Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / September 29, 2026
Transcript
- Greg: What's up everybody and welcome back to the September 29th edition of Beliefs, Ballots, and Bulldogs. Dog fans, I'm gonna say something to you today, and and I'm talking to myself just as much as I'm talking to all of you, and maybe we should just enjoy these moments. And I mean that seriously. Look, we just beat Oklahoma 41 to 13. And I've already caught myself going back and going, well, the offense didn't look as good. Gunnar threw an interception, things got a little sloppy there in the second half. Alabama and Tuscaloosa still coming. Look, guys, l let it go. Just stop. We're four and ⁓ two and ⁓ in conference. We've won every game by at least four touchdowns. And Saturday, we literally welcomed one of the most storied programs in the entire history of college football to Sanford Stadium. And we dominated them, beat them from the whistle to whistle. At some point, my my my point here is let's just enjoy being good. Because here's here's what was great about Saturday. We didn't need Gunner to throw for 400 yards. We didn't need some perfectly called offensive masterpiece of against what is a pretty good defense. We didn't need everything to go right. At some point you could realize the defense had basically told the rest of the team, hey, don't worry about it. We got this. And Oklahoma gets down near the goal line and you see what I'm talking about. The ball pops out, and Chris Cole, who what a physical freak of a specimen. This 240-pound behemoth just scrambles at 22 plus miles an hour down the sideline and I don't know about you. There's just something fun about watching those guys get their hands on the ball. And and you could see that moment where it where they finally go, holy crap, I'm about to score. It's just a freedom and a passion, I'm sure, that that most of us can't relate to. But I mean, I get it, but Oklahoma had four turnovers, but but they weren't exactly all gift turnovers. Those turnovers were were forced by the defense and were created a lot by the defensive havoc we were we were instituting. And look, they we gave up 65 rushing yards to to a good football team. It was 28 to nothing at halftime, and essentially the game was over. So I just want to talk about like let's let's remember the good stuff because look, I'm telling you, at some point we're gonna miss these years one day down the road. There, as much as it pains me to admit, there is going to come a time where Georgia football doesn't just roll out there on Saturday and win every daggum game. There'll be a time where where I'm looking back, going, man, you remember how good those Kirby teams were? You remember how much fun that was? Well, look, we are watching this right now, we are living it. Don't miss what's happening right in front of you because you're constantly worried about what's coming next. Don't beat Oklahoma by 28 points and start worrying about Alabama already. Don't spend the entire season waiting on us to get exposed and show that weakness that we all know we have. Look, Saturday was fun. Sanford Stadium was incredible. The defense is flying around and looks amazing. Talon Taylor finally had his breakout game. Chris Cole showed what kind of athlete we all knew he was. And look, we beat Oklahoma 41 to 13 and That's a pretty good thing to just sit back and enjoy. We got Vanderbilt rolling into town for homecoming week. Alabama's on deck after that. Like there's plenty of time to worry. But for today, let's just focus on enjoying being a Georgia a Georgia Bulldog because let me tell you something, boys and girls. These are the good old days. And let's be lucky enough and fortunate enough to realize it while we're going through it. We're gonna talk a little bit today about something. We're gonna we're gonna start taking the show in a slightly different direction just because with the with the elections around the corner. I I feel like we we need to talk about some of the political issues and and just get stuff out there and say, hey, what what does the Bible tell us about this? And so that's it, guys. We're we're gonna talk a little bit more politics than we have been. And that's it. I I know what some of you are thinking, you know, like there's not enough politics and political talk going around everywhere. Anytime you turn on the television, it's it's political. Facebook is political. You get on X and it's political everywhere. You walk into Thanksgiving dinner and Uncle Jimmy's a couple of beers deep. Well, he's gonna talk politics too. So why do we want to bring more of that into into this show? And the reason is because I don't want I don't want to talk about politics from that same angle that we that we see all the time. I want to have some different conversations. I want to talk about what we believe, why we believe it, and what the scripture says and what scripture doesn't say. We want to talk about how biblical principles apply to some of the biggest issues facing our country. And look, I'm going to tell you where I land clearly without dancing around it. That's the point of this. So let's get something out of the way. I don't think this is a secret to anybody who's paying attention to this. I'm a conservative. All right. Shocker, I know. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'm not going to spend the next several weeks talking about these things and acting like I don't have political beliefs because I'm afraid somebody might disagree with me. You might disagree with me. And that's okay. I'm not offended by that. But I'm also not going to water down what I believe simply because I'm concerned that somebody might get offended. What I'm going to do is what I think matters enormously. I'm going to tell you why. I'm not going to tell you I'm conservative, but conservatives are right. That's not an argument. Say the other side is idiots, well, that's not an argument either. And I'm certainly not going to try to just say, well, God's obviously on my political team. We've all got to be very careful saying things like that. What we're going to do is ask ourselves, what does scripture actually teach? What principles does it establish? How should those principles affect the way Christians talk about public life? And then we're going to talk about hey, where do those principles lead me? Those are the conversations worth having, and those are the conversations we're going to have. I want to establish something right out of the gate before we do anything else. The Bible is not conservative. The Bible is not liberal. The Bible is not Republican nor Democrat. The Bible doesn't belong to America. The Bible doesn't need or belong to any political categories. The Bible is the word of God. And therefore, my responsibility isn't to make scripture fit my politics. My responsibility is to make my politics answer to the scripture. And that is a completely different animal. If I only open the Bible looking for verses that prove what I already believe, then I'm not really allowing the scripture to teach me anything. I'm just using it as ammunition. And that's not what we want to do. Here's something I want every Christian to wrestle with. Does my faith shape my politics, or does my politics shape my faith? They can look somewhat similar from the outside. We can always find Bible verses that support something we already believe to prove a point we're trying to make. I I can listen exclusively to Christian teachers who agree with me. I can follow people who reinforce my worldview. I can become extremely confident that God agrees with me about everything and never once stop long enough to ask, have I actually submitted this belief fully to him? So that's the challenge. And look, by the way, hey, that's a challenge for me too. I don't get an exemption just because I come on here and do this all the time. That that's there's another idea I reject that and you'll hear people say all this all the time. You know, keep religion, keep faith out of politics. I mean, how how exactly am I supposed to do that? My faith determines what I believe about human beings. It determines my my feelings and thoughts on justice and truth, sexuality, marriage, money, work, compassion, authority, freedom, violence, forgiveness, responsibility, life, death, good and evil. If if my faith shapes all of those things, then how can it possibly have nothing to say about politics? Politics deals with those things. It deals with human beings and justice and money and authority and freedom and life. So those worlds, the the worlds of religion and faith and politics are naturally going to intersect. The question isn't whether your worldview influences your politics. Everybody's worldview influences their politics. The question is what worldview is shaping yours? So let me establish the other boundary. Jesus Christ is not a politician. He is not a mascot for my political beliefs, and Christianity is not a campaign platform. Jesus says in John 18 36, My kingdom is not of this world. Our ultimate hope isn't in Washington. It's not Congress. It's not the Supreme Court. It's certainly not a president or a governor or even an election. Psalms 146, chapter verse 3 says Put not your trust in princes. In a son of man in whom there is no salvation. It's a pretty good warning for political people. Don't ask politics to save you. It can't and it won't. But saying politics cannot save us doesn't mean politics doesn't matter. Governments make decisions that affect human beings. Laws have consequences. Policies have consequences. Leadership, as we see, certainly has consequences. And as Christians, we live in this world. So we should think seriously about those things. Over the next few weeks and several episodes, we're gonna get into all of this stuff. We're gonna talk about the economy. We're gonna talk about work and money and debt and taxes and government spending and poverty and generosity and personal responsibility. We're gonna talk some about the border and immigration and law and order and national sovereignty and how to treat foreigners and compassion versus crime, human dignity. We're gonna talk about abortion and human life and the unborn and mothers and responsibility. what it means to believe that a human being is created in the image of God. We're gonna talk about sex and gender and all the LGBTQ issues, male and female, marriage, sexual morality, children, parents, dignity, truth, love. We're gonna talk about all of that. And whether loving another human being requires affirming everything that person believes about themselves. We're gonna talk about crime and justice. We're gonna talk about government and power. We're gonna talk about freedom. We're gonna talk about war. We're going talk about political leadership and character. And I'm sure somewhere along the way, we're going to make everybody uncomfortable, including me. But good, maybe that's healthy. And let me be especially clear about this. These episodes aren't going to end with, well, you know, there's good arguments on both sides and everywhere. So nobody can really know anything for sure. So everybody just follow your heart and do what you believe is right. No, I don't agree with that. I'm going to tell you what I believe. I'm gonna defend it and I'm gonna tell you why I believe it. And when I believe scripture gives us a clear moral principle, I'm not gonna pretend it's unclear just because the clarity might be unpopular. There is another side to intellectual honesty. When scripture gives us a principle but doesn't give us a specific public policy, I'm gonna try to tell you that too, because there's a difference between saying, hey, this is what the Bible teaches, and saying, because the Bible teaches this. I believe this policy is the wisest way to apply it. Those are not the same statements. And for Christians, we have to be honest enough to recognize that difference. Here's the easiest example I could come up with. The Bible talks exclusively and extensively about money, work, greed, generosity, debt, care for the poor, justice, good stewardship, government. But at no point do you find a verse that says, Second opinion, chapter four, verse 17. And behold, the marginal tax rate shall be 27.3%. It's not in there. I checked. So what we do is we have to take the biblical principles, and then we have to exercise wisdom about how those principles should be applied. Christians can sometimes can sometimes agree completely on the biblical principle, but still disagree with the best policy for accomplishing it. That's what we deal with all the time. That's legitimate. But sometimes scripture is considerably clearer about the underlying moral question. And we shouldn't pretend that. Every issue has the same exact amount of ambiguity. Some don't. And look, here's another promise I'm going to make. If I'm going to disagree with somebody, if I'm going to disagree with you on something, I'm going to try to disagree with what they actually believe. I'm not going to try to turn it into the stupidest version of their argument. I'm not going to try to argue against the mean version or the 12-second clip designed to make everybody angry. I want to go against the real argument. Because if my position is accurate, correct, and true. I don't need the other side to be stupid. And that's an important distinction to make. We've talked about listening and we've talked about admitting that we might be wrong, about trying to understand what the other person actually sees. We're not throwing that away because politics enters the conversation. Quite the opposite. We're probably going to need it even more here. Understanding someone's argument doesn't mean you have to agree with it. It simply means that you have enough integrity to tell the truth about the person you're disagreeing with and what their stance is. And look, at the same time, being fair and being understanding doesn't mean that I'm going to pretend that I don't believe anything and I don't have beliefs. Respect doesn't require silence. Love doesn't require agreement on everything. Humility doesn't require me to abandon my convictions. And Christianity certainly doesn't require us to look at every cultural decision and just shrug. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 15 tells us to speak the truth in love. We've talked about that repeatedly. Notice both words. Speak the truth in love. Truth and love. Truth without love can just become cruel, but love without truth can become cowardice, disguised as compassion. Christ calls us to use both all the time. That's the standard I'm going to try to hold myself to throughout this series. And look, this may make some of my conservative people a little bit uncomfortable. Good. I I'm not interested in replacing biblical Christianity with conservative conservatism. If something on the political right contradicts scripture, scripture wins every time. That's the bottom line. If conservatives have become cruel towards people we are commanded to love, then we need to confront that. If we excuse dishonesty because the liar helps our political goals, we need to confront that. If we care about morality only when the person behaving immorally belongs on the other side. We need to confront that. If we preach personal responsibility to everybody else while refusing to take responsibility for ourselves, we absolutely have to confront that. If we become consumed by anger, we should confront it. Because I don't want my politics discipling me. I want Jesus to disciple me. And if that never creates tension with my political tribe, well, I should probably ask whether or not I've confused the two because they shouldn't line up all the time. Conviction without caricature. That is something that we're gonna we're gonna pursue after this series. I I don't want to build straw men, I don't want to manipulate scripture, I don't want to call every political disagreement a battle between good people and evil people. But I also don't want to become so terrified of the controversy that I'm unwilling to say, this is what I believe, this is why I believe it, and this is where I believe scripture leads me. You can disagree, but at least at that point we're having a real conversation. So here's what I want from you during this series. As we go through the series, don't ask yourself, do I agree with Greg? That's not the goal. Ask yourself, is what Greg is saying true? Look at the scriptures for yourself. Read the passages around the verses I wrote. Get the whole context. Challenge the argument. Think, pray, study. And if you believe I am wrong, that's okay. But you know why I'm thinking what I'm thinking. And at least at this point, you'll know why I'm wrong. And if you discover something that challenges what you already believe, don't run from it. We've talked about this before. Being wrong is not the most dangerous thing. Being uncorrectable is. This applies to politics too, probably even more so. It applies especially in politics. At the end of the day, I know what my political philosophy is. I've told you, I'm a conservative, but that word doesn't define me before everything else. Christian does. Follower of Jesus. That's the identity that everything else has to answer to. My politics, my marriage, my money, my sexuality, my work, my speech, my relationships, my ambitions, everything. Jesus doesn't get the parts of my life that don't interfere with my preferences. He gets all of it. And that includes my politics. One of our pastors at Church of the Highlands has has repeated the phrase many times. Jesus is either Lord of it all or not at all. And that's your choice. So we're gonna go there. We're gonna talk about all the issues that people are arguing at ⁓ arguing about around the dinner tables and on television and online and at work and everywhere. But we're gonna open the Bible and we're gonna look and see what it actually says. We're gonna examine the principles. We're gonna look at honestly, we're gonna look at the arguments, and I'm gonna tell you where I stand. Not because I expect you to outsource your thinking to me, quite the opposite. I I want you to think about these things. I want you to pray. I want you to read the scripture, I want you to ask the difficult questions. And most importantly, I want every one of us to ask, does what I believe politically actually survive contact with what I claim to believe biblically? Because eventually every Christian has to decide which direction the authority runs. Do I interpret scripture through my politics or do I submit politics to my scripture? I know which one of those I want. And I'm sure there will be moments that that throughout this series where I discover that doing this is a whole lot harder than saying it. And that's okay. We're all going to wrestle with this together. No slogans, no caricatures, no pretending, no hiding what I believe. Scripture first, conviction without cruelty, and truth without fear. And look, wherever God's word challenges me, God's word wins every time. Every single time. Get in your Bible, say your prayers, think for yourselves, tell the truth, and above everything else, follow Jesus before you follow anyone else. God bless.