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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that

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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become

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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking

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Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world

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Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that

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Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to

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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everybody, welcome to this

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Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer. I'm joined

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Speaker 1: by Dr. Ashish Varma. And today we're going to talk about,

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Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what we're going to talk about.

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Speaker 1: We're going to start by talking about this survey that

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Speaker 1: kind of a friend of the show, I'd like to

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Speaker 1: count her as a friend of the show, Beth Allison Barr,

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Speaker 1: she's been on a couple of times. She posted this

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Speaker 1: on her Instagram. It's a graphic from Billy Graham Center's

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Speaker 1: Gen Z survey that was posted by the Religious News Service.

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Speaker 1: And it says this, In the sample of Gen Z,

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Speaker 1: nearly half, 48%, agreed with the following statement. Christian support

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Speaker 1: of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.

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Speaker 1: And then it says about one in five young adults

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Speaker 1: said they strongly agreed with that sentiment. And so the

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Speaker 1: graph has actually, you know, strongly agree. It counts for 19%.

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Speaker 1: And another 14% agree with that statement. So you've got,

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Speaker 1: you know, good 33% who are in the strongly agree category,

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Speaker 1: another 15% slightly agree. And then you've got about 21%

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Speaker 1: that strongly disagree. It's interesting, you know, they're counting the, the,

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Speaker 1: all the agrees together there, but you can, you can

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Speaker 1: strongly say about a third, I think. 48% might be

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Speaker 1: stretching it, but I would say a third of these

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Speaker 1: folks agreed that Christian support of Trump has made me

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Speaker 1: less likely to go to church. Now, there's no other

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Speaker 1: context to this survey. There's no other real, like, texture

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Speaker 1: to it. It's just one infographic. And I'll be honest,

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Speaker 1: I looked up the Gen Z, you know, sort of

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Speaker 1: survey that was done and it didn't give a lot

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Speaker 1: more than just what I saw on that Instagram post.

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Speaker 1: They didn't have the time to like dive in and

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Speaker 1: ask why, you know, is it about Trump or is

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Speaker 1: it about politics? You know, if they, if, you know,

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Speaker 1: the church had supported some other candidate, would it bother

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Speaker 1: you as much? So it's unclear whether this is a

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Speaker 1: political issue or whether it's a theological issue, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of in that if we're going to split the

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Speaker 1: baby sort of way, right, and segment these things out.

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Speaker 1: But my sense is, you know, especially given the conversation

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Speaker 1: we recently had with William Kavanaugh that is yet to

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Speaker 1: be released or some of the conversations we've had with

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Speaker 1: Kevin Flatt about sacred social orders, that these things are

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Speaker 1: just deeply intertwined and that what we're starting to see

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Speaker 1: is that There's a rejection of this sort of rival

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Speaker 1: sacred social order that has said the church and politics

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Speaker 1: need to be joined at the hip. And more than

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Speaker 1: they need to be joined at the hip, that there

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Speaker 1: is a conservative political stance that the church has to take.

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Speaker 1: And it needs to toe that line almost disregarding anything else.

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Speaker 1: And so to me, if we're putting it in Kevin

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Speaker 1: Flatt's language, I think this is a rival sacred social

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Speaker 1: order issue that what maybe Gen Z is seeing is

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Speaker 1: that the church is no longer really reflecting, particularly in

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Speaker 1: this aspect, God's order. So I'll leave the preamble there,

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Speaker 1: and Ashish, let you weigh in a bit. I agree

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Speaker 1: that the issue is intertwined.

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Speaker 2: It's hard to separate the theological from the political.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: The immediate anecdote that comes to my mind is when

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Speaker 2: I was on the faculty somewhere, I was accused repeatedly

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Speaker 2: of being politically motivated for some of the things I

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Speaker 2: was saying, even though I never once advocated for a

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Speaker 2: political candidate party. I never told people to go vote

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Speaker 2: this way or that way. I never even told them

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Speaker 2: to vote. My arguments were theological, they were sociological, they

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Speaker 2: were philosophical, but Well, the person who most frequently wanted

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Speaker 2: to accuse me of being politically motivated one day was

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Speaker 2: sitting in a meeting and all of a sudden blurted out,

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Speaker 2: so in fairness, the conversation was on issues in abortion.

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Speaker 2: It was an attempted colloquium. And I think it's a

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Speaker 2: complicated issue. I also had learned that trying to nuance

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Speaker 2: in that environment was, you know, was mental and emotional suicide.

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Speaker 1: Let's say that.

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Speaker 2: So I didn't say much. I just sat there. I

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Speaker 2: asked a couple clarifying questions to a couple comments that

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Speaker 2: I thought were pretty bewildering. And I'll leave that at that.

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Speaker 2: I won't even give what those comments were. No, I'll

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Speaker 2: give one of them. One colleague said that the Old

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Speaker 2: Testament cited a biblical passage in which there was a

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Speaker 2: punishment given for a pregnant woman that was different for

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Speaker 2: the punishment given for a non-pregnant woman. And his conclusion was,

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Speaker 2: the Bible seems to take the life of the baby

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Speaker 2: inside the womb as more important than even the mother.

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Speaker 2: I can't make this stuff up. So I asked some

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Speaker 2: clarifying questions on things like that. But just to be clear,

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Speaker 2: I find that to be an utterly absurd and bizarre

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Speaker 2: takeaway from the passage. Now I don't even remember what

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Speaker 2: the passage was at this point. Someone else then piped

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Speaker 2: up and he said, same person who had been repeatedly

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Speaker 2: calling me politically motivated, he said, I don't understand how

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Speaker 2: anyone can vote for, at that point it was Joe Biden,

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Speaker 2: because Joe Biden is a murderer. Democrats are murderers. They

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Speaker 2: support abortion. They're killing babies. How can you vote for

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Speaker 2: someone like this? And all I thought they're thinking was, um,

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Speaker 2: I actually did respond to him, but, uh, All I

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Speaker 2: could think was, frankly, why is it that you can

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Speaker 2: make these overt statements about voting and who you should

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Speaker 2: and should not vote for on supposedly purely theological grounds

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Speaker 2: that are far more complicated than he was giving them

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Speaker 2: credence for? And I'm politically motivated, but you're not. Now,

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Speaker 2: that's one instance, but it is a pretty regular thing

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Speaker 2: that I've noticed. And I think historically, truthfully, this is

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Speaker 2: the Constantinian thesis, right, that And Hauerwas loves to talk

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Speaker 2: about this. Many others have built upon it. But the

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Speaker 2: idea that the church, in Hauerwas' case, made a bad move.

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Speaker 2: I tend to agree with Hauerwas, but we'll leave the

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Speaker 2: value judgment on for the moment. But the church made

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Speaker 2: a move, and a pretty decisive, significant move that shaped

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Speaker 2: much of the rest of its history, at least in

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Speaker 2: the Western world. The moment that the church... not just

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Speaker 2: accepted that Constantine had taken up the sign of the

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Speaker 2: key row, the first two letters of Christ in Greek

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Speaker 2: as his symbol to conquer by and his claim that

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Speaker 2: God had given him a vision to conquer in the symbol.

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Speaker 2: But specifically then when he takes up in three 25,

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Speaker 2: the mantle of being able to call the church to

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Speaker 2: a council to work out its issues with what became

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Speaker 2: the nice scene versus Aryan split.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Um, That's a pretty remarkable moment, right? Where we go

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Speaker 2: from the church having waves of persecution against it and

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Speaker 2: the church being a marginal community to we're in a

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Speaker 2: position now where the church has to decide whether they're

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Speaker 2: going to heed the call of the emperor to a

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Speaker 2: theological meeting. That is the ultimate beginning of accepting the

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Speaker 2: theological political intertwinement. And you can't go the rest of

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Speaker 2: Western church history without seeing it, right? The medieval period

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Speaker 2: is characterized, among other things, as this battle between papacy

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Speaker 2: and throne. Who annoys whom? Who affirms whom? There's this

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Speaker 2: period in the medieval period known as the Babylonian captivity

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Speaker 2: of the church where the political rivalry had resulted in,

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Speaker 2: at one point, three people having been claimed as the pope, right?

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Speaker 2: Three sets of cardinals electing three different popes And these

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Speaker 2: were all on political grounds. The Reformation in many ways,

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Speaker 2: especially the magisterial part of it, you can't untwine that

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Speaker 2: from political issues. You can't understand colonization, whether it be

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Speaker 2: the doctrine of discovery in the Catholic Church or the

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Speaker 2: parallel beliefs and opinions in various Protestant churches and countries,

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Speaker 2: and understanding colonialism and the carving out of the world

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Speaker 2: as we know it. And you can't understand the United States.

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Speaker 2: And the question here isn't whether the US was founded

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Speaker 2: as an explicitly Christian nation. There's a lot of important

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Speaker 2: nuance here. That's its own conversation. But you can't understand

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Speaker 2: Christian formation of the idea of America and within the

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Speaker 2: idea of America without understanding this deep sense of Christian

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Speaker 2: theology meaning political action and Christian political action meaning formation

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Speaker 2: of theological ideas. Now that's a really truncated look at it,

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Speaker 2: but it's impossible to get away from. And when we

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Speaker 2: come to the present, to sort of make the claims

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Speaker 2: that only one group that you don't like is politically motivated,

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Speaker 2: and I really don't think I'm politically motivated. by the way,

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Speaker 2: but people can tell me otherwise. But when you make

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Speaker 2: a claim that is overtly political, you're showing that your

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Speaker 2: colors play there, right? And I think when you have

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Speaker 2: that reality of this intertwining, this entanglement, it's going to

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Speaker 2: create a whole host of pressures. Why do we make

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Speaker 2: the theological decisions we do? Are they being coerced or

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Speaker 2: influenced at the very least by concerns of power, concerns

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Speaker 2: of donors, money? What leads those donors? What leads that money?

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Speaker 2: It's a complicated web.

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Speaker 1: I think I want to step it back just one

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Speaker 1: step because I think that part of the issue I

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Speaker 1: see is we should be pushing for, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to use Kevin Flatt's terms, I really like his sacred

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Speaker 1: social order sort of notion. And what a sacred social

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Speaker 1: order in my mind, and I think the way he

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Speaker 1: would describe it, or at least faithful to the way

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Speaker 1: he would describe it is, a social order arranges itself

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Speaker 1: such that it is reflecting the sacred order above. And

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Speaker 1: that social order then entails a variety of different things,

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Speaker 1: including laws, it includes You know, the way we interact

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Speaker 1: with God, it includes, you know, our use of time,

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Speaker 1: our relationship to space, like all these different sort of aspects.

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Speaker 1: It would include government as well. How are things governed?

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Speaker 1: And so there's in Christian sacred social order, which is,

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Speaker 1: I think, what all of us are really shooting for. Right.

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Speaker 1: We have a particular way of relating to government. And

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Speaker 1: I think that way is recognizing that God has given

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Speaker 1: the government a certain scope, or at least this is

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Speaker 1: the way I think about it. God has given the

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Speaker 1: government a certain scope of authority. And within that scope

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Speaker 1: of authority, when they're exercising their God-given authority in appropriate

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Speaker 1: ways within that scope of authority, Christians are told to

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Speaker 1: subject themselves to that. So we don't have to, for instance,

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Speaker 1: put up with a government that is constantly performing injustice, right?

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Speaker 1: We can sort of resist that by certain means, but

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Speaker 1: we can't just, you know, if the government's trying to

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Speaker 1: do good for us, we can't say, ah, we don't

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Speaker 1: want to deal with that. We're just going to answer

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Speaker 1: to God, right? The government is in some degree, some way,

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Speaker 1: shape or form, it is a vehicle that God is using.

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Speaker 1: And so again, that's sort of truncated. But I think

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Speaker 1: what's starting to happen is we're starting to pull in

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Speaker 1: political procedure and allowing that to shape our behavior and

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Speaker 1: our thought process. So we begin to think that what

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Speaker 1: we're trying to do is we're trying to arrange America

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Speaker 1: as the social order. And when we're trying to turn

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Speaker 1: America into the social order, that reflects the sacred order,

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Speaker 1: we do that through political procedure. But it turns out

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Speaker 1: that when we start using these political procedures, when we

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Speaker 1: start leveraging money, when we start lobbying, when we start

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Speaker 1: becoming advocacy groups, when we start to try to elect

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Speaker 1: particular officials, all of a sudden, without really noticing it,

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Speaker 1: we become disciples of something other than the way, the truth,

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Speaker 1: and the life of Jesus. And I think that Part

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Speaker 1: of what we're struggling with, at least part of what

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Speaker 1: I'm struggling with, is I don't want to say Christians

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Speaker 1: shouldn't participate in government. That's not at all what I

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Speaker 1: want to do. But I also want to say that

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Speaker 1: there's a way of being captured by our political apparatus

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Speaker 1: that deforms us. It conforms us to something other than

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Speaker 1: the image of Christ. And I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: times that's what we're seeing in these conversations. I think

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Speaker 1: this person you're talking about in the meeting who's very

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Speaker 1: happy to say you can't vote for Democrats because they're murderers,

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Speaker 1: is captured by that sort of political process and procedure,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to being held captive by the word of God.

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Speaker 1: I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I really could

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Speaker 1: care less who people vote for. I think what my

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Speaker 1: big concern is, is that people recognize God's word is

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Speaker 1: the final authority for life and faith, that they are

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Speaker 1: reasoning through that well, discerning who they should vote for,

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Speaker 1: whether they should vote, how often they should vote, should

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Speaker 1: they vote locally or nationally, like all those choices sit

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Speaker 1: underneath the governance of the word of God. I don't

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Speaker 1: think that it should be like hey, Christians, there's only

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Speaker 1: one side you could ever vote for, and if you

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Speaker 1: vote for the other side, you're anti-biblical. I think that

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Speaker 1: gets us into a real mess, and it creates, oddly,

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Speaker 1: a rival sacred social order to the kingdom of God.

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Speaker 1: We're now reflecting something that I don't actually think is

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Speaker 1: on earth as it is in heaven. I don't think

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Speaker 1: this is reflective of what God is doing. I think

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Speaker 1: that either way you go in any political issue, you're

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Speaker 1: running afoul of God's word because these systems, political, and

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Speaker 1: when I say systems, I mean these political parties are

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Speaker 1: going to bend away from God's order in different ways.

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Speaker 1: But they're both bending. There's no perfect choice here. Neither

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Speaker 1: are perfectly aligned with it. And thus they create these

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Speaker 1: different sort of sacred social orders. When I have these

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Speaker 1: political conversations, I find that when people tend to talk

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Speaker 1: like care for the poor, it automatically goes to welfare.

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Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's just a capture of the imagination

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Speaker 1: of the political system that we're in. Welfare is not

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Speaker 1: the only way to solve that, right? It goes to

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Speaker 1: communism or Marx or whatever, right? But those aren't the

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Speaker 1: only ways for us to solve this. These aren't the

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Speaker 1: only ways for us to address this. In fact, The

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Speaker 1: church is called to care for the poor multiple times

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Speaker 1: in scripture. One of my favorite passages, Romans 15, Paul's

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Speaker 1: been aching to go to Rome for forever. And he's like,

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Speaker 1: I finally have an opportunity to come to you. But first,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to deliver this gift from the Corinthians to

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Speaker 1: the poor in Jerusalem. And I may not make it back.

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Speaker 1: But he sees that as so crucial and important, partly

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Speaker 1: because I think he wants to care for the poor,

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Speaker 1: partly because he wants to demonstrate the unity of the church.

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Speaker 1: But either way, it's an example of of the church

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Speaker 1: caring for the poor that is not socialist. It's not

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Speaker 1: welfare system. It's not, you know, Marx. It's the church.

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Speaker 1: And so I just feel like we're sort of adopting

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Speaker 1: these procedures and these ways of thinking, um, that only

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Speaker 1: give us certain buttons to push and levers to pull.

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Speaker 1: And that that is a big part of the problem

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Speaker 1: we're having in these conversations.

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Speaker 2: So what I hear in the way that you're describing that, um,

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Speaker 2: makes me think of Augustine's City of God. And the

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Speaker 2: real issue he's trying to address there is this is

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Speaker 2: just after that Constantinian shift, right? Just after, you know,

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Speaker 2: about 100 years, roughly, after that. And in some ways,

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Speaker 2: the City of God is a magnus opum apologetic work

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Speaker 2: by Augustine responding to the remaining intellectual pagans who've said

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Speaker 2: the decline of Rome is because of you Christians.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: You Christians have undermined our traditional ways. That is what

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Speaker 2: built up this city and this empire. And specifically, that's

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Speaker 2: meant you've undermined the traditional gods that lifted it up.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 2: My understanding of Augustine is he's wanting to say, nah,

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Speaker 2: it's really because of Christians that we've lasted this long. Now,

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Speaker 2: I think the strength of Augustine's argument is in his

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Speaker 2: description of these two cities. I'll say to start out

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Speaker 2: that I actually disagree with Augustine. I do actually agree

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Speaker 2: that Christianity was a big reason for the demise of Rome.

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Speaker 2: But I think it's because of what Augustine says that

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Speaker 2: it's hidden within what he's saying. I think he missed

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Speaker 2: the entailment. And what he points out is that these

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Speaker 2: two cities have two sets of a citizenship with two

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Speaker 2: sets of allegiances. They're about different things. This isn't the

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Speaker 2: same kind of different things as if we describe the

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Speaker 2: United States versus, fill in the blank, Russia, China, Iran,

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Speaker 2: some other country where we have different constituents, different ideas.

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Speaker 2: We're vying for the same kind of power, the same

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Speaker 2: kind of wealth amid the same kind of global structures.

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Speaker 2: Those are rivalries within the same kind for who's going

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Speaker 2: to be preeminent. But what Augustine's describing is not that

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Speaker 2: kind of a rivalry between two citizens. but rather citizenships

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Speaker 2: that overlap. So you can have a Christian who's also

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Speaker 2: a Roman, but because they have two different priorities, it's

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Speaker 2: going to mean two different ways of engaging reality.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 2: So case in point might be like the early church.

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Speaker 2: They were pretty notorious in the Roman world in the

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Speaker 2: early church for Christians for refusing military service. And it's

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Speaker 2: because they had, frankly, a pacifist understanding of long before

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Speaker 2: we have the movement of pacifism we think of today

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Speaker 2: as politically motivated. These are Christians who said, our job

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Speaker 2: is not to take life. Our job is to bring healing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: When they were criticized for it by the Roman authorities,

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Speaker 2: and this was used as one of the markers to

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Speaker 2: show that they were subversive to the empire, and for pagans,

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Speaker 2: it was a marker later on to say, see, this

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Speaker 2: is one of the ways you subversed the empire. And

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Speaker 2: I actually think that's true in some ways, but their

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Speaker 2: response was, No, we're actually uplifting it because instead we

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Speaker 2: commit to prayer, and we commit to helping those who

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Speaker 2: are hurt.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Right?

