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A King Like the Nations: The Easter Luncheon and the Theology Behind the Prayers · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

0:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
0:04
Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
0:08
Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
0:11
Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
0:15
Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
0:18
Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
0:22
Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to
0:25
Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
0:29
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer. I'm joined
0:32
Speaker 1: by doctor Asheesh Varma, and today we're going to discuss something.
0:35
Speaker 1: It's probably going to go well beyond the event that
0:38
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss. But there was a luncheon. It's
0:40
Speaker 1: usually referred to as the Easter Luncheon online. It's been
0:43
Speaker 1: since April first now that this luncheon took place. There's
0:47
Speaker 1: been a lot of comments about certain remarks made at
0:52
Speaker 1: this meeting, particularly by Paula White Kine, who is Trump's
0:56
Speaker 1: sort of faith leader in the White House. As many
1:01
Speaker 1: of you listen to the program before, note I've talked
1:04
Speaker 1: about Christian nationalism a good bit We've talked a fair
1:07
Speaker 1: amount about American civil religion, but when I actually listen
1:13
Speaker 1: to some of the prayers and some of those speeches
1:16
Speaker 1: at this luncheon event, it just felt like there was
1:21
Speaker 1: a necessity to address it, and I didn't want to
1:24
Speaker 1: address it in the moment as a reaction. I wanted
1:26
Speaker 1: to kind of wait a little bit, step back and
1:29
Speaker 1: give more of a reason theological response to it. And
1:32
Speaker 1: so that's what we're going to try to do today.
1:35
Speaker 1: The event's gone, it's probably out of the news cycle
1:38
Speaker 1: to a large extent, But I think there's some really
1:42
Speaker 1: deeper theological implications than just the evangelical clutching of pearls
1:48
Speaker 1: that happens when someone says something goofy, and we really
1:54
Speaker 1: do need to get to the root of it, because
1:55
Speaker 1: if we don't, we're The danger, I think is that
2:00
Speaker 1: people clean up their language and they don't represent what
2:02
Speaker 1: they're really thinking. They clean it up enough that most
2:05
Speaker 1: of us will accept it, and I think that's a
2:07
Speaker 1: real problem. So understanding the roots of this problem, the
2:11
Speaker 1: deeper dynamics of this problem, and how what I would
2:15
Speaker 1: argue is civil religion and maybe some Christian nationalism mixed
2:19
Speaker 1: in but how we are bowing down to a sacred
2:23
Speaker 1: social order that is not Christian. It's a sacred social
2:26
Speaker 1: order that is very American, and we need to be
2:30
Speaker 1: very careful about that. So I'll leave it there and
2:34
Speaker 1: welcome Ashish. Thanks for being here, brother.
2:37
Speaker 2: Thanks, thanks for having me, Thanks for your intro. I
2:41
Speaker 2: think the issue here is that that we have concerns
2:46
Speaker 2: for the sake of the church. Yes, right, and so
2:49
Speaker 2: what we want to do is address that. Certainly, some
2:53
Speaker 2: of these issues are going to sound like we're trying
2:56
Speaker 2: to stand in a political box just because lines have
3:00
Speaker 2: been drawn in modern history of what issues belong to
3:06
Speaker 2: what party, and that's that's just not the intent, right.
3:08
Speaker 2: So this is an hour and two minute program. The
3:12
Speaker 2: first forty two and a half minutes of it were
3:13
Speaker 2: Trump before anyone else came to the podium, and then
3:19
Speaker 2: the final twenty minutes or so were seven these seven
3:25
Speaker 2: so called faith leaders who were coming up in succession,
3:28
Speaker 2: with varying amounts of time given to them. That's to
3:32
Speaker 2: say that there's so much we could talk about that
3:34
Speaker 2: we can't talk about we just don't have time for it.
3:38
Speaker 2: And in that forty two and a half minutes, the
3:42
Speaker 2: goal here is not to call out all of the
3:45
Speaker 2: political issues you or I might have, well, you know,
3:51
Speaker 2: one way or the other with Trump. The goal here
3:53
Speaker 2: is to talk about the theological dynamics and what it
3:55
Speaker 2: means for the church, and just to ask, in some ways,
3:59
Speaker 2: what are we doing?
4:00
Speaker 1: Yeah?
4:01
Speaker 2: And so it's worth noting that whatever we don't talk about,
4:05
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that wasn't important. Yeah, there's limited space.
4:09
Speaker 2: It is worth saying that in that forty two and
4:11
Speaker 2: a half minutes, there's about five minutes accumulative, right, And
4:15
Speaker 2: it's hard to say precisely five minutes because it's scattered,
4:18
Speaker 2: but about five minutes cumulatively of prepared remarks concerning Easter
4:23
Speaker 2: from Trump himself, whereas the other thirty seven or so
4:27
Speaker 2: minutes are him speaking off the kuff about everything except Easter.
4:32
Speaker 1: Yeah.
4:33
Speaker 2: And to me, that's part of the initial concern when
4:36
Speaker 2: this is called a Easter lunch for and with faith leaders, right,
4:41
Speaker 2: where was Easter?
4:44
Speaker 1: Yeah?
4:44
Speaker 2: And when we did finally see Easter, there were some
4:47
Speaker 2: troubling remarks to say, the least.
4:49
Speaker 1: Less recognizable than you would have liked it to be.
4:53
Speaker 1: I'll say this I because again I talk about politics
4:57
Speaker 1: on the show an awful lot, and I try to
5:00
Speaker 1: keep it in that theological register. And so just so
5:04
Speaker 1: people know, I'm working on a piece on James tall Rico,
5:09
Speaker 1: who is a Democratic senator or Republican or something like that.
5:13
Speaker 1: He's a House of Reps person down in Texas, and
5:16
Speaker 1: he's been fairly popular recently for using the Bible and
5:21
Speaker 1: arguing from scripture for particular policy issues. And my concern
5:27
Speaker 1: is not with the policy issues, although I wouldn't agree
5:29
Speaker 1: with everything he says. My concern always is that the
5:34
Speaker 1: Bible is being co opted by political discourse, and it's
5:37
Speaker 1: being co opted very poorly most of the time. What
5:41
Speaker 1: I see when people are using the Bible or theological language,
5:44
Speaker 1: and we see it here at this Easter lunch, what
5:47
Speaker 1: we see is that the Bible is being abstracted from
5:51
Speaker 1: its theological matrix. There's no particular necessity for Christ, there's
5:57
Speaker 1: no particular necessity for glorifying the trying God, and the
6:01
Speaker 1: Bible is being pulled in. Theology is being pulled in
6:05
Speaker 1: to a very political conversation and used to legitimate, very
6:09
Speaker 1: specific political agendas. Just if we go back to an
6:14
Speaker 1: old Bonhoeffer quote, right, he wasn't speaking to politics. He
6:17
Speaker 1: was speaking to Christian people, and he says something like,
6:22
Speaker 1: has it not become clear in the way that we
6:23
Speaker 1: have discussed these things today, gentlemen, that we have become
6:27
Speaker 1: more enamored with our own thoughts than with the Bible.
6:30
Speaker 1: We need to be reading the Bible not for ourselves,
6:33
Speaker 1: but against ourselves. What he meant by that was that
6:37
Speaker 1: we need to be reading the Bible expecting to be transformed,
6:40
Speaker 1: expecting to be changed, and not expecting the Bible to
6:43
Speaker 1: affirm all of our agendas. And I think that that
6:47
Speaker 1: is if I'm you know, I'm biblical studies guy, right,
6:51
Speaker 1: So from the at the end of the day, like,
6:54
Speaker 1: I just hate seeing the Bible drawn into these type
6:59
Speaker 1: of conversations, abstracted from that broader theological understanding the reality
7:05
Speaker 1: of the trying God, and used as if it's sort
7:09
Speaker 1: of a bludgeon or a cudgel to push a theological
7:13
Speaker 1: agenda through. And that's what I see happening here in
7:17
Speaker 1: this Easter lunch. And it makes it even more disturbing
7:22
Speaker 1: that much of this was done via prayer. I you know,
7:29
Speaker 1: I had visions going back to Lauren Winner's work of
7:33
Speaker 1: the dangers of Christian practice and the deformation of different
7:36
Speaker 1: Christian practices. While I was watching this, I was like,
7:40
Speaker 1: if I'm sure many listeners may not have read that book,
7:43
Speaker 1: But essentially she argues that we can use practices like
7:48
Speaker 1: prayer in a very abusive and inappropriate manner, and she
7:53
Speaker 1: gives examples of how that's been done throughout history. Some
7:57
Speaker 1: of these prayers that were offered seem really to echo
8:02
Speaker 1: exactly what she's talking about in her book. So I'll
8:06
Speaker 1: leave it there, Ashiesh, but just to say, like, this
8:09
Speaker 1: isn't about politics. It's not about one side or the other.
8:13
Speaker 1: It's not about partisanism. It is about politics, it's not
8:17
Speaker 1: about being partisan. This is about us figuring out why
8:22
Speaker 1: it is that the Bible should be used to authorize
8:25
Speaker 1: any political agenda or any political policy in the way
8:30
Speaker 1: that seems to have been done at this launch.
8:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things you said, I know what
8:38
Speaker 2: you mean by it, but I think it's worth clarifying.
8:40
Speaker 2: You said it drives you nuts. Not a direct quote.
8:44
Speaker 2: When the Bible is used to push through theological agendas
8:47
Speaker 2: could be interpreted as saying the Bible therefore it doesn't
8:51
Speaker 2: have meaning for what we're doing today. It lives entirely
8:53
Speaker 2: in the past. And now I know you don't.
8:56
Speaker 1: I do not mean that.
8:57
Speaker 2: Yes, So the issue here again is not precisely theology
9:02
Speaker 2: being done. The issue is what the theology is in
9:07
Speaker 2: service to. And I think you and I we've discussed
9:10
Speaker 2: ahead of time. We've discussed a few times a shared
9:14
Speaker 2: concern that the theology here is being done in service
9:18
Speaker 2: to a particular set of political ideals that have been
9:23
Speaker 2: foisted onto the public, as if we're supposed to bely
9:27
Speaker 2: that these just star straightforwardly and obviously the Bible's concerns,
9:31
Speaker 2: or straightforwardly and obviously what the Bible is even teaching, Yeah,
9:37
Speaker 2: and done in this particular moment, not just in service
9:41
Speaker 2: to those ideals, but in bolstering the particular image of
9:44
Speaker 2: a nation which itself needs to be scrutinized, circled around
9:49
Speaker 2: the body of one particular man in this moment, right
9:52
Speaker 2: so that they repeated frame refrain, wasn't this Roman sort
9:56
Speaker 2: of statement of we pray for our leaders and we
10:01
Speaker 2: recognize the Lord can be at work Therein it was
10:04
Speaker 2: a specific elevation of the president as an anointed one, right,
10:11
Speaker 2: as one who, in the words of Miss White Cain.
10:18
Speaker 2: She referred to him repeatedly as the one who is
10:22
Speaker 2: in charge, precisely because Jesus rose from the dead, and
10:26
Speaker 2: because Jesus rose from the dead, he is the instrument
10:29
Speaker 2: and the person put there as the protector of the church. Now,
10:32
Speaker 2: that was pretty alarming to me. I'm even inclined, and
10:36
Speaker 2: I came to this judgment. I looked up online just
10:39
Speaker 2: to get the names of the people right, and in
10:41
Speaker 2: that process I learned others were calling her heretical. That
10:45
Speaker 2: was the word that came to my mind almost right away.
10:49
Speaker 2: And I think it's worth bearing that the word heresy
10:53
Speaker 2: in its advent, right in the way that it comes
10:56
Speaker 2: about why it's used within the church, is a word
10:59
Speaker 2: that means the use of one form of reality to
11:02
Speaker 2: colonize another. And so the idea is that the idea
11:06
Speaker 2: of America and what it is in the minds of
11:09
Speaker 2: particular people and arguably as a theological claim, is being
11:15
Speaker 2: used here to colonize and therefore put into its own
11:19
Speaker 2: service Jesus. Right, So, rather than circling around the body
11:22
Speaker 2: of Jesus, the Jewish Man born of the virgin son
11:26
Speaker 2: of a carpenter, fulfilling the old Testament the prophet like
11:31
Speaker 2: under Moses the King in the line of David the
11:34
Speaker 2: Priest and the order of Melchizedic, and having everything encircled
11:37
Speaker 2: around him to rethink our structures in our way of thinking.
11:42
Speaker 2: He's instead being put into service on the idea of
11:45
Speaker 2: what America is, or at least the idea of America
11:49
Speaker 2: as a particular political party envisions it or a subset
11:52
Speaker 2: of that party, and also what this one presidential figure
11:57
Speaker 2: would like it to be around his very self.
12:00
Speaker 1: That's heresy, Yeah, And I think I agree with you
12:05
Speaker 1: on Paulo wait Kane. I think that her comments were scattered,
12:12
Speaker 1: informed by her background and at least sort of somewhat
12:17
Speaker 1: of quasi prosperity gospel sort of ministry, Like you can
12:20
Speaker 1: see that coming out in all of her comments. And
12:24
Speaker 1: I think her equation between Trump's victory and Jesus' victory
12:29
Speaker 1: is problematic on a whole series of levels, right, and
12:36
Speaker 1: not least of which is the fact that he did
12:39
Speaker 1: lose to Biden not that long ago, so was Biden's victory.
12:45
Speaker 1: Also this same sort of because Christ has victory, Biden
12:48
Speaker 1: had victory, and if not, how do we know? Like
12:53
Speaker 1: I think there are just all these sort of latent
12:55
Speaker 1: assumptions coming into this that we see this is going
12:59
Speaker 1: to appeal to people who Trump are already sort of
13:02
Speaker 1: pro Trump and always Trump and will never disagree with Trump,
13:07
Speaker 1: and who demonize previous presidents, but venerate this one. And
13:13
Speaker 1: I think it has it. It's theologically unnuanced, it's deeply problematic,
13:20
Speaker 1: and it just it can't be held with any degree
13:24
Speaker 1: of certainty or scrutiny. If you dig into that claim,
13:28
Speaker 1: you'll never be able to demonstrate it. And I think
13:31
Speaker 1: that the other aspect of her conversation that really bothered
13:35
Speaker 1: me was the equation when she's talking about, you know,
13:39
Speaker 1: Jesus and he suffered and he was wrongfully arrested, and
13:42
Speaker 1: you know, all these different things, but you never really
13:47
Speaker 1: reference the fact that Jesus is experiencing all that because
13:51
Speaker 1: he's being faithful to God. It's because he's aligning himself
13:55
Speaker 1: with the Kingdom of God and doing the Lord's will.
13:59
Speaker 1: Now he has all of this friction with the world,
14:03
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. That was not partisan politics that God Jesus.
14:08
Speaker 1: It was not Jesus upsetting some sort of status quo
14:13
Speaker 1: by going after one policy as opposed to another. He's
14:17
Speaker 1: representing the Kingdom of God and that kingdom was rejected,
14:21
Speaker 1: and so I think there's a Christian context for the suffering.
14:25
Speaker 1: I know there's a Christian context for the suffering that
14:27
Speaker 1: Jesus suffered, and to say that Trump has suffered in
14:33
Speaker 1: that same way and for those same reasons is very difficult.
