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10/18/26 Return of the Strong Gods · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently G.K.
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  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton did not exactly say that to cease to believe in God is not to believe
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  SPEAKER_00: in nothing, but rather to believe in everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if he didn't say that, it's certainly a good phrase, and I think it's true nonetheless.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that it can shed some light on the gospel that we have today.
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  SPEAKER_00: In a related vein, I've been reading a book recently by a philosopher named R.R.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reno called The Return of the Strong Gods.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's an interesting hypothesis that he lays out.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's not really much of a hypothesis.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty obviously true.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's that in this world in which we live now,
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  SPEAKER_00: we are in the time of the weak gods or the end of that time.
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  SPEAKER_00: What do I mean by all of this strange talk,
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  SPEAKER_00: and how does that have anything to do with the Gospels?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that it does,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I think it's very relevant to our own times, so bear with me for just a second.
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  SPEAKER_00: The strong gods, R. Arvino says, were those things which every culture has.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every culture has these values and these core beliefs and these things
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  SPEAKER_00: which people are willing to die for,
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  SPEAKER_00: And after the trauma of the Second World War,
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  SPEAKER_00: because we don't realize that,
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  SPEAKER_00: we don't realize that the First World War and
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  SPEAKER_00: the Second World War were incredibly traumatic,
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  SPEAKER_00: and much more so for Europe even than the United States.
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  SPEAKER_00: There were world-shakingly traumatic events.
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  SPEAKER_00: People's entire societies were destroyed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Their entire countryside became a minefield.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a horrific time.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as a response to that time,
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  SPEAKER_00: there was this whole,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: way of thinking and idea that came about,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is that the world wars were caused by the strong gods.
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  SPEAKER_00: In other words,
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  SPEAKER_00: they were caused by people having things that they believed in,
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  SPEAKER_00: things that they were willing to die for.
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  SPEAKER_00: And all of that led to this horrible clash that almost destroyed the world in a very real sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we have to get rid of the strong gods and we have to only have weak gods.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to get rid of those things that people care about so much
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  SPEAKER_00: that they're willing to die for or kill for them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: you can think of John Lennon's famous song,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: nothing to die for, nothing, nothing to kill for, you know, no heaven above.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of a good,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: summation or expression of this idea,
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  SPEAKER_00: this idea that, well,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we just get rid of all those strong gods,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we get rid of religion, if we get rid of anything that anyone cares about.
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  SPEAKER_00: If everyone's just sort of living this drugged out meaningless existence,
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  SPEAKER_00: then there will be no more wars and we'll have peace on earth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that we can all kind of see the problem with that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we can understand also that the people in that situation would have that idea,
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  SPEAKER_00: would come to that conclusion, especially if they didn't believe in God.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not a hard conclusion to reach.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the only problem with it, like all utopian thinking, is that it doesn't work.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a great idea, but it doesn't work.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't it work?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't work because we can't live without strong gods.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't live without things that we're living for.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't live without meaning in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to live a meaningless life.
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  SPEAKER_00: The only way you'd settle for a meaningless life is if you had had so much trauma
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  SPEAKER_00: that you're trying to escape from that,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that was kind of what that generation was.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we're in a different time now, and that's what Ara Reno is pointing out.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's pointing out we live in a time in which people are recovering from A sense of
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  SPEAKER_00: the strong gods, because of course they are, because we can't live without those.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the question is, what gods are we going to recover?
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  SPEAKER_00: What are we going to live for?
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  SPEAKER_00: What are we willing to give our life for?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's the wrong one, we will have problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if it's the right one, then that could be the solution to our problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we get to the gospel that we have today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ says in this little phrase at the end of the gospel,
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  SPEAKER_00: Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but to God what belongs to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now it's interesting that we're talking about this phrase
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  SPEAKER_00: because this could almost be seen as the throwaway phrase, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the Herodians and the Pharisees who hate each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the only thing that binds them together is they hate Jesus even more.
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  SPEAKER_00: They all get together and they try to come up with this sneaky trap for him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he finds this perfect way of calling their bluff.
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  SPEAKER_00: But That's the thing about Christ is his throwaway phrases are so good
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  SPEAKER_00: that they can become defining for an entire culture.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is certainly true of this phrase that Christ gives us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and unto God what belongs to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is we can't fall down on either one of those.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's this key that Christ is giving us.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we render unto God what belongs to Caesar, we will be in trouble.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that might surprise us because we'll think, well, Jesus is all about God, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: We should be all about God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why would we not worry about giving everything to God?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's not everything that we should give to God because we don't live in heaven yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: We live in the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so rendering unto God what belongs to Caesar,
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  SPEAKER_00: that sets up what we had in the Middle Ages where we have sort
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  SPEAKER_00: of this monarchical papacy and we have the church taking over control of the world
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  SPEAKER_00: and the church getting itself into physical power and into ruling things and
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  SPEAKER_00: that leads nowhere good very fast.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's important for us to remember.
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  SPEAKER_00: We cannot render unto God what belongs to Caesar.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to have things in balance.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't let religion take over everything because then it's not religion anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we can't render unto Caesar what belongs to God,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is what obviously the Romans were doing at that time.
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  SPEAKER_00: They saw Caesar as a God.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were giving worship to their physical ruler.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when you get that, you get ideology.
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  SPEAKER_00: You get all the sorts of things that led to the catastrophe of this last century,
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  SPEAKER_00: where people are giving the devotion and love that belongs to God to things
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  SPEAKER_00: that are not God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the solution to the problem of the strong gods is not get rid of strong gods,
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  SPEAKER_00: but render unto Caesar only what belongs to Caesar and unto God only what belongs
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  SPEAKER_00: to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And don't get those two mixed up.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Christ is trying to tell us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The solution from all of our problems that we've experienced
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  SPEAKER_00: during this past century,
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  SPEAKER_00: the solution to our political problems,
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  SPEAKER_00: the solution to the problems of our own time is to have things in balance.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the invitation of Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because Christians never set up their own state, at least not in the early church.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when they did later on, it did not work.
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  SPEAKER_00: It does not work.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christianity is a radical relationship with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not a worldly state.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when you take that radical relationship and you try to make it into
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  SPEAKER_00: a worldly state, you lose the essence of Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you end up with nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was what led to these Second World Wars,
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  SPEAKER_00: was taking the Second World,
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  SPEAKER_00: First World Wars,
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  SPEAKER_00: taking Christianity and making it into an ideology,
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  SPEAKER_00: transferring what should be rendered unto God to human beings,
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  SPEAKER_00: absolutizing your country and saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're better than everyone else,
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  SPEAKER_00: and we have the right to dominate everyone else and take everyone else over.
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  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that leads to this conflict.
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  SPEAKER_00: And right now,
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  SPEAKER_00: this time in our history,
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  SPEAKER_00: After this time of the weak gods,
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  SPEAKER_00: right after we've sort of had this attempt to make this global society in
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  SPEAKER_00: which there's no more conflict and everybody lives in peace,
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  SPEAKER_00: nobody really has any values.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're seeing that it doesn't work.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's why in every side in this global world we've tried to build,
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  SPEAKER_00: we see rising nationalism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why would people be nationalistic?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because it's natural to love your country.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's natural to love your people.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's natural to want to be proud of that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And especially in Europe,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I've been to Europe, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: I visited Germany and it's like,
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  SPEAKER_00: for the most part,
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  SPEAKER_00: Germans are not proud to be German because they've been told over and over again
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  SPEAKER_00: for generations, we did this, we are horrible, we are terrible.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's, is it surprising That someone who grows up in that would say, well, wait a minute.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to be proud of my country.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to be proud of my heritage.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to be proud of what I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if the only people who are doing that are the neo-Nazis,
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  SPEAKER_00: then it's like, well, maybe I'm a neo-Nazi.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there you're going and creating the whole problem over again.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we cannot just suppress any values or any loves or any fears.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those things are natural to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We won't be able to suppress them.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what we can do is we can put them into order and we can remember
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  SPEAKER_00: to put first things first and second things second.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can remember to keep God in the first place.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can remember not to render unto Caesar what belongs to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in this time,
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  SPEAKER_00: as we do that,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we do that,
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  SPEAKER_00: then we can build up just and good societies and we can have a healthy place for
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  SPEAKER_00: a love of our country,
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  SPEAKER_00: for a love of our nation, for a love of our people, for a love of our family.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are fine and they're good and they're rich.
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  SPEAKER_00: And beautiful as long as we render unto God what belongs to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we do that,
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  SPEAKER_00: then all of those things that we have, they can become a way of enriching others.
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  SPEAKER_00: And to truly be together in a multicultural environment and community is wonderful.
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  SPEAKER_00: As long as we have things in order, as long as we render unto God what belongs to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as we make our race or our ethnicity or our particular situation
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  SPEAKER_00: into God,
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  SPEAKER_00: Then all of a sudden we're back in the same place where we're conflicting
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  SPEAKER_00: with other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because if that is God, then that needs to conquer everything else, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: If some aspect that is not God,
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  SPEAKER_00: I make that into God,
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  SPEAKER_00: then I'm in a place in which I can very easily condemn other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: And certainly we see that in our culture.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, our culture,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is so tolerant and so accepting and so loving,
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  SPEAKER_00: is extremely ready to condemn anyone who disagrees.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's always a sign that something is off.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if we keep rendering to God what belongs to God and rendering
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  SPEAKER_00: to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,
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  SPEAKER_00: then we can see one another as human beings,
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  SPEAKER_00: loved by God,
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  SPEAKER_00: cherished by God,
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  SPEAKER_00: filled with his image and his likeness,
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  SPEAKER_00: and we can appreciate that richness that we all have and we can share that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this little phrase,
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  SPEAKER_00: this seemingly throwaway phrase of Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: can become for us a key to understand our time,
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  SPEAKER_00: And a key to live this time well and to remember what really matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we do that,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we let that message of Christ sink into our hearts,
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  SPEAKER_00: then Christ will help us to go forward and build a society that is just,
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  SPEAKER_00: that is loving, that is respectful, that is truly tolerant.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because tolerance is this God that we all need to give,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, obeisance to, but because tolerance flows from having God.
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  SPEAKER_00: First things in place from having the love of God in our hearts and only from
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  SPEAKER_00: that love,
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  SPEAKER_00: the love that comes from God,
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  SPEAKER_00: can that flow through us and out to all those around us and create a truly loving
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  SPEAKER_00: and good and just society.