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Speaker 2: But the goals were different, and they knew that that

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Speaker 2: meant for them that they could not be part of

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Speaker 2: the Roman military and its goals of conquering, its goals

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Speaker 2: of bringing under its controls, its goals of ordering creation

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Speaker 2: in a way that wasn't bringing life to all of creation,

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Speaker 2: but rather bringing some subservient to the good of a

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Speaker 2: few that supported Rome, right? Yeah. The idea of conflation

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Speaker 2: that we're talking about now that I'm hearing in what

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Speaker 2: you're saying is I don't hear that kind of distinction

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Speaker 2: being made, right? Occasionally there might be lip service to it,

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Speaker 2: but instead the idea of the pulling of the levers

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Speaker 2: of this system isn't just simply, well, these are the

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Speaker 2: levers available for this task that is deeply Christian, but

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Speaker 2: rather these are the levers that I need to make

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Speaker 2: sure are bent towards the will of the idea of

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Speaker 2: Christian empire.

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Speaker 1: Hmm.

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Speaker 2: And that's actually precisely the opposite of what, as you said, church,

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Speaker 2: the church was advocating early on, right? The idea of

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Speaker 2: Christian empire was, in this early stage, an oxymoron. Because

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Speaker 2: the very mechanism of empire entailed a certain idea of

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Speaker 2: emperor and king and power and control and hegemony, right?

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Speaker 2: And for Christians, it meant an overcoming of that sort

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Speaker 2: of hegemony, an overcoming of that sort of idea of

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Speaker 2: a certain kind of king, right? Right back to the

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Speaker 2: Old Testament. God doesn't want a king like the nations

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Speaker 2: among his covenant people. And the impulse that we're talking

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Speaker 2: about in this conflation in the present, which is long-rooted,

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Speaker 2: this isn't new, and that's kind of the point that

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Speaker 2: I'm trying to bring out, that it's not new, but

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Speaker 2: it's a conflation that is at odds with the text.

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Speaker 2: And so we find ourselves now having to do creative enterprises,

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Speaker 2: and I'm for creativity, but when the creativity is to

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Speaker 2: explain away The differences in goals, agendas, ideas of the world,

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Speaker 2: of creation, of what makes creation thrive. What we end

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Speaker 2: up with is still a kind of sacred social order, right?

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Speaker 2: But we now have a kind of sacred social order

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Speaker 2: in which the ideals of empire building are what the

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Speaker 2: church is playing with, and we no longer have an

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Speaker 2: idea of two cities. We have an idea of bending

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Speaker 2: the one city to our purposes that look strangely like

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Speaker 2: the purposes of empire building just with a cross on it, right?

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Speaker 2: It looks like Constantine, the hero.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. That's a sharper way of putting it

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Speaker 1: than I was explaining, but you're getting the gist of

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I think that we've become so enamored

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Speaker 1: with the world that we want that we're no longer

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Speaker 1: pursuing the pattern of the world that God has given us.

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Speaker 1: And so I take it back to like, as a

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Speaker 1: strange person, reference, but Exodus 31. Exodus 31 is the

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Speaker 1: first time that anyone is referenced as having been filled

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Speaker 1: with the Spirit of God. Now, there is a previous passage.

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Speaker 1: I think I'm citing the later one. I think it's

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Speaker 1: in Exodus 28, where Bezalel, same guy, is said to

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Speaker 1: have been filled with the Spirit of God. Moses is

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Speaker 1: given the pattern for the tabernacle that is to be built.

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Speaker 1: And then God tells him that Bezalel and Aholiab are

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Speaker 1: given the wisdom and the craftsmanship to make the tabernacle

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Speaker 1: the speck. And Bezalel is specifically said is filled with

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Speaker 1: the spirit of God in order to do this. And

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Speaker 1: so when you reference creativity, I think part of our

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Speaker 1: problem with creativity is that we're trying to be creative

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Speaker 1: in a way that is not patterned after something God

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Speaker 1: has given us. Our creativity should be constrained by God's vision,

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Speaker 1: not expanded with our own. Right? That kind of idea. So,

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Speaker 1: Bezalel doesn't get the option of, you know, adding a

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Speaker 1: second holy of holies to the temple. Right? There's only one.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how convenient having a second one might be.

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Speaker 1: There's only one. Because the creativity is in service of

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Speaker 1: a particular vision. It's in service of a particular pattern.

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Speaker 1: And I think that's part of what we're running into

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Speaker 1: here is that we are trying to do something by ourselves,

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Speaker 1: through our own power, for ourselves, however we want to

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Speaker 1: sort of describe that, that we should be waiting on

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Speaker 1: God to do. And in that waiting on God to

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Speaker 1: do it, we're doing something that very much is in

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Speaker 1: keeping with what the Christians in Rome were saying. No,

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Speaker 1: we're praying for the empire. We're lifting the empire up.

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Speaker 1: We're doing the things that God has told us to do.

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Speaker 1: And that's our best strategy. And guess what? It's also

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Speaker 1: your best strategy. And so I think that there's a

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Speaker 1: sense in which we've just sort of lost this notion

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Speaker 1: that governments are not trivial governments. but they are to

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Speaker 1: some degree provisional. I think, you know, Acts 17, you know,

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Speaker 1: God establishes these things within a certain degree of boundaries and,

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Speaker 1: you know, with certain limitations. But I think at the

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Speaker 1: end of the day, where I kind of sit, this

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Speaker 1: conflation of the conservatism with the Christianity is very much

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Speaker 1: driven by the selective use of biblical texts and that

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Speaker 1: selective use of biblical texts on some level undercuts the

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Speaker 1: authority of the scriptures. I think it's very difficult. And

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Speaker 1: I know this isn't the way we usually think of it.

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Speaker 1: We usually think of it as I'm going to wholesale

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Speaker 1: reject the Bible because Right. That's definitely a rejection of

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Speaker 1: of that authority. But if I just say, no, I'm

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Speaker 1: only going to I'm only going to listen to the

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Speaker 1: parts of the Bible that are really convenient for me.

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Speaker 1: That's also a rejection of its authority. And so there

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Speaker 1: isn't it isn't a question of. I guess what I

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Speaker 1: want to make sure people don't hear me saying is,

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Speaker 1: you know, be liberal, don't be conservative. I think the

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Speaker 1: liberal side has the exact same problems, right? They're just

429
00:26:46,890 --> 00:26:53,150
Speaker 1: sort of mirror images of each other. But the point is,

430
00:26:55,690 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be following the doctrines of conservatism or liberalism.

431
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:04,859
Speaker 1: We should be following the doctrines that are taught in

432
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,500
Speaker 1: the scriptures. We should be developing a shared understanding of

433
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:11,370
Speaker 1: what our lives are supposed to look like on this earth.

434
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:15,220
Speaker 1: from that text. Some of those are going to entail

435
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,139
Speaker 1: political decisions, but they're never going to be able to

436
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,820
Speaker 1: align us with a political party. One of the things

437
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,980
Speaker 1: I mentioned when I was at this Politics in the

438
00:27:25,010 --> 00:27:28,190
Speaker 1: Pews event with Christian Post a couple of years ago now,

439
00:27:29,410 --> 00:27:34,630
Speaker 1: I basically said, Christians can be conservative. I don't really

440
00:27:34,650 --> 00:27:39,850
Speaker 1: have a problem with Christians holding some conservative values. But

441
00:27:39,890 --> 00:27:43,290
Speaker 1: I don't think that conservatism In fact, I think I

442
00:27:43,470 --> 00:27:47,630
Speaker 1: said it even stronger than this. Conservatism can't encompass Christianity

443
00:27:47,650 --> 00:27:53,360
Speaker 1: because it has no place for Christ. And I mean,

444
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: I think that's the real issue. Conservatism isn't cruciform. It's

445
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:01,550
Speaker 1: not following Jesus. It's not patterned after him in any

446
00:28:01,590 --> 00:28:05,109
Speaker 1: particular way. There are points where it may intersect and

447
00:28:05,150 --> 00:28:08,450
Speaker 1: you see these sort of points of contact where you say, oh, okay, yeah,

448
00:28:08,490 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 1: that part of conservatism makes sense with Christianity. You could

449
00:28:11,380 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: do the same with liberalism. But neither of them has

450
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:18,139
Speaker 1: real space for Christ. Neither of them cares one way

451
00:28:18,180 --> 00:28:23,380
Speaker 1: or the other whether we are conformed to Christ's image, right?

452
00:28:23,940 --> 00:28:28,130
Speaker 1: That's sort of incidental to those philosophies. If we can

453
00:28:28,170 --> 00:28:31,179
Speaker 1: be conformed to the image of Christ, but still uphold

454
00:28:31,220 --> 00:28:34,780
Speaker 1: all the conservative doctrines or all the liberal doctrines, that's great.

455
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: But what Christians are called to is something very different.

456
00:28:38,900 --> 00:28:42,140
Speaker 1: It's the reverse of that. We're to be cruciform, and

457
00:28:42,180 --> 00:28:45,290
Speaker 1: then we're to interact in the world in ways that

458
00:28:46,510 --> 00:28:52,430
Speaker 1: deny these other entities any level of sway over how

459
00:28:52,490 --> 00:28:53,590
Speaker 1: we think or how we behave.

460
00:28:55,190 --> 00:28:57,850
Speaker 2: I appreciate the way that you describe the conservative and

461
00:28:57,910 --> 00:29:01,970
Speaker 2: liberal as, I think you said, negative images of each other.

462
00:29:01,990 --> 00:29:03,970
Speaker 2: I tend to say two sides of the same coin,

463
00:29:04,990 --> 00:29:07,230
Speaker 2: by which I don't mean that they're saying the same thing.

464
00:29:07,990 --> 00:29:10,810
Speaker 2: I mean that they belong to the same kind of program.

465
00:29:11,750 --> 00:29:15,380
Speaker 2: And it's that program that I think is ultimately at stake, right?

466
00:29:16,230 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 2: In this country, most Christians tend to be on the

467
00:29:19,340 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 2: conservative end. But that doesn't mean that we've solved the

468
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 2: problem if we make most Christians on the liberal end. Right. Right.

469
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,630
Speaker 2: conservative and liberal, right? Where we have to ask the

470
00:29:33,670 --> 00:29:37,410
Speaker 2: question of conservative what? To what? What is the full premier?

471
00:29:37,550 --> 00:29:41,410
Speaker 2: Progressive to what? And for both of them, the idea

472
00:29:41,650 --> 00:29:49,260
Speaker 2: is empire building. It's even a related image of empire

473
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 2: building insofar as what is it that we want to create?

474
00:29:52,660 --> 00:29:55,340
Speaker 2: What are the values that we're working off of historically

475
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:58,710
Speaker 2: or tweaking historically that we're trying to get there? What

476
00:29:58,770 --> 00:30:01,540
Speaker 2: is it that we We desire out of people. What

477
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 2: is our view towards the land, right? It's worth noting

478
00:30:04,940 --> 00:30:09,770
Speaker 2: that progressive American regimes and Canadian regimes were involved in

479
00:30:09,810 --> 00:30:13,330
Speaker 2: trying to suppress Native Hawaiians who were saying, you cannot

480
00:30:13,510 --> 00:30:18,350
Speaker 2: use our holy land to build your observatory. And the

481
00:30:18,390 --> 00:30:21,630
Speaker 2: language that was returned to them was, we need to

482
00:30:21,750 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 2: use this land because it is one of the most

483
00:30:24,470 --> 00:30:27,420
Speaker 2: ideal places for us to get deep looks into space

484
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:32,890
Speaker 2: and without having to launch into orbit another grand telescope, right?

485
00:30:33,390 --> 00:30:36,630
Speaker 2: So the idea of caring about other peoples that is

486
00:30:36,790 --> 00:30:40,300
Speaker 2: often tied to liberalism or progressivism apparently comes to end

487
00:30:40,340 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 2: when that program is at risk. Now, my point in

488
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 2: saying this is that as two sides of the same coin,

489
00:30:49,740 --> 00:30:51,940
Speaker 2: we got to ask, what is that program? And that

490
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,220
Speaker 2: gets us to this notion of the city of God

491
00:30:54,260 --> 00:30:57,270
Speaker 2: and the city of humanity, right? The structures of this world.

492
00:30:58,410 --> 00:31:01,970
Speaker 2: Where we do recognize it's not we can choose the

493
00:31:02,010 --> 00:31:04,530
Speaker 2: city of God and ignore the other. We live within

494
00:31:04,570 --> 00:31:09,270
Speaker 2: them both. But the tensions that are created are real, right? Now,

495
00:31:09,310 --> 00:31:11,300
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of things entailed within this

496
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:14,940
Speaker 2: that is worth bringing up in other conversations because we

497
00:31:14,980 --> 00:31:18,500
Speaker 2: have to ask the question then historically, who is elevated?

498
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,860
Speaker 2: Who is not elevated? Has that changed in the present?

499
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 2: Do we think it's changed? Has it really changed? Or

500
00:31:26,700 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 2: does it just look a little differently? I think those

501
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 2: are questions worth doing in an episode into itself. But

502
00:31:34,140 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 2: what we gain within this is a recognition then of

503
00:31:37,140 --> 00:31:42,250
Speaker 2: even when we say we're Christians who have certain conservative ideals,

504
00:31:42,370 --> 00:31:45,910
Speaker 2: certain progressive ideals, we still have to ask the question

505
00:31:45,990 --> 00:31:50,230
Speaker 2: of where did those ideals come from? So perhaps one

506
00:31:50,270 --> 00:31:52,510
Speaker 2: of those ideals is we need to take care of

507
00:31:52,550 --> 00:31:55,350
Speaker 2: the poor. And that's why we have a program like Welfare.

508
00:31:56,900 --> 00:32:00,420
Speaker 2: But to your point, that's a command given to the church.

509
00:32:01,500 --> 00:32:03,460
Speaker 2: So if we want to say the government is not

510
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 2: in that business and that's not what tax dollars should

511
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,990
Speaker 2: go to, we haven't solved the question given to the

512
00:32:09,030 --> 00:32:10,690
Speaker 2: church of why aren't you doing.

513
00:32:12,390 --> 00:32:12,550
Speaker 1: It?

514
00:32:13,190 --> 00:32:15,270
Speaker 2: And I would argue that perhaps the reason that has

515
00:32:15,330 --> 00:32:17,010
Speaker 2: had to be taken up by the government is because

516
00:32:17,090 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 2: the church is not doing it. That's an abandonment of

517
00:32:21,140 --> 00:32:26,420
Speaker 2: the requirements of citizenship. or the markers of citizenship within

518
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 2: the city of God, in Augustine's language again. And that's

519
00:32:31,180 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 2: where the conversation has to be. That's what churches need

520
00:32:33,580 --> 00:32:36,380
Speaker 2: to be attentive to. What is this text saying? Not

521
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 2: just what do we want the text to say, or

522
00:32:38,500 --> 00:32:40,540
Speaker 2: what are the parts of the text that bolster our

523
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:45,140
Speaker 2: particular doctrinal formulations that give us mastery or control or

524
00:32:45,180 --> 00:32:48,700
Speaker 2: power or influence or whatever. What does the text say?

525
00:32:49,950 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 2: And that's one of my deepest concerns that goes on

526
00:32:52,180 --> 00:32:57,940
Speaker 2: within evangelicalism, that for all the concern formally about interpreting scripture,

527
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 2: I actually find that if you try to engage difficult

528
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,990
Speaker 2: passages of which scholars have noted tons of different ways

529
00:33:06,030 --> 00:33:08,870
Speaker 2: of looking at a text, if you try to address

530
00:33:09,090 --> 00:33:12,770
Speaker 2: trying to understand that text, you get met with a

531
00:33:12,870 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 2: stonewall of, well, that's political motivation here, or that's heresy there.

532
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:20,850
Speaker 2: And I okay, there are things that the church has

533
00:33:20,890 --> 00:33:26,450
Speaker 2: historically called heresy, but let's not arbitrarily expand those boundaries, right?

534
00:33:26,790 --> 00:33:29,610
Speaker 2: What's significant about the church having called things heresy was

535
00:33:30,650 --> 00:33:35,010
Speaker 2: the sheer buy-in from vast geographic spaces to recognize together,

536
00:33:35,750 --> 00:33:37,630
Speaker 2: not for one person to look at another and say,

537
00:33:37,690 --> 00:33:39,410
Speaker 2: you're not saying the thing that I want you to

538
00:33:39,470 --> 00:33:42,210
Speaker 2: say or that my community has decided for a long time,

539
00:33:42,270 --> 00:33:46,060
Speaker 2: and that's therefore heresy. Whereas conservatives like to say, you're

540
00:33:46,100 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 2: just being a liberal. do you know what a liberal

541
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 2: is why is this a two-dimensional spectrum here why are

542
00:33:52,340 --> 00:33:55,420
Speaker 2: there not more options what if i'm not working off

543
00:33:55,460 --> 00:34:00,030
Speaker 2: of your presumption about the goals of citizenship right then

544
00:34:00,050 --> 00:34:02,350
Speaker 2: i'm not a liberal right or on the other side

545
00:34:02,450 --> 00:34:06,150
Speaker 2: liberals love to call anyone more conservative than them fundamentalists

546
00:34:07,030 --> 00:34:08,210
Speaker 2: need to break it to you but there are a

547
00:34:08,250 --> 00:34:11,390
Speaker 2: lot of liberal fundamentalists if we want to be true

548
00:34:11,410 --> 00:34:15,569
Speaker 2: to the language of fundamentals right yeah The church needs

549
00:34:15,590 --> 00:34:17,049
Speaker 2: to be attentive to the church. It needs to be

550
00:34:17,090 --> 00:34:21,529
Speaker 2: attentive to the things that it says it's attentive to,

551
00:34:21,610 --> 00:34:24,189
Speaker 2: like scripture. It needs to be attentive to history, both

552
00:34:25,070 --> 00:34:28,259
Speaker 2: positively and negatively, right? We need to learn from history.

553
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:30,700
Speaker 2: We need to be honest and repentant about our past

554
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,100
Speaker 2: so that we can move forward, not merely repeating.

555
00:34:35,180 --> 00:34:38,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think part of that, you know, we've

556
00:34:38,020 --> 00:34:39,819
Speaker 1: sort of come through that, you know, you're saying be

557
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:42,779
Speaker 1: honest and attentive to your past so that we don't

558
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:45,819
Speaker 1: repeat it. I think sometimes people hear that it gets

559
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,860
Speaker 1: tied into, again, these sort of governmental or policy concerns

560
00:34:49,900 --> 00:34:53,360
Speaker 1: about like paying reparations or something like that, like very

561
00:34:53,380 --> 00:35:03,870
Speaker 1: particular policy issues. I can remember reading Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi,

562
00:35:03,950 --> 00:35:08,370
Speaker 1: thank you. And there's a line in the book, and

563
00:35:08,650 --> 00:35:11,669
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing it, so I'm hoping I'm getting this right.

564
00:35:11,770 --> 00:35:15,469
Speaker 1: It was something like, The only way you can be

565
00:35:15,510 --> 00:35:19,469
Speaker 1: anti-racist is to be for the payment of reparations. And

566
00:35:19,489 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 1: it's like that sort of closure, I think, when you

567
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: say we need to attend to our history, that's what

568
00:35:24,420 --> 00:35:29,919
Speaker 1: people sort of ultimately go to. But I don't actually think, again,

569
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: that's what the Bible is teaching us. You can cite

570
00:35:33,700 --> 00:35:37,220
Speaker 1: numerous examples in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, where

571
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 1: there's a looking back on the mistakes that Israel has made.

572
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:42,910
Speaker 1: and an encouragement for the church not to make those

573
00:35:42,930 --> 00:35:47,709
Speaker 1: same mistakes. There's this sort of cautionary tale that comes

574
00:35:47,770 --> 00:35:52,170
Speaker 1: along with Israel's life and the failures that they exhibit

575
00:35:52,410 --> 00:35:56,180
Speaker 1: in their life. That is then the church is called

576
00:35:56,320 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 1: not to repeat that pattern. And I just, so I

577
00:36:00,420 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 1: find it interesting when we get kind of stuck in

578
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:05,800
Speaker 1: that loop, which I can understand why people are leery

579
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:08,170
Speaker 1: of getting stuck, you know, like, They don't want to

580
00:36:08,210 --> 00:36:10,190
Speaker 1: agree to some of these things, and they don't want

581
00:36:10,210 --> 00:36:16,290
Speaker 1: to get stuck in that sort of, hey, this very

582
00:36:16,330 --> 00:36:19,210
Speaker 1: specific thing is what has to change. But at the

583
00:36:19,250 --> 00:36:22,109
Speaker 1: same time, to your point, we do have to learn

584
00:36:22,130 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: from our patterns of history. And part of that, part

585
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,760
Speaker 1: of what we're learning from those patterns of history is, look,

586
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:31,939
Speaker 1: this aspect of our society was not aligned with God's order,

587
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: and we need to be realigned to something different. Um, it's,

588
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,900
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily, Hey, we have to make up for

589
00:36:39,940 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: all these things in the past. Part of it is

590
00:36:42,180 --> 00:36:45,990
Speaker 1: just in order for us to be different in the world,

591
00:36:46,790 --> 00:36:49,010
Speaker 1: we have to make sure that we're not just going

592
00:36:49,110 --> 00:36:53,490
Speaker 1: along with the flow and never seeing the problems that

593
00:36:53,850 --> 00:36:57,950
Speaker 1: we're living into on a day-to-day basis. Um, and so

594
00:36:57,989 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: that analysis I think is really crucial. Um, One of

595
00:37:02,219 --> 00:37:05,489
Speaker 1: the things I'll throw out there, you had mentioned, you're

596
00:37:05,510 --> 00:37:08,649
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about the church's abdication of care

597
00:37:08,670 --> 00:37:12,170
Speaker 1: for the poor as being part of the problem or

598
00:37:12,230 --> 00:37:14,910
Speaker 1: part of the impetus for why welfare has to come in.

599
00:37:15,530 --> 00:37:19,650
Speaker 1: I've done some research on Engel versus Vitale. It was

600
00:37:19,730 --> 00:37:24,319
Speaker 1: the court case where prayer was banned from public schools.

601
00:37:25,610 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 1: And people were really frustrated by this. But I don't know.

602
00:37:29,969 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: I've been to prayer meetings at churches that I've attended previously,

603
00:37:32,980 --> 00:37:35,140
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, three people on a Wednesday night.

604
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: And so as frustrated as Christians got about the elimination

605
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: of prayer from public schools, and as much as we're

606
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:48,020
Speaker 1: starting to hear sort of rumblings about bringing some of

607
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,620
Speaker 1: those things back, let's post this kind of commandments. Let's

608
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 1: bring prayer back into public schools. Let's, let's put Bible

609
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:58,670
Speaker 1: back into textbooks. Um, You know, that sort of is

610
00:37:58,730 --> 00:38:00,830
Speaker 1: what it is, right? I don't feel like I have

611
00:38:00,850 --> 00:38:02,450
Speaker 1: the time to weigh in on all that right now.

612
00:38:03,410 --> 00:38:06,190
Speaker 1: But I guess my point is, nobody seems all that

613
00:38:06,230 --> 00:38:08,810
Speaker 1: upset about the three people at the Wednesday night prayer meeting.

614
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:14,220
Speaker 1: And I think that's so interesting because that is the church's,

615
00:38:14,260 --> 00:38:18,740
Speaker 1: that is sort of the, that is the church's vocation, right?

616
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:23,430
Speaker 1: Show up, study the word, pray, like do the hard

617
00:38:23,489 --> 00:38:27,589
Speaker 1: work of faithfulness. Don't try to outsource this all to

618
00:38:27,610 --> 00:38:32,350
Speaker 1: the government because the government doesn't exactly have that particular,

619
00:38:32,370 --> 00:38:36,250
Speaker 1: they're not, the government has no vested concern or vested

620
00:38:37,010 --> 00:38:41,710
Speaker 1: interest in conforming us to the image of Christ. And

621
00:38:41,750 --> 00:38:44,250
Speaker 1: so anything it's going to do is going to be

622
00:38:44,850 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: in service of civil advancement. Not saying those two can't overlap,

623
00:38:51,420 --> 00:38:54,500
Speaker 1: not saying they're mutually exclusive, but the reality is that

624
00:38:55,340 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: If the church wants to pray, it doesn't need permission

625
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 1: to pray in public schools. It can pray whenever it wants, right?

626
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:07,830
Speaker 1: But we've sort of lost the lack. We've lost the

627
00:39:07,870 --> 00:39:12,489
Speaker 1: coordination necessary to do that as a people to a

628
00:39:12,510 --> 00:39:15,930
Speaker 1: large extent. And so many times what we see as

629
00:39:15,989 --> 00:39:19,890
Speaker 1: sort of national prayer gatherings are just that. They're prayer

630
00:39:19,910 --> 00:39:27,180
Speaker 1: gatherings arranged by the nations. where we're involved as Christians,

631
00:39:27,300 --> 00:39:31,710
Speaker 1: but so are you know, Jews, Muslims, you know, everybody

632
00:39:31,930 --> 00:39:36,410
Speaker 1: is involved. The church isn't doing that. The church is

633
00:39:36,489 --> 00:39:41,900
Speaker 1: involved in that. We're not coordinating that. We are coordinated

634
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:48,660
Speaker 1: into it. And it's just such an interesting sort of, um, challenge,

635
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:51,840
Speaker 1: I think, for the church to face up is to say,

636
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: we need to be better about coordinating amongst ourselves and

637
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:58,480
Speaker 1: making sure that the body of Christ doesn't look like

638
00:39:58,540 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: a gawky teenager who just, you know, grew seven inches

639
00:40:01,860 --> 00:40:04,839
Speaker 1: in a year and hasn't grown into his, you know,

640
00:40:04,860 --> 00:40:07,890
Speaker 1: his limbs yet. Like we need to be, we need

641
00:40:07,910 --> 00:40:11,370
Speaker 1: to have that fluidity about us, right? Where we're moving

642
00:40:11,430 --> 00:40:14,230
Speaker 1: and addressing and adapting to these other, you know, these

643
00:40:14,270 --> 00:40:16,630
Speaker 1: things that we're seeing in society in service of Christ.

644
00:40:18,489 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that never happens, but I am saying

645
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: that I think we're being out-coordinated in a number of

646
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:29,379
Speaker 1: different areas by a governmental bureaucracy.

647
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:34,890
Speaker 2: I see you, and I'm going to raise you a

648
00:40:34,930 --> 00:40:36,050
Speaker 2: tad bit more cynicism.

649
00:40:36,910 --> 00:40:37,420
Speaker 1: Go for it.

650
00:40:39,670 --> 00:40:43,489
Speaker 2: It's not just that expecting the government to do this, that,

651
00:40:43,530 --> 00:40:47,150
Speaker 2: and the other for us or to educate us. is

652
00:40:47,190 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 2: an incomplete work, or to expect government to make policies

653
00:40:52,020 --> 00:40:56,100
Speaker 2: for us is an incomplete work. It's also an agenda-oriented work.

654
00:40:56,780 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 2: The government has no vested interest in helping us understand issues.

655
00:41:02,980 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 2: The government, divided into parties, has a vested interest in

656
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:12,230
Speaker 2: recruiting our support. And the blinder, the better. And so

657
00:41:12,489 --> 00:41:16,660
Speaker 2: part of the task of recognizing what seemed like really

658
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 2: common sense things of we're, we're making a big deal

659
00:41:21,340 --> 00:41:28,780
Speaker 2: out of prayer in school, but we're not actually praying, right?

660
00:41:28,860 --> 00:41:31,020
Speaker 2: We're not praying on Wednesday nights. So why do you

661
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:32,580
Speaker 2: care about praying before math?

662
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: Right.

663
00:41:34,580 --> 00:41:38,580
Speaker 2: You know, or what's to stop you from praying before

664
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:43,280
Speaker 2: math or what's to stop you from grabbing your three friends.

665
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,550
Speaker 2: And as you walk into class, Saying a quick prayer.

666
00:41:48,730 --> 00:41:53,430
Speaker 2: Isn't that the point? That's not a government problem in

667
00:41:53,469 --> 00:41:59,459
Speaker 2: the sense of we can't do something that we need

668
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,380
Speaker 2: to be able to do. It's that the government has

669
00:42:02,420 --> 00:42:06,860
Speaker 2: no vested interest in saying, hey, you have other options.

670
00:42:07,460 --> 00:42:09,700
Speaker 2: But I think even on a more cynical note than

671
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:14,670
Speaker 2: that even is the fact that I mentioned, I just

672
00:42:14,710 --> 00:42:17,460
Speaker 2: used the example of welfare, and I It's learning from

673
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,580
Speaker 2: the past, but there's even more to learn from it, right?

674
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:25,290
Speaker 2: It's to understand why are these issues here that are

675
00:42:25,310 --> 00:42:28,750
Speaker 2: dividing us? It's worth looking into the birth of welfare,

676
00:42:28,810 --> 00:42:32,109
Speaker 2: and it's worth looking into all the pressures that went

677
00:42:32,150 --> 00:42:34,469
Speaker 2: behind it, right? Among other pressures that were into it

678
00:42:34,510 --> 00:42:37,550
Speaker 2: was that it was a program that was supposed to

679
00:42:37,590 --> 00:42:42,330
Speaker 2: be part of FDR's New Deal, and it was something

680
00:42:42,370 --> 00:42:48,480
Speaker 2: that was largely criticized and left out or truncated because

681
00:42:48,580 --> 00:42:51,820
Speaker 2: of the people who wanted to say, you know, the

682
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:53,940
Speaker 2: sort of standard lines we know of, if you don't work,

683
00:42:53,980 --> 00:42:56,759
Speaker 2: you don't eat. But the same people who were saying

684
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 2: that were the people who were getting government handouts in

685
00:42:59,450 --> 00:43:05,650
Speaker 2: order to buy houses. So the real question worth investigating,

686
00:43:05,690 --> 00:43:07,650
Speaker 2: that again, the government has no interest in teaching you.

687
00:43:07,670 --> 00:43:10,050
Speaker 2: It's just not part of their task, nor is it

688
00:43:10,090 --> 00:43:14,149
Speaker 2: in their vested interest. But we can learn history. Who

689
00:43:14,510 --> 00:43:17,830
Speaker 2: were these people? and I'll leave it to myself for

690
00:43:17,870 --> 00:43:19,730
Speaker 2: the moment, I know the answer, but who were these

691
00:43:19,810 --> 00:43:24,450
Speaker 2: people that were happy to receive government handouts so that

692
00:43:24,710 --> 00:43:31,129
Speaker 2: they could begin wealth accumulation, but weren't willing to give

693
00:43:31,150 --> 00:43:32,930
Speaker 2: it to these other people? Who were those people that

694
00:43:32,950 --> 00:43:35,410
Speaker 2: they didn't want the money to go to, that they

695
00:43:35,430 --> 00:43:36,969
Speaker 2: were wanting to say, if you don't work, you don't eat?

696
00:43:37,260 --> 00:43:38,989
Speaker 2: Could we say, if you don't work, you don't get house?

697
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,339
Speaker 1: I mean, I... Feels like we could.

698
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 2: The same sorts of things can go into.

699
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:44,580
Speaker 1: All sorts of issues, right?

700
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:52,170
Speaker 2: How did... 85% of American Christians become synonymous with the

701
00:43:52,190 --> 00:43:55,310
Speaker 2: Republican Party. What happened in the 1970s when that wasn't true?

702
00:43:56,210 --> 00:43:56,410
Speaker 1: Yeah.

703
00:43:56,840 --> 00:44:00,020
Speaker 2: Why is one issue suddenly the only issue that's born

704
00:44:00,060 --> 00:44:04,259
Speaker 2: in that movement? Which, by the way, was seen at

705
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 2: the time to be, ironically, a Catholic issue among evangelicals.

706
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,049
Speaker 2: Evangelicals refused to weigh in on it. In fact, they

707
00:44:12,070 --> 00:44:13,709
Speaker 2: said it's a complicated issue, right?

708
00:44:14,350 --> 00:44:14,569
Speaker 1: Yeah.

709
00:44:15,690 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 2: Why is it that we have... Houses built the places

710
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:21,580
Speaker 2: they are. Roads built the way they are. Highways built

711
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:22,919
Speaker 2: the way they are. If you go to the south

712
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 2: side of Chicago, the highways are built as walls. You

713
00:44:26,500 --> 00:44:30,359
Speaker 2: go to the north side of Chicago, they're built on beams.

714
00:44:30,430 --> 00:44:31,259
Speaker 2: They're not as walls.

715
00:44:31,620 --> 00:44:31,950
Speaker 1: Why?

716
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 2: Why is that the case? This is the sort of

717
00:44:33,930 --> 00:44:36,529
Speaker 2: hard work of doing the history, and you might say,

718
00:44:36,570 --> 00:44:39,150
Speaker 2: I don't know where to find it. We probably have

719
00:44:39,190 --> 00:44:41,790
Speaker 2: people around us that can help us do the research.

720
00:44:41,810 --> 00:44:44,410
Speaker 2: We're not all trained historians, but we have people around

721
00:44:44,450 --> 00:44:46,370
Speaker 2: us that can help us do the work. And part

722
00:44:46,390 --> 00:44:49,950
Speaker 2: of that is beginning to help us understand that there

723
00:44:50,030 --> 00:44:52,730
Speaker 2: really was a motive and agenda behind these different sorts

724
00:44:52,750 --> 00:44:57,090
Speaker 2: of things. And do we really want to tie or

725
00:44:57,170 --> 00:45:00,340
Speaker 2: conflate the fullness of our Christian identity with these sorts

726
00:45:00,380 --> 00:45:04,450
Speaker 2: of things? My answer is, I hope not. And that's

727
00:45:04,469 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 2: a very different conversation than saying we also have civic responsibilities.

728
00:45:08,540 --> 00:45:12,140
Speaker 2: And perhaps that civic responsibility leads us to, with a

729
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:16,649
Speaker 2: well-informed and robust wrestling system, Determine who to vote for.

730
00:45:17,130 --> 00:45:17,310
Speaker 1: Right.

731
00:45:17,370 --> 00:45:22,270
Speaker 2: But that robust wrestling is very different than the one box,

732
00:45:23,610 --> 00:45:28,010
Speaker 2: one size fits all truncated failure to understand the depths

733
00:45:28,050 --> 00:45:31,109
Speaker 2: of issues. And now we all suddenly vote the same

734
00:45:31,150 --> 00:45:34,550
Speaker 2: way because one group of people had a vested interest

735
00:45:34,610 --> 00:45:36,750
Speaker 2: in getting us to be convinced that's who we should

736
00:45:36,770 --> 00:45:38,090
Speaker 2: vote for. Yeah.

737
00:45:38,110 --> 00:45:41,950
Speaker 1: And it's very different than the sort of advocacy that

738
00:45:41,969 --> 00:45:44,940
Speaker 1: we see. It's very different than the sort of campaigning

739
00:45:44,980 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 1: that we see. Um, it was interesting again, you know,

740
00:45:49,540 --> 00:45:51,620
Speaker 1: I think it was back in 2024 when I did this,

741
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:56,450
Speaker 1: but the Republican position had just changed. Um, so that

742
00:45:56,469 --> 00:45:58,830
Speaker 1: it was no longer a hard line on abortion, but

743
00:45:58,870 --> 00:46:01,009
Speaker 1: that they wanted to make sure that these weren't being

744
00:46:01,050 --> 00:46:04,790
Speaker 1: done too early or I'm sorry, too late. So they

745
00:46:04,830 --> 00:46:09,350
Speaker 1: were now no longer advocating for a strict pro-life position.

746
00:46:10,030 --> 00:46:15,490
Speaker 1: They were advocating for, um, An early term abortion position.

747
00:46:17,739 --> 00:46:23,100
Speaker 1: And yet the people who were and who had in

748
00:46:23,140 --> 00:46:26,450
Speaker 1: the past advocated for the Republicans just continue to move

749
00:46:26,510 --> 00:46:32,250
Speaker 1: on that forward. It was a really interesting moment. Now,

750
00:46:33,110 --> 00:46:35,950
Speaker 1: the way I think about that is, you know, in

751
00:46:35,969 --> 00:46:38,470
Speaker 1: the way that Jesus talks about the law, the law

752
00:46:38,950 --> 00:46:41,739
Speaker 1: is not intended to legislate the ideal. The law is

753
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,980
Speaker 1: often intended to ensure that we don't go off the

754
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: rails because if we don't have some sort of restraints,

755
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:52,610
Speaker 1: we'll be more and more and more evil. And so

756
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,790
Speaker 1: I don't have a real problem sitting back and saying, well,

757
00:46:56,890 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: from a legislative perspective, It does make sense to restrain

758
00:47:01,660 --> 00:47:04,899
Speaker 1: this if you can't stop it, right? If it's going

759
00:47:04,940 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: to happen, it needs to happen within a certain degree

760
00:47:07,020 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: of restraints, and there needs to be punishment outside of

761
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:13,330
Speaker 1: those constraints. Ideally, from a theological perspective, I prefer it

762
00:47:13,350 --> 00:47:16,630
Speaker 1: didn't happen at all. But legislatively, you look at it

763
00:47:16,650 --> 00:47:19,770
Speaker 1: and you say the law can only do so much,

764
00:47:20,010 --> 00:47:22,530
Speaker 1: and then other things have to kick in. And so

765
00:47:22,910 --> 00:47:25,340
Speaker 1: it's just one of those moments where I can remember

766
00:47:25,420 --> 00:47:29,230
Speaker 1: distinctly sitting back and going, yeah, my theological convictions about

767
00:47:29,250 --> 00:47:32,550
Speaker 1: this issue don't hinge on whether or not America passes

768
00:47:32,610 --> 00:47:36,750
Speaker 1: this very specific law or makes this very specific precedence

769
00:47:36,790 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court. And it doesn't necessarily have to

770
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,819
Speaker 1: entail me voting one way or the other, right? But

771
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:46,980
Speaker 1: you can kind of hold the two in tension and

772
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:51,910
Speaker 1: recognize that there are different ways to attack the issue,

773
00:47:52,070 --> 00:47:56,550
Speaker 1: to approach the issue, right, that may actually be effective.

774
00:47:57,500 --> 00:48:03,529
Speaker 1: And so when the Republican position changed, I felt like

775
00:48:03,570 --> 00:48:10,330
Speaker 1: that was, oddly, a more consistent way of looking at

776
00:48:10,390 --> 00:48:13,180
Speaker 1: it than of trying to think that we are going

777
00:48:13,260 --> 00:48:17,060
Speaker 1: to legislate this sort of act that we find reprehensible

778
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,419
Speaker 1: out of existence. I don't know that that was ever

779
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:24,150
Speaker 1: realistic before. And so it was just interesting to watch

780
00:48:24,250 --> 00:48:27,910
Speaker 1: the folks who were in that sort of Republican mode.

781
00:48:29,250 --> 00:48:33,009
Speaker 1: They didn't blink. They just kept running at it. And

782
00:48:34,969 --> 00:48:40,890
Speaker 1: it definitely suggested something to me about their convictions about

783
00:48:40,930 --> 00:48:44,850
Speaker 1: that issue and how they were related to other political

784
00:48:45,230 --> 00:48:49,339
Speaker 1: points in that agenda. that, um, aren't always as clearly

785
00:48:49,420 --> 00:48:56,819
Speaker 1: articulated as the abortion issue was. Um, I'll leave that there. And, and, and, um,

786
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:01,109
Speaker 1: I did want to just sort of to give this

787
00:49:01,140 --> 00:49:03,069
Speaker 1: a little bit of biblical closure. I thought maybe I'd

788
00:49:03,090 --> 00:49:06,850
Speaker 1: go to Isaiah seven. Uh, I think it's an interesting

789
00:49:06,890 --> 00:49:10,260
Speaker 1: passage to go to. It's the sign of Emmanuel. Um,

790
00:49:11,420 --> 00:49:13,980
Speaker 1: I think this, you know, in the spirit of we

791
00:49:14,020 --> 00:49:15,850
Speaker 1: need to look back at history and not repeat the

792
00:49:15,890 --> 00:49:18,890
Speaker 1: bad patterns that we've had in the past, I think

793
00:49:18,930 --> 00:49:24,180
Speaker 1: this serves as an interesting cautionary tale because in this passage,

794
00:49:24,500 --> 00:49:31,759
Speaker 1: Ahaz is waiting for the Syro-Palestinian alliance. Syria and the

795
00:49:31,820 --> 00:49:34,810
Speaker 1: Northern Kingdom have aligned against Judah because Judah refuses to

796
00:49:34,850 --> 00:49:36,790
Speaker 1: be part of their alliance. And so what they want

797
00:49:36,810 --> 00:49:40,219
Speaker 1: to do is they want to kick Ahaz out set

798
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:42,509
Speaker 1: up a puppet king who will join their alliance, and

799
00:49:42,530 --> 00:49:46,810
Speaker 1: then they have Syria, Northern Kingdom, and Southern Kingdom all

800
00:49:46,830 --> 00:49:51,489
Speaker 1: aligned against Assyria. Ahaz has already decided that he's going

801
00:49:51,510 --> 00:49:55,470
Speaker 1: to side with Assyria. He doesn't need to do anything

802
00:49:55,510 --> 00:49:59,370
Speaker 1: with this Syro-Palestinian alliance. And so Isaiah comes to Ahaz,

803
00:49:59,390 --> 00:50:02,549
Speaker 1: and he delivers this message and says, hey, you don't

804
00:50:02,570 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: have to worry about Syria and the Northern Kingdom. That's

805
00:50:05,620 --> 00:50:08,440
Speaker 1: going to come to nothing. And then God offers him

806
00:50:08,500 --> 00:50:13,939
Speaker 1: a sign as a surety that this will happen, that

807
00:50:14,100 --> 00:50:17,230
Speaker 1: this alliance is not going to harm the Southern Kingdom.

808
00:50:18,210 --> 00:50:23,350
Speaker 1: And Ahaz says something really interesting. He says, oh, no, no,

809
00:50:23,610 --> 00:50:28,240
Speaker 1: I will not ask for a sign. And I will

810
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:32,739
Speaker 1: not put the Lord my God to the test. Sounds

811
00:50:32,780 --> 00:50:37,339
Speaker 1: very pious, right? Very, you know, right out of Deuteronomy.

812
00:50:37,460 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 1: Don't test the Lord. Don't be like the Israelites at Massa.

813
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:44,540
Speaker 1: You know, don't test God and try to get him

814
00:50:44,580 --> 00:50:46,740
Speaker 1: to prove that he's on your side and that he's faithful.

815
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,489
Speaker 1: The problem is that God actually offered him a sign

816
00:50:51,250 --> 00:50:54,890
Speaker 1: and Ahaz is now rejecting that sign. And so this

817
00:50:54,969 --> 00:50:57,810
Speaker 1: is where we end up getting the sign of Immanuel.

818
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,500
Speaker 1: Nothing worse going into a military battle than a new baby.

819
00:51:04,460 --> 00:51:11,549
Speaker 1: Not exactly the most useful sign to have when you're

820
00:51:11,570 --> 00:51:17,109
Speaker 1: about to go into a military context. But my point

821
00:51:17,150 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 1: here is Ahaz makes the absolutely wrong decision because he's

822
00:51:23,500 --> 00:51:27,170
Speaker 1: playing a different game than he should be. He's playing

823
00:51:27,210 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 1: a political game. He's looking out at the military landscape

824
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,940
Speaker 1: and saying, siding with the Syria is going to give

825
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,339
Speaker 1: me the best chance of survival. And so that's what

826
00:51:36,380 --> 00:51:40,219
Speaker 1: I'm going to do. Syria and the Northern Kingdom, they're

827
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 1: going to lose regardless of whether I'm with them or not.

828
00:51:43,100 --> 00:51:45,780
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to reject them. And he's already

829
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:50,230
Speaker 1: made that decision. He's already gone through that thought process.

830
00:51:50,510 --> 00:51:52,489
Speaker 1: He knows this is the decision he's going to make.

831
00:51:53,230 --> 00:51:58,140
Speaker 1: So he doesn't need God's signs. He's not depending on

832
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: the Lord anyway. So it doesn't really matter whether God

833
00:52:01,420 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 1: secures the victory for him. He's already done the math.

834
00:52:05,219 --> 00:52:08,080
Speaker 1: Assyria is going to win. I'm aligned with Assyria. God,

835
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:09,980
Speaker 1: you can go home. You can kick your feet up on,

836
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:14,940
Speaker 1: you know, on the footrest and just chill, right? Like

837
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:18,380
Speaker 1: hit the Barco lounger. Like this is all good. And

838
00:52:18,420 --> 00:52:23,340
Speaker 1: so in rejecting God and Ahaz is making this bad decision,

839
00:52:23,420 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 1: but he couches it in this pious language.

840
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:27,140
Speaker 2: Right?

841
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 1: But he's already done the underlying mechanistic work to align

842
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: himself with a powerhouse. I think this is what we

843
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:40,500
Speaker 1: need to avoid in modern day. I think we need

844
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:46,469
Speaker 1: to avoid making a decision about how we're going to

845
00:52:46,510 --> 00:52:52,190
Speaker 1: go about changing our world, whether that's our small local family,

846
00:52:52,469 --> 00:52:55,969
Speaker 1: our city, our nation, whatever it is, right? We need

847
00:52:55,989 --> 00:53:02,629
Speaker 1: to Avoid making those calls and then acting as if

848
00:53:03,330 --> 00:53:06,990
Speaker 1: we're really just following the Lord. We need to avoid,

849
00:53:07,330 --> 00:53:09,450
Speaker 1: you know, deciding what we're going to do and then

850
00:53:09,489 --> 00:53:13,129
Speaker 1: praying about it afterwards. Right. Would be, you know, sort

851
00:53:13,150 --> 00:53:17,250
Speaker 1: of a concrete example about this. Because in doing this,

852
00:53:17,430 --> 00:53:19,910
Speaker 1: in deciding what we're going to do, in looking out,

853
00:53:20,030 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: reading the tea leaves of the world and saying, this

854
00:53:22,260 --> 00:53:25,399
Speaker 1: is the clear path toward victory. This is the clear

855
00:53:25,460 --> 00:53:28,649
Speaker 1: path toward success. And so this is what I'm going

856
00:53:28,690 --> 00:53:31,430
Speaker 1: to do, regardless of what God is asking me to do.

857
00:53:32,430 --> 00:53:38,310
Speaker 1: We subtly close ourselves off from actually getting to see

858
00:53:38,390 --> 00:53:40,770
Speaker 1: what the God who can do more than we can

859
00:53:41,340 --> 00:53:45,720
Speaker 1: ever ask or think is going to do. We settle.

860
00:53:46,820 --> 00:53:49,330
Speaker 1: We settle for our own comfort in the moment. And

861
00:53:49,350 --> 00:53:52,860
Speaker 1: I think that's the story of Ahaz while we usually

862
00:53:52,900 --> 00:53:55,660
Speaker 1: look at it in a slightly different angle. I think

863
00:53:56,140 --> 00:53:59,900
Speaker 1: understanding the background and why Ahaz refuses to ask for

864
00:53:59,940 --> 00:54:03,609
Speaker 1: the sign is really crucial because it illustrates this idea

865
00:54:03,690 --> 00:54:07,310
Speaker 1: that it is possible for us to make decisions without

866
00:54:07,370 --> 00:54:11,089
Speaker 1: God and to make them seem really, really pious when

867
00:54:11,110 --> 00:54:14,549
Speaker 1: we do it. And that is part of what we

868
00:54:14,610 --> 00:54:17,239
Speaker 1: need to avoid in today's world.

869
00:54:20,450 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 2: That's a really helpful passage, I think. It's a good

870
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 2: last word for speaking to what I think we too

871
00:54:27,300 --> 00:54:28,100
Speaker 2: often fall into.

872
00:54:28,120 --> 00:54:31,060
Speaker 1: Yeah.

873
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 2: It's, again, really easy to pick one reading of one

874
00:54:37,060 --> 00:54:40,750
Speaker 2: issue spoken in one way in order to make it

875
00:54:40,830 --> 00:54:43,270
Speaker 2: seem like there's a righteous cause at play for the

876
00:54:43,310 --> 00:54:49,350
Speaker 2: entirety of a group. And that often is the case, frankly,

877
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 2: with good intentions.

878
00:54:51,100 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: For a lot of people.

879
00:54:51,860 --> 00:54:54,460
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very easy to fall into it. You and

880
00:54:54,500 --> 00:54:57,980
Speaker 2: I can fall into it. We're all susceptible to it.

881
00:54:58,690 --> 00:55:00,730
Speaker 2: And I think that's all the more reason to be

882
00:55:00,870 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: clearer on what the goals are of what we mean

883
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 2: when we say we are the church, we are awaiting

884
00:55:13,700 --> 00:55:16,759
Speaker 2: another kind of kingdom with another kind of king in

885
00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 2: the return of the sun. And I think that also

886
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:27,760
Speaker 2: requires us to be very careful to not over-expect whatever

887
00:55:27,860 --> 00:55:31,020
Speaker 2: levers we can pull at the moment in good conscience

888
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 2: to be identical with.

889
00:55:34,340 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: Yeah.

890
00:55:34,900 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 2: That what we theologians probably unnecessarily in a fancy term

891
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:43,660
Speaker 2: called that eschatological reality, the reality of the new heavens and.

892
00:55:43,620 --> 00:55:44,180
Speaker 1: The new earth.

893
00:55:45,260 --> 00:55:51,070
Speaker 2: Yeah. We're at best cultivating local local images that are

894
00:55:51,090 --> 00:55:55,430
Speaker 2: supposed to point. I think the image that Karl Barth

895
00:55:55,469 --> 00:55:58,070
Speaker 2: would have kept behind his desk is a really powerful one.

896
00:55:58,110 --> 00:56:00,810
Speaker 2: He had a painting of John the Baptist pointing to

897
00:56:00,850 --> 00:56:03,510
Speaker 2: remind himself that the theological task is always to point,

898
00:56:03,910 --> 00:56:07,710
Speaker 2: and it's specifically to point. Like John the Baptist to Jesus,

899
00:56:07,850 --> 00:56:10,710
Speaker 2: that he might increase and I might decrease.

900
00:56:11,850 --> 00:56:16,009
Speaker 1: Yeah. The last thing I'll say, and then we can

901
00:56:16,030 --> 00:56:19,320
Speaker 1: close this out, but Ian McGilchrist has this Great quote.

902
00:56:19,340 --> 00:56:20,700
Speaker 1: I go back to it all the time because I

903
00:56:20,700 --> 00:56:23,490
Speaker 1: just love it. It's in his book, The Matter with Things.

904
00:56:24,290 --> 00:56:27,670
Speaker 1: And he basically says that we're like the sorcerer's apprentice.

905
00:56:28,450 --> 00:56:30,710
Speaker 1: We're messing around with stuff that we can't hope to

906
00:56:30,790 --> 00:56:35,390
Speaker 1: understand and certainly can't control. And so oftentimes while we

907
00:56:35,450 --> 00:56:38,940
Speaker 1: try to manipulate the world by pulling levers and pushing buttons,

908
00:56:39,020 --> 00:56:41,080
Speaker 1: we end up messing things up worse than they were

909
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:45,150
Speaker 1: because while we can manipulate the world, we don't understand it.

910
00:56:46,300 --> 00:56:49,010
Speaker 1: And I think this is the point where Christians just

911
00:56:49,050 --> 00:56:54,859
Speaker 1: need to grapple with this really deeply. Something like Deuteronomy 30,

912
00:56:54,860 --> 00:56:58,070
Speaker 1: 20 gives us a deep understanding of how the world works.

913
00:56:58,770 --> 00:57:01,410
Speaker 1: In that text, God says, you know, he's given Israel

914
00:57:01,450 --> 00:57:05,509
Speaker 1: a choice between life and death, between good and evil,

915
00:57:05,650 --> 00:57:09,270
Speaker 1: between obedience and disobedience. And he tells them to choose life.

916
00:57:10,650 --> 00:57:13,670
Speaker 1: And in Deuteronomy 30, 20, he says, for the Lord

917
00:57:13,730 --> 00:57:17,740
Speaker 1: is your life and the length of your days. And

918
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,840
Speaker 1: that is to me like the underlying dynamic. It's the

919
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:26,120
Speaker 1: governing dynamics of reality that our loyalty to the Lord

920
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:30,530
Speaker 1: is what makes everything else work. And even though we're in,

921
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:33,310
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a, the midst of broken relationships

922
00:57:33,410 --> 00:57:38,410
Speaker 1: after the fall, that governing logic never changes. And so

923
00:57:38,530 --> 00:57:41,290
Speaker 1: our allegiance to the Lord is always the governing logic

924
00:57:41,310 --> 00:57:44,930
Speaker 1: that we are using as we're navigating life. We're going

925
00:57:44,950 --> 00:57:47,170
Speaker 1: to miss. That's why we have confession. That's why we

926
00:57:47,190 --> 00:57:51,490
Speaker 1: have repentance. We're going to miss. It's not about being perfect, right?

927
00:57:51,650 --> 00:57:55,890
Speaker 1: It's about, to your point, pointing to God. And in

928
00:57:55,930 --> 00:57:59,610
Speaker 1: our confession, when we say, I screwed this up, we're

929
00:57:59,650 --> 00:58:05,590
Speaker 1: pointing to God. And so to have the depth of

930
00:58:05,690 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 1: understanding to realize that when we pull a lever or

931
00:58:09,780 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: push a button, right, we may be manipulating something we

932
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:16,340
Speaker 1: don't fully understand What we need to be doing is

933
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: we need to be leaning into what we do understand,

934
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:21,160
Speaker 1: and that is all the word that God has given

935
00:58:21,260 --> 00:58:23,500
Speaker 1: us and the way that we are to interact with him,

936
00:58:23,520 --> 00:58:26,700
Speaker 1: to depend on him, to wait for him, and sometimes

937
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:31,030
Speaker 1: to exercise deep restraint rather than trying to control and change.

938
00:58:32,050 --> 00:58:37,530
Speaker 1: So I'll end it there. This has been a cathartic conversation,

939
00:58:37,590 --> 00:58:42,330
Speaker 1: I think. And, uh, and super helpful. So, yeah, so, um,

940
00:58:42,810 --> 00:58:46,220
Speaker 1: much appreciated and, uh, hopefully everybody else enjoyed it and

941
00:58:46,260 --> 00:58:48,540
Speaker 1: we will catch you next time on thinking Christian. Take care.

942
01:07:34,450 --> 01:07:35,939
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team

943
01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:38,380
Speaker 1: at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the

944
01:07:38,420 --> 01:07:42,020
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find

945
01:07:42,100 --> 01:07:45,470
Speaker 1: dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got

946
01:07:45,510 --> 01:07:48,330
Speaker 1: shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.