14:38
Speaker 1: And that's why I think she makes it generic. Right.
14:42
Speaker 1: It's as if Trump hauld walk down the street and
14:45
Speaker 1: stubbed a tow. That's persecution of some sort because he's
14:48
Speaker 1: trying to make America great again. And I just think
14:51
Speaker 1: her whole argument, in her whole thought process, if you're
14:54
Speaker 1: not careful and look at it carefully. And a lot
14:56
Speaker 1: of people have critiqued her portion of this, but I
15:00
Speaker 1: think if you're not careful, you can start to think, oh,
15:04
Speaker 1: these surface level sort of connections that she's making might
15:10
Speaker 1: actually make sense, and I would just say, no, they
15:13
Speaker 1: really don't. Suffering is not just the same across the board.
15:19
Speaker 1: I would say, first, Peter makes this distinction when he
15:22
Speaker 1: talks about suffering. As a Christian, you have these passages
15:27
Speaker 1: where it's clear that suffering for righteousness, suffering for being
15:31
Speaker 1: a Christian is a very different thing than just suffering
15:35
Speaker 1: because you've done something wrong or you're confronting a different party.
15:43
Speaker 1: I think the equation there is has deeper theological problems
15:47
Speaker 1: than many of the commentators I watched.
15:50
Speaker 2: Notice, yeah, to that point, the details matter, yes, Right,
16:01
Speaker 2: we look at things like the Sermon on the Mount
16:03
Speaker 2: and what Jesus does beginning with the beatitudes, but really
16:06
Speaker 2: throughout it where he's he's taking previous understandings that religious
16:11
Speaker 2: leaders have placed upon the people, and Jesus is challenging them.
16:16
Speaker 2: But he's not challenging them so as to break with
16:19
Speaker 2: the tradition of the Jewish covenant covenants with the Jewish
16:25
Speaker 2: law Torah. What he's doing in those moments is he's
16:29
Speaker 2: he's calling out to the people to say, there's been
16:32
Speaker 2: a certain burden placed upon you in the name of
16:36
Speaker 2: the covenants that God has made with the Jewish people,
16:39
Speaker 2: beginning with the Abrahamic Covenant, right, and those burdens of
16:45
Speaker 2: it im placed on you don't actually get at what
16:47
Speaker 2: the covenants are about.
16:48
Speaker 1: Right.
16:49
Speaker 2: The short version of it is that he sees the
16:51
Speaker 2: religious leaders having various levels of interaction with the Roman
16:56
Speaker 2: imperial government. That's over them, some to see their identities
17:02
Speaker 2: fulfilled through Rome, others to see themselves as biding their
17:05
Speaker 2: times as they work with Rome and together expecting a
17:11
Speaker 2: messiah who is in the order of David and established
17:14
Speaker 2: as the king as David was, in order to set
17:17
Speaker 2: themselves up as rivals of Rome, and ultimately the step
17:20
Speaker 2: step on Rome. Right, it's to flip the script and
17:26
Speaker 2: Jesus rightly recognizes that that process would make Israel no
17:31
Speaker 2: different than the other empires around them in the present
17:34
Speaker 2: or the past, right, Yeah. And so he's calling them out,
17:39
Speaker 2: and he's he's liberating the people on the margins. He's
17:41
Speaker 2: liberating those who've been crushed by these these poor uses
17:46
Speaker 2: of the Covenant.
17:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:49
Speaker 2: And it is that that gets him ultimately to Holy Week.
17:53
Speaker 2: Is coming into the city of Jerusalem on palm Sunday,
17:56
Speaker 2: is being greeted by one group of people with palms,
18:00
Speaker 2: while with others being plotted against to go to the cross.
18:03
Speaker 2: And it's that that he submits himself to and not
18:07
Speaker 2: an incidental detail in scripture is that his death comes
18:11
Speaker 2: outside of the city, right, Meaning it's outside of the
18:13
Speaker 2: locusts of powers, and his resurrection comes now from the
18:17
Speaker 2: depths of the earth. The very womb of the earth
18:19
Speaker 2: is what that tomb is in order to raise it
18:22
Speaker 2: up to the hope of a new creation. Right, so
18:25
Speaker 2: Jesus is the first fruits of that. That's not even
18:28
Speaker 2: remotely what we see Trump doing. No, setting aside the
18:32
Speaker 2: moral failures that have been written about plenty, he represents
18:38
Speaker 2: precisely the status quo of an imperial reality that relegates
18:42
Speaker 2: some to an underling position at the expense of the powerful,
18:47
Speaker 2: at the expense of whoever's at the center of this.
18:50
Speaker 2: The fact that he lost an election and the fact
18:53
Speaker 2: that people don't like him is not even remotely the
18:57
Speaker 2: same thing as the persecuse in Jesus is undertaking. But
19:00
Speaker 2: the removal of details is what you have to do
19:03
Speaker 2: in the case of someone like miss White Kinane in
19:06
Speaker 2: order to put forth any sort of similarity. And what's
19:12
Speaker 2: startling is that she marched through various aspects of the
19:16
Speaker 2: life of Christ and remarkable vagueness, yes, and made every
19:21
Speaker 2: single one of them about our president, right except the
19:27
Speaker 2: death of Christ, right, because Trump, of course didn't die.
19:31
Speaker 1: Didn't die, right, And I thought, oh, this.
19:33
Speaker 2: Is an important point of breaking only to get to
19:35
Speaker 2: the resurrection, in which she then affirms the resurrection as
19:38
Speaker 2: the power in which Donald Trump was raised, meaning it's
19:42
Speaker 2: giving Trump this notion of resurrection argument or presumably from persecution,
19:48
Speaker 2: so that now we're living. And whether she used the
19:52
Speaker 2: words or not, the theological thrust of her claim in
19:55
Speaker 2: some sort of new heavens and new Earth and eschatological
20:00
Speaker 2: kingdom as theologians like to say, Yeah, that Trump is
20:03
Speaker 2: ushered in and that tenor carried forth in more and
20:08
Speaker 2: less subtle ways from most of the people that followed her. Right,
20:11
Speaker 2: she took the most time.
20:13
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, you know, we think about details, we
20:16
Speaker 1: jump off Paul Away came for a minute and jump
20:18
Speaker 1: into Franklin Graham. He does the same thing. He just
20:23
Speaker 1: doesn't do it with Jesus, and so I think people
20:26
Speaker 1: give him a little bit more of a pass. I'm
20:28
Speaker 1: not going to. I think the way he did this
20:32
Speaker 1: was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, he's equating Trump to Esther.
20:38
Speaker 1: Such a time as this raised up to battle the
20:42
Speaker 1: Iranians who want to kill all the Jews, just like
20:45
Speaker 1: the Persians wanted to kill all the Jews back in
20:48
Speaker 1: Esther's day. Again, this sort of surface level equation of
20:52
Speaker 1: what's happening there. And if you don't know and you
20:56
Speaker 1: don't look, you're not going to be able to tell
20:58
Speaker 1: that He's missing layers and layers and layers of details here.
21:03
Speaker 1: So I would argue number one, the Persians were not
21:10
Speaker 1: really the ones who are trying to kill all the Jews.
21:13
Speaker 1: Haman was an Agite, a Gagite, and that is part
21:20
Speaker 1: of the traditional enemies of Israel. It goes all the
21:24
Speaker 1: way back. You can find an a gag in numbers.
21:26
Speaker 1: You can find an agag in for Samuel. This was
21:30
Speaker 1: the the Amalakite sort of lineage. And now you have
21:37
Speaker 1: this one Amalakite who is Haman, who is trying to
21:43
Speaker 1: destroy the Jews in Persia. And this is very much
21:48
Speaker 1: an inner court conflict within Persia that ultimately doesn't work.
21:55
Speaker 1: But it's not the Persians who are trying to do this.
21:58
Speaker 1: And I think the the equation of the Persians with
22:02
Speaker 1: the Iranians historically completely impossible. The Persians were probably Zoroastrian,
22:14
Speaker 1: you know, until like the nineteen seventies, when you finally
22:18
Speaker 1: have an Islamic state set up, it's like twenty five
22:24
Speaker 1: hundred years away from Esther. These are not the same people.
22:30
Speaker 1: This is not the same mentality, this was not the
22:32
Speaker 1: same religion. It wasn't even that. It's not even close
22:36
Speaker 1: to the same thing, not even close. But if you
22:41
Speaker 1: can put those sort of non detail oriented little pieces
22:45
Speaker 1: together and then go, oh, look, Trump is Esther. He's
22:50
Speaker 1: been raised up for a time such as this. It's
22:54
Speaker 1: just a manipulation of the scriptures and a misuse of
23:00
Speaker 1: prayer to argue this type of surface level connections in
23:09
Speaker 1: a way that legitimizes the war. It's crazy. I don't
23:17
Speaker 1: really mind saying that. It's nuts. He does effectively the
23:21
Speaker 1: exact same thing that PAULA white Kin does equating Jesus
23:25
Speaker 1: and Trump. He does the exact same thing equating Esther
23:28
Speaker 1: and Trump, and he should not get a pass just
23:31
Speaker 1: because he doesn't use Jesus.
23:34
Speaker 2: That's right. A prominent passage in the Old Testament that
23:39
Speaker 2: we quote a lot, or I hear quoted a lot
23:42
Speaker 2: that I'm not sure that we really get the narrative
23:45
Speaker 2: thrust of it is the claim that solved the king
23:49
Speaker 2: that precedes David was was more or less the fulfillment
23:54
Speaker 2: of the people's desire to of a king.
23:56
Speaker 1: Like the nations yep.
24:01
Speaker 2: As a biblical theological claim. What I often hear more
24:04
Speaker 2: popularly from the pulpit is that the fact that they
24:07
Speaker 2: wanted a king was a problem. That's not precisely true, right.
24:12
Speaker 2: The issue was specifically like the nations. Right, So the
24:15
Speaker 2: raising up of David, at least the early David and
24:18
Speaker 2: the late David. The middle David had some trouble with
24:20
Speaker 2: this wasn't like the nations. He represented the shepherd's mentality.
24:27
Speaker 2: He represented a sort of demeanor that was supposed to
24:33
Speaker 2: be ministerial of some sort, right ministerial, where the nations
24:39
Speaker 2: around him were to receive what he said or to
24:42
Speaker 2: the way that he was, and to be drawn to
24:44
Speaker 2: worship of Yahweh. This wasn't a statement of subjugation. This
24:48
Speaker 2: wasn't a statement of conquering imperial right. And when we
24:51
Speaker 2: get to Solomon, right, the early Solomon, you see the
24:55
Speaker 2: fruits of this, and that's when the Queen of Sheba
24:57
Speaker 2: comes to him. In other words, you're seeing these good
24:58
Speaker 2: relations with those who are out and through that you
25:01
Speaker 2: see a drawing of people to the God of Israel.
25:04
Speaker 2: By the time you get to the New Testament, the
25:07
Speaker 2: ways that you can describe the thought processes, the political
25:12
Speaker 2: thought processes of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, in their own
25:15
Speaker 2: kinds of ways, is a king like the nations. And
25:17
Speaker 2: it's that which Jesus is pushing against, right, Because what
25:22
Speaker 2: Jesus is saying again is that you have this reality
25:25
Speaker 2: that Paul, for instance, bears out in the Book of
25:28
Speaker 2: Ephesians with his near far language. The old Testman talks
25:31
Speaker 2: about near and far as opposed to in the right ordering,
25:34
Speaker 2: as opposed to this nation against other nations.
25:40
Speaker 1: Right.
25:41
Speaker 2: So when you get to Paul, he reveals, guess what,
25:44
Speaker 2: the distance between near and far was always meant to
25:46
Speaker 2: be bridged. But that's not a political statement again in
25:48
Speaker 2: the sense that we think of it, right, It's meant
25:52
Speaker 2: to be a theological statement about the ordering of creation
25:55
Speaker 2: into its highest point of flourishing.
25:59
Speaker 1: Right.
25:59
Speaker 2: It's the freedom of creation within that. And the payoff
26:04
Speaker 2: of this is supposed to be that you have these
26:08
Speaker 2: peoples that might otherwise have been considered far, the gentiles,
26:12
Speaker 2: but they are to be brought near in a way
26:14
Speaker 2: in which they're not second class citizens. Right, the way
26:17
Speaker 2: that Franklin Graham orders his particular rendering a vester to
26:22
Speaker 2: return to that point, sets up opposition, It sets up
26:26
Speaker 2: a king like the nations. He even describes this as
26:28
Speaker 2: a parallel to the point of not just for the
26:30
Speaker 2: good of America, but to save Israel, where Israel is
26:33
Speaker 2: not a political entity, not a covenantal identity, which is
26:36
Speaker 2: completely removed from the ordering of Israel as an entity
26:42
Speaker 2: that's covenantal. It's meant to draw people to the beauty
26:46
Speaker 2: and flourishing reality of God, of their covenant God.
26:50
Speaker 1: Right.
26:52
Speaker 2: You see this also in the antagonistic sorts of claims
26:54
Speaker 2: in the middle of prayer. Ostensibly prayer, Franklin Graham says,
26:59
Speaker 2: refers to these Islamic lunatics.
27:02
Speaker 1: Right.
27:03
Speaker 2: Again, that's oppositional in a way, that's just. It's asking
27:07
Speaker 2: for trouble, it's asking for conflict in a way that's
27:13
Speaker 2: It doesn't at all speak to the beauty of the
27:15
Speaker 2: God that you're wishing to proclaim. It doesn't speak at
27:17
Speaker 2: all to the ability to draw people who are far near.
27:20
Speaker 2: It speaks of keeping those who are far, not just far,
27:24
Speaker 2: but now in an antagonistic relationship, and to do so
27:28
Speaker 2: ostensibly in the name of Jesus. As you pointed out,
27:31
Speaker 2: he doesn't say Jesus. But that's clearly the implication, right, Yeah,
27:34
Speaker 2: in so far as Esther is this in the Persian Empire,
27:39
Speaker 2: Israel is this vis a vis the Iranian people, and
27:43
Speaker 2: on this Easter Sunday. It's a representation now the fullness
27:46
Speaker 2: of what God meant and intended to do through this
27:49
Speaker 2: man in a time like this, which is again in
27:52
Speaker 2: a biblical phrase, for such time as this.
27:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't get the impression as he's praying.
27:59
Speaker 1: So there are precatory psalms where you would find this
28:03
Speaker 1: sort of same antagonistic language as the Islamic lunatics. Right,
28:06
Speaker 1: you could see in precatory psalms utilizing that sort of language.
28:11
Speaker 1: But in the imprecatory psalms, what you normally sense is
28:14
Speaker 1: that there's this lament about a lack of justice and
28:20
Speaker 1: a desire for God to write the world. What you
28:26
Speaker 1: don't see is this idea that we are looking for justice,
28:33
Speaker 1: we're looking for God to write the world, and oh look,
28:36
Speaker 1: here happens to be a world leader who God is
28:39
Speaker 1: placed right before us in order to write the world
28:42
Speaker 1: and the way that we think it should be righted.
