard Round The World

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