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Charlie Kirk Did "Third Way" — And So Do You || SLP617 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Which way now for the church?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: After Charlie Kirk's memorial, Russell Johnson, a mega church pastor in the States, said this.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Charlie's memorial service wasn't just a funeral for him.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was a funeral for third wayism.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: It was a funeral for Can you define that for listeners?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like this idea of like, well, I'm neither left nor right.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really above the political binary.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's uh pros and cons on on both sides, but in an effort to reach as many people as possible, I'm gonna use ambiguity as an ideological strategy so nobody can tell where I stand.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Lest, God forbid, somebody who might be on the left leaves my church.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: The usual suspects hold out the usual playbook.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Complete avoidance, total ambiguity, or grotesque appeal to like nuance.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: This entire grift has been exposed.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: What people are looking for is strong leadership that's able to speak with moral authority.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then when his memorial service functioned as a platform for the gospel, that he treats literally to hundreds of millions, if not billions, at this point.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And for pastors to act as if that is an event of no consequence, exposed the spiritual depravity of cowards who stand behind pulpits and get their talking points from ex-vangelicals.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Which way now?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the Charlie Kirk Memorial was for Russell Johnson an inflection point.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: It revealed that there is a bankruptcy to third wayism.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what is third wayism?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: We've heard Russell Johnson give his definition.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh let's hear Gavin Ortland's definition, somebody who is much more associated with the third way.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_06: Tim Keller, for example, has always said it is not about finding a middle ground.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_06: It is about nothing other than following the Bible, no matter what, even if the world sees you as an extremist.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_06: Christopher Watkin wrote this excellent book, Biblical Critical Theory.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_06: It's very clear that third wayism is not splitting the difference between the major political parties that are currently operating.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_06: Not only is that not the way forward, that's actually wandering from the faith.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_06: Rather, the goal is nothing other than letting the Bible set the table.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_06: The Bible does not fit into the modern world.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_06: It will rearrange the furniture, so to speak.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_06: Trevan Wax makes this point very clearly that we should not stay above the fray.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_06: We should not make it sound like there's moral equivalency between the two parties.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_06: There isn't.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_06: What is third wayism?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_06: In a nutshell, it is very simple.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_06: The thinking is this contemporary conservative politics, especially in the United States, has important differences from historic Christianity.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_06: And even if those differences are not as dire as the political left, they are still important enough that they are worth pointing out.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_06: From our perspective, this is not really a third way.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_06: It's just the first way.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_06: We just want to follow Jesus, and it is that simple.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we've heard Russell Johnson's critique.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: We've heard Gavin Ortland, who's summarizing other proponents of third wayism.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: Here is James Wood, who wrote a viral article for First Things in 2022 called How I Evolved on Tim Keller.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the article, and he in this video here, go to great lengths to express his appreciation for Tim Keller.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Nevertheless, when he talks about the dangers of winsome third wayism, these are the dangers.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a package approach to cultural engagement that thinks about politics through the lens of the vi gospel, particularly about like how to maximize uh minimize um offense so as to maximize openness to the gospel.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's the way I summary package approach to cultural engagement and politics so as to minimize offense and maximize openness to the gospel.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Here there are common problems with it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying this is always true about Keller, so let me just talk about the model.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes this maps onto Keller, but often maybe to his acolytes.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is I think that it often reduces to niceness, which I think is a sentimentalized reduction of the biblical worldview, what winsomeness does uh inclines Christians to embrace the narratives pushed by cultural elites, many of whom are increasingly uh hostile to Christianity, some moral teