1
00:00:01,760 --> 00:00:04,760
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that

2
00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:08,000
Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become

3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:11,360
Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

4
00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:15,560
Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking

5
00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:18,000
Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world

6
00:00:18,360 --> 00:00:22,319
Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that

7
00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:25,640
Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to

8
00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:29,560
Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this

9
00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:32,080
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer. I'm joined

10
00:00:32,080 --> 00:00:34,879
Speaker 1: by doctor Asheesh Varma, and today we're going to discuss something.

11
00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:38,120
Speaker 1: It's probably going to go well beyond the event that

12
00:00:38,159 --> 00:00:40,919
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss. But there was a luncheon. It's

13
00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:43,680
Speaker 1: usually referred to as the Easter Luncheon online. It's been

14
00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:47,560
Speaker 1: since April first now that this luncheon took place. There's

15
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:52,599
Speaker 1: been a lot of comments about certain remarks made at

16
00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:56,400
Speaker 1: this meeting, particularly by Paula White Kine, who is Trump's

17
00:00:56,600 --> 00:01:01,600
Speaker 1: sort of faith leader in the White House. As many

18
00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:04,640
Speaker 1: of you listen to the program before, note I've talked

19
00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:07,920
Speaker 1: about Christian nationalism a good bit We've talked a fair

20
00:01:07,959 --> 00:01:13,759
Speaker 1: amount about American civil religion, but when I actually listen

21
00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:16,240
Speaker 1: to some of the prayers and some of those speeches

22
00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:21,640
Speaker 1: at this luncheon event, it just felt like there was

23
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:24,240
Speaker 1: a necessity to address it, and I didn't want to

24
00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:26,960
Speaker 1: address it in the moment as a reaction. I wanted

25
00:01:26,959 --> 00:01:29,480
Speaker 1: to kind of wait a little bit, step back and

26
00:01:29,720 --> 00:01:32,640
Speaker 1: give more of a reason theological response to it. And

27
00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:34,279
Speaker 1: so that's what we're going to try to do today.

28
00:01:35,400 --> 00:01:37,720
Speaker 1: The event's gone, it's probably out of the news cycle

29
00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:42,240
Speaker 1: to a large extent, But I think there's some really

30
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:48,240
Speaker 1: deeper theological implications than just the evangelical clutching of pearls

31
00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:54,200
Speaker 1: that happens when someone says something goofy, and we really

32
00:01:54,200 --> 00:01:55,760
Speaker 1: do need to get to the root of it, because

33
00:01:55,800 --> 00:01:59,920
Speaker 1: if we don't, we're The danger, I think is that

34
00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:02,520
Speaker 1: people clean up their language and they don't represent what

35
00:02:02,520 --> 00:02:05,520
Speaker 1: they're really thinking. They clean it up enough that most

36
00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:07,640
Speaker 1: of us will accept it, and I think that's a

37
00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:10,840
Speaker 1: real problem. So understanding the roots of this problem, the

38
00:02:11,080 --> 00:02:15,120
Speaker 1: deeper dynamics of this problem, and how what I would

39
00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:19,680
Speaker 1: argue is civil religion and maybe some Christian nationalism mixed

40
00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:23,040
Speaker 1: in but how we are bowing down to a sacred

41
00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:26,520
Speaker 1: social order that is not Christian. It's a sacred social

42
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:30,840
Speaker 1: order that is very American, and we need to be

43
00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:33,840
Speaker 1: very careful about that. So I'll leave it there and

44
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:36,720
Speaker 1: welcome Ashish. Thanks for being here, brother.

45
00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:41,639
Speaker 2: Thanks, thanks for having me, Thanks for your intro. I

46
00:02:41,720 --> 00:02:46,079
Speaker 2: think the issue here is that that we have concerns

47
00:02:46,120 --> 00:02:49,840
Speaker 2: for the sake of the church. Yes, right, and so

48
00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:53,520
Speaker 2: what we want to do is address that. Certainly, some

49
00:02:53,600 --> 00:02:56,560
Speaker 2: of these issues are going to sound like we're trying

50
00:02:56,600 --> 00:03:00,520
Speaker 2: to stand in a political box just because lines have

51
00:03:00,600 --> 00:03:06,080
Speaker 2: been drawn in modern history of what issues belong to

52
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:08,760
Speaker 2: what party, and that's that's just not the intent, right.

53
00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:12,120
Speaker 2: So this is an hour and two minute program. The

54
00:03:12,120 --> 00:03:13,919
Speaker 2: first forty two and a half minutes of it were

55
00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:19,200
Speaker 2: Trump before anyone else came to the podium, and then

56
00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:25,120
Speaker 2: the final twenty minutes or so were seven these seven

57
00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:28,639
Speaker 2: so called faith leaders who were coming up in succession,

58
00:03:28,880 --> 00:03:32,320
Speaker 2: with varying amounts of time given to them. That's to

59
00:03:32,360 --> 00:03:34,520
Speaker 2: say that there's so much we could talk about that

60
00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:37,600
Speaker 2: we can't talk about we just don't have time for it.

61
00:03:38,120 --> 00:03:42,800
Speaker 2: And in that forty two and a half minutes, the

62
00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:45,920
Speaker 2: goal here is not to call out all of the

63
00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:50,520
Speaker 2: political issues you or I might have, well, you know,

64
00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:53,000
Speaker 2: one way or the other with Trump. The goal here

65
00:03:53,080 --> 00:03:55,800
Speaker 2: is to talk about the theological dynamics and what it

66
00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 2: means for the church, and just to ask, in some ways,

67
00:03:59,160 --> 00:03:59,840
Speaker 2: what are we doing?

68
00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:01,680
Speaker 1: Yeah?

69
00:04:01,720 --> 00:04:05,520
Speaker 2: And so it's worth noting that whatever we don't talk about,

70
00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:09,160
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that wasn't important. Yeah, there's limited space.

71
00:04:09,640 --> 00:04:11,200
Speaker 2: It is worth saying that in that forty two and

72
00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:15,680
Speaker 2: a half minutes, there's about five minutes accumulative, right, And

73
00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:18,640
Speaker 2: it's hard to say precisely five minutes because it's scattered,

74
00:04:18,680 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 2: but about five minutes cumulatively of prepared remarks concerning Easter

75
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:27,560
Speaker 2: from Trump himself, whereas the other thirty seven or so

76
00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:31,159
Speaker 2: minutes are him speaking off the kuff about everything except Easter.

77
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:33,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

78
00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:36,520
Speaker 2: And to me, that's part of the initial concern when

79
00:04:36,560 --> 00:04:41,760
Speaker 2: this is called a Easter lunch for and with faith leaders, right,

80
00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:42,680
Speaker 2: where was Easter?

81
00:04:44,080 --> 00:04:44,359
Speaker 1: Yeah?

82
00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:47,800
Speaker 2: And when we did finally see Easter, there were some

83
00:04:47,920 --> 00:04:50,200
Speaker 2: troubling remarks to say, the least.

84
00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:52,200
Speaker 1: Less recognizable than you would have liked it to be.

85
00:04:53,960 --> 00:04:57,080
Speaker 1: I'll say this I because again I talk about politics

86
00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:00,720
Speaker 1: on the show an awful lot, and I try to

87
00:05:00,800 --> 00:05:04,200
Speaker 1: keep it in that theological register. And so just so

88
00:05:04,279 --> 00:05:08,600
Speaker 1: people know, I'm working on a piece on James tall Rico,

89
00:05:09,240 --> 00:05:13,240
Speaker 1: who is a Democratic senator or Republican or something like that.

90
00:05:13,279 --> 00:05:16,400
Speaker 1: He's a House of Reps person down in Texas, and

91
00:05:16,440 --> 00:05:21,320
Speaker 1: he's been fairly popular recently for using the Bible and

92
00:05:21,640 --> 00:05:27,200
Speaker 1: arguing from scripture for particular policy issues. And my concern

93
00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:29,600
Speaker 1: is not with the policy issues, although I wouldn't agree

94
00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:34,159
Speaker 1: with everything he says. My concern always is that the

95
00:05:34,200 --> 00:05:37,600
Speaker 1: Bible is being co opted by political discourse, and it's

96
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:41,240
Speaker 1: being co opted very poorly most of the time. What

97
00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:44,480
Speaker 1: I see when people are using the Bible or theological language,

98
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,040
Speaker 1: and we see it here at this Easter lunch, what

99
00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:51,480
Speaker 1: we see is that the Bible is being abstracted from

100
00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:57,720
Speaker 1: its theological matrix. There's no particular necessity for Christ, there's

101
00:05:57,760 --> 00:06:01,719
Speaker 1: no particular necessity for glorifying the trying God, and the

102
00:06:01,760 --> 00:06:05,280
Speaker 1: Bible is being pulled in. Theology is being pulled in

103
00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:09,880
Speaker 1: to a very political conversation and used to legitimate, very

104
00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:14,520
Speaker 1: specific political agendas. Just if we go back to an

105
00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:17,800
Speaker 1: old Bonhoeffer quote, right, he wasn't speaking to politics. He

106
00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:20,800
Speaker 1: was speaking to Christian people, and he says something like,

107
00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:23,880
Speaker 1: has it not become clear in the way that we

108
00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:27,119
Speaker 1: have discussed these things today, gentlemen, that we have become

109
00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:30,359
Speaker 1: more enamored with our own thoughts than with the Bible.

110
00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:33,600
Speaker 1: We need to be reading the Bible not for ourselves,

111
00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:37,760
Speaker 1: but against ourselves. What he meant by that was that

112
00:06:37,800 --> 00:06:40,520
Speaker 1: we need to be reading the Bible expecting to be transformed,

113
00:06:40,600 --> 00:06:43,839
Speaker 1: expecting to be changed, and not expecting the Bible to

114
00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:47,600
Speaker 1: affirm all of our agendas. And I think that that

115
00:06:47,839 --> 00:06:51,440
Speaker 1: is if I'm you know, I'm biblical studies guy, right,

116
00:06:51,560 --> 00:06:54,240
Speaker 1: So from the at the end of the day, like,

117
00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:59,800
Speaker 1: I just hate seeing the Bible drawn into these type

118
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:05,240
Speaker 1: of conversations, abstracted from that broader theological understanding the reality

119
00:07:05,279 --> 00:07:09,240
Speaker 1: of the trying God, and used as if it's sort

120
00:07:09,279 --> 00:07:13,480
Speaker 1: of a bludgeon or a cudgel to push a theological

121
00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:17,200
Speaker 1: agenda through. And that's what I see happening here in

122
00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:21,440
Speaker 1: this Easter lunch. And it makes it even more disturbing

123
00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:29,160
Speaker 1: that much of this was done via prayer. I you know,

124
00:07:29,200 --> 00:07:33,040
Speaker 1: I had visions going back to Lauren Winner's work of

125
00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:36,600
Speaker 1: the dangers of Christian practice and the deformation of different

126
00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:39,000
Speaker 1: Christian practices. While I was watching this, I was like,

127
00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:43,440
Speaker 1: if I'm sure many listeners may not have read that book,

128
00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:48,000
Speaker 1: But essentially she argues that we can use practices like

129
00:07:48,080 --> 00:07:53,280
Speaker 1: prayer in a very abusive and inappropriate manner, and she

130
00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:57,560
Speaker 1: gives examples of how that's been done throughout history. Some

131
00:07:57,600 --> 00:08:02,080
Speaker 1: of these prayers that were offered seem really to echo

132
00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:06,040
Speaker 1: exactly what she's talking about in her book. So I'll

133
00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:09,680
Speaker 1: leave it there, Ashiesh, but just to say, like, this

134
00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:13,520
Speaker 1: isn't about politics. It's not about one side or the other.

135
00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:17,160
Speaker 1: It's not about partisanism. It is about politics, it's not

136
00:08:17,200 --> 00:08:22,000
Speaker 1: about being partisan. This is about us figuring out why

137
00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:25,720
Speaker 1: it is that the Bible should be used to authorize

138
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:30,480
Speaker 1: any political agenda or any political policy in the way

139
00:08:30,520 --> 00:08:32,440
Speaker 1: that seems to have been done at this launch.

140
00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:38,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things you said, I know what

141
00:08:38,720 --> 00:08:40,520
Speaker 2: you mean by it, but I think it's worth clarifying.

142
00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:44,160
Speaker 2: You said it drives you nuts. Not a direct quote.

143
00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:47,520
Speaker 2: When the Bible is used to push through theological agendas

144
00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:51,480
Speaker 2: could be interpreted as saying the Bible therefore it doesn't

145
00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:53,760
Speaker 2: have meaning for what we're doing today. It lives entirely

146
00:08:53,800 --> 00:08:55,760
Speaker 2: in the past. And now I know you don't.

147
00:08:56,080 --> 00:08:56,840
Speaker 1: I do not mean that.

148
00:08:57,160 --> 00:09:02,679
Speaker 2: Yes, So the issue here again is not precisely theology

149
00:09:02,720 --> 00:09:07,079
Speaker 2: being done. The issue is what the theology is in

150
00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 2: service to. And I think you and I we've discussed

151
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,440
Speaker 2: ahead of time. We've discussed a few times a shared

152
00:09:14,240 --> 00:09:18,000
Speaker 2: concern that the theology here is being done in service

153
00:09:18,160 --> 00:09:23,760
Speaker 2: to a particular set of political ideals that have been

154
00:09:23,800 --> 00:09:27,200
Speaker 2: foisted onto the public, as if we're supposed to bely

155
00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:31,319
Speaker 2: that these just star straightforwardly and obviously the Bible's concerns,

156
00:09:31,679 --> 00:09:37,120
Speaker 2: or straightforwardly and obviously what the Bible is even teaching, Yeah,

157
00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:41,480
Speaker 2: and done in this particular moment, not just in service

158
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:44,880
Speaker 2: to those ideals, but in bolstering the particular image of

159
00:09:44,880 --> 00:09:49,800
Speaker 2: a nation which itself needs to be scrutinized, circled around

160
00:09:49,840 --> 00:09:52,400
Speaker 2: the body of one particular man in this moment, right

161
00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:56,720
Speaker 2: so that they repeated frame refrain, wasn't this Roman sort

162
00:09:56,760 --> 00:10:01,520
Speaker 2: of statement of we pray for our leaders and we

163
00:10:01,559 --> 00:10:04,760
Speaker 2: recognize the Lord can be at work Therein it was

164
00:10:04,960 --> 00:10:11,800
Speaker 2: a specific elevation of the president as an anointed one, right,

165
00:10:11,840 --> 00:10:16,760
Speaker 2: as one who, in the words of Miss White Cain.

166
00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:22,720
Speaker 2: She referred to him repeatedly as the one who is

167
00:10:22,760 --> 00:10:25,960
Speaker 2: in charge, precisely because Jesus rose from the dead, and

168
00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:29,200
Speaker 2: because Jesus rose from the dead, he is the instrument

169
00:10:29,240 --> 00:10:32,920
Speaker 2: and the person put there as the protector of the church. Now,

170
00:10:32,920 --> 00:10:36,920
Speaker 2: that was pretty alarming to me. I'm even inclined, and

171
00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:39,560
Speaker 2: I came to this judgment. I looked up online just

172
00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:41,720
Speaker 2: to get the names of the people right, and in

173
00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:45,040
Speaker 2: that process I learned others were calling her heretical. That

174
00:10:45,160 --> 00:10:49,120
Speaker 2: was the word that came to my mind almost right away.

175
00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:53,800
Speaker 2: And I think it's worth bearing that the word heresy

176
00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:56,440
Speaker 2: in its advent, right in the way that it comes

177
00:10:56,480 --> 00:10:59,200
Speaker 2: about why it's used within the church, is a word

178
00:10:59,240 --> 00:11:02,560
Speaker 2: that means the use of one form of reality to

179
00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:05,800
Speaker 2: colonize another. And so the idea is that the idea

180
00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:09,040
Speaker 2: of America and what it is in the minds of

181
00:11:09,120 --> 00:11:15,319
Speaker 2: particular people and arguably as a theological claim, is being

182
00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:19,160
Speaker 2: used here to colonize and therefore put into its own

183
00:11:19,200 --> 00:11:22,120
Speaker 2: service Jesus. Right, So, rather than circling around the body

184
00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:26,920
Speaker 2: of Jesus, the Jewish Man born of the virgin son

185
00:11:26,960 --> 00:11:31,520
Speaker 2: of a carpenter, fulfilling the old Testament the prophet like

186
00:11:31,559 --> 00:11:34,640
Speaker 2: under Moses the King in the line of David the

187
00:11:34,679 --> 00:11:37,520
Speaker 2: Priest and the order of Melchizedic, and having everything encircled

188
00:11:37,559 --> 00:11:41,600
Speaker 2: around him to rethink our structures in our way of thinking.

189
00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:45,440
Speaker 2: He's instead being put into service on the idea of

190
00:11:45,440 --> 00:11:48,920
Speaker 2: what America is, or at least the idea of America

191
00:11:49,520 --> 00:11:52,480
Speaker 2: as a particular political party envisions it or a subset

192
00:11:52,520 --> 00:11:57,240
Speaker 2: of that party, and also what this one presidential figure

193
00:11:57,280 --> 00:11:59,520
Speaker 2: would like it to be around his very self.

194
00:12:00,080 --> 00:12:05,000
Speaker 1: That's heresy, Yeah, And I think I agree with you

195
00:12:05,080 --> 00:12:11,199
Speaker 1: on Paulo wait Kane. I think that her comments were scattered,

196
00:12:12,840 --> 00:12:17,200
Speaker 1: informed by her background and at least sort of somewhat

197
00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:20,880
Speaker 1: of quasi prosperity gospel sort of ministry, Like you can

198
00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:23,880
Speaker 1: see that coming out in all of her comments. And

199
00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:29,280
Speaker 1: I think her equation between Trump's victory and Jesus' victory

200
00:12:29,520 --> 00:12:36,360
Speaker 1: is problematic on a whole series of levels, right, and

201
00:12:36,400 --> 00:12:38,920
Speaker 1: not least of which is the fact that he did

202
00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:45,480
Speaker 1: lose to Biden not that long ago, so was Biden's victory.

203
00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:48,920
Speaker 1: Also this same sort of because Christ has victory, Biden

204
00:12:48,960 --> 00:12:53,360
Speaker 1: had victory, and if not, how do we know? Like

205
00:12:53,400 --> 00:12:55,400
Speaker 1: I think there are just all these sort of latent

206
00:12:55,440 --> 00:12:59,240
Speaker 1: assumptions coming into this that we see this is going

207
00:12:59,280 --> 00:13:02,560
Speaker 1: to appeal to people who Trump are already sort of

208
00:13:02,559 --> 00:13:06,400
Speaker 1: pro Trump and always Trump and will never disagree with Trump,

209
00:13:07,160 --> 00:13:13,160
Speaker 1: and who demonize previous presidents, but venerate this one. And

210
00:13:13,200 --> 00:13:19,440
Speaker 1: I think it has it. It's theologically unnuanced, it's deeply problematic,

211
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:24,440
Speaker 1: and it just it can't be held with any degree

212
00:13:24,480 --> 00:13:28,200
Speaker 1: of certainty or scrutiny. If you dig into that claim,

213
00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:31,559
Speaker 1: you'll never be able to demonstrate it. And I think

214
00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:35,640
Speaker 1: that the other aspect of her conversation that really bothered

215
00:13:35,679 --> 00:13:39,400
Speaker 1: me was the equation when she's talking about, you know,

216
00:13:39,520 --> 00:13:42,680
Speaker 1: Jesus and he suffered and he was wrongfully arrested, and

217
00:13:42,880 --> 00:13:47,079
Speaker 1: you know, all these different things, but you never really

218
00:13:47,120 --> 00:13:51,800
Speaker 1: reference the fact that Jesus is experiencing all that because

219
00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:55,880
Speaker 1: he's being faithful to God. It's because he's aligning himself

220
00:13:55,960 --> 00:13:59,319
Speaker 1: with the Kingdom of God and doing the Lord's will.

221
00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:02,800
Speaker 1: Now he has all of this friction with the world,

222
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:08,160
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. That was not partisan politics that God Jesus.

223
00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:13,600
Speaker 1: It was not Jesus upsetting some sort of status quo

224
00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:17,160
Speaker 1: by going after one policy as opposed to another. He's

225
00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:20,200
Speaker 1: representing the Kingdom of God and that kingdom was rejected,

226
00:14:21,320 --> 00:14:24,760
Speaker 1: and so I think there's a Christian context for the suffering.

227
00:14:25,040 --> 00:14:27,640
Speaker 1: I know there's a Christian context for the suffering that

228
00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:33,280
Speaker 1: Jesus suffered, and to say that Trump has suffered in

229
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:37,880
Speaker 1: that same way and for those same reasons is very difficult.

230
00:14:38,120 --> 00:14:41,840
Speaker 1: And that's why I think she makes it generic. Right.

231
00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:44,960
Speaker 1: It's as if Trump hauld walk down the street and

232
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,240
Speaker 1: stubbed a tow. That's persecution of some sort because he's

233
00:14:48,280 --> 00:14:51,320
Speaker 1: trying to make America great again. And I just think

234
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:54,080
Speaker 1: her whole argument, in her whole thought process, if you're

235
00:14:54,120 --> 00:14:56,680
Speaker 1: not careful and look at it carefully. And a lot

236
00:14:56,680 --> 00:15:00,800
Speaker 1: of people have critiqued her portion of this, but I

237
00:15:00,800 --> 00:15:04,160
Speaker 1: think if you're not careful, you can start to think, oh,

238
00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:10,400
Speaker 1: these surface level sort of connections that she's making might

239
00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:13,480
Speaker 1: actually make sense, and I would just say, no, they

240
00:15:13,520 --> 00:15:19,360
Speaker 1: really don't. Suffering is not just the same across the board.

241
00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:22,120
Speaker 1: I would say, first, Peter makes this distinction when he

242
00:15:22,160 --> 00:15:27,040
Speaker 1: talks about suffering. As a Christian, you have these passages

243
00:15:27,080 --> 00:15:31,920
Speaker 1: where it's clear that suffering for righteousness, suffering for being

244
00:15:31,960 --> 00:15:35,080
Speaker 1: a Christian is a very different thing than just suffering

245
00:15:35,160 --> 00:15:42,119
Speaker 1: because you've done something wrong or you're confronting a different party.

246
00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:47,880
Speaker 1: I think the equation there is has deeper theological problems

247
00:15:47,920 --> 00:15:50,160
Speaker 1: than many of the commentators I watched.

248
00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:59,840
Speaker 2: Notice, yeah, to that point, the details matter, yes, Right,

249
00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:03,120
Speaker 2: we look at things like the Sermon on the Mount

250
00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:06,760
Speaker 2: and what Jesus does beginning with the beatitudes, but really

251
00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:10,960
Speaker 2: throughout it where he's he's taking previous understandings that religious

252
00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:16,480
Speaker 2: leaders have placed upon the people, and Jesus is challenging them.

253
00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,760
Speaker 2: But he's not challenging them so as to break with

254
00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:25,040
Speaker 2: the tradition of the Jewish covenant covenants with the Jewish

255
00:16:25,120 --> 00:16:29,040
Speaker 2: law Torah. What he's doing in those moments is he's

256
00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:32,400
Speaker 2: he's calling out to the people to say, there's been

257
00:16:32,440 --> 00:16:36,240
Speaker 2: a certain burden placed upon you in the name of

258
00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:39,280
Speaker 2: the covenants that God has made with the Jewish people,

259
00:16:39,680 --> 00:16:45,200
Speaker 2: beginning with the Abrahamic Covenant, right, and those burdens of

260
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:47,200
Speaker 2: it im placed on you don't actually get at what

261
00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:48,160
Speaker 2: the covenants are about.

262
00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:48,560
Speaker 1: Right.

263
00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:51,080
Speaker 2: The short version of it is that he sees the

264
00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:56,720
Speaker 2: religious leaders having various levels of interaction with the Roman

265
00:16:56,720 --> 00:17:02,520
Speaker 2: imperial government. That's over them, some to see their identities

266
00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,640
Speaker 2: fulfilled through Rome, others to see themselves as biding their

267
00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:11,000
Speaker 2: times as they work with Rome and together expecting a

268
00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:14,120
Speaker 2: messiah who is in the order of David and established

269
00:17:14,119 --> 00:17:17,160
Speaker 2: as the king as David was, in order to set

270
00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:20,280
Speaker 2: themselves up as rivals of Rome, and ultimately the step

271
00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:25,000
Speaker 2: step on Rome. Right, it's to flip the script and

272
00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:31,000
Speaker 2: Jesus rightly recognizes that that process would make Israel no

273
00:17:31,080 --> 00:17:34,679
Speaker 2: different than the other empires around them in the present

274
00:17:34,760 --> 00:17:39,040
Speaker 2: or the past, right, Yeah. And so he's calling them out,

275
00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:41,800
Speaker 2: and he's he's liberating the people on the margins. He's

276
00:17:41,840 --> 00:17:46,560
Speaker 2: liberating those who've been crushed by these these poor uses

277
00:17:46,600 --> 00:17:47,320
Speaker 2: of the Covenant.

278
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:49,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

279
00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:51,960
Speaker 2: And it is that that gets him ultimately to Holy Week.

280
00:17:53,080 --> 00:17:56,680
Speaker 2: Is coming into the city of Jerusalem on palm Sunday,

281
00:17:56,760 --> 00:18:00,160
Speaker 2: is being greeted by one group of people with palms,

282
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:03,560
Speaker 2: while with others being plotted against to go to the cross.

283
00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:06,399
Speaker 2: And it's that that he submits himself to and not

284
00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:11,400
Speaker 2: an incidental detail in scripture is that his death comes

285
00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:13,520
Speaker 2: outside of the city, right, Meaning it's outside of the

286
00:18:13,560 --> 00:18:17,480
Speaker 2: locusts of powers, and his resurrection comes now from the

287
00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:19,560
Speaker 2: depths of the earth. The very womb of the earth

288
00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:22,840
Speaker 2: is what that tomb is in order to raise it

289
00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:25,639
Speaker 2: up to the hope of a new creation. Right, so

290
00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:28,080
Speaker 2: Jesus is the first fruits of that. That's not even

291
00:18:28,119 --> 00:18:32,159
Speaker 2: remotely what we see Trump doing. No, setting aside the

292
00:18:32,200 --> 00:18:38,000
Speaker 2: moral failures that have been written about plenty, he represents

293
00:18:38,080 --> 00:18:42,960
Speaker 2: precisely the status quo of an imperial reality that relegates

294
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:47,400
Speaker 2: some to an underling position at the expense of the powerful,

295
00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:49,639
Speaker 2: at the expense of whoever's at the center of this.

296
00:18:50,800 --> 00:18:52,960
Speaker 2: The fact that he lost an election and the fact

297
00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:57,560
Speaker 2: that people don't like him is not even remotely the

298
00:18:57,600 --> 00:19:00,159
Speaker 2: same thing as the persecuse in Jesus is undertaking. But

299
00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:03,119
Speaker 2: the removal of details is what you have to do

300
00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:06,240
Speaker 2: in the case of someone like miss White Kinane in

301
00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:12,040
Speaker 2: order to put forth any sort of similarity. And what's

302
00:19:12,080 --> 00:19:16,520
Speaker 2: startling is that she marched through various aspects of the

303
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:21,440
Speaker 2: life of Christ and remarkable vagueness, yes, and made every

304
00:19:21,440 --> 00:19:27,040
Speaker 2: single one of them about our president, right except the

305
00:19:27,080 --> 00:19:31,080
Speaker 2: death of Christ, right, because Trump, of course didn't die.

306
00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 1: Didn't die, right, And I thought, oh, this.

307
00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:35,200
Speaker 2: Is an important point of breaking only to get to

308
00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:38,280
Speaker 2: the resurrection, in which she then affirms the resurrection as

309
00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:42,160
Speaker 2: the power in which Donald Trump was raised, meaning it's

310
00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:47,840
Speaker 2: giving Trump this notion of resurrection argument or presumably from persecution,

311
00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:52,280
Speaker 2: so that now we're living. And whether she used the

312
00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:55,760
Speaker 2: words or not, the theological thrust of her claim in

313
00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:59,960
Speaker 2: some sort of new heavens and new Earth and eschatological

314
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:03,000
Speaker 2: kingdom as theologians like to say, Yeah, that Trump is

315
00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:08,199
Speaker 2: ushered in and that tenor carried forth in more and

316
00:20:08,280 --> 00:20:11,280
Speaker 2: less subtle ways from most of the people that followed her. Right,

317
00:20:11,359 --> 00:20:12,280
Speaker 2: she took the most time.

318
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:16,119
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, you know, we think about details, we

319
00:20:16,480 --> 00:20:18,560
Speaker 1: jump off Paul Away came for a minute and jump

320
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:23,719
Speaker 1: into Franklin Graham. He does the same thing. He just

321
00:20:23,720 --> 00:20:26,320
Speaker 1: doesn't do it with Jesus, and so I think people

322
00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:28,520
Speaker 1: give him a little bit more of a pass. I'm

323
00:20:28,560 --> 00:20:31,520
Speaker 1: not going to. I think the way he did this

324
00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:36,680
Speaker 1: was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, he's equating Trump to Esther.

325
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:42,399
Speaker 1: Such a time as this raised up to battle the

326
00:20:42,520 --> 00:20:45,560
Speaker 1: Iranians who want to kill all the Jews, just like

327
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:47,920
Speaker 1: the Persians wanted to kill all the Jews back in

328
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:52,480
Speaker 1: Esther's day. Again, this sort of surface level equation of

329
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:56,040
Speaker 1: what's happening there. And if you don't know and you

330
00:20:56,119 --> 00:20:58,280
Speaker 1: don't look, you're not going to be able to tell

331
00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:02,160
Speaker 1: that He's missing layers and layers and layers of details here.

332
00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:10,040
Speaker 1: So I would argue number one, the Persians were not

333
00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:12,520
Speaker 1: really the ones who are trying to kill all the Jews.

334
00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:20,880
Speaker 1: Haman was an Agite, a Gagite, and that is part

335
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:24,399
Speaker 1: of the traditional enemies of Israel. It goes all the

336
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 1: way back. You can find an a gag in numbers.

337
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:30,520
Speaker 1: You can find an agag in for Samuel. This was

338
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:37,600
Speaker 1: the the Amalakite sort of lineage. And now you have

339
00:21:37,760 --> 00:21:42,879
Speaker 1: this one Amalakite who is Haman, who is trying to

340
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:48,080
Speaker 1: destroy the Jews in Persia. And this is very much

341
00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:54,320
Speaker 1: an inner court conflict within Persia that ultimately doesn't work.

342
00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 1: But it's not the Persians who are trying to do this.

343
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:01,880
Speaker 1: And I think the the equation of the Persians with

344
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:12,400
Speaker 1: the Iranians historically completely impossible. The Persians were probably Zoroastrian,

345
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:18,080
Speaker 1: you know, until like the nineteen seventies, when you finally

346
00:22:18,119 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 1: have an Islamic state set up, it's like twenty five

347
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 1: hundred years away from Esther. These are not the same people.

348
00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:32,520
Speaker 1: This is not the same mentality, this was not the

349
00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:36,080
Speaker 1: same religion. It wasn't even that. It's not even close

350
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:41,520
Speaker 1: to the same thing, not even close. But if you

351
00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:45,840
Speaker 1: can put those sort of non detail oriented little pieces

352
00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:50,560
Speaker 1: together and then go, oh, look, Trump is Esther. He's

353
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:54,400
Speaker 1: been raised up for a time such as this. It's

354
00:22:54,480 --> 00:22:59,960
Speaker 1: just a manipulation of the scriptures and a misuse of

355
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 1: prayer to argue this type of surface level connections in

356
00:23:09,600 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: a way that legitimizes the war. It's crazy. I don't

357
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: really mind saying that. It's nuts. He does effectively the

358
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:25,400
Speaker 1: exact same thing that PAULA white Kin does equating Jesus

359
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:28,679
Speaker 1: and Trump. He does the exact same thing equating Esther

360
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: and Trump, and he should not get a pass just

361
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: because he doesn't use Jesus.

362
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:39,399
Speaker 2: That's right. A prominent passage in the Old Testament that

363
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 2: we quote a lot, or I hear quoted a lot

364
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,160
Speaker 2: that I'm not sure that we really get the narrative

365
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,360
Speaker 2: thrust of it is the claim that solved the king

366
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 2: that precedes David was was more or less the fulfillment

367
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:56,360
Speaker 2: of the people's desire to of a king.

368
00:23:56,440 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: Like the nations yep.

369
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,880
Speaker 2: As a biblical theological claim. What I often hear more

370
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 2: popularly from the pulpit is that the fact that they

371
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 2: wanted a king was a problem. That's not precisely true, right.

372
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:15,439
Speaker 2: The issue was specifically like the nations. Right, So the

373
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:18,720
Speaker 2: raising up of David, at least the early David and

374
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:20,879
Speaker 2: the late David. The middle David had some trouble with

375
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 2: this wasn't like the nations. He represented the shepherd's mentality.

376
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:32,359
Speaker 2: He represented a sort of demeanor that was supposed to

377
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 2: be ministerial of some sort, right ministerial, where the nations

378
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 2: around him were to receive what he said or to

379
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 2: the way that he was, and to be drawn to

380
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 2: worship of Yahweh. This wasn't a statement of subjugation. This

381
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 2: wasn't a statement of conquering imperial right. And when we

382
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 2: get to Solomon, right, the early Solomon, you see the

383
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:56,959
Speaker 2: fruits of this, and that's when the Queen of Sheba

384
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 2: comes to him. In other words, you're seeing these good

385
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 2: relations with those who are out and through that you

386
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 2: see a drawing of people to the God of Israel.

387
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 2: By the time you get to the New Testament, the

388
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:11,880
Speaker 2: ways that you can describe the thought processes, the political

389
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,160
Speaker 2: thought processes of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, in their own

390
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 2: kinds of ways, is a king like the nations. And

391
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 2: it's that which Jesus is pushing against, right, Because what

392
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,400
Speaker 2: Jesus is saying again is that you have this reality

393
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,119
Speaker 2: that Paul, for instance, bears out in the Book of

394
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 2: Ephesians with his near far language. The old Testman talks

395
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 2: about near and far as opposed to in the right ordering,

396
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 2: as opposed to this nation against other nations.

397
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 1: Right.

398
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 2: So when you get to Paul, he reveals, guess what,

399
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 2: the distance between near and far was always meant to

400
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 2: be bridged. But that's not a political statement again in

401
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 2: the sense that we think of it, right, It's meant

402
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 2: to be a theological statement about the ordering of creation

403
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 2: into its highest point of flourishing.

404
00:25:59,040 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: Right.

405
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 2: It's the freedom of creation within that. And the payoff

406
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 2: of this is supposed to be that you have these

407
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 2: peoples that might otherwise have been considered far, the gentiles,

408
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 2: but they are to be brought near in a way

409
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,880
Speaker 2: in which they're not second class citizens. Right, the way

410
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 2: that Franklin Graham orders his particular rendering a vester to

411
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 2: return to that point, sets up opposition, It sets up

412
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 2: a king like the nations. He even describes this as

413
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 2: a parallel to the point of not just for the

414
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 2: good of America, but to save Israel, where Israel is

415
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 2: not a political entity, not a covenantal identity, which is

416
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 2: completely removed from the ordering of Israel as an entity

417
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 2: that's covenantal. It's meant to draw people to the beauty

418
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 2: and flourishing reality of God, of their covenant God.

419
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: Right.

420
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,679
Speaker 2: You see this also in the antagonistic sorts of claims

421
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,639
Speaker 2: in the middle of prayer. Ostensibly prayer, Franklin Graham says,

422
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:01,959
Speaker 2: refers to these Islamic lunatics.

423
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 1: Right.

424
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 2: Again, that's oppositional in a way, that's just. It's asking

425
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 2: for trouble, it's asking for conflict in a way that's

426
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 2: It doesn't at all speak to the beauty of the

427
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 2: God that you're wishing to proclaim. It doesn't speak at

428
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 2: all to the ability to draw people who are far near.

429
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 2: It speaks of keeping those who are far, not just far,

430
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 2: but now in an antagonistic relationship, and to do so

431
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:30,960
Speaker 2: ostensibly in the name of Jesus. As you pointed out,

432
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 2: he doesn't say Jesus. But that's clearly the implication, right, Yeah,

433
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 2: in so far as Esther is this in the Persian Empire,

434
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 2: Israel is this vis a vis the Iranian people, and

435
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:46,680
Speaker 2: on this Easter Sunday. It's a representation now the fullness

436
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 2: of what God meant and intended to do through this

437
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 2: man in a time like this, which is again in

438
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:53,840
Speaker 2: a biblical phrase, for such time as this.

439
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't get the impression as he's praying.

440
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: So there are precatory psalms where you would find this

441
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: sort of same antagonistic language as the Islamic lunatics. Right,

442
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: you could see in precatory psalms utilizing that sort of language.

443
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: But in the imprecatory psalms, what you normally sense is

444
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:20,199
Speaker 1: that there's this lament about a lack of justice and

445
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:26,439
Speaker 1: a desire for God to write the world. What you

446
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 1: don't see is this idea that we are looking for justice,

447
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: we're looking for God to write the world, and oh look,

448
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: here happens to be a world leader who God is

449
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: placed right before us in order to write the world

450
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: and the way that we think it should be righted.

451
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: That in it of itself is also problematic. It's the

452
00:28:51,880 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: Islamic lunatics are being framed as the problem, the only

453
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 1: problem for justice. Let's put it like that, the only

454
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: problem for justice. I wouldn't deny that I have a

455
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 1: problem with the way of the Islamic regimes talk about

456
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: other peoples as well, But I don't think what you

457
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: see in his discourse his prayer is an elevation above that,

458
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: an elevation that recognizes, to your point, you know, the

459
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: king like the nations. Part of what I see when

460
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: I read that statement in First Samuel is Saul is

461
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: a king who fears the people. If you read through

462
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: for Samuel and you watch where Saul fails, he fears

463
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: because the people are running away, and so he takes

464
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: action to do an inappropriate sacrifice to keep the people

465
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: near him. He operates early on on threats because the

466
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: people won't come to him. He threatens them basically and says,

467
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: if you don't come fight, I'm coming after you. Next.

468
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 1: David and Goliath narrative, which we often frame is this

469
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 1: contrast between David and Goliath, But really what we see

470
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: there is Saul is afraid because he knows he doesn't

471
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: have the physical strength to beat Goliath. And so he

472
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: cowers in the back with his men. Saul's always afraid

473
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,719
Speaker 1: of what he sees before him. David, the difference is

474
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: he fears the Lord. He's constantly doing things that demonstrate

475
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: that he is more attuned to what the Lord is

476
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: doing supposed to what Saul is doing. Now he does

477
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 1: that imperfectly. I have read the David and Abashivan narrative.

478
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 1: I'm not ignoring that. But the point is that even

479
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: as we move into the New Testament, to your point

480
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: and you say, well, what is Jesus really embodying here?

481
00:30:45,560 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: He's not embodying a political revolution, because political revolutions won't work.

482
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: The way of the world is obedience to the will

483
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 1: of the Father. That's what he's showing us. It's faithfulness.

484
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 1: It's not alignment with a political entity. It's continually being

485
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: faithful to the Lord, living obediently, even when living obediently

486
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the world's problems. It is our strategy, and

487
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 1: that's it. And I think that gets lost in all

488
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: of these prayers at that the prayers that we're going

489
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 1: to talk about. At least, I actually think Bishop Baron

490
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 1: gave the best prayer at that meeting. But I will

491
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: say paul O White Kine, Franklin Graham, and then the

492
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: other person we haven't talked about yet, Robert Jeffers. They

493
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: just really feel like what they're promoting is sort of

494
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: a triumphalism that the Kingdom of God can be made

495
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: manifest in some way, shape or form through military action

496
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: in the United States or through the United States leadership

497
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: in some way. And I'm just not sold. In fact,

498
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: I would say I'm more than not sold. I would

499
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 1: absolutely disagree that that is the way of things. I

500
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: think God uses our nations. I think God is God

501
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: has a plan for the United States. But when I

502
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: say that, I have no idea what that plan is.

503
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: And we live with that mystery, right, Like, it's not

504
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: that the United States has some special covenantal relationship with

505
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: God that I'm not aware of. We're a nation. God

506
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 1: uses nations and stop.

507
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I want to hone in on that God

508
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 2: has a plan discourse. Yeah, to be clear. In the

509
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 2: Book of a bac Tobacua comes forward, he calls out

510
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 2: to God. He says, Lord, help the wealthy, the powerful

511
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 2: amongst my people, referring to Biblical Israel are trampling upon

512
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 2: the outcasts, the poor, the underprivileged, do something about it.

513
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 2: God's responses, don't worry, Babylon's coming in and they're going

514
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 2: to take care of them. Yes, a backup is beside himself.

515
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: He says, what wait, no, what, Yeah.

516
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 2: Babylon's worse.

517
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, I take it back.

518
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 2: No, don't worry, they'll get their own too, right, And

519
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 2: historically them getting their own ends up being the Greeks.

520
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 2: The point being in that moment that to to well,

521
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 2: to the point of a plan that God might have,

522
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 2: what it is that God does in and through, maybe

523
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 2: with often in spite of the United States, is more

524
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 2: akin to don't worry. The Babylonians are coming in. Don't worry,

525
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 2: they'll get their own too right. But the way that

526
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 2: the US has often established itself, and this is maybe

527
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 2: a topic of its own, is this sort of city

528
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 2: on a hill mentality. You hear this on both sides

529
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 2: of the letter Ledger by the way. You hear this

530
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:57,959
Speaker 2: if you go to Fox News, you hear this, if

531
00:33:58,000 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 2: you go to CNN. The city on the hill is

532
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 2: sort of dying. The criticism is less less often about

533
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 2: invoking that and more often what someone means by it.

534
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 2: But The problem theologically is to invoke it at all

535
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 2: in that sort of way. Right, It's a declaration that

536
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 2: exists within the Sermon on the Mount to refer to

537
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:22,840
Speaker 2: what Israel was supposed to be as a covenant reality,

538
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 2: not as a political, national imperial entity.

539
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 1: Yep.

540
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 2: And the degree to which that can still be possible,

541
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:32,880
Speaker 2: in Jesus' words, is the degree to which in that

542
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:37,319
Speaker 2: Sermon on the Mount, he's he's upending the order in which,

543
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,160
Speaker 2: again the Pharisees and Sadducees have in their own ways

544
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 2: seen their allegiance with Rome as either a fulfillment or

545
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 2: a or an entity to be used to reach a

546
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 2: fulfillment that still looks like a king. Like the Nations,

547
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 2: the US is not a covenant identity. It's not the

548
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 2: replacement of Israel. And what's what's particularly troubling is that, unfortunately,

549
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 2: there is a history and the US beginning with the

550
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:06,759
Speaker 2: Mayflower Compact. Right. If you read it, it is all right,

551
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 2: it's an explicit declaration of what the people saw, that

552
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 2: their reality being entering into this world, where they saw

553
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 2: this land that we think of as America today as

554
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 2: a land flowing with milk and honey. The new Israel.

555
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 2: They saw themselves therefore as the new Israel, and this

556
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 2: particular mode of Israel as a king like the nations,

557
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 2: and they saw the people that were in it as

558
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:33,760
Speaker 2: the Canaanites. They set themselves already up in a position

559
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 2: as readers of the text that were in direct opposition

560
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 2: to the message Jesus giving, which was to speak on

561
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 2: behalf of the elevation of all creation, not the elevation

562
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 2: of some at the expense of the rest of creation.

563
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: Right. It's when I studied some of that, and I

564
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: haven't done the full historical research to nail down this claim,

565
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:04,520
Speaker 1: but what I saw is the use of the Exodus

566
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: narrative in early American literature has so many resonances with

567
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: what we find in liberation theology. It's really not even funny.

568
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: It's always a political liberation of freedom from tyranny so

569
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 1: that we can live on our own terms. And when

570
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 1: you read the Biblical Exodus, when you actually read the

571
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: account in Exodus, Exodus fourteen and fifteen, the israel Lites

572
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 1: escape Exodus fifteen is the Song of Sea. Exodus twenty,

573
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 1: they're getting the Ten commandments. God is essentially saying I'm

574
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: the one who redeemed you out of Egypt. You're not

575
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,240
Speaker 1: living life on your terms, You're living them on mine.

576
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:49,279
Speaker 1: Here are the constraints, here's the law. This is what

577
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,399
Speaker 1: you now get to do. And it wasn't a constricting

578
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: sort of law there. It was an appropriate constraint given

579
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: so that the israel could really enjoy their freedom and

580
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: remain in a position in the presence of God and

581
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: God going with them, God being with them, God being

582
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: together in them, being together with God. That was supposed

583
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: to be the animating principle, the animating idea, right that

584
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 1: we keep Israel safe and allow them to go into

585
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 1: the land. They're going with God. God's going into the land.

586
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: You can come with him. Here's how you live in

587
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,359
Speaker 1: the presence of God. Here's how you walk with him. Like,

588
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: that's what those laws were meant to do. But when

589
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: that exodus narrative is activated, particularly, I would say, specifically

590
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: in early America, what we find is, no, we just

591
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:48,799
Speaker 1: want freedom from the tyranny of Europe right or of

592
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: Great Britain specifically, and we want to be able to

593
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: live life on our own terms. Now, was that life

594
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: on their own terms? Was that structured with some sense

595
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: of miracle. Was it influenced by some Christian teachings and

596
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:10,880
Speaker 1: those kinds of ideas. Probably that's not Christianity. And so

597
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how close you get, if you're not

598
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 1: living under the lordship of Jesus Christ, you're not there yet, right. So,

599
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 1: I think that overall, what we're seeing in these prayers,

600
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in some of the history is a slippage.

601
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: It's this notion that we can take a lot of

602
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 1: the good Bible teachings, like we can lucky dip into

603
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 1: scripture and we can say, oh, I like this nugget,

604
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 1: I like that nugget, I really enjoy this part. Some

605
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: of the other ones I'm going to do without. And

606
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: I don't really need Jesus to do any of this,

607
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:49,799
Speaker 1: and so I'll just keep these portions. I think what

608
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 1: I see in these in these at this prayer lunch,

609
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,319
Speaker 1: and what I see a lot when people were talking

610
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,439
Speaker 1: about advocating for Christian nationalism and those kind of things,

611
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 1: is that Jesus tends to get parked somewhere else. And

612
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: what they're really talking about is something akin to the

613
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:11,240
Speaker 1: Judeo Christian ethic that is then situated under an American

614
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 1: civil religion, and now we need a new Messiah, a

615
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: new king, a new leader who can usher in this

616
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: moment of enhanced morality. None of that is a Christian story,

617
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: None of it is a true exodus, because we don't

618
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: end up getting freed from anything like what we get

619
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 1: freed from in Christ. We don't get freed from sin.

620
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:39,760
Speaker 1: We just move from one dominion of sin to another.

621
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: And what Christ brings us is that freedom from sin,

622
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: as Paul talks about, like Romans six. So there's just

623
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 1: so much I think that we see in these in

624
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: this luncheon that is so deeply problematic. And the last person,

625
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: which we haven't really talked much about yet, is Robert Jeffers.

626
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: I dealt with I dealt with his July fourth sermon

627
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago in my book Serpents and

628
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: Doves Shameless Plug. But he argued there and at the

629
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,800
Speaker 1: end of his sermon he quotes Psalm thirty three twelve.

630
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: You know, blessed is the nation who's God is the Lord.

631
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: And that's actually in his sermon. He only quotes that portion.

632
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: There's actually a second part of Psalm thirty three twelve.

633
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: He only quotes a not b and b really specifies

634
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: this as the covenant people of Israel, but when he

635
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: quotes it, he's talking about America. That mentality I think

636
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: carries through in this prayer that he gives and the

637
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: remarks that he makes at this luncheon. He uses this

638
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: language of divine authorization, and what he means by that

639
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,399
Speaker 1: is not that ever leader everywhere is appointed by God

640
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: and so we should give them some due respect. What

641
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:09,239
Speaker 1: he seems to mean by that is you have been

642
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: uniquely chosen by God for a task that will advance

643
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:16,800
Speaker 1: His kingdom in a very particular way that Christians should

644
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: all get behind. I don't know how else it put that,

645
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 1: but when I listen to Jeffri's talk, that's really what

646
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: I think he's saying. So I don't know if you

647
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,879
Speaker 1: have thoughts on that one, Ashish, but I'll stop talking

648
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:31,800
Speaker 1: and let you respond.

649
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do. And it connects to what you begin

650
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 2: your comments on with the liberating impulse. My emphasis might

651
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,359
Speaker 2: be a little bit different than yours, but I think

652
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 2: there's some parallel elements that lead into what I see

653
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 2: as similarly troubles and troublesome remarks from Jeffers that the

654
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 2: liberating impulse that you're talking about. Of course, there are

655
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:02,800
Speaker 2: a variety of liberation theologies, yeah, right, and they're doing

656
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 2: different things in different places, but also sometimes coming from

657
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 2: different traditions and so different tools at play. But the

658
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 2: impulse that concerns you, I think is a fair one

659
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 2: that if a liberation theology is merely an inversion of

660
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:24,279
Speaker 2: a political spectrum, yes, then what we've created is a

661
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:26,120
Speaker 2: ripe new opportunity for abuse.

662
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:28,919
Speaker 1: Agreed. That's exactly and.

663
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 2: Unfortunately the rhetoric in a lot of cases, and you

664
00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 2: this might be controversial in your part, but I know

665
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 2: where you're coming from. What these mayflower folks you call

666
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:40,880
Speaker 2: them liberators in some sense, or liberation theologis of some

667
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 2: kind in some sense, they were, right, Yeah, and that's

668
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 2: precisely the impulse they had in mind. Alternatively, of course,

669
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 2: Jesus is the liberator. But what's distinct about his liberation

670
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 2: is that, yes, he's calling us to a reality that

671
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 2: now receives its life from the fullness of God's very

672
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 2: presence and being, giving life to all that there is.

673
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 2: But what's distinct about that that's not you know, of course,

674
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 2: one difference is there's God versus not God but it's

675
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 2: more than that. The God who liberates is setting up

676
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 2: a reality in which the pattern that he gives to creation, yeah,

677
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,959
Speaker 2: God's very self, from father giving of son to son,

678
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,280
Speaker 2: giving what the son has been given by the Father

679
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 2: to his disciples to then give on to those that

680
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 2: they take the good news to. Is this consistent pattern

681
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,359
Speaker 2: that begins at the top of the giving of oneself.

682
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 2: And this is the pattern that makes makes liberation truly

683
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 2: life giving and free for all, right. And it's the

684
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 2: irony of that freedom comes not in the freedom from,

685
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,239
Speaker 2: as Bart would say, but in the freedom for, as

686
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:58,120
Speaker 2: he argues, to give ourselves to another. And ultimately that

687
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 2: giving ourselves to another is to give it all to

688
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 2: the God, who doesn't keep for God's self, but gives

689
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 2: it all right back to the giving of God's very self.

690
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 2: It's an eternal cycle. And that freedom is not a

691
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 2: freedom just for a few. It's not a freedom of

692
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 2: some at the expense of the many, which is what

693
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 2: every version of this freedom from, this liberating experience that

694
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 2: doesn't have its ultimate understanding in the self giving of

695
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 2: the Father, in the Son for everyone, right. And that

696
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,680
Speaker 2: kind of liberating just sets up, ironically a king like

697
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:42,879
Speaker 2: the nation. But the kind of liberating that God gives

698
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 2: us is a kind that is for the other. Now,

699
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,919
Speaker 2: when you get to Jeffers, this distinction is precisely what's

700
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 2: on display for him the presence of Donald Trump, beginning

701
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 2: all the way back in twenty sixteen, when he seems

702
00:44:56,960 --> 00:44:59,919
Speaker 2: to indicate God in some way told him Trump would

703
00:44:59,920 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 2: be next president, which I guess he was. So I

704
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 2: suppose whether or not God told him.

705
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: He was at least right.

706
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 2: Right was always for the purpose of being able to

707
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:15,319
Speaker 2: and in his own words, right was always for the

708
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 2: purpose of enacting what amounts to a power over, And

709
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 2: that power over is never self giving, it's always extracting. Right,

710
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 2: And so whatever liberation Jeffers thought that he and his

711
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 2: people received in that moment came at the expense of

712
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 2: the fullness of life, not just of other people. But

713
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 2: I would argue in a conversation that would take us further,

714
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 2: and we don't have time for a subjugation of the

715
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 2: very earth itself. Right, it can. It accelerated patterns of

716
00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:00,840
Speaker 2: loss of fertility for crops. It accelerated patterns of removing

717
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 2: stuff from the earth without filling it with anything else,

718
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 2: creating an unstabable, unstable crust of the earth. It continued

719
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 2: projects that removed habitat from the other creatures of God,

720
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:18,280
Speaker 2: the other animals that belong to land, animals that belong

721
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 2: to Day six of creation. Right, that's obviously a larger creation.

722
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 2: But these are all markers. Right when you look at

723
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 2: the end of the Bible and you look at Ezekiel,

724
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 2: the end of Ezekiel where it's where it's alluding to

725
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:32,799
Speaker 2: this same end, it's this garden imagery in which all

726
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 2: the creatures of the earth are receiving their full and

727
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 2: are able to receive their full not at the expense

728
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 2: of another creature. Right, And any version of this liberating

729
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 2: impulse that just merely changes who's at the center but

730
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 2: continues to extract is not ultimately liberating. It it's downcasting

731
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,040
Speaker 2: of another group of people's And that could go either

732
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 2: way in the political spectrum. By the way, it just

733
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,239
Speaker 2: so happens to be one way the moment in under

734
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 2: the Jeffer's vision. But that shows to me a radical

735
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 2: lack of understanding on his part of what Easter is

736
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 2: and what it is Jesus doing and the fullness that

737
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 2: that's meant to bring to a liberation of the entire earth.

738
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think his references to Trump ushering

739
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 1: in a spiritual revival, and I'm not exactly sure that

740
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:26,440
Speaker 1: was exactly the way he put it, but there is

741
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: a spurring on of a spiritual revival that is done

742
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: in the context of this presidency that wasn't done in

743
00:47:32,239 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: previous ones. Is basically the implication I think he's playing

744
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:42,239
Speaker 1: in and leading into the dynamic. You're suggesting that, in

745
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: part oddly, the spiritual revival is available because Christians are

746
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 1: getting what they want. And this spiritual revival doesn't, in

747
00:47:53,960 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 1: my mind, necessarily equate to Christians deepening their commitment to

748
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: the Lord Jesus Christ. It may very well just be

749
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: a function of Christianity being more comfortable now and so

750
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:15,240
Speaker 1: I can more conveniently participate as a Christian in various realms.

751
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that that. I know, I wouldn't

752
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: call that revival, but I'm not sure that's not what

753
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: I see happening. This merger between the politics and the religion,

754
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:32,319
Speaker 1: which again I've addressed in numerous other episodes. People can

755
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: go and listen to those if they want, but I

756
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:39,560
Speaker 1: think this unholy merger between the politics and the religion.

757
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:42,799
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is that I kind

758
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: of introduce this, but there's this idea that what's the

759
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: sacred order that we sit underneath. I think what each

760
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: of these people conveyed that we've talked about, they conveyed

761
00:48:56,120 --> 00:49:02,720
Speaker 1: that the sacred order is America, and that the social

762
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 1: order then is downstream from America. That there's a vision

763
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: of America that they have that is the sacred order,

764
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 1: and it is why they can identify Donald Trump in

765
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 1: the way that they have. What I think we're arguing

766
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: is just to put in these terms that the Kingdom

767
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: of God is the sacred order, and that everything underneath

768
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: that sits underneath that sacred order should be conforming to

769
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: the authority of Christ and seeking to be refined to

770
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: his image. I read Romans thirteen correctly. Everything sits under

771
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: the authority of God, and that means that a politician

772
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 1: doesn't get to determine what is good in the sense

773
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 1: that they get to make it up wholesale themselves. They

774
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: should be recognizing what is good and doing thusly, and

775
00:50:04,600 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 1: the Church should be speaking in to the political realm saying,

776
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:12,920
Speaker 1: by the way, you missed it this time. This isn't justice,

777
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: this isn't goodness, this isn't beauty, this isn't whatever. We

778
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:20,920
Speaker 1: need to have a prophetic voice in that, not a

779
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 1: legitimizing voice. It's not that we are constantly attacking the

780
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 1: people who are in charge of us. That's not what

781
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 1: I'm saying. We can give people their due right. When

782
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: they do justice, we should affirm that. When they do goodness,

783
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: we should affirm that. But my perspective is we should

784
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:43,239
Speaker 1: always be pointing beyond this justice that you're enacting. This

785
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: is gesturing forward to the judgment of God that is coming.

786
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: And so even though you're serving justice in the moment,

787
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: you need to be serving Christ. Like We've got to

788
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: get to that point where the church understands that these

789
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: political leaders are gesturing toward God's judgment when they do

790
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: it right, but that they still need to know Christ

791
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:11,880
Speaker 1: in order to escape God's judgment at the end. And

792
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: I think that somewhere along the line we've just forgotten

793
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: that part of it. We've gotten consumed with being comfortable

794
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: having religious freedom, having all the rights that we have,

795
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 1: and those are fantastic things. I don't I'm not wishing

796
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 1: them away but I also know that if my faith

797
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:32,759
Speaker 1: depends on not being persecuted, I'm going to be in

798
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: trouble one of these days. And so I think that

799
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,959
Speaker 1: that sort of summarizes my discomfort with what I heard

800
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: from these three individuals. For the most part. I'll let

801
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:48,920
Speaker 1: you go ahead, Ashiesh.

802
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I second what you're saying. I suppose if we're

803
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 2: talking in terms of summaries very much related to yours,

804
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:01,760
Speaker 2: my discomfort is the collect apps of the faith into

805
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:08,520
Speaker 2: national identity. One way people talk about that you alluded

806
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 2: to is nationalism, in other words, civil religion. My fear is,

807
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 2: and I'm drawing off one of our former colleagues herea

808
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 2: Mike McDuffie, is that it's it's actually a description of

809
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:23,399
Speaker 2: America as a religion. And I'm still wrestling with understanding that.

810
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:27,240
Speaker 2: But increasingly as I listened to these people, it really

811
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 2: did seem that there was a lack of a gap

812
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 2: between their understanding of this nation and their understanding of

813
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:37,640
Speaker 2: their faith, such that there's a loss of the distinctiveness

814
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 2: of Jesus. There's a loss of the meaningfulness of the

815
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,720
Speaker 2: biblical covenant with biblical Israel. Right not to be confused

816
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 2: with the modern nation state of Israel, and the meaningfulness

817
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:51,759
Speaker 2: of Jesus is coming out of that, so that we

818
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 2: can't see in the way that these folks talked about,

819
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 2: these supposed faith leaders. We can't see or a man

820
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 2: a way of understanding the goodness of the work of

821
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 2: Jesus and the work of renewal that we see in

822
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 2: the first fruits, we see in the very work of

823
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:14,600
Speaker 2: Jesus as separated in any sort of way from where

824
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 2: this country goes. Yeah, right, And I find that problematic,

825
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 2: not least because regardless of who's in control this world,

826
00:53:24,160 --> 00:53:29,080
Speaker 2: this country has never represented the thriving and the fulfillment

827
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:34,839
Speaker 2: and the liberation really of everyone in this country, never

828
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 2: mind outside of this country. Correct, It's always existed within

829
00:53:39,239 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 2: the kind of reality that you see, even if the

830
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:45,840
Speaker 2: politics are different at the top, the kind of reality

831
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 2: you see in the emperor or the imperial dynasties of

832
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:56,600
Speaker 2: the past. Yeah, And that's always the blessing of a

833
00:53:56,640 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 2: few at the expense of the many, and that blessing

834
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 2: of the few is a short lived thing, right, Yeah,

835
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:08,840
Speaker 2: And that concerns me when we now reduce what Jesus

836
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:12,280
Speaker 2: is doing to this we make Jesus a partisan entity.

837
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 2: We make Jesus a political entity that sets one nation

838
00:54:15,280 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 2: up against the other when the work that Jesus came

839
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 2: to do radically challenges all of it. Right, So when

840
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:27,320
Speaker 2: we think of the work of the providential ministry of God,

841
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 2: we begin to see God as a puppeteer and raised

842
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 2: up America to do X, Y, and Z. When I

843
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:36,399
Speaker 2: think the better way to look at it is, these

844
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:39,600
Speaker 2: things exist because the world exists in a place civilianation

845
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 2: from it's thriving, which is with the Tree of Life

846
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 2: as it represents God's fulfilling presence in the center of it.

847
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 1: Right.

848
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 2: But the existence of the world in this kind of

849
00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 2: a way doesn't mean God is powerless within it. God

850
00:54:56,160 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 2: can nudge, God can pull, God can move, God can push.

851
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,400
Speaker 2: And that's what we mean by the providence of God,

852
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:06,239
Speaker 2: that nothing is outside the scope of God working. But

853
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 2: that's not the same thing as saying the set of

854
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:14,439
Speaker 2: affairs politically that's at play are God's entities. That's right,

855
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 2: and the collapse of those realities really troubles me. And

856
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:20,279
Speaker 2: the fact that Christians are happy to embrace that troubles me.

857
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:25,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, I think just to end this episode

858
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,040
Speaker 1: were coming up on time, but I would just say

859
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: we didn't get to it. But I do have a

860
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 1: piece that will be published on christianity dot com that

861
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:36,720
Speaker 1: discusses some of these prayers, and I would just commend

862
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron's prayer is one of these bright spots. So

863
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 1: if you've listened this long, you shouldn't leave with the

864
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: impression that what we're saying is Christians should never pray

865
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:49,800
Speaker 1: at the White House. It's not at all what we're saying.

866
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 1: What we're saying is that Christian prayer at the White House,

867
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:58,400
Speaker 1: Christian participation in politics needs to be situated under the

868
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,399
Speaker 1: authority of Christ and needs to form to the sort

869
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:05,040
Speaker 1: of patterns that we see in Jesus and throughout the scriptures.

870
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 1: And I thought, as I listened to each one each

871
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:10,000
Speaker 1: person pray, there were a couple of bright spots. But

872
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:13,799
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron, I thought, did a wonderful job of number one,

873
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:17,320
Speaker 1: recognizing that it's almost Easter. I thought that was nice,

874
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:21,160
Speaker 1: really focusing it on Jesus, but then also praying for

875
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:26,799
Speaker 1: the President and praying in a way that echoed very

876
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:29,759
Speaker 1: much the Sermon on the Mountain. He talked about weakness

877
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:34,279
Speaker 1: or meekness and humility. He talked about wisdom. You know,

878
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:40,720
Speaker 1: he encouraged God to instill in Donald Trump these characteristics,

879
00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: and so I think that there are appropriate ways for

880
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:46,680
Speaker 1: us to pray for our president. So this isn't about hey,

881
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: don't pray for your political leaders. This isn't about hey,

882
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: never participate in politics or never show up at the

883
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 1: White House. That's not it. But we have to recognize

884
00:56:56,080 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 1: that our God sits above all of this and that

885
00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: we his name, and in doing so, we have a

886
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:08,520
Speaker 1: role and responsibility of representing him well. And I don't

887
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: think that the first three folks did that. I thought

888
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:15,319
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron did a wonderful job of it. So we

889
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: can leave it there and really appreciate you having this conversation.

890
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,520
Speaker 1: I learned a lot. I think your comments were really helpful,

891
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: and so thanks for being here, and thanks everybody else

892
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of

893
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:31,680
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to

894
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:34,120
Speaker 1: thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with

895
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:36,840
Speaker 1: us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to

896
00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered

897
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,

898
00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 1: and more.