The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Tim Keller’s Problem Isn’t His Embrace Of Abraham Kuyper, It’s His Embrace Of Karl Marx ｜ with David McLeod & Chris Hwang

00:00:00 All right, listen, guys, I get it.

00:00:02 Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry because you're spending your

00:00:05 cash and your lives on raising young children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

00:00:10 Praise God for you and that endeavor.

00:00:13 However, algorithms are a thing.

00:00:16 Shadow banning, sadly, is a thing.

00:00:18 And one major way that you can help to expand the reach and effectiveness of this ministry

00:00:24 that doesn't cost you a dime is by spending just a few moments leaving us a five-star review. Also,

00:00:31 perhaps even more effective than that, you can share our podcast with a friend. We hope you'll

00:00:37 take the time to do so. Thank you so much. God bless. The problem with Timothy Keller is not

00:00:43 that he's embraced Abraham Kuyper, but that sadly, at least at some level, he seems to have embraced

00:00:51 Karl Marx. Kuyperianism is not the problem. The problem is Marxism. This is something that I hope

00:00:59 especially some of my Baptist friends may listen to and might at least consider that Abraham Kuyper

00:01:06 is not the primary problem. The sentiment of engaging all of life with all of Christ

00:01:15 is not the issue. The issue is, are we actually engaging all of life, every realm of life with

00:01:22 all of Christ or some of Christ and some of a progressive neo-Marxist, godless pagan idea?

00:01:33 That's what we're going to address in this episode with two special guests, David McLeod

00:01:39 and Chris Wong. Tune in now. Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:53 All right. Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel

00:01:57 Webin with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome not one, but

00:02:02 two special guests to the show. We have Chris Wong and David McLeod. Would you guys go ahead and

00:02:09 just share a little bit about yourselves and then we'll get into some Tim Keller stuff as promised

00:02:13 as the title showcases. We're going to talk about how all three of us in different ways were shaped

00:02:19 by Tim Keller, how we came to eventually realize the problems with Keller, how we overcompensated,

00:02:24 but then came back and saw some things that are actually good that the church, even the

00:02:30 conservative evangelical realm has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And it's actually

00:02:35 creating some serious problems that we want to address. So before we hop into all that,

00:02:41 first, let's just welcome our guest. Could you guys, Chris and David, tell our listeners a little

00:02:45 bit about yourselves? Hey guys, I'm Chris Wong, and I'm really thrilled to be a part of this

00:02:52 community, Joel. I worked in New York City for, gosh, 12, 13, 14 years of my life. Worked on

00:03:01 Wall Street for a few years. And then from there, joined a startup where I helped build that

00:03:07 business for over a decade. We sold that business, had a brief stint at a public technology company.

00:03:15 And then as of now, I'm the co-founder of Every Good Work with my business partner and artist,

00:03:22 David, and I'm also advising startups as well. Great. There's a lot to

00:03:31 talk about go ahead david go ahead well um i'm i'm an artist um i've been an artist essentially my

00:03:37 entire life um i grew up in birmingham i grew up in the pca um kind of at the epicenter of the of

00:03:46 the founding of the pca in the in the 70s i'm a child of the early 80s grew up uh with great

00:03:55 Christian family, um, went to school, studied art and have been a portrait painter and paint

00:04:02 painting for, um, galleries and personal collectors for about two decades now.

00:04:10 Awesome. That's so interesting. Yeah. So I'm excited about this episode and our listeners,

00:04:15 you should be excited about this episode because part of what we're going to be talking about

00:04:18 is this all of Christ for all of life, this Kuyperian mantra, Abraham Kuyper. He's the guy

00:04:24 who was famous for saying, there's not one square inch of all the world that Christ doesn't cry out

00:04:29 mine. You guys have heard me use this analogy or illustration several times, but we don't want to

00:04:34 do the Mufasa and Simba Lion King routine where they go up to the Pride Rock and Simba's looking

00:04:41 at this kingdom that he's going to inherit. And Mufasa, his father says, everything that the light

00:04:46 touches is going to be your kingdom. And Simba responds by saying, but what about that dark,

00:04:51 shadowy place. We don't want to do that as Christians and say, well, that dark shadowy

00:04:56 place, that's politics or that dark shadowy place, that's art. That dark shadowy place,

00:05:01 that's culture, that's medicine, that's science. That's no, no, no. It all belongs to Jesus.

00:05:07 And so basically the team that we have on the show today is we've got Chris and David,

00:05:10 we've got the business guru and we've got the artist. And so we're going to be looking at

00:05:16 markets. We're going to be looking at economics. We're going to be looking at art and culture

00:05:19 and painting and talking about why, um, business is corrupt and art sucks. And it's because of a 0.95

00:05:26 rejection of Christ and how to fix those things. But the first thing that we want to look at is

00:05:31 part of the problem has to do with Tim Keller and not saying that it's exclusively his fault

00:05:38 or that he's the first guy to make this mistake. But he, the reason why we're going to address it

00:05:43 from Keller is because all three of us have been shaped by Keller particularly. And so I want us

00:05:47 to talk about that, but then also because Keller is not the original failure in this arena that

00:05:53 we're about to discuss. But he's probably one of the most notable guys today. And so what we want

00:06:00 to talk about is this all of Christ mantra, redeeming that. But the problem, just to stop

00:06:08 beating around the bush, the problem is that Keller actually did that and does that really well.

00:06:13 Keller is a Kuyperian. And I think there's a lot of guys who have watched Keller's

00:06:19 deconstruction, his theological evolution, becoming more and more politically and culturally

00:06:27 progressive and compromising on more and more conservative, biblical, theological issues.

00:06:34 And I know, at least in the Baptist world, I have a lot of Baptist friends, pastors, podcasters,

00:06:40 you name it authors they think that the problem with keller and and and the the achilles heel

00:06:48 that led to his progressive theological progressive downfall is his embrace of abraham kuyper and it's

00:06:55 not the problem with keller is not kuyper the problem with keller is that he's a marxist that's

00:07:02 the problem and so all that being said let me throw it to you chris and then you throw it to

00:07:06 David, but talk a little bit about the ways that you were shaped by Tim Keller, the good,

00:07:10 the bad, the ugly. Yeah. I mean, I remember, um, being on my campus and, uh, that was when he

00:07:18 wrote, um, I believe his apologetics on, um, what was it? Um, the reason for God, the reason for

00:07:26 God. Yeah. I remember that he was on a book tour. I had lunch with him with a group of, um, college

00:07:31 students um and and he really he radically changed my understanding of of the gospel um he spoke in

00:07:39 a language that i would say really was attractive um you know he had a different type of way of

00:07:46 communicating i think he's very gifted in that i think obviously adding his um his intellectualism

00:07:53 you know um was was um also very um very attractive and so really i just kind of

00:07:59 Yep, fell in love with the whole Tim Keller, you know, mission and what he was up to.

00:08:05 And I would say that the impact that he made was he really was able to communicate the gospel.

00:08:12 I think that was something good, and we should praise God for that.

00:08:15 There's a lot of good stuff about that.

00:08:17 I think the really bad stuff that I ended up embracing as a disciple of Tim Keller was I ended up nuancing everything.

00:08:25 um i think c.s lewis i believe it's c.s lewis where he said something where you know if you

00:08:31 if you start seeing through everything at some point you see nothing at all and and in many ways

00:08:38 i kind of became that as a christian and i think when when you when you live that out where you

00:08:44 start nuancing everything um you you start losing spine right you start losing witness you start

00:08:53 losing the very power of why the holy spirit indwells inside of the believers it's boldness

00:09:01 so so i think i i became a i almost i wasn't i wasn't i would say i wasn't a person who

00:09:09 mastered apologetics i ended up becoming a person over time who apologized a lot

00:09:15 does that make sense yeah so there's a lot of practicing sodom sodomites that we were friends

00:09:20 with um and we love right but i found myself in terms of the most effective witnessing that i

00:09:28 could do was number one practicing hospitality but whenever we're talking about the gospel it's

00:09:32 always always something about me trying to um point a finger with contempt at those self-righteous

00:09:41 christians right and little did i realize that those self-righteous christians were actually

00:09:47 christians who were being faithful to the text right they actually were being faithful to the

00:09:52 lord and they were willing to take nasty stuff from even people like myself um right and and

00:09:59 they were willing to be faithful and so i i think for me over time i became that winsome intellectual

00:10:05 guy who spoke poetically but then when you double clicked on does this guy have any substance

00:10:12 does he have any rock is there anything that he's standing on i would say people would not really

00:10:18 know so i would say in short that's a little bit of how tim keller has impacted me positively but

00:10:24 also a lot of negative too right and you chris were correct me if i'm wrong but you were a part

00:10:29 um a core member of an axe 29 church in manhattan because you lived there yep and that church the

00:10:37 pastor there was intimately involved he was a part of what how would you describe it yeah he's

00:10:42 part of a cohort, had personal discipleship with Tim Keller. And yeah, I would say Tim Keller was

00:10:48 very much like the mayor of New York City when it came to church planting, right? You kind of get

00:10:52 the blessings of being a part of that ministry, being a part of some sort of, you know, leadership

00:10:58 training, pastoral training. And yeah, so was definitely involved. And yeah, Tim Keller was

00:11:05 always just a subway ride away. So my friends, roommates were all part of it. So yeah, definitely

00:11:12 had a lot of involvement with Tim. So you were part of the 829 church, but your pastor in many

00:11:16 ways was discipled with other pastors in a cohort with Tim Keller, but you had friends who were part

00:11:21 of Tim Keller's church. You would attend it sometimes. And it's funny because you were

00:11:25 part of an Acts 29 church and you know, I was an Acts 29 pastor and a lot of people don't understand

00:11:30 like, um, like I remember going to Acts 29 conferences and, uh, they would literally call

00:11:35 like it wasn't, they would say it out loud. They would say, um, uh, here's, you know, every single

00:11:40 lecture, you know, um, plenary speaker, you know, would, would give their, their speech and, uh,

00:11:46 and the quotations would be, you know, 50% of the quotations would all be Keller quotes and they

00:11:51 would, and they would call him Yoda. So even, so even though like Keller wasn't ever in Acts 29,

00:11:57 people underestimate, uh, the extent of his influence by Acts 29. I would say Acts 29 has

00:12:05 been impacted more by keller than it has by channel yeah i would say like how many times

00:12:10 and you probably even preach this message where it's like everything needs to end with like a

00:12:15 gospel right the gospel uh hook yeah you're not you're not allowed you're not allowed you're too

00:12:21 broken you're too sinful you don't even realize it and how many times have we not been allowed

00:12:27 by maybe this is a counseling session between us Joel but but no I'm I can talk about all that

00:12:36 stuff but yeah I'm being very serious like how many times do we just feel immobilized as a body

00:12:42 like we're not allowed to have dominion we're not allowed to conquer those are actually

00:12:48 sensitive words that you should be careful Chris using even though they're very biblical words

00:12:53 right like right because it's the the keller gospel twist is what we would sometimes call

00:12:59 the keller gospel twist is that uh essentially what it is is that the whole sermon leading up

00:13:04 to that gospel twist is a use of the law of god but exclusively only ever in the first use of the

00:13:10 law the first use of the law is that it functions as a mirror it reveals to us the holiness of god

00:13:16 and by way of consequence our sinfulness and all the ways that we fall short and that we will never

00:13:21 ever be able to measure up to God's standard of holiness, which is true, right? All of sin and

00:13:26 fallen short of the glory of God, no man will be saved by works as done unto the law. All that's

00:13:31 true. But the reformed tradition is not just one use of the law. The third use of the law is that

00:13:37 for the Christian, the law, it doesn't just reveal our need for a savior, but having by grace through

00:13:43 faith alone in Christ received a savior, the law in its third use is now a lamp unto our feet,

00:13:49 a light unto our path. It's a guide. It's a compass. It shows us where to go in the process

00:13:55 of sanctification, being formed more into the image of Christ, but also growing in godly dominion.

00:14:02 And guys, you don't like the word dominion. Okay. Then in place, you should like it because it's a

00:14:06 biblical word, but just in place the word stewardship, stewarding God's world, that is

00:14:11 dominion. So all that being said, Keller was good with using the law in its first use. That is a

00:14:16 legitimate use of the law of God. People, you know, Spurgeon said, a man cannot appreciate

00:14:21 the beauty of Christ unless he first come to see the need for Christ. And the law reveals to us

00:14:26 our need for Christ. But the law having received Christ reveals to us where to go, how to grow in

00:14:33 holiness, but how to grow in holiness for the purpose of glorifying God by exercising Christian

00:14:39 stewardship and dominion in the tangible physical world and not just in the 17th dimension. And

00:14:46 that's where keller we'll get there david we'll go to david but we'll get we'll get there so no

00:14:53 chris joel awesome insight um i'm probably not going to be quite as eloquent or uh long-winded

00:15:04 as either of you guys that's fine nobody's as long until we get to art it's a great compliment

00:15:09 in which case i can just i can just go on forever great um yeah i um my experience with keller was

00:15:17 very positive for a very long time um and i and i say that even looking back that i i still see it as

00:15:25 as positive during that that era of my life as chris said um you know some similar story

00:15:33 heavily impacted on my understanding of justification, need for a savior, the beauty

00:15:39 of the gospel, my interaction. I didn't read a whole lot of Keller books, so maybe that's why

00:15:46 it's still also so positive to me, my history. I remember something about a forgetfulness

00:15:58 book is a tiny little a tiny little book um blessed forgetfulness the humility thing don't

00:16:06 think less of yourself but think of yourself less yeah yes um he spoke at a church in nashville

00:16:12 when i was uh either newly married or a college student so somewhere around 23 24 25

00:16:19 um and he just like chris said he had just a great way of delivering making um uh very apparent

00:16:29 biblical truths to my modern ears so um talking to mothers in the audience about how

00:16:38 um if they if they don't like doing the dishes you know or changing your motivation to to a

00:16:48 christ-like motivation um and and again looking back i can see how there was a little bit of

00:16:55 jiu-jitsu going on in order to always make everything kind of like the third way yes

00:17:04 there's like there's this way which is this the bad ditch and there's this way which is also a

00:17:09 bad ditch but this is the right way um and it's and it's like walking a tightrope you eventually

00:17:16 you eventually look silly because you're just trying to balance and you can't possibly say

00:17:24 one thing to offend these people or what another thing to offend these people um and 0.97

00:17:30 in application in my own life i mean being an artist in a very broken world in a broken world

00:17:40 in a broken country, in a broken field, the arts, being able to proclaim the gospel in a way that is

00:17:51 in your face or winsome or anything is nearly impossible. And I found myself just being silenced

00:17:59 whenever the topic would come up. There were times when I would be more bold, but

00:18:07 But it certainly wasn't because I had a great Tim Keller quote in the back of my mind to pull out to really convince my pagan friends in New York that they should start going to Redeemer. 0.62

00:18:23 It was more boots on the ground, very basic stuff about how sad they clearly were and how fulfilling my life in Christ is.

00:18:37 um so yeah i that that's really good and i like that you brought up the third way ism because

00:18:43 that's just a classic you know so you got the classic you know tim color gospel twist uh you

00:18:47 know first use of the law exclusively never the third and then you know and then at the end hey

00:18:52 but thank god for jesus so it's you know you're lawless you've broken the law you'll never be

00:18:57 able to keep the law don't even bother trying but jesus kept the law in your place praise god let's

00:19:01 go home um so that's a classic you know but the third way thing is a classic too right you know

00:19:05 so there's Republicans and there's Democrats and then there's Jesus. And what's implied in that,

00:19:11 the problem with that is because the Republican Party and the Republican platform is certainly

00:19:17 not synonymous with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Or for that matter, not that it even should be,

00:19:22 but what it should be in line with as a ministry of justice with the civil master, it should be

00:19:26 in line not with the gospel, but with the law of God. And it's not in line with that either.

00:19:30 So the Republican party is not synonymous with biblical law and justice, but what you

00:19:36 do, here's what you do is this subtle crafty jujitsu, like you said, David, is that it's

00:19:42 not even what you're saying out loud, but by way of implication, what you're implying

00:19:46 by your silence, and I think an intentional and careful crafty silence is you're saying,

00:19:52 well republicanism isn't uh christian and uh and democrats aren't christian um and and then what

00:20:00 you're implying is that they're both they're both wrong but that they're both equally wrong

00:20:05 which is not true right when you have one party that recently had 49 out of 50 representatives

00:20:11 vote to codify row into law in all 50 states for abortion the murder of the unborn child to be

00:20:18 legal all the way through nine months of pregnancy without uh with for any reason at any point in any

00:20:26 state and and you have one party that has 49 out of 50 people voting for that to be law and then

00:20:32 another party that's voting against it um these things are not equal right they're just they're

00:20:37 just not and so that third way ism is is really i think just um it's it's really it's a euphemism

00:20:43 for the biblical word, which is compromise, because what you have is, you know, another

00:20:50 classic Keller thing was contextualize the gospel, contextualizing.

00:20:54 And he would point to Paul, you know, in like in Athens, you know, or Mars Hill, you know,

00:20:59 I see you are a very religious people, you know, you have all these idols built to all

00:21:03 these gods, but I noticed one over here built to the unknown God.

00:21:06 I've come to make him known, to reveal, you know, who this God is.

00:21:09 And Keller would, you know, really emphasize that text, which is a biblical text, and there's

00:21:14 lots of truth to be preached from it, but he would emphasize it over and against other

00:21:18 texts, overemphasize it.

00:21:20 And this whole contextualizing of the gospel, what I realized, and it took me a long time

00:21:24 to realize this, but what I finally came to see was when Tim Keller contextualizes the

00:21:30 gospel, what he means is he means being very acutely aware of the culture that you're

00:21:37 preaching the gospel in, and then taking the gospel, namely taking Christ, and instead

00:21:43 of all of Christ for those people in their lives, you take the portions of Christ, now

00:21:50 being an expert in this particular culture, you take the particular portions of Christ

00:21:55 that you think will be most palatable to this particular people.

00:21:59 And so it's actually some of Christ, part of Christ, a portion of Christ against the

00:22:05 whole Christ, all of Christ for these particular people. And I can't remember who it was, but

00:22:09 someone at some point correcting Keller on this, it was a podcast I was listening to a few years

00:22:15 back, but it was so helpful. He said, yeah, Paul contextualized the gospel, but contextualization

00:22:20 of the gospel in the mind of Paul and in the New Testament apostolic writings, what that always

00:22:26 meant was finding, being aware of the culture that you're in, their customs, their culture,

00:22:31 those kinds of things um for the sake of making the gospel more clear not less so to contextualize

00:22:38 the gospel means to clarify the gospel not to make it more ambiguous right it's to clarify

00:22:44 the offense of the gospel right exactly it's to make it it's it's to make it what it is which is

00:22:51 a sword and not what it isn't which is syncretism yeah i think that's a good point because for me

00:22:57 what I was going to say was, um, it was really weird for me.

00:23:01 It was almost like the power of the gospel had to submit to secularism.

00:23:08 You know what I'm saying? That's right.

00:23:10 It's almost like the gospel was not powerful enough to chop off the head of an 0.96

00:23:16 impotent God of secularism, which is so impotent.

00:23:21 And yet for some reason we needed to be shrewd and intellectual,

00:23:27 and and find the compatible pieces of secularism and mix it yeah and you said david would yeah go

00:23:34 ahead no go ahead joel well i was i was just saying finding those compat instead of instead

00:23:39 of actually right like i think phil johnson said it like this like i want to engage culture

00:23:43 he said but i um i want to engage culture the way david engaged goliath yeah he killed him

00:23:50 right so it's like we want to engage secularism um but we want to engage secularism um with the

00:23:56 mentality that it's a fight to the death that's right um and and the reason why the left has been

00:24:01 winning is because they play for keeps they know it's a fight to the death right exactly so when

00:24:06 you just think you're sparring you're wrestling or you're just sitting down and having a charitable

00:24:10 conversation and seeing how we can learn from each other you know and establishing this

00:24:14 synchronization between secularism and finding well it can't all be bad find the compatible

00:24:19 pieces that might fit with christianity and this principled pluralism right a lot of this comes

00:24:23 back to classical liberalism. It comes back to, uh, misinterpretations and, and, and some of the,

00:24:28 the negative things with John Locke and all, all these kinds of things. Um, when that's your

00:24:32 mentality, um, that's a lose, that's a recipe for losing. That's a loser mentality. Uh, the left 0.95

00:24:37 keeps winning because, uh, not because they had all the institutions, they have them now. Um, but,

00:24:42 but, but they got them. They were at a massive deficit 40 years ago. And yet now they're winning

00:24:48 how, um, because they were scrappy, right? Like when, when there's two guys fighting and one of

00:24:52 him's a little scrawny dude he knows he doesn't have the physical advantage they were playing so

00:24:57 he's biting scratching punching go david go for playing to win yes and playing to win and and guys

00:25:05 like we could name a whole laundry list of sort of wannabe conservatives um evangelicals who just

00:25:15 want a seat at the table right i think of these men as um they see where the culture is going

00:25:23 and they don't have the boldness to proclaim the actual truth to the enemy and as a result they

00:25:31 want to be they want to have a seat at the table for now and then when things get really bad they

00:25:37 want to be the last against the wall exactly yeah and i think and it's all for the sake of love

00:25:43 right and and i think that's the i think i'm curious to hear your thoughts joel like as a

00:25:49 pastor but since when can we not still be so burdened by love for our enemies why why can't

00:25:57 we still be bold and actually believe that the gospel can destroy the enemy but that it destroys

00:26:06 the enemy and we welcome that enemy into the family of god right like why why does it have

00:26:12 i think that's the biggest critique that i think is just a straw man um david loves the lost you

00:26:20 love the lost i love the lost but we're not going to compromise before the word of god and we're

00:26:26 not going to compromise the glory of god what's that compromise that makes that makes it ineffective

00:26:33 if we if we are not bold and proclaiming the truth then they're not going to be caught up

00:26:40 in the stories we have to tell

00:26:41 because they think that their story

00:26:43 is better than ours.

00:26:44 Their story goes along

00:26:46 with the world that they see around them

00:26:49 way better than ours does

00:26:50 in most cases.

00:26:52 We have to call out

00:26:53 these giants that are in the land

00:26:56 for what they are.

00:26:57 And I think that's the most loving thing

00:26:59 that we can do.