28:46
Speaker 1: That in it of itself is also problematic. It's the
28:51
Speaker 1: Islamic lunatics are being framed as the problem, the only
29:01
Speaker 1: problem for justice. Let's put it like that, the only
29:04
Speaker 1: problem for justice. I wouldn't deny that I have a
29:08
Speaker 1: problem with the way of the Islamic regimes talk about
29:11
Speaker 1: other peoples as well, But I don't think what you
29:15
Speaker 1: see in his discourse his prayer is an elevation above that,
29:23
Speaker 1: an elevation that recognizes, to your point, you know, the
29:27
Speaker 1: king like the nations. Part of what I see when
29:30
Speaker 1: I read that statement in First Samuel is Saul is
29:35
Speaker 1: a king who fears the people. If you read through
29:39
Speaker 1: for Samuel and you watch where Saul fails, he fears
29:43
Speaker 1: because the people are running away, and so he takes
29:45
Speaker 1: action to do an inappropriate sacrifice to keep the people
29:48
Speaker 1: near him. He operates early on on threats because the
29:52
Speaker 1: people won't come to him. He threatens them basically and says,
29:57
Speaker 1: if you don't come fight, I'm coming after you. Next.
30:01
Speaker 1: David and Goliath narrative, which we often frame is this
30:05
Speaker 1: contrast between David and Goliath, But really what we see
30:08
Speaker 1: there is Saul is afraid because he knows he doesn't
30:11
Speaker 1: have the physical strength to beat Goliath. And so he
30:14
Speaker 1: cowers in the back with his men. Saul's always afraid
30:18
Speaker 1: of what he sees before him. David, the difference is
30:22
Speaker 1: he fears the Lord. He's constantly doing things that demonstrate
30:27
Speaker 1: that he is more attuned to what the Lord is
30:30
Speaker 1: doing supposed to what Saul is doing. Now he does
30:32
Speaker 1: that imperfectly. I have read the David and Abashivan narrative.
30:37
Speaker 1: I'm not ignoring that. But the point is that even
30:40
Speaker 1: as we move into the New Testament, to your point
30:42
Speaker 1: and you say, well, what is Jesus really embodying here?
30:45
Speaker 1: He's not embodying a political revolution, because political revolutions won't work.
30:52
Speaker 1: The way of the world is obedience to the will
30:55
Speaker 1: of the Father. That's what he's showing us. It's faithfulness.
30:58
Speaker 1: It's not alignment with a political entity. It's continually being
31:04
Speaker 1: faithful to the Lord, living obediently, even when living obediently
31:10
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the world's problems. It is our strategy, and
31:15
Speaker 1: that's it. And I think that gets lost in all
31:19
Speaker 1: of these prayers at that the prayers that we're going
31:22
Speaker 1: to talk about. At least, I actually think Bishop Baron
31:25
Speaker 1: gave the best prayer at that meeting. But I will
31:31
Speaker 1: say paul O White Kine, Franklin Graham, and then the
31:36
Speaker 1: other person we haven't talked about yet, Robert Jeffers. They
31:39
Speaker 1: just really feel like what they're promoting is sort of
31:42
Speaker 1: a triumphalism that the Kingdom of God can be made
31:46
Speaker 1: manifest in some way, shape or form through military action
31:49
Speaker 1: in the United States or through the United States leadership
31:53
Speaker 1: in some way. And I'm just not sold. In fact,
31:58
Speaker 1: I would say I'm more than not sold. I would
32:00
Speaker 1: absolutely disagree that that is the way of things. I
32:04
Speaker 1: think God uses our nations. I think God is God
32:07
Speaker 1: has a plan for the United States. But when I
32:10
Speaker 1: say that, I have no idea what that plan is.
32:15
Speaker 1: And we live with that mystery, right, Like, it's not
32:19
Speaker 1: that the United States has some special covenantal relationship with
32:22
Speaker 1: God that I'm not aware of. We're a nation. God
32:26
Speaker 1: uses nations and stop.
32:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I want to hone in on that God
32:35
Speaker 2: has a plan discourse. Yeah, to be clear. In the
32:39
Speaker 2: Book of a bac Tobacua comes forward, he calls out
32:42
Speaker 2: to God. He says, Lord, help the wealthy, the powerful
32:46
Speaker 2: amongst my people, referring to Biblical Israel are trampling upon
32:51
Speaker 2: the outcasts, the poor, the underprivileged, do something about it.
32:58
Speaker 2: God's responses, don't worry, Babylon's coming in and they're going
33:02
Speaker 2: to take care of them. Yes, a backup is beside himself.
33:06
Speaker 1: He says, what wait, no, what, Yeah.
33:08
Speaker 2: Babylon's worse.
33:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I take it back.
33:12
Speaker 2: No, don't worry, they'll get their own too, right, And
33:14
Speaker 2: historically them getting their own ends up being the Greeks.
33:21
Speaker 2: The point being in that moment that to to well,
33:25
Speaker 2: to the point of a plan that God might have,
33:29
Speaker 2: what it is that God does in and through, maybe
33:33
Speaker 2: with often in spite of the United States, is more
33:38
Speaker 2: akin to don't worry. The Babylonians are coming in. Don't worry,
33:42
Speaker 2: they'll get their own too right. But the way that
33:45
Speaker 2: the US has often established itself, and this is maybe
33:48
Speaker 2: a topic of its own, is this sort of city
33:52
Speaker 2: on a hill mentality. You hear this on both sides
33:54
Speaker 2: of the letter Ledger by the way. You hear this
33:56
Speaker 2: if you go to Fox News, you hear this, if
33:58
Speaker 2: you go to CNN. The city on the hill is
33:59
Speaker 2: sort of dying. The criticism is less less often about
34:04
Speaker 2: invoking that and more often what someone means by it.
34:08
Speaker 2: But The problem theologically is to invoke it at all
34:12
Speaker 2: in that sort of way. Right, It's a declaration that
34:16
Speaker 2: exists within the Sermon on the Mount to refer to
34:19
Speaker 2: what Israel was supposed to be as a covenant reality,
34:23
Speaker 2: not as a political, national imperial entity.
34:26
Speaker 1: Yep.
34:27
Speaker 2: And the degree to which that can still be possible,
34:30
Speaker 2: in Jesus' words, is the degree to which in that
34:32
Speaker 2: Sermon on the Mount, he's he's upending the order in which,
34:37
Speaker 2: again the Pharisees and Sadducees have in their own ways
34:40
Speaker 2: seen their allegiance with Rome as either a fulfillment or
34:44
Speaker 2: a or an entity to be used to reach a
34:48
Speaker 2: fulfillment that still looks like a king. Like the Nations,
34:52
Speaker 2: the US is not a covenant identity. It's not the
34:55
Speaker 2: replacement of Israel. And what's what's particularly troubling is that, unfortunately,
34:58
Speaker 2: there is a history and the US beginning with the
35:01
Speaker 2: Mayflower Compact. Right. If you read it, it is all right,
35:06
Speaker 2: it's an explicit declaration of what the people saw, that
35:10
Speaker 2: their reality being entering into this world, where they saw
35:14
Speaker 2: this land that we think of as America today as
35:18
Speaker 2: a land flowing with milk and honey. The new Israel.
35:21
Speaker 2: They saw themselves therefore as the new Israel, and this
35:24
Speaker 2: particular mode of Israel as a king like the nations,
35:28
Speaker 2: and they saw the people that were in it as
35:30
Speaker 2: the Canaanites. They set themselves already up in a position
35:33
Speaker 2: as readers of the text that were in direct opposition
35:39
Speaker 2: to the message Jesus giving, which was to speak on
35:41
Speaker 2: behalf of the elevation of all creation, not the elevation
35:46
Speaker 2: of some at the expense of the rest of creation.
35:48
Speaker 1: Right. It's when I studied some of that, and I
35:57
Speaker 1: haven't done the full historical research to nail down this claim,
36:01
Speaker 1: but what I saw is the use of the Exodus
36:04
Speaker 1: narrative in early American literature has so many resonances with
36:11
Speaker 1: what we find in liberation theology. It's really not even funny.
36:16
Speaker 1: It's always a political liberation of freedom from tyranny so
36:21
Speaker 1: that we can live on our own terms. And when
36:25
Speaker 1: you read the Biblical Exodus, when you actually read the
36:27
Speaker 1: account in Exodus, Exodus fourteen and fifteen, the israel Lites
36:33
Speaker 1: escape Exodus fifteen is the Song of Sea. Exodus twenty,
36:37
Speaker 1: they're getting the Ten commandments. God is essentially saying I'm
36:40
Speaker 1: the one who redeemed you out of Egypt. You're not
36:42
Speaker 1: living life on your terms, You're living them on mine.
36:46
Speaker 1: Here are the constraints, here's the law. This is what
36:49
Speaker 1: you now get to do. And it wasn't a constricting
36:53
Speaker 1: sort of law there. It was an appropriate constraint given
36:59
Speaker 1: so that the israel could really enjoy their freedom and
37:03
Speaker 1: remain in a position in the presence of God and
37:09
Speaker 1: God going with them, God being with them, God being
37:12
Speaker 1: together in them, being together with God. That was supposed
37:16
Speaker 1: to be the animating principle, the animating idea, right that
37:20
Speaker 1: we keep Israel safe and allow them to go into
37:23
Speaker 1: the land. They're going with God. God's going into the land.
37:26
Speaker 1: You can come with him. Here's how you live in
37:28
Speaker 1: the presence of God. Here's how you walk with him. Like,
37:31
Speaker 1: that's what those laws were meant to do. But when
37:34
Speaker 1: that exodus narrative is activated, particularly, I would say, specifically
37:39
Speaker 1: in early America, what we find is, no, we just
37:43
Speaker 1: want freedom from the tyranny of Europe right or of
37:48
Speaker 1: Great Britain specifically, and we want to be able to
37:52
Speaker 1: live life on our own terms. Now, was that life
37:56
Speaker 1: on their own terms? Was that structured with some sense
37:59
Speaker 1: of miracle. Was it influenced by some Christian teachings and
38:03
Speaker 1: those kinds of ideas. Probably that's not Christianity. And so
38:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how close you get, if you're not
38:15
Speaker 1: living under the lordship of Jesus Christ, you're not there yet, right. So,
38:22
Speaker 1: I think that overall, what we're seeing in these prayers,
38:25
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in some of the history is a slippage.
38:30
Speaker 1: It's this notion that we can take a lot of
38:34
Speaker 1: the good Bible teachings, like we can lucky dip into
38:36
Speaker 1: scripture and we can say, oh, I like this nugget,
38:38
Speaker 1: I like that nugget, I really enjoy this part. Some
38:42
Speaker 1: of the other ones I'm going to do without. And
38:44
Speaker 1: I don't really need Jesus to do any of this,
38:46
Speaker 1: and so I'll just keep these portions. I think what
38:49
Speaker 1: I see in these in these at this prayer lunch,
38:53
Speaker 1: and what I see a lot when people were talking
38:55
Speaker 1: about advocating for Christian nationalism and those kind of things,
38:58
Speaker 1: is that Jesus tends to get parked somewhere else. And
39:02
Speaker 1: what they're really talking about is something akin to the
39:05
Speaker 1: Judeo Christian ethic that is then situated under an American
39:11
Speaker 1: civil religion, and now we need a new Messiah, a
39:15
Speaker 1: new king, a new leader who can usher in this
39:20
Speaker 1: moment of enhanced morality. None of that is a Christian story,
39:28
Speaker 1: None of it is a true exodus, because we don't
39:31
Speaker 1: end up getting freed from anything like what we get
39:35
Speaker 1: freed from in Christ. We don't get freed from sin.
39:37
Speaker 1: We just move from one dominion of sin to another.
39:40
Speaker 1: And what Christ brings us is that freedom from sin,
39:43
Speaker 1: as Paul talks about, like Romans six. So there's just
39:48
Speaker 1: so much I think that we see in these in
39:52
Speaker 1: this luncheon that is so deeply problematic. And the last person,
39:57
Speaker 1: which we haven't really talked much about yet, is Robert Jeffers.
40:02
Speaker 1: I dealt with I dealt with his July fourth sermon
40:06
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago in my book Serpents and
40:09
Speaker 1: Doves Shameless Plug. But he argued there and at the
40:17
Speaker 1: end of his sermon he quotes Psalm thirty three twelve.
40:20
Speaker 1: You know, blessed is the nation who's God is the Lord.
40:24
Speaker 1: And that's actually in his sermon. He only quotes that portion.
40:27
Speaker 1: There's actually a second part of Psalm thirty three twelve.
40:32
Speaker 1: He only quotes a not b and b really specifies
40:36
Speaker 1: this as the covenant people of Israel, but when he
40:40
Speaker 1: quotes it, he's talking about America. That mentality I think
40:45
Speaker 1: carries through in this prayer that he gives and the
40:48
Speaker 1: remarks that he makes at this luncheon. He uses this
40:53
Speaker 1: language of divine authorization, and what he means by that
40:58
Speaker 1: is not that ever leader everywhere is appointed by God
41:02
Speaker 1: and so we should give them some due respect. What
41:05
Speaker 1: he seems to mean by that is you have been
41:09
Speaker 1: uniquely chosen by God for a task that will advance
41:13
Speaker 1: His kingdom in a very particular way that Christians should
41:16
Speaker 1: all get behind. I don't know how else it put that,
41:19
Speaker 1: but when I listen to Jeffri's talk, that's really what
41:24
Speaker 1: I think he's saying. So I don't know if you
41:27
Speaker 1: have thoughts on that one, Ashish, but I'll stop talking
41:30
Speaker 1: and let you respond.
41:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do. And it connects to what you begin
41:37
Speaker 2: your comments on with the liberating impulse. My emphasis might
41:42
Speaker 2: be a little bit different than yours, but I think
41:44
Speaker 2: there's some parallel elements that lead into what I see
41:49
Speaker 2: as similarly troubles and troublesome remarks from Jeffers that the
41:54
Speaker 2: liberating impulse that you're talking about. Of course, there are
41:58
Speaker 2: a variety of liberation theologies, yeah, right, and they're doing
42:02
Speaker 2: different things in different places, but also sometimes coming from
42:06
Speaker 2: different traditions and so different tools at play. But the
42:11
Speaker 2: impulse that concerns you, I think is a fair one
42:13
Speaker 2: that if a liberation theology is merely an inversion of
42:18
Speaker 2: a political spectrum, yes, then what we've created is a
42:24
Speaker 2: ripe new opportunity for abuse.
42:27
Speaker 1: Agreed. That's exactly and.
42:29
Speaker 2: Unfortunately the rhetoric in a lot of cases, and you
42:32
Speaker 2: this might be controversial in your part, but I know
42:34
Speaker 2: where you're coming from. What these mayflower folks you call
42:38
Speaker 2: them liberators in some sense, or liberation theologis of some
42:40
Speaker 2: kind in some sense, they were, right, Yeah, and that's
42:43
Speaker 2: precisely the impulse they had in mind. Alternatively, of course,
42:48
Speaker 2: Jesus is the liberator. But what's distinct about his liberation
42:53
Speaker 2: is that, yes, he's calling us to a reality that
42:57
Speaker 2: now receives its life from the fullness of God's very
43:02
Speaker 2: presence and being, giving life to all that there is.
43:06
Speaker 2: But what's distinct about that that's not you know, of course,
43:10
Speaker 2: one difference is there's God versus not God but it's
43:12
Speaker 2: more than that. The God who liberates is setting up
43:17
Speaker 2: a reality in which the pattern that he gives to creation, yeah,
43:23
Speaker 2: God's very self, from father giving of son to son,
43:26
Speaker 2: giving what the son has been given by the Father
43:28
Speaker 2: to his disciples to then give on to those that
43:31
Speaker 2: they take the good news to. Is this consistent pattern
43:36
Speaker 2: that begins at the top of the giving of oneself.
43:40
Speaker 2: And this is the pattern that makes makes liberation truly
43:44
Speaker 2: life giving and free for all, right. And it's the
43:47
Speaker 2: irony of that freedom comes not in the freedom from,
43:50
Speaker 2: as Bart would say, but in the freedom for, as
43:53
Speaker 2: he argues, to give ourselves to another. And ultimately that
43:58
Speaker 2: giving ourselves to another is to give it all to
44:01
Speaker 2: the God, who doesn't keep for God's self, but gives
44:04
Speaker 2: it all right back to the giving of God's very self.
44:08
Speaker 2: It's an eternal cycle. And that freedom is not a
44:13
Speaker 2: freedom just for a few. It's not a freedom of
44:15
Speaker 2: some at the expense of the many, which is what
44:19
Speaker 2: every version of this freedom from, this liberating experience that
44:25
Speaker 2: doesn't have its ultimate understanding in the self giving of
44:30
Speaker 2: the Father, in the Son for everyone, right. And that
44:36
Speaker 2: kind of liberating just sets up, ironically a king like
44:39
Speaker 2: the nation. But the kind of liberating that God gives
44:42
Speaker 2: us is a kind that is for the other. Now,
44:45
Speaker 2: when you get to Jeffers, this distinction is precisely what's
44:48
Speaker 2: on display for him the presence of Donald Trump, beginning
44:54
Speaker 2: all the way back in twenty sixteen, when he seems
44:56
Speaker 2: to indicate God in some way told him Trump would
44:59
Speaker 2: be next president, which I guess he was. So I
45:02
Speaker 2: suppose whether or not God told him.
45:05
Speaker 1: He was at least right.
45:08
Speaker 2: Right was always for the purpose of being able to
45:13
Speaker 2: and in his own words, right was always for the
45:15
Speaker 2: purpose of enacting what amounts to a power over, And
45:20
Speaker 2: that power over is never self giving, it's always extracting. Right,
45:26
Speaker 2: And so whatever liberation Jeffers thought that he and his
45:32
Speaker 2: people received in that moment came at the expense of
45:35
Speaker 2: the fullness of life, not just of other people. But
45:41
Speaker 2: I would argue in a conversation that would take us further,
45:44
Speaker 2: and we don't have time for a subjugation of the
45:49
Speaker 2: very earth itself. Right, it can. It accelerated patterns of
45:56
Speaker 2: loss of fertility for crops. It accelerated patterns of removing
46:00
Speaker 2: stuff from the earth without filling it with anything else,
46:03
Speaker 2: creating an unstabable, unstable crust of the earth. It continued
46:10
Speaker 2: projects that removed habitat from the other creatures of God,
46:15
Speaker 2: the other animals that belong to land, animals that belong
46:18
Speaker 2: to Day six of creation. Right, that's obviously a larger creation.
46:23
Speaker 2: But these are all markers. Right when you look at
46:25
Speaker 2: the end of the Bible and you look at Ezekiel,
46:27
Speaker 2: the end of Ezekiel where it's where it's alluding to
46:30
Speaker 2: this same end, it's this garden imagery in which all
46:32
Speaker 2: the creatures of the earth are receiving their full and
46:35
Speaker 2: are able to receive their full not at the expense
46:38
Speaker 2: of another creature. Right, And any version of this liberating
46:42
Speaker 2: impulse that just merely changes who's at the center but
46:47
Speaker 2: continues to extract is not ultimately liberating. It it's downcasting
46:53
Speaker 2: of another group of people's And that could go either
46:57
Speaker 2: way in the political spectrum. By the way, it just
46:58
Speaker 2: so happens to be one way the moment in under
47:01
Speaker 2: the Jeffer's vision. But that shows to me a radical
47:04
Speaker 2: lack of understanding on his part of what Easter is
47:08
Speaker 2: and what it is Jesus doing and the fullness that
47:10
Speaker 2: that's meant to bring to a liberation of the entire earth.
47:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think his references to Trump ushering
47:20
Speaker 1: in a spiritual revival, and I'm not exactly sure that
47:22
Speaker 1: was exactly the way he put it, but there is
47:26
Speaker 1: a spurring on of a spiritual revival that is done
47:29
Speaker 1: in the context of this presidency that wasn't done in
47:32
Speaker 1: previous ones. Is basically the implication I think he's playing
47:36
Speaker 1: in and leading into the dynamic. You're suggesting that, in
47:42
Speaker 1: part oddly, the spiritual revival is available because Christians are
47:48
Speaker 1: getting what they want. And this spiritual revival doesn't, in
47:53
Speaker 1: my mind, necessarily equate to Christians deepening their commitment to
48:00
Speaker 1: the Lord Jesus Christ. It may very well just be
48:04
Speaker 1: a function of Christianity being more comfortable now and so
48:10
Speaker 1: I can more conveniently participate as a Christian in various realms.
48:15
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that that. I know, I wouldn't
48:18
Speaker 1: call that revival, but I'm not sure that's not what
48:22
Speaker 1: I see happening. This merger between the politics and the religion,
48:29
Speaker 1: which again I've addressed in numerous other episodes. People can
48:32
Speaker 1: go and listen to those if they want, but I
48:35
Speaker 1: think this unholy merger between the politics and the religion.
48:40
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is that I kind
48:42
Speaker 1: of introduce this, but there's this idea that what's the
48:46
Speaker 1: sacred order that we sit underneath. I think what each
48:50
Speaker 1: of these people conveyed that we've talked about, they conveyed
48:56
Speaker 1: that the sacred order is America, and that the social
49:02
Speaker 1: order then is downstream from America. That there's a vision
49:07
Speaker 1: of America that they have that is the sacred order,
49:11
Speaker 1: and it is why they can identify Donald Trump in
49:15
Speaker 1: the way that they have. What I think we're arguing
49:19
Speaker 1: is just to put in these terms that the Kingdom
49:22
Speaker 1: of God is the sacred order, and that everything underneath
49:27
Speaker 1: that sits underneath that sacred order should be conforming to
49:30
Speaker 1: the authority of Christ and seeking to be refined to
49:39
Speaker 1: his image. I read Romans thirteen correctly. Everything sits under
49:45
Speaker 1: the authority of God, and that means that a politician
49:49
Speaker 1: doesn't get to determine what is good in the sense
49:54
Speaker 1: that they get to make it up wholesale themselves. They
49:58
Speaker 1: should be recognizing what is good and doing thusly, and
50:04
Speaker 1: the Church should be speaking in to the political realm saying,
50:09
Speaker 1: by the way, you missed it this time. This isn't justice,
50:12
Speaker 1: this isn't goodness, this isn't beauty, this isn't whatever. We
50:18
Speaker 1: need to have a prophetic voice in that, not a
50:21
Speaker 1: legitimizing voice. It's not that we are constantly attacking the
50:25
Speaker 1: people who are in charge of us. That's not what
50:26
Speaker 1: I'm saying. We can give people their due right. When
50:32
Speaker 1: they do justice, we should affirm that. When they do goodness,
50:35
Speaker 1: we should affirm that. But my perspective is we should
50:38
Speaker 1: always be pointing beyond this justice that you're enacting. This
50:43
Speaker 1: is gesturing forward to the judgment of God that is coming.
50:48
Speaker 1: And so even though you're serving justice in the moment,
50:51
Speaker 1: you need to be serving Christ. Like We've got to
50:55
Speaker 1: get to that point where the church understands that these
50:59
Speaker 1: political leaders are gesturing toward God's judgment when they do
51:03
Speaker 1: it right, but that they still need to know Christ
51:07
Speaker 1: in order to escape God's judgment at the end. And
51:11
Speaker 1: I think that somewhere along the line we've just forgotten
51:15
Speaker 1: that part of it. We've gotten consumed with being comfortable
51:20
Speaker 1: having religious freedom, having all the rights that we have,
51:23
Speaker 1: and those are fantastic things. I don't I'm not wishing
51:26
Speaker 1: them away but I also know that if my faith
51:30
Speaker 1: depends on not being persecuted, I'm going to be in
51:32
Speaker 1: trouble one of these days. And so I think that
51:38
Speaker 1: that sort of summarizes my discomfort with what I heard
51:41
Speaker 1: from these three individuals. For the most part. I'll let
51:46
Speaker 1: you go ahead, Ashiesh.
51:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I second what you're saying. I suppose if we're
51:53
Speaker 2: talking in terms of summaries very much related to yours,
51:58
Speaker 2: my discomfort is the collect apps of the faith into
52:02
Speaker 2: national identity. One way people talk about that you alluded
52:08
Speaker 2: to is nationalism, in other words, civil religion. My fear is,
52:12
Speaker 2: and I'm drawing off one of our former colleagues herea
52:14
Speaker 2: Mike McDuffie, is that it's it's actually a description of
52:19
Speaker 2: America as a religion. And I'm still wrestling with understanding that.
52:23
Speaker 2: But increasingly as I listened to these people, it really
52:27
Speaker 2: did seem that there was a lack of a gap
52:30
Speaker 2: between their understanding of this nation and their understanding of
52:33
Speaker 2: their faith, such that there's a loss of the distinctiveness
52:37
Speaker 2: of Jesus. There's a loss of the meaningfulness of the
52:41
Speaker 2: biblical covenant with biblical Israel. Right not to be confused
52:45
Speaker 2: with the modern nation state of Israel, and the meaningfulness
52:49
Speaker 2: of Jesus is coming out of that, so that we
52:51
Speaker 2: can't see in the way that these folks talked about,
52:55
Speaker 2: these supposed faith leaders. We can't see or a man
53:00
Speaker 2: a way of understanding the goodness of the work of
53:04
Speaker 2: Jesus and the work of renewal that we see in
53:07
Speaker 2: the first fruits, we see in the very work of
53:09
Speaker 2: Jesus as separated in any sort of way from where
53:14
Speaker 2: this country goes. Yeah, right, And I find that problematic,
53:20
Speaker 2: not least because regardless of who's in control this world,
53:24
Speaker 2: this country has never represented the thriving and the fulfillment
53:29
Speaker 2: and the liberation really of everyone in this country, never
53:34
Speaker 2: mind outside of this country. Correct, It's always existed within
53:39
Speaker 2: the kind of reality that you see, even if the
53:42
Speaker 2: politics are different at the top, the kind of reality
53:45
Speaker 2: you see in the emperor or the imperial dynasties of
53:51
Speaker 2: the past. Yeah, And that's always the blessing of a
53:56
Speaker 2: few at the expense of the many, and that blessing
54:01
Speaker 2: of the few is a short lived thing, right, Yeah,
54:06
Speaker 2: And that concerns me when we now reduce what Jesus
54:08
Speaker 2: is doing to this we make Jesus a partisan entity.
54:12
Speaker 2: We make Jesus a political entity that sets one nation
54:15
Speaker 2: up against the other when the work that Jesus came
54:18
Speaker 2: to do radically challenges all of it. Right, So when
54:23
Speaker 2: we think of the work of the providential ministry of God,
54:27
Speaker 2: we begin to see God as a puppeteer and raised
54:31
Speaker 2: up America to do X, Y, and Z. When I
54:33
Speaker 2: think the better way to look at it is, these
54:36
Speaker 2: things exist because the world exists in a place civilianation
54:39
Speaker 2: from it's thriving, which is with the Tree of Life
54:44
Speaker 2: as it represents God's fulfilling presence in the center of it.
54:47
Speaker 1: Right.
54:49
Speaker 2: But the existence of the world in this kind of
54:52
Speaker 2: a way doesn't mean God is powerless within it. God
54:56
Speaker 2: can nudge, God can pull, God can move, God can push.
55:00
Speaker 2: And that's what we mean by the providence of God,
55:02
Speaker 2: that nothing is outside the scope of God working. But
55:06
Speaker 2: that's not the same thing as saying the set of
55:08
Speaker 2: affairs politically that's at play are God's entities. That's right,
55:14
Speaker 2: and the collapse of those realities really troubles me. And
55:17
Speaker 2: the fact that Christians are happy to embrace that troubles me.
55:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, I think just to end this episode
55:25
Speaker 1: were coming up on time, but I would just say
55:28
Speaker 1: we didn't get to it. But I do have a
55:31
Speaker 1: piece that will be published on christianity dot com that
55:34
Speaker 1: discusses some of these prayers, and I would just commend
55:36
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron's prayer is one of these bright spots. So
55:41
Speaker 1: if you've listened this long, you shouldn't leave with the
55:43
Speaker 1: impression that what we're saying is Christians should never pray
55:47
Speaker 1: at the White House. It's not at all what we're saying.
55:50
Speaker 1: What we're saying is that Christian prayer at the White House,
55:54
Speaker 1: Christian participation in politics needs to be situated under the
55:58
Speaker 1: authority of Christ and needs to form to the sort
56:01
Speaker 1: of patterns that we see in Jesus and throughout the scriptures.
56:05
Speaker 1: And I thought, as I listened to each one each
56:08
Speaker 1: person pray, there were a couple of bright spots. But
56:10
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron, I thought, did a wonderful job of number one,
56:13
Speaker 1: recognizing that it's almost Easter. I thought that was nice,
56:17
Speaker 1: really focusing it on Jesus, but then also praying for
56:21
Speaker 1: the President and praying in a way that echoed very
56:26
Speaker 1: much the Sermon on the Mountain. He talked about weakness
56:29
Speaker 1: or meekness and humility. He talked about wisdom. You know,
56:34
Speaker 1: he encouraged God to instill in Donald Trump these characteristics,
56:42
Speaker 1: and so I think that there are appropriate ways for
56:44
Speaker 1: us to pray for our president. So this isn't about hey,
56:46
Speaker 1: don't pray for your political leaders. This isn't about hey,
56:49
Speaker 1: never participate in politics or never show up at the
56:51
Speaker 1: White House. That's not it. But we have to recognize
56:56
Speaker 1: that our God sits above all of this and that
56:59
Speaker 1: we his name, and in doing so, we have a
57:03
Speaker 1: role and responsibility of representing him well. And I don't
57:08
Speaker 1: think that the first three folks did that. I thought
57:10
Speaker 1: Bishop Baron did a wonderful job of it. So we
57:15
Speaker 1: can leave it there and really appreciate you having this conversation.
57:19
Speaker 1: I learned a lot. I think your comments were really helpful,
57:23
Speaker 1: and so thanks for being here, and thanks everybody else
57:27
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of
57:29
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to
57:31
Speaker 1: thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with
57:34
Speaker 1: us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to
57:36
Speaker 1: lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered
57:39
Speaker 1: podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
57:44
Speaker 1: and more.