00:27:00 And if a world could see

00:27:02 men with spine

00:27:05 who believe more than ever

00:27:07 that god is god is their lord jesus christ is lord yep but also but also but also see that

00:27:17 we're willing to lay down our lives right because we love too like there's something glorious the

00:27:24 lion and the lamb but i think for me what was kind of the tipping point was twitter

00:27:29 seeing how much um i still believe you know i'm i'm earnestly hoping you know keller i love keller

00:27:39 i love him as as as someone who's who's learned so much but on twitter when you're convincing

00:27:45 um an entire generation that it's okay to vote it's it's just so nuanced and so complex that

00:27:54 it's okay to vote for people who love to murder babies that to me is insane there's something

00:28:01 insane about that right and and i think you know lord have mercy on us and thank god for me you

00:28:09 know praise god i'm still repenting i was just like that so i completely understand it um but

00:28:16 but the the tipping point for me was they would they would point the fingers at the sheep

00:28:22 keller would be more focused on blasting his members the lord's the lord's sheep the lord's

00:28:31 this is this is the blood was spilt for for his sheep and and here for their self-righteousness

00:28:37 or for their as if he knows there are all their hearts that's right and you know we can do our

00:28:42 own name calling joel i know you've got an awesome video on who to who we have to be aware of but

00:28:48 i mean russell moore right there's all these people where you just look at what they're doing

00:28:52 on twitter is they're they care more about bashing they punch right they tickle left they coddle the

00:28:58 left cow kowtow left and what that means that's political you know cultural terms what it means

00:29:03 in christian terms is that they beat up christians and a particular kind of christian they beat up 0.58

00:29:08 blue collar salt of the earth average ordinary christians the christian who believes that god

00:29:14 actually made the world in six literal days yep the christian who believes that marriage is between 0.95

00:29:19 a man and a woman and that gay marriage is a mirage and that it shouldn't be legal that's right 0.58

00:29:24 the christian who who um the christian who's uh such a um primitive neanderthal that he actually 0.97

00:29:32 is ignorant enough to think uh that christian nationalism might be biblical because christ is 1.00

00:29:38 king you know that the dumb christian the killer laughs and mocks that person russell moore is 1.00

00:29:46 laughing and mocking that person. Beth Moore is laughing at and mocking that person. And when I 1.00

00:29:54 realized that, Matt Chandler has laughed and mocked that person. And when I realized that, that's when

00:29:58 I left Acts 29. I was like, I'm not going to give you my blood, my sweat, my tears, our money,

00:30:04 our support. No, because that person that you're mocking is the member in my church.

00:30:11 Amen. That's right.

00:30:12 And it's me.

00:30:13 That's right.

00:30:13 And it's my wife and Lord willing, if he would be so gracious, it's the kids that I'm raising. 0.99

00:30:18 I hope that my kids are your Neanderthal primitive Christians that believe that God created the 0.97

00:30:24 world in six literal days and that Christ is King. 1.00

00:30:26 And that Jesus is Lord is the most political statement ever made in all the universe.

00:30:32 That's, you know, so no, I'm not going to help build and support your clout and your

00:30:38 ministry, um, that, that, that exists for mocking my future children. Um, I, no, I'm not going to

00:30:45 participate in that. And so all that being said, my point to segue here for us, um, my point is

00:30:51 that like, I had that experience. You guys have that experience. Um, but then the next experience

00:30:57 in the leg of my theological development as the Lord was in his sovereignty, sanctifying me,

00:31:01 um, producing repentance for things that was wrong. Well, part of the problem is that I,

00:31:06 when I started seeing that, right, we left in 2018. I took my church out of Acts 29,

00:31:12 the church I was pastoring in California, because that was right after Eric Mason had wrote Woke

00:31:18 Church, you know, and so Acts 29 was getting, you know, Chandler had just made his, you know,

00:31:24 his notorious statement of, you know, I'll take a African-American six on a scale of one to 10

00:31:32 instead of an Anglo seven, you know, and those, those kinds of things were happening. And that 0.96

00:31:37 was Keller influence. And so when that happened, I moved out. So this is 2018. And, and when I took

00:31:42 our church out of Acts 29, Acts 29 was very Kuyperian. Again, not everything about Abraham

00:31:49 Kuyper is great. In fact, Abraham Kuyper has a couple of quotes about art that all three of us

00:31:55 would strongly disagree with. But when we're talking about, when we say Kuyperianism, what

00:32:00 what the three of us mean and what Keller means and what and we would agree with what he means

00:32:04 about Kuyper and what, you know, the quintessential way that Kuyperianism, the term is used in

00:32:11 theological realms today is simply meaning all of Christ for all of life. That's what we mean by

00:32:17 Kuyperianism. We don't mean prescribing to, just like Calvinism doesn't necessarily mean that you

00:32:22 prescribe with everything in John Calvin's institutes, but it means primarily his take on

00:32:27 soteriology, right? That the five points of Calvinism, as it refers to salvation, the sovereignty

00:32:32 of God in election and salvation, that's Calvinism. Well, Kuyperianism, what we mean is all of Christ

00:32:38 for all of life. The recognition that yes, the church is unique. Christ is uniquely head of the

00:32:43 church in the sense that the church is the only, it's the only institution for which Christ died.

00:32:50 The only entity for which Christ died. It's the only entity that is Christ eternal bride.

00:32:55 but Christ is head. So he is uniquely head of the church, but he is not exclusively or merely head

00:33:04 of the church, uniquely head of the church, but he is head of everything. Caesar submits to God.

00:33:09 He's God's deacon. So Christ is head of Caesar. Christ is head of markets. He's head of arts.

00:33:14 He's head of culture. He's head of science. He's every square inch. That's the Kuyper sentiment

00:33:19 when we say Kuyperianism. And my point is in 2018, pulling out of Acts 29, seeing the negative

00:33:25 impact of Keller with compromise, becoming more and more culturally and theologically

00:33:30 and politically progressive, those kinds of things, you guys, me, we started pulling away

00:33:35 from this and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but for myself, one of the things

00:33:40 that I did as I threw out my Keller books, I also threw out Kuyper and I looking and

00:33:48 it took me a couple of years.

00:33:49 It wasn't until probably about 2020 when all the stuff started going down with the

00:33:55 branch covidians and you know and the summer of love you know where the country was on fire

00:33:59 you know like those kind of things is what really started to wake me up where i realized okay wait

00:34:04 a sec wait a second because i had thrown out keller and i threw out kuyper with him and and

00:34:09 my point is um because i thought the all of christ for all of life every square inch mentality

00:34:14 that's what would cause you to cozy up to culture want a seat at the table like you said david and

00:34:20 start to make concessions and compromises. But then I realized as I looked under the lid a little

00:34:27 bit, it took a closer look, I realized, no, no, no. It's not that Keller is Kuyperian. It's that

00:34:33 Keller is Marxist. And I went back and started listening to Acts 29, you know, conference

00:34:37 sessions that I had sat in, you know, that I decided, man, I'm going to pull the church out.

00:34:41 And I realized, you know, like there were talks about how we should be more socialist in our

00:34:46 economic, you know, framework as a country, because that's caring for the poor. And I realized,

00:34:51 wait a second, that's not Kuiper. That's Christ has a stake in economics. The problem is they're

00:34:57 not applying Christ to economics. They're applying Marx to economics. And so then I went, you know,

00:35:03 from Keller to like Kuiper sucks. Let's go radical to kingdom. I started looking at Van 0.98

00:35:08 Druden and I was right there, you know, next to Escondido, Westminster. And I started looking at

00:35:12 like this, um, no, it's just the church. Let's just do the holy huddle. It's it, let's, let's

00:35:16 build the bunker and just practice the ordinary means of grace and Christ will, you know, he's

00:35:21 going to return in 50, you know, 15, 20 minutes anyways. So let's just do this and, um, and just

00:35:26 worry about that. Um, and, and this whole, you know, we lose down here as, as brother MacArthur

00:35:31 would say, we lose down here. And, and that's, you know, and so I embraced that. And then I 0.99

00:35:35 started to realize, you know, it was guys like Doug Wilson, God bless him forever. You know,

00:35:39 it was that I started realizing, Oh, there's actually a, the problem was not Kuiper. The

00:35:44 problem was, um, using a Kuiperian lens, but marks, um, and progressive things as the source

00:35:51 instead of Kuiperian lens with Christ as a source. Um, it, it, so it's not the all of life piece

00:35:56 applying to all of life. That's the problem. It's the, are you applying all of Christ piece?

00:36:02 Is it the biblical Christ, um, a biblical view of government, biblical view of economics,

00:36:07 biblical view. And that saved my ministry. It revitalized everything. It brought me into

00:36:14 post-millennialism, theonomy, all these different things. And it brought you guys, it caused me

00:36:22 practically in terms of practical implications to move across the country. And it did similar

00:36:26 things. This testimony that I'm sharing, it did similar things with you guys and it caused you to

00:36:31 move. It caused you to start a company. And that's what I want to talk about now, because what you

00:36:37 guys are doing is it's, it's so it's exactly the same as what I'm doing and entirely different at

00:36:42 the same time. I'm doing like podcasting and right response ministries and preaching, but,

00:36:47 but what we're doing, it's entirely different. You're in the business realm, but it's 100%

00:36:51 the same. And the sense of that Kuyperian, all of Christ for all of life. When I got that,

00:36:57 I moved from California to Texas. Chris, you, you moved from, from New York to Tennessee,

00:37:03 New York. No, I wanted more of an adventure. New York to Seattle to Tennessee.

00:37:09 Oh, okay. You moved to all the blue collar, primitive Neanderthal Christians who have the 1.00

00:37:17 gall to believe the Bible, right? Instead of being the sophisticated, snobbish kind of, 1.00

00:37:22 you were like, I'm not, no, man, I've been arrogant. What am I, right? I was raised in

00:37:28 Texas and I thought like, no, I'm going to be sophisticated. I'm going to, you know,

00:37:32 And I've had to repent and be like, no, these people, some of them, sure, there's religious, you know, religiosity and self-righteousness.

00:37:41 Some of that, everybody's a sinner.

00:37:43 But a lot of it was like, no, these are the salt of the earth.

00:37:46 These are some really sweet people that I took for granted because I thought I was too cool for school.

00:37:52 David, how is this coming back to, Kuyper's good, Marx is bad.

00:37:58 Let's apply all of Jesus to all of life.

00:38:00 How has that affected you and your personal life?

00:38:03 And then let's talk about you guys combined with your business endeavor.

00:38:08 Probably less of a drastic journey for me.

00:38:12 Although my moment of sort of upheaval, I guess it did happen.

00:38:19 It just wasn't necessarily along the same lines.

00:38:22 It wasn't post-COVID.

00:38:23 It was pre-COVID. And it wasn't necessarily because of Kuiper or not Kuiper. In 2016, my wife and I moved our family from downtown Nashville, a mile from the Titans football stadium, to a 50 acre farm an hour south.

00:38:44 And it was the time right when she was quitting work with our church, which is a PCA church, mostly because she was having a baby.

00:38:59 Our third, it was time for her to quit work and her oldest was five and to be home with the kids.

00:39:05 And I don't know. I mean, I don't have, like I said, I don't have quite as drastic of a journey with Keller and Kuyper. Kuyper and Calvin. Kuyper's interpretation of Calvin has kind of always been on my radar.

00:39:26 um and i don't think i don't think it's any um fluke that we're all sort of similar ages

00:39:34 i think that like coming into like some i have a long way to go but coming into some bit of

00:39:41 maturity having a my oldest is nearly a teenager now and you know just the responsibilities my

00:39:49 wife and I will be married for, um, 16 years and a couple of weeks, you know, life, life has just

00:39:57 gotten, I've just, I'm not a boy anymore. Um, I feel like a boy in many days. Um, but I don't know,

00:40:06 I, is that helpful at all? Yeah. It sounds like from, from my interpretation of what you just

00:40:14 said is that, um, Chris and I, uh, drank the Kool-Aid maybe a little bit more than you did.

00:40:19 in terms of the, you know, Joel and I have more commiserating. We went through more

00:40:24 strengths. That's what it was. He's going to New York. I'm going to California. We're going to be

00:40:28 sophisticated and influential and sit at the table and, and be nuanced and winsome and

00:40:34 contextualize the gospel, AKA make the gospel less clear. And David was awesome. That's what

00:40:41 No, I did have that.

00:40:44 And it's every good work, man.

00:40:45 Exactly.

00:40:47 No, I did have that.

00:40:48 I showed my work in Manhattan in 2017.

00:40:51 Right, right.

00:40:52 Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

00:40:53 I went there multiple times.

00:40:55 I had shows there.

00:40:57 I went and visited my art buddies there.

00:41:00 And, you know, so yeah, I thought, okay, I've got the keys to the kingdom.

00:41:05 I'm showing in the epicenter of the art world, or at least in America.

00:41:09 um but i can i can work my way and and like sort of avoid this um this the world that i was in

00:41:19 was so pagan and the way that i was going about it was just sort of pushing aside

00:41:24 my personal convictions and um this work that we're doing now so i've always done portraits

00:41:32 um even during that time because those gallery sales didn't pay the bills like i needed them

00:41:38 I've always done portraits, which is beautiful because I get to depict the image of God in a human face. But this work that we're doing together is something that I did not see coming. Chris might have, but we got to chatting one afternoon at his house, and I told him about an idea to paint people doing regular things, and I want to kind of redeem the art world.

00:42:03 and chris was like well how do you feel about making a marketplace and like really democratizing

00:42:08 this thing like if you want to make it accessible if you want to paint regular people why don't we

00:42:12 actually be able to sell the paintings to regular people and 30 minutes later we were like already

00:42:18 sort of drawing up there were no napkins but the proverbial the proverbial pin to napkin moment

00:42:26 had happened right um in terms of the business model and what we want so with that let's do so

00:42:33 this is different for my listeners if you know you'll probably recognize if you've been following

00:42:37 right response for a while i don't typically do this but i think that this will be really special

00:42:41 and unique so what i actually want to do at this point is i want to actually start showing some of

00:42:46 the paintings that david's done from their website every good work as we continue this conversation

00:42:51 so we're going to pull this up and you're going to be able to see some of these paintings you're

00:42:54 and be able to see the quality of the craftsmanship with the paintings, but also just the website

00:42:59 itself, this Christian excellence in everything.

00:43:02 And as we do this, real quick, what I'd like to do is I'd like to have Chris and David

00:43:06 now actually reintroduce themselves.

00:43:09 So we kind of started as just normal guys in the church world, followers of Jesus, how

00:43:13 we've been shaped by Keller negatively, positively, how we relearn from the scripture along the

00:43:19 way and set some things right.

00:43:21 Personal testimony was kind of the first half of this episode, but now I want you to hear

00:43:26 the professional side of things.

00:43:28 I want you to actually hear Chris and David introduced in regards to this company that

00:43:34 they've started that's significant, that it's impacted Right Response Ministries personally,

00:43:39 even with our new studio and our set.

00:43:41 David's the guy who painted the painting that's right behind me on the wall.

00:43:44 So we're going to do all of that, new introductions, as you're being able to look at the website,

00:43:50 uh, looking at the paintings. Um, and I want you to hear because, because I want you to hear their

00:43:56 testimony. I want you to hear what they're doing, but I want you to be inspired. Chris and David

00:44:00 are inspiring. Um, I want you to hear the inspiration because, um, they've got a good

00:44:05 work that they're doing, but the Lord has prepared in advance a good work for you to do. And it's

00:44:11 not just the good works of putting sin to death. Yes. And amen. And sanctification, but good works

00:44:16 in business, good works in arts, good works in the home, good works in every realm of life. So

00:44:22 Chris and David, would you guys just take a moment and, and, and read for our listeners, your bios?

00:44:27 Okay. So yeah, I'm, uh, as Joel has said, I'm David McLeod. I'm an artist. I grew up drawing

00:44:33 and painting. It wasn't until I studied with a portrait painter for a kind of an old world

00:44:40 classical style apprenticeship for four years while I was also a college student that I got

00:44:46 the passion and realized this is something that I wanted to do so I've just been an artist ever

00:44:52 since mostly painting portraits but doing other things as well and like I said I'm Chris and

00:45:00 with David we founded every good work which we're excited to reveal this painting here shortly

00:45:05 um i think that the the biggest difference is on post mill uh covenantal um really focused on

00:45:15 building the kingdom from the bottom up outside of the walls of the church outside of the walls

00:45:19 of the family of course those are priorities but i think i think we can talk about sort of how

00:45:24 every good workly synergizes with with that change um and then yeah like i said before

00:45:30 worked on wall street for a few years that's where i cut my teeth in the media and entertainment

00:45:35 in space back in 2007 which was an interesting time for all of us and then from there decided

00:45:42 to roll up my sleeves and figure out how to build businesses from scratch and so joined a small

00:45:48 startup we raised you know a pretty significant round of venture capital we scaled the business

00:45:56 and we sold it for you know a little over a couple hundred million dollars to a publicly

00:46:00 traded competitor. From there, joined a public technology company and was very much introduced to

00:46:08 how public company woke culture works. I'm a master at that now. And then the Lord did his

00:46:18 work around that same period of time. And it's been three years of repenting, three years of

00:46:23 reforming, three years of God's goodness over David's life, over my life and bringing us

00:46:28 together i believe the spirit's doing a wonderful work in a specific area in tennessee um which you

00:46:34 know that's a whole different topic uh but ultimately you know we're here to build we're

00:46:39 here to make a difference we believe that jesus christ is lord and he's lord over art yes he's

00:46:46 lord over business he's lord over art amen so we just revamped our whole studio which is kind of

00:46:54 cool because i met you guys really around the same time that i was thinking about you know making

00:47:00 these changes revamping the studio um which a lot of that here's here's one of the things that i

00:47:06 think christians get wrong and one of the hesitancies for other christians because so

00:47:11 many christians do get it wrong um there's a hesitancy to pursue christian excellence in

00:47:17 every realm of life because people will say it's vain they'll say it's frivolous they'll say what

00:47:22 why not you know it should just be the gospel it's just the content or it's just the you know

00:47:26 it's just the message it's just the truth it's just just give me the doctrine and and give it

00:47:31 to me from a webcam on your computer um don't spend a dime don't don't do anything for it to

00:47:38 be you know aesthetically excellent and i don't do anything and and i just reject that because a lot

00:47:45 of the message that i'm trying to convey to my listeners is not that everyone should um should

00:47:51 should quit their job and become Christian podcasters and not that everyone should,

00:47:56 should quit their job and, and go to seminary and become pastors.

00:48:01 That one of the big theological messages that I'm trying to convey with right response

00:48:07 ministries, theology applied, right?

00:48:09 The show that we're doing right now, that's our flagship show.

00:48:12 Theology applied to what, right?

00:48:14 Applied to every realm of life.

00:48:16 So a lot of what I'm trying to accomplish is I'm not trying to get a bunch of people

00:48:20 to decide to be pastors or to decide to be christian podcasters but to be christians in

00:48:26 every realm of life and because that's that that all of life all of christ for all of life

00:48:32 kyperian post-millennial theonomic restoring chrysidom that's the big banner would be chrysidom

00:48:37 chrysidom 2.0 and because that's really the mission of right response ministries and that's

00:48:42 the message i'm conveying i realized that it was almost hypocritical and in at least at minimum

00:48:47 maybe not hypocritical, maybe not malice of intent in my heart, but at least at minimum

00:48:53 inconsistent and contradictory and confusing to the listener and in the ministry and the message

00:49:00 that I was trying to convey to say Christian excellence in all of life and to do it with a

00:49:05 blank white wall behind me and a webcam. And so we were like, man, we want to do a studio and I

00:49:13 want it to look like professor xavier meets the apostle paul slash you know whatever i want it to

00:49:19 be like ligonier except i'm not as as smart as sprawl and that you know and everybody knows that

00:49:24 that's fair um but but you know but presuppositional so better apologetic but i want it to be like you

00:49:30 know that's but that's the style now with that leading to you guys i thought um i can't have

00:49:37 a piece of wood hanging that says there's no place like home or you know you know what i mean

00:49:43 like i can't go to um i can't go to uh to hobby lobby right uh no offense to deck this this studio

00:49:52 out to achieve what i'm trying to convey to everyone else and and so then it's like well

00:49:59 i don't i don't even know anything about art and i don't i don't know a painter yeah and then god's

00:50:06 happy you know favorable providence you know god sent you guys and you found me and i was like yeah

00:50:12 i'll partner with you guys because this is exactly what i'm trying and so all that being said like

00:50:18 as we're pursuing excellence in all of life and applying all of christ to all of life

00:50:22 um part of that has to do with with art and um and part of that has to do with good art

00:50:30 talk about that guys yeah so totally agree um if christians aren't going to be making good things

00:50:40 and buying good things then there aren't going to be people making good things that christians like

00:50:48 like if we want to if we want for there to be better things that glorify and honor god

00:50:56 then we need to be spending our money on good things yeah period we need to be hiring crafts

00:51:03 people and looking up i mean it's fine to look up where your clothes came from and where the

00:51:08 furniture came from and trying to orient all of our purchases around something that is god honoring

00:51:13 absolutely and if we just hold our pennies and save them um the world is just going to care

00:51:21 keep keep going it's just going to keep building it's just going to keep uh building up its own

00:51:27 idols christians especially now i think we've sort of come out of the haze of the last 50 years

00:51:35 really since post post enlightenment this has kind of been coming and that if we don't have

00:51:40 an alternative a better story to tell we're just going to keep finding bad stories all over the

00:51:47 place it's not okay just to you know turn off your netflix or cancel disney plus what are you

00:51:56 going to read what are you going to watch what are you going to consume this is where what are

00:52:00 you going to create what are you going to create and the creation is it's everywhere because we

00:52:04 are made in god's image we are sub creators we're going to be making things no matter what and we're

00:52:10 going to be consuming things no matter what which we we have a small slice of that sub creator

00:52:16 world and our company every good work intends to make art that is accessible to everyday people

00:52:24 not just paintings and drawings but also in other fields as well as the business continues to grow

00:52:31 yeah chris would you yeah yeah i was just gonna say i mean that's what very well put um i think

00:52:37 for us like we forget god is the best storyteller right david already pointed out stories i think

00:52:43 that was really captivating to us like god is god is an artist god is god creates god god is a

00:52:50 storyteller and going back to kuiper and kind of recovering the wells of abraham or you know

00:52:56 calvinism i think for us we've been awakened to this idea of the sovereignty of god like the

00:53:02 sovereignty of god and the very holy spirit that resurrected a dead body like we live in a story

00:53:07 in which there's the tomb has is empty like how does that not completely undo every every

00:53:15 conventional line of thinking every sense you know how does that not undo or or cause you to

00:53:21 repent from laziness or cause you to somehow think life is boring um god god has done something

00:53:29 magical you could almost say and so we believe that our task as christians is to tell the best

00:53:37 stories and praise God that, um, you know, I'm out of the, out of sort of the world of

00:53:44 the best story that only I can tell is the upper level story, right?

00:53:49 As Joe put Joe boot on your, on your show, um, praise God that I don't have to be a community

00:53:56 group leader in order for me to tell a better story, praise God.

00:54:00 I don't have to be a part of the elder pastoral training program and the next discipleship

00:54:07 the next 90-day discipleship plan from the pastor.

00:54:10 Praise God.

00:54:11 I don't have to do that to tell the best story.

00:54:13 Praise God that really we can build businesses

00:54:15 and we can tell better stories through better art.

00:54:19 And so every good work, go ahead, Joel.

00:54:22 Were you going to say something?

00:54:23 No, I was just agreeing.

00:54:24 But if you give me a chance to talk, I'll never turn you down.

00:54:28 But as I was listening to both of you guys,

00:54:32 David, I love what you were saying.

00:54:34 You can't just cancel your Netflix.

00:54:35 it's not enough to just cancel your Disney Plus

00:54:37 it's not enough to just say I'm not going to give my pennies

00:54:40 to people who hate me

00:54:41 and who hate Christ

00:54:42 you're going to

00:54:44 well this is a rush duty sentiment

00:54:46 it's not whether but which

00:54:48 you're going to spend your money

00:54:50 you're going to

00:54:51 even if you save it in your coffer 0.99

00:54:53 until the day you die

00:54:54 even then you're going to get the death tax

00:54:57 depending on what state you live in

00:54:59 then your pennies

00:55:01 they don't go to Disney

00:55:02 they go to the government

00:55:05 that's right so my my point is what what i hear you saying is it's not enough to boycott and i

00:55:09 kept thinking this is the way to phrase it as you were talking um christians can't only boycott

00:55:14 christians have to build it's not just boycott but boycott and build um and and really if you

00:55:21 i've talked about this in the past but it's kind of like you know five b's um and and christians

00:55:26 and conservatives sadly have only done four of them and always left left out the fifth one which

00:55:31 is built um the first b is is vitally important and christians are experts i mean just phenomenally

00:55:38 successful at um and that first b is getting beat um so christians are great at that get beat right

00:55:43 following christ's example right he's the suffering servant like a lamb led to the slaughter right so

00:55:48 first it's vitally important you can't miss the first step you must get beat john mccarthur has

00:55:53 great notes on that we don't win down here um so get beat all right uh number two is uh once you

00:55:59 get beat, bemoan, right? And that's the Christian version of the B word. There's another B word

00:56:04 that you could put in there, but get beat, bemoan, right? So whine, complain, complain about getting

00:56:12 beat. And then the third one is get beat, bemoan, and then boycott. And that's what you were talking

00:56:18 about, David. And that is actually something we should do. So these first two, we actually

00:56:21 shouldn't do. We shouldn't get beat and we shouldn't bemoan, but we should boycott wickedness.

00:56:26 Uh, we, we should not give our dollars, our time, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our

00:56:31 children, uh, to, to, uh, wickedness.

00:56:35 Um, so boycott. 1.00

00:56:36 Then the fourth one is, you know, and this is again, what Christians have done wrong, 1.00

00:56:40 get beat, bemoan, boycott, and then beg. 0.96

00:56:44 Um, which typically means a nonprofit and not, there's nothing inherently wrong with

00:56:48 this right response ministries.

00:56:50 It's a religious organization.

00:56:52 It's raises awareness, teaches theology.

00:56:55 It is a nonprofit.

00:56:56 So there's, I'm not saying that this is inherently wrong, but what I'm saying is, is that I think

00:57:00 that if anybody has any ambition at all, and they're a Christian, 90% of Christians with

00:57:06 ambition go the nonprofit route.

00:57:08 Um, and, and, and so that fourth B is beg.

00:57:11 So get beat, bemoan, uh, boycott, and then beg for donations, um, instead of build and,

00:57:19 and and and know that people even if they hate you will buy um because because you can hate

00:57:27 chick-fil-a because you're a sodomite um but by golly it's a good chicken sandwich that's right 0.98

00:57:33 and you and your gay partner are going to be eating chick-fil-a not on sunday right not on 1.00

00:57:39 sunday sabbatarian you know but you are gonna you're gonna eat chick-fil-a whether you like 0.93

00:57:43 it or not um and consider we do the same thing right so i'm gonna cancel netflix but i've got

00:57:48 amazon you know like i mean so anyways that's all i was thinking the whole time you guys were

00:57:52 talking is not enough to boycott david nailed it we've got to build we've got to build and it is

00:57:58 okay it's not only okay i would say it is imperative that christians build for profit

00:58:05 enterprises in the realm of business in the realm of art that is not a sinful endeavor that is a

00:58:12 righteous good endeavor what makes it sinful is when you produce a product that's lousy

00:58:17 And it rips people off.

00:58:19 Making good things to be sold for ethical prices, it pleases the heart of God.

00:58:26 And I think, how can we not, like, dead men become new creations, and all of a sudden, by the sovereign spirit of God, we're created to actually worship God again.

00:58:38 And we worship God with our total self, our total humanity.

00:58:43 And a third of our life is committed towards work.

00:58:47 how how could we not as an act of adoration act of worship to this glorious father son and holy

00:58:55 spirit where christ is lord overall how can we not see um coding as an act of worship right

00:59:04 imagine just imagine if the church would just awaken or you know we kind of we use this term

00:59:10 where the church it's almost like every good work exists to break spells the church is under a spell

00:59:18 and it's it's living a half-life because of radical two kingdom and forfeiting better stories

00:59:26 that god has actually given our generation an opportunity to make make our mark for the king

00:59:33 yeah right and and so in many ways we don't jokingly say we mean it seriously that a painting

00:59:40 might actually if it could just wake up one person to a better story the story of what it

00:59:46 means to be truly christian all the way then we've served our purpose yeah and and so yeah with fine

00:59:54 art we want to reclaim art but we want to make it available for everyday people again yeah because

01:00:00 art is such a strategic channel um it's such a strategic place because where art goes david can

01:00:08 attest to it obviously there goes the culture they're just 10 years ahead right when you're

01:00:14 in new york city and williamsburg right you just see what's going on there you'll see that

01:00:20 normalize a decade later yep and so for us if we were radical to kingdom about it we would

01:00:28 abdicate our role right as an artist or as a business person and and unfortunately we would

01:00:36 be so undereducated i would be and i and i'm still learning because of help from the likes of david

01:00:42 um we would almost be discipled into actually thinking that um a banana with duct tape tied to

01:00:50 it is actually worth me paying 99 bucks to watch to look at and right like like not only is it

01:00:58 discipling us um but it's discipling us to be anti-christ yeah right we're actually choosing

01:01:05 to accept a story that's based off of evil wickedness and godliness and we're choosing to

01:01:12 like you said you'll syncretize with the false god yeah right because art of course is driven

01:01:18 by worldview and so if christian artists like david has been consistently doing for his his

01:01:23 career if it's an act of worship to god we can't help but want wanted to make it excellent

01:01:31 but at the same time it's going to show something about who christ is and we know that the perfection

01:01:39 of beauty is in christ and so if we can just awaken a renaissance almost a create a renaissance

01:01:45 an emerging class of artists who are willing to be unashamedly christian through and through in

01:01:51 their art and be inspired by christ in what they do and create works of beauty works of art then

01:01:58 our hope is that we become a platform

01:02:00 in which

01:02:02 we can create a parallel path

01:02:04 and we can create an avenue in which better

01:02:07 stories are being told.

01:02:08 Every Good Work, in a nutshell, we're an e-commerce

01:02:10 marketplace for buyers and sellers

01:02:13 of fine art originals

01:02:15 and exclusive

01:02:16 limited prints on canvas.

01:02:19 Can I speak to that?

01:02:20 Please, go ahead.

01:02:22 The print technology is phenomenal.

01:02:25 We have access to a

01:02:27 scanner that takes works of art that I think they can do um five and a half feet by eight feet or

01:02:34 something like that uh hopefully we can do a painting that size and then um it scans it with

01:02:41 the same machine that is used by the Smithsonian to scan any image you see online um in print

01:02:49 material that the Smithsonian uses the same exact scanner it's a seven figure scanner

01:02:55 so we have access to that machine and then it's printed using a printing technology called

01:03:04 a gicle which is it's not it's different from a print on canvas that you just order

01:03:10 online a family photo on canvas the archival quality is the biggest difference and the

01:03:17 quality of the printing so it's using pigment based inks instead of dye based inks these prints

01:03:24 that look identical to the original so we have the original behind us here and joel has a print

01:03:32 behind right there right behind very hard to tell apart until you get really close

01:03:37 and they're also guaranteed for 100 years so we wanted to make something that is significantly

01:03:44 less of a price from the original but also is still an heirloom something that we could pass on

01:03:52 you could pass on to your grandkids, your great grandkids, potentially five, six, seven,

01:03:59 eight generations from now could own these same works of art.

01:04:03 And what is the name of this one, David?

01:04:06 What did you name this painting?

01:04:07 Well, I'm terrible at naming my paintings.

01:04:11 I occasionally, I occasionally strike gold, but for this one, I believe it was Chris who

01:04:17 actually gave the name, The Conquering King.

01:04:20 The Conquering King.

01:04:22 Yeah.

01:04:22 so it's it's an allegorical painting and go ahead and then i'll keep going no no go ahead

01:04:29 it's an allegorical painting go yeah it's an allegorical painting there's two figures um

01:04:34 they're the heroes it's fun because while i was painting this my two and a half year old son

01:04:40 would come into the studio and would continually point and say good guys

01:04:46 good guys um so joel wanted a painting that depicted light and dark he wanted a painting

01:04:56 that depicted war victory struggle we collaborated with joel that's kind of one of the cool parts of

01:05:04 this actually that see that's what i was going to say yeah because i want you to talk about the

01:05:08 painting you're the artist and you're on the show i want but what was so cool to me about this model

01:05:15 is like okay first like because of having access to a seven figure and david just said that just

01:05:20 for anybody who you know just to spell that out what that means is this is a piece of machinery

01:05:24 that is in the millions that's so this is not just like um a cheap knockoff print this is something

01:05:30 when david says it's really hard to tell the difference he means that um i i personally could

01:05:34 be a foot and a half away from both of them and probably wouldn't be able to see the difference

01:05:38 someone trained uh very highly trained in the realm of painting and arts and texture would have

01:05:44 to be very close for them to even be able to tell the difference. So one, what's really cool about

01:05:48 the model is being able to take high quality works of art that should cost thousands of dollars,

01:05:54 10 grand, you know, maybe more, maybe less, give or take, you know, given the size, the time,

01:05:59 you know, all those things, but be able to put them in the hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds

01:06:03 of dollars to where your average blue collar family could say, okay, we may not be able to

01:06:10 have a painting on every wall of our house but we could have one or two we you know instead of

01:06:15 instead of the hobby lobby you know instead of like a bunny you know that that's uh chewing on

01:06:19 a piece of grass you know and made out of twisted iron you know whatever like that you get at the

01:06:23 um the the big what's the name of that store big that sounds like the big it's uh perfect big

01:06:29 something i can't remember the name of the store but you know whatever instead of those kinds of

01:06:32 things like we're gonna have so it's it's um incredibly high quality art at a reasonable price

01:06:39 But then what was so cool is that that's one piece of the puzzle.

01:06:42 The other piece of the puzzle with your model that I love is that Chris and David are actually

01:06:47 seeking out like-minded pastors and theologians.

01:06:52 And so they're actually, instead of just, we're going to do this.

01:06:55 And this is actually humble too.

01:06:57 And this is one of the, you know, this kind of proof that David is a Christian artist.

01:07:02 Because I don't imagine most secular pagan artists would be willing to do this.

01:07:07 um, but David is saying, okay, I'm the artist. He knows, he knows that he's the artist and I'm not,

01:07:11 I don't have this kind of skill, but he's saying, I'm going to collaborate with Joel

01:07:15 and I'm going to hear his ideas. And I, and I, and he's not going to know what he's talking about

01:07:19 at certain points along, along the journey. But what was cool was that me and David got to work

01:07:23 together and it wasn't, it wasn't a lot, but a few text messages or a 15 minute phone call here or

01:07:29 there about once a week for about a month throughout the whole painting process to where,

01:07:35 um, I can't paint, but, but David can. And I was able to say, this is my vision of what I see

01:07:42 theologically as, as, um, as the, as the cultural moment that the church is living in right now.

01:07:50 And I want to capture it, not just in a podcast and not just in a sermon that has to happen,

01:07:55 but I want to capture it on a canvas where you can not just hear it, but you could see it

01:08:00 and be moved and and david was able to help me do that and not just do it for me personally

01:08:06 but he was able to collaborate with me so you've got the i'm providing the theological vision right

01:08:12 and david's providing the artistic vision um and then and then this model that chris has brought

01:08:19 in with the business piece means that um not just uh a guy who you know has a podcast that thousands

01:08:24 of people listen to and you know it's a little bit not a lot but a little bit of clout a little

01:08:28 bit of credibility and a little bit of a budget you know he can afford a painting on his wall and

01:08:32 his fancy you know professor xavier studio no but like chris comes in with the business piece

01:08:37 and you get to take joel's theology david's artistic gift and chris's business mind and now

01:08:45 you can have the conquering king in your house and when people come over you can say yeah this

01:08:51 this means something and this will last not not for 10 months but lord willing 100 years and i'm

01:08:56 going to give it to my kids they're going to give it to their kids um that's that's beautiful and

01:09:02 without that then again it's just the the it's just the the independent fundamentalism bunker

01:09:08 that we're just you know we're just on the sinking ship and let's just you know do another

01:09:13 do another podcast on lauren daigle and why she's a heretic you know and well um but but the world

01:09:19 gets to keep everything that you can see that's right they they get they get that i think that

01:09:23 Christians have gotten very comfortable with books and podcasts and filling our mind with things

01:09:29 that we don't know what to do with our walls. We don't know what to do with our clothes. We don't 0.86

01:09:35 know what to do with our movies. We don't know. We don't know what to do with a lot of our activity.

01:09:40 What should our Sundays look like? What should our shopping look like? What should our food look

01:09:44 like? We're exploring all of these things. And it really is amazing to, you said it so well,

01:09:52 Joel, that the three of us could kind of use our different gifts and collaborate on something

01:09:56 that provides, hopefully other people will like this and will respond positively to it.

01:10:03 And then we can keep, we can do it again. You know, one of the things that keeps sticking

01:10:09 out to me is we're three guys sitting around talking about art and theology. Now it's pretty

01:10:15 common for guys to sit around talking about theology nowadays, at least in the circles

01:10:19 that i'm familiar with but forgot for us to talk about how that applies to art is very it's unique

01:10:25 and and early on in our conversations one of the things that chris harped on before we even

01:10:32 chatted with you first joel was i want to make art for i want to make it masculine again

01:10:37 i want i want art that men want to buy um because a lot of the decisions in art and in the home

01:10:46 are made by women that it makes sense that it would but we want to we want to tap into that

01:10:52 part of a man that um is looking for the battle that really is there and not to be told just to

01:11:01 go sit back down on this on the bleachers but actually to engage the culture wherever he is

01:11:07 yeah we forget that men we're called to fight but as men were called to look to know how to feast

01:11:14 right because that because our lord does that perfectly and so we we really want that's what's

01:11:20 amazing about being word driven i think right having you joel is sort of the foundation by which

01:11:26 david could kind of have a biblical grid and a biblical imagination you know that's something

01:11:32 that we would love i think that's how reformation works right artists and farmers they just go to

01:11:38 the script and all of a sudden it changes the way in which they do their work and so having that was

01:11:45 a really really powerful thing for me to see like seeing it come alive yeah um but yeah ultimately

01:11:51 for us like we we believe that men should know what beauty tastes like men should know what

01:11:58 beauty looks like right that's that's what it means to be a masculine man and so and so for us

01:12:05 this conquering king really really really was a special thing for us um but then ultimately

01:12:11 you know what we care about like what David was pointing out is because we're post-mill

01:12:17 and because we're covenantal fine art makes so much sense to us yeah you know what I'm saying

01:12:24 like like the world is inundating us with inglorious unrighteous images and

01:12:34 they're saying look at this on the computer screen look at this on the

01:12:38 television screen look at this in the next art gallery and have to have to

01:12:43 deal with the fact that this piece of art is supposed to be worth 20 million

01:12:48 dollars right right even even and then the average person just going that

01:12:53 doesn't make any sense that's right so what happens is our appetite for understanding for art

01:13:01 goes very to kingdom we just go into this little hole where everything art is bad because everything

01:13:09 that art in the world right now kind of is bad they've taken over this amazing institution that

01:13:15 was largely created by christians who seek to honor god and if the best thing that we've got

01:13:21 and there's nothing to say i mean from what i know the the ceo of hobby lobby is a brother in

01:13:26 the lord and seems to be a man who who's on fire for for him and praise god for that but to your

01:13:32 point joel like if the best that christians have is a bible verse that's on a quilt in a very

01:13:40 sentimentally way then something is wrong the church is under under a spell could have been

01:13:47 made by in a sweatshop for i mean hopefully not right we have no idea how these things were made

01:13:53 but and and so how can you be post mill if the best you've got is blessed in cursive

01:14:02 how can you how can you deal with how can you deal with all the screens all the unrighteous images

01:14:08 that are on your children right that they see on social media that they see on whatever and

01:14:15 that's considered glorious that's considered beautiful that's considered righteous

01:14:19 well this is for us a faith experiment you know it's a mustard seed it's a startup but ultimately

01:14:28 what we want to do is we want to inundate every wall for christ yeah right our mission is that

01:14:34 the real mission behind this is we want to reclaim every wall because just like you said christ

01:14:40 everywhere everything is mine and so your wall is his so is your television screen whatever your

01:14:47 magazine cover shows it's either going to be christ or it's not going to be it's either going

01:14:51 to be beautiful or it's going to be ugly and what a what a white space opportunity we've got i think

01:14:57 david and i were shocked yeah we're like how how where where are where's the competition you know

01:15:03 i'm kind of nervous joel that you have a decent followership you know but but i think you know

01:15:09 We really believe that this is our post-mill response.

01:15:14 This is our faith in action, and we pray that God will bless it.

01:15:17 Yeah, and going back to the start of the episode, I think you made a good point to begin with. 0.54

01:15:27 Tim Keller, with his Every Good Endeavor, the Kuyperian sentiment, the Kuyperian mindset is there and is good.

01:15:37 that was good yeah yeah he was on to something you know we didn't actually name the company

01:15:44 every good work after that but coincidentally it's the same idea right and and not only art

01:15:51 but like you go through the scriptures and you look at the word work and where god uses work

01:15:56 and workmanship we are we are his artwork that's right our whole lives sort of become a work of

01:16:02 art Schaefer talks about that um in one of his books so yeah I I love Chris what you said it's

01:16:10 it's per it's a perfect time I think for this because people are starting to look other places

01:16:16 and right um do you guys remember this is a little bit random but do you remember David

01:16:22 and and Chris the little three minute video and this was years ago but I remember seeing it

01:16:28 And I thought, whoa, and this is when I was still in Acts 29, but it was from Keller and it was about how they were going to take over New York and saying right now, statistically, it's like 3% Christian, but we believe if we could get to 10%, it would be a tipping point.

01:16:43 But the whole thing was this Kuyperian, all of Christ for all of life thing. 0.52

01:16:47 He said art would become 10%, that much salt concentrated in one area.

01:16:52 It would affect everything.

01:16:54 It wouldn't just mean more churches.

01:16:56 It wouldn't just mean more churches.

01:16:57 um art would become more hopeful i remember that line that that phrase right there art would become

01:17:03 more hopeful this would become like um business would become more ethical um medicine would become

01:17:09 more compassionate um you know all these and and i remember watching more just yeah amen exactly so

01:17:16 i remember watching that and and and sadly you know it's so ironic i'm remembering that video

01:17:23 and now with the latest and greatest you know 2.0 update from keller is the keller institute

01:17:30 and i don't know if you guys have noticed but it's it's tragic because it really is kind of um

01:17:34 it's it's a it's basically a concession that like um that didn't work we we we failed because now

01:17:41 the keller institute is an acknowledgement um that we're in a negative world now we're in a

01:17:46 hostile world. Christendom is on decline. We're not going to win, at least not anytime soon.

01:17:54 And so we just need to learn how to live in a world that's owned by the enemy, 0.98

01:18:00 where we're the minority. And we've been preached to give away. 0.58

01:18:06 Exactly. Exactly. And we need to learn how to live in this hostile world where we're the minority,

01:18:12 where we lost, uh, basically how to live in Babylon when, when, when Israel gets taken 0.68

01:18:17 captive.

01:18:18 Um, and, and what that means is with the Keller Institute is we're going to focus on apologetics

01:18:24 because we want to make it, you know, we don't, we don't want to just surrender.

01:18:26 We want to go down with a fight, but we are the ones who are conquered.

01:18:31 They are the conquerors.

01:18:32 They are stronger.

01:18:33 And so we're going to be doing careful apologetics.

01:18:37 And so we're at the Keller Institute is going to train you how to be apologists in a negative

01:18:41 world which we both all three of us know what that means is how to be even more you thought

01:18:45 we were winsome before you've seen nothing yet we're going to be even more winsome even more

01:18:50 contextualizing even more ambiguous even more stephen colbert you know um as an example of

01:18:57 great christian witness um and and it was just so sad because it was like the keller institute

01:19:02 is is kind of like the the uh the answer to that little three minute video and and that

01:19:08 you know endeavor from you know 10 years ago whenever it was and that not working out and i

01:19:13 and i see that and i just again i you know you guys are more in the presbyterian world and i have

01:19:18 at this point probably more presbyterian friends than baptists but i am still 1689 and i have some

01:19:23 baptist you know relationships and and networking and my baptist friends especially don't get

01:19:30 kuiper they don't get abraham kuiper and and they look at like keller tried to do this thing they

01:19:35 remember that video that i'm referencing um and they look at that and they say and now look at

01:19:40 keller and the keller institute the keller institute is the fruit of that and whereas i

01:19:44 want to say no the keller institute um is is the um it's the response to that failing um it's not

01:19:51 the fruit of that it's the failure of that not working and the reason why that didn't work

01:19:56 in my assessment a couple reasons why but one is because uh the all of life piece was not the

01:20:02 problem but it was the lack of all of christ it was compromising christ and number two um it was

01:20:07 also missing um the art of war um of of just warfare just war theory but also successful

01:20:18 war strategy um the decisive point finding a place that's both significant but also

01:20:25 winnable um keller went to a place that was significant um but he is right in the sense that

01:20:31 Manhattan's not going

01:20:34 we're post-mill Manhattan is going to bow to 0.96

01:20:36 Christ but probably

01:20:38 not in the next couple

01:20:40 years. And what did you say Joel

01:20:42 like and this

01:20:44 does line in with what you're saying

01:20:46 and I think every good work

01:20:47 I think what Keller was up to 0.89

01:20:50 yeah being Kuyperian being Marxist

01:20:52 I mean fail that's number 1.00

01:20:54 one but also it seemed like

01:20:56 it was all about the

01:20:58 world. It was always

01:21:00 about for the world as opposed to for the glory of god yeah you know the good of all about the

01:21:08 good of people more than it's all about evangelizing the lost it was always about being winsome for

01:21:15 anything anyone but right but i would say it's almost like um christ was not lord jesus was not

01:21:25 lord to your point about just war because jesus is lord we say just war right because it's all

01:21:32 about the glory of god we're able to say these controversial things that might you know raise a

01:21:38 hair and brother don't be too where's your winsomeness certificate you know that you earned

01:21:44 it through the keller institute i i really do believe that if it wasn't about worship

01:21:49 yeah it was about it was about you know i'm saying it was it wasn't about that

01:21:54 christianity instead of objective christianity yeah it was it wasn't like um westminster

01:21:57 catechism question number one what's the whole point exactly the chief end exactly like everything

01:22:02 god does he does for his glory and for the good of those who love him are called to according to

01:22:06 his purpose yes but it's both of those and and i think yeah you can you can emphasize one or the

01:22:11 other you can say everything god does is for his glory and the world's going to go to hell in a

01:22:15 handbasket you know and anybody who's post mill is just shining brass on the sinking ship right

01:22:20 So that's like glory of God, but not good of, of his image bearing people, or you can

01:22:24 go image bearing people.

01:22:25 They're good, but not glory of God. 1.00

01:22:27 And it's got it.

01:22:28 The two have to stay together.

01:22:29 Yeah.

01:22:30 Yeah.

01:22:30 And also taking a longer look at it.

01:22:35 We as Americans, especially just want to look at every decade is just every generation

01:22:41 that Jesus is coming.

01:22:42 Now we're also every, we're special.

01:22:44 We're the special ones.

01:22:45 and to not look at the future of Christendom to be potentially thousands of years before Jesus

01:22:53 returns. I mean, it could be that our grandkids are running every good work and it's finally

01:23:01 making an impact. I don't know. It's got to do something in order to maintain a functioning

01:23:08 business model between now and then. But I don't want to be arrogant to say that God's going to do

01:23:14 something amazing but i also don't want to be falsely humble and pretend like god doesn't want

01:23:20 to bless work that is honoring to his name yeah i think i think for us like even with the whole

01:23:25 worship to the glory of god like our thesis is if if by faith we do this to the glory of god

01:23:33 and then then one of the byproducts is it becomes a blessing to the world whether or not the world

01:23:40 wants it or not. And I think what's missing is when you're focused so much on the world,

01:23:46 and that's what it's all about. And it's about sharing the gospel to the lost so that you

01:23:51 actually compromise your entire Lord's Day service, right? Where a pastor, a megachurch

01:23:59 pastor, like an Andy Stanley, can tell you, look you in the eye, look the sheep in the eyes and say,

01:24:05 church isn't for you church isn't for believers right church if you're if you're thinking about

01:24:12 that then you have the wrong idea of why you're here yeah right there's just this obsession with

01:24:18 wanting to win the loss that's not the end goal the goal is the glory of god to delight in him

01:24:24 and as we worship him yeah everything falls into place yeah we're gonna what good is a man

01:24:31 to gain the world that's right we're gonna love yeah so this is this is an

01:24:36 act of love just as much as it is an active act of worship and and our hope

01:24:40 is that this what this displays actually will be a blessing you know that that

01:24:47 there will be pagans who say I don't I don't like Christ I don't I don't

01:24:52 understand the Bible verse but but that story really resonates with me and I and

01:24:59 i don't know what to say other than it's gonna fit on my wall and then or christians put it on

01:25:06 their wall and maybe mom or dad explain it to their kids a couple times and it just goes in

01:25:12 one ear out the other they come home in 20 years and they realize in a moment of sanity that this

01:25:20 this painting or one like it has been has been catechizing them day after day after day after

01:25:28 day into the very things that the first i remember joel very distinctly you wanted

01:25:36 first corinthians 15 25 for he shall reign until he makes an enemy his all of his enemies are under

01:25:45 his feet right and romans 12 2 that we would be able to test we would discern what is before us

01:25:56 You wanted to see a clear light and dark that a man can see what is good, that a man can see what is bad, and that we would also understand that Jesus is reigning and ruling.

01:26:11 He is in dominion right now, and he is going to put all of his enemies under his feet, and he's called us to be a part of that story.

01:26:19 there's going to be kids that see that and have no idea what that story means because they're

01:26:24 children but they're good their imaginations potentially are stirred up by the imagery of the

01:26:29 of the demons in the background and their imaginations are stirred up by my like my two

01:26:33 and a half year old who just wants to turn the corner and see the good guy standing there who

01:26:38 just looks so powerful so serene but yet so ready to fight that image those images that feeling

01:26:47 that does something especially on a daily basis for the course of years that we're hoping

01:26:53 that we're going to bring we're going to bring up people and and call other christians into

01:26:58 similar works where we're just surrounded by good things we can't look around and not see

01:27:06 christians doing good things it's happening all over the podcast world it's happening all over

01:27:11 the publishing world we want to see it happen in the art world yeah amen could i real quick

01:27:18 no go ahead go ahead well i was going to take a minute to describe the elements in the painting

01:27:24 but i want to yeah that's what that's exactly what i was going to do but go ahead you don't

01:27:28 know i want i want to hear you i want to hear your take on it because i can give the theological

01:27:32 side yeah go for it and then maybe yeah so like like david said you know uh looking at first

01:27:38 corinthians 15 for he must reign until he has made all his enemies a footstool for his feet

01:27:45 and and so that's actually in the painting there's um there's like a monument like a

01:27:50 pillow like an ebenezer being raised and you see that in kind of the bottom right hand corner

01:27:55 and etched in you know stone you find engraved those words and so the the verse is actually

01:28:01 spelled out with a reference first Corinthians 15, 20, it's 25. Is that right? And so you've

01:28:08 got that in the bottom corner. But then the two heroes, the figures, what I wanted David to do

01:28:13 is like, I wanted to see a Christ figure reigning. So not Christ himself. So it's not, it's not a

01:28:19 second commandment violation. It's not, you know, this isn't Jesus, but a Christ figure just like

01:28:22 Aslan is a Christ figure in Narnia. I wanted a Christ figure, but then I also wanted the church

01:28:29 and the church, you know, um, on earth militant and, and, and, and, you know, dressed for

01:28:34 battle.

01:28:34 Um, and, and the biggest thing that I told David and David came up with a lot of that

01:28:39 stuff.

01:28:39 Um, but the biggest thing I said is I want to see Christ reigning this great post-millennial

01:28:43 hope, um, a Cochrane King, like, um, but I want, um, but I want to also see darkness.

01:28:49 I want to see the enemy.

01:28:50 And that's where the cross reference of, of first Corinthians 15 kind of works in with,

01:28:54 uh, Romans chapter 12, where, um, good, you know, some of the best stories, at least in my

01:29:00 assessment, in my opinion, things like the Lord of the Rings, um, you, you, you know who the bad

01:29:06 guys are. Um, because they're literally right. There's this triple braided cord in, in, in

01:29:13 theological terms and in just reality, the world that God made. And that's truth, goodness, and

01:29:19 beauty these three things are inseparable um as as as creatures right everything god alone is the

01:29:27 creator as any creature begins to deny um its purpose the purpose for which god intended it

01:29:34 that's glory right a glorious tree is a is a very treely tree a tree that is truly truthful you know

01:29:42 it's, it's, um, it's, it's the treiest tree you could ever find. It's, it's being a tree and all

01:29:48 the greatness of a tree and all the right ways in the right direction and the, and the purpose for

01:29:52 which God intends it. And so too with man, um, you know, the man is the glory of God, right?

01:29:58 That man is the glory of Christ, a woman, the glory of man and the woman's hair is the glory

01:30:03 of woman. Um, this, this cascading flow of reflecting glory, but part of reflecting glory

01:30:09 is being in step with the purpose of the creature for which the creator made it.

01:30:15 And so when man is doing what God, being who God created man to be, there's a glory there.

01:30:23 And so my point is that the truth is there.

01:30:26 You're doing what you've truly been made to do.

01:30:28 But along with that truth comes automatically goodness and beauty.

01:30:35 And so one of the things that I love about Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings is that you see not just this is a good man, but that good man also happens to be a beautiful man and not a beautiful in an effeminate man, effeminate way.

01:30:52 But there are elves and there are orcs.

01:30:56 You don't have to ask, you know, 20 questions to figure out who the bad guys are.

01:31:01 And that's not to say that the elves are perfect.

01:31:04 there are some nefarious elf characters um but but what happens is that the orcs and especially

01:31:10 a certain species a certain type of orc is actually even used to be an elf but is now a

01:31:17 hybrid because of dark magic there was a compromise in the truth and the immediate result um was a

01:31:24 disfiguring of beauty that that as truth went so so beauty went with it and you can see that in art

01:31:32 right the unveiling of the martin luther king statue it's it's a it's a pair of hands holding 0.97

01:31:37 a penis that's what it looks like it's disgusting it is objectively ugly because as culture denies 0.98

01:31:45 truth they can't make beauty truth and beauty are intertwined you can only make that which is 0.99

01:31:52 objectively beautiful um for for a very short period if you look at human history as a whole

01:31:59 for a very short period after a culture has turned its back on the truth. So all that being said,

01:32:04 I wanted the Christ figure and then this lesser good guy, still a good guy, but the shorter guy

01:32:11 that you see who's dressed for battle next to the Christ, I wanted them to be good, true, and also

01:32:16 beautiful in the light. You see, the light is focused on them. It's beautiful. There's this

01:32:22 cascading, you know, above it, you know, with the red garment. But then I wanted bad guys and I

01:32:27 wanted bad guys to look like bad guys i want them to look like orcs like let's let's make bad guys

01:32:32 bad again you know what i mean that's that's my that's that's my mantra let's make bad guys bad

01:32:36 again i want that one of them to be ugly um and and and to depicted uh physically visibly as as

01:32:44 such um to to look as ugly as as as they are evil and so so what you see is you've got you know

01:32:52 you've got this dragon and, and the theology behind it, as that pulls into the post mill thing

01:32:57 is that, um, basically the Christ figure is holding a bow and it's, and it's, you can tell

01:33:02 that he's already fired off his shot. Um, and so it's, it's, it's being held down and what,

01:33:07 what he shot and killed is this giant dragon over and it's dark. So it's hard to see, but Nathan

01:33:13 will pull it up in post. And so you, if you're watching right now, you should be able to see a

01:33:17 close-up of of the painting but you see this dragon um and and and the dragon is more than

01:33:24 just a singular atomistic bad guy um it's it's like it's like the mothership carrying all these

01:33:31 other lesser bad guys and and its belly is like like a hole of of a ship and out of its belly is

01:33:38 coming um other monsters and you can see them depicted that david drew in there so you got the

01:33:43 the chief monster and that's the monster that the christ figure has already taken out but now the

01:33:48 the dragon this mothership bad guy is crashing to earth and and its hole its its belly is being

01:33:57 opened up and all these lesser monsters are coming out and polluting the earth so the christ figure

01:34:01 said i've already given the death blow to satan is what's being communicated um you know i bound

01:34:07 the strong man. But now you church militant, the church on earth. So, so that lesser good guy is

01:34:15 not supposed to be an individual person like the Christ figure, but it's supposed to represent the

01:34:20 church corporately, the church as a whole and the church militant on earth. I gave the death blow

01:34:26 to Satan. Now you go finish the job and round up all his minions. And your eschaton is there in 0.99

01:34:33 the background before you always before you a glimpse of the celestial city um and and you can

01:34:39 see in the background the celestial city and that so that's the theology piece and and david can

01:34:45 you talk about like some of the textures and the colors and things like that yeah um i think joel

01:34:52 just complete yeah that was it joel thank you no i mean the only the only things that i would

01:34:59 really add are the painting is it depicts a very the the high contrast of what is what is apparent

01:35:09 to believers and that is victory is sure yes but also we live in turmoil a lot of the time we don't

01:35:22 know our own personal lives can be confusing the world at large can be confusing family life church

01:35:29 life, business, finances? Why is this all not working out if Christ is victorious and Christ

01:35:38 is ruling? And so the painting actually from a visual standpoint depicts that contrast. You have

01:35:46 the stable um sort of calming very uh simple graphic effect of the vertical central figure

01:36:02 that everything is around the whole painting is divided in thirds vertically so there's a bottom

01:36:09 third that goes from the bottom to the golden hero's feet and then to the top of his helm

01:36:16 and then to the top of the painting and then he stands in the exact center of the painting

01:36:22 from his feet the ground goes out in a in a like a pyramid shape that just gives structure to that

01:36:33 dark object and then around him so he's also unaffected by the swirl the swirling

01:36:43 storms of evil the swirling storms of evil have have swept across the foreground and have pulled

01:36:51 the cape of the silver hero the church militant along with it he is even affected by it you can

01:37:00 see how it sweeps across his figure in some places and then there's this so then you see also like

01:37:09 the light side of the painting with the celestial city in the background and the foreground of

01:37:15 pasture land is very beautiful and there's a there's a river and a stream that comes through

01:37:20 and then on the other side you have chaos demons the leviathan the beasts the the fire

01:37:29 and the smoke plumes that come up from the crashing of the beast to the ground

01:37:34 um and then the but the final say the final word is god's word the banner of the banner that that

01:37:46 matches the same color of the cloak of the golden hero um is god's is god's final word and gives

01:37:54 and gives the painting uh it gives it sort of a surreal feeling but also gives it kind of the

01:38:02 final say this is this is the way things are going to be the final eschaton is that god is going to

01:38:11 bring his people to himself through jesus is jesus is going to present us to him um and the last enemy

01:38:20 to be defeated is death awesome yeah so so with that i want to turn to you chris now because

01:38:28 I've got some guys in my church that I'm thinking of that I think probably want to get, you know,

01:38:32 we've actually, we've already had a couple of people email us, you know, because they've seen

01:38:36 the painting and I've talked a little bit about it in some of my other videos as we just unveiled,

01:38:40 you know, our new studio. And so we've had a couple of people reach out and say, you know,

01:38:44 how do I get one? So Chris, talk about that now. So we, you know, there's theological meaning,

01:38:49 there's beauty, there's all the reasons, everything we've talked about thus far,

01:38:52 why we need to recapture art, why, you know, it needs to be, you know, all of Christ for all of

01:38:56 life. Every good work, art's one of those good works. And what this particular piece of art

01:39:00 means, how an artist and a business guy and a pastor collaborated together to make something

01:39:06 that's beautiful, but it's beautiful because it's, what I want to say is it's not beautiful and true.

01:39:10 It's beautiful because it's true. It's beautiful because it's true. It means something. And so

01:39:17 how do people get it, Chris? This is the best part. I got the easy job. So go to

01:39:23 everygoodwork.art that's our domain and you'll see either in the top banner and we'll see if we can

01:39:31 do this in post but in the top banner we have right response ministries we call out the conquering

01:39:36 king and you can click on that and it'll take you to the actual page where you can either get a

01:39:42 recap of some of the technical technical things that david had applied to the painting itself

01:39:50 some of the theological narratives that inspire joel but ultimately you can kind of get a sense

01:39:55 of it i know it's hard to see and i know nathan's going to try his best to get some close-ups

01:40:00 but we also do our part we've also done our part to create some good product photography

01:40:05 where it'll allow you to kind of get a deeper glimpse of it in a multi-dimensional way um

01:40:11 and and ultimately look we're brothers and so we're this is not a a company of 2 000 people

01:40:17 it's david and myself and so we'll be personally handling any any questions or or emails or

01:40:24 anything like that and then prices are very affordable so this is right this is something

01:40:29 that's over ten thousand dollars as an original but we've been able to figure out a way to make

01:40:34 this affordable through high quality prints on canvas and so prices start as low as 240 based on

01:40:40 a certain type of dimension and then it can range all the way as high as you know six hundred dollars

01:40:45 plus to get this real life you know very magnificent looking um print um depending on

01:40:53 obviously the wall that you want to put it on and so ultimately our goal was how do we make this

01:40:58 a really unique special experience for the right response ministries we wanted to honor you

01:41:04 pastor joel and honor um the community that supports you too and so this is made available

01:41:11 really on a limited print i think that's the other thing that we wanted to bring up is that

01:41:15 you know a lot of people don't realize that declays actually do increase in value over time

01:41:21 just because it's a very high quality product but at the same time we wanted to also accentuate

01:41:28 the value of this by making it limited as well and so we have a limited print release but we want to

01:41:34 expose this amazing work of art in collaboration from pastor joel and david and we wanted to give

01:41:40 it to y'all the to the right response community and um it's a one-time discount of 40 off so

01:41:48 that's as that's as as as affordable as we would want to make it to be yeah that's that's super

01:41:54 generous guys thank you um the community kind of rallies around this and we've done everything we

01:42:03 can to hopefully explain to you why this is meaningful um but we also ultimately want to

01:42:10 make sure that you see it just as meaningfully and so yeah go to everygoodwork.art there's a

01:42:16 top banner or you can scroll down and you'll see the conquering king image click on that and then

01:42:21 just like any other simple e-commerce website add to cart we'll take credit cards and all that

01:42:26 normal standard right is that going to be 40 off on whatever whatever dimension whatever size they

01:42:32 pick or just on a specific size so they can get that like the original which is i have the you

01:42:38 know i don't have the original but i have the same size of that 30 you know 30 by 40 inches it's

01:42:43 massive you know like it's about they could get that for for 40 off that's right so something

01:42:49 so if my math is right go ahead go ahead so something that's 499 you can or sorry something

01:42:55 that's 399 you can get it at 240 right and so we're really trying to do everything we can to

01:43:00 make it affordable but also we really want to bless um your community joel because you are the

01:43:06 first there's a short list of pastors and we wanted to also honor you because you you actually

01:43:13 took a risk on us and so this is not something this is not a sustainable business model you're

01:43:19 talking to the business guy here but but it's also something where man we really want to make this

01:43:25 a special thing that we'll remember for a long time yeah and we also know that this painting

01:43:30 hopefully will be present at the upcoming it will conference it will that's the last piece of the

01:43:36 puzzle. Yeah. So we've got five. Well, no, no, no, we'll say it. But like 550 people are registered

01:43:42 and, you know, and I know that I've had so many people emailing me. And so listeners, I, I,

01:43:47 I apologize that we were not able, I've told you, but we were not able to get a larger venue

01:43:50 this year. Now that said, we have decided to host this conference again in 2024 and Lord willing,

01:43:57 we will secure a larger venue that can seat, you know, around a thousand to 1200 people, but

01:44:01 in god's providence we want to be content with what he's provided this year so for 2023 may 5th

01:44:06 6th and 7th the theonomy and post-millennialism conference our venue holds 500 we've got you know

01:44:12 550 that we've let in so we've already gone over our capacity and we've got another like 150 people

01:44:19 on a waiting list so we just we can't take anyone else but if you are one of those 550 people who

01:44:25 was able to get through you were able to register you're going to be there at this conference this

01:44:29 is a painting that you can get right now. And I would not encourage you to wait, get it now for

01:44:34 40% off. But if for whatever reason, just financially, you can't swing it right now.

01:44:39 We're living in Joe Biden's recession. I get it. May 5th, 6th and 7th at the Theonomy and

01:44:44 Postmillennialism Conference. I'm pretty sure that even if we've sold out, we're going to limit it.

01:44:51 But even if we sold out, I think that I might be able to twist David and Chris's arm just enough

01:44:56 to say this is this is the post-millennial conference this is the post-millennial painting

01:45:00 it's a match made in heaven let's bust it out of the vault one more time so yeah you would this

01:45:05 painting will have an appearance at that conference as well the original will be there

01:45:09 and we'll have oh awesome yeah and we'll have prints to view and purchase and we've talked

01:45:17 about maybe um you know if you've if you've placed an order a week or two before the conference maybe

01:45:24 we could deliver it we could bring the print for you um we can figure out some of those details in

01:45:30 the time in the time being but for now think about it as limited print run we know that this 100 or

01:45:38 200 prints is going to be special um it's our first set so i will be hand signing that's right the

01:45:45 front of these i won't be doing that for every i will not be doing that for everything and every

01:45:51 good work that is painted by me but i will be doing it for these so this painting um

01:45:59 the original is not signed yet i had it scanned without being signed so that joel when they

01:46:05 printed yours the signature wasn't done yet i signed it and then i finished it with a clear

01:46:10 coat that's that's uv that protects the ultraviolet light and then i'm also going to

01:46:16 number them on the back. So if you're in the first of this limited print run, you're going to have

01:46:24 those two things. And I'm not sure how often we will be doing that sort of next step. And I know

01:46:31 from looking into it that the way as you clay increases in value is the limited print and being

01:46:39 signed by the artist. So those two things for sure are going to give you something that hopefully

01:46:46 you like just because it's a good painting and that's a good story but also it's going to last

01:46:51 and also it's going to go into the valley um that's great that's awesome yeah cool guys well

01:46:58 that's it i i think that this episode is great i think it'll be helpful i think people will get an

01:47:02 idea of you know all right here's some of the problems with keller but here's the baby that

01:47:06 we don't need to throw out with the bath water all of christ for all of life let's reject marks

01:47:11 Let's keep Kuiper. 1.00

01:47:12 Okay. 0.98

01:47:13 With the Kuiperian mindset, how can we apply all of Christ to every single realm? 0.54

01:47:18 Art's one of them. 0.97

01:47:20 What does that look like?

01:47:21 How do truth and beauty relate to one another?

01:47:23 And how can I actually put my money where my mouth is?

01:47:26 What good endeavor does God have for me?

01:47:28 And what good endeavors and good works can I support like what Chris and David are doing?

01:47:34 So thanks for coming on the show.

01:47:36 Thanks for our listeners tuning in.

01:47:38 And I encourage you guys, if you like art, if you like this painting, it means something.

01:47:44 It means something beautiful and true about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is

01:47:49 also king, reigning and ruling right now.

01:47:53 So if you can afford it, don't break the bank. 0.99

01:47:55 But if you can afford it, don't spend 240 bucks on crap. 0.97

01:48:00 Spend 240 bucks in a Christian way. 0.97

01:48:03 Get a nice piece of art.

01:48:04 So thanks for tuning in.

01:48:05 Can I be frank with you for just a second?

01:48:07 right here at the end. Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry,

01:48:12 and from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you. I cannot thank you enough. However, some of you,

01:48:19 you just can't afford it. In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest. I mean,

01:48:26 we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political elites 0.98

01:48:34 lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we simply

01:48:42 cannot cash. It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are living in

01:48:48 a recession right now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the

01:48:55 grocery store. You cannot support financially this ministry at this time nor should you but you could

01:49:03 still help us tremendously. I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one

01:49:10 minute of your time. Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify,

01:49:17 whatever that might be. This is the way the system works. We want to be innocent as doves,

01:49:22 but shrewd as vipers. We need to be strategic. You leave us a five-star review and our podcast

01:49:30 shows up for more people. And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in practical ways to

01:49:37 every realm of life gets out there. Help us get it out there. Thanks for tuning in.

`witch hunt`	Both words, anywhere in the episode.
`"witch hunt"`	The exact phrase.
`witch OR hunt`	Either word.
`"alpha male" -"high value"`	The first phrase, but not the second.
`(feminist OR feminism) AND (marriage OR divorce)`	Parentheses group alternatives.
`"decline civilization"~5`	Both words within 5 words of each other.

`misogyn*`	Any word starting with "misogyn": misogyny, misogynist, misogynistic…
`feminizm~1`	Words one letter off: catches typos and transcription errors.

`person:"Andrew Tate"`	Episodes where they host, guest, or are mentioned.
`host:"Glenn Beck"`	Episodes they host.
`guest:"Jordan Peterson"`	Episodes they appear on as a guest.
`mentioned:"Andrew Tate" -host:"Andrew Tate"`	Talked about on other people's shows.
`show:"Bannon's War Room"`	Episodes from one show.

`topics:abortion`	Episodes tagged with a topic (see the Topics page).
`summary:"Andrew Tate"`	Words in the episode summary. Summaries are machine-written and can be wrong.

`"great replacement" AND episode_date:[NOW-1YEAR TO NOW]`	From the past 12 months.
`lockdown AND episode_date:[2020-01-01T00:00:00Z TO 2020-12-31T23:59:59Z]`	From one year. Dates need the full time, as shown.
`"high value" AND misogyny_count:[100 TO *]`	Episodes with 100 or more sentences flagged as misogynistic. Also: hate_speech_count, toxicity_count, word_count.

The NXR Podcast - February 28, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Tim Keller’s Problem Isn’t His Embrace Of Abraham Kuyper, It’s His Embrace Of Karl Marx ｜ with David McLeod & Chris Hwang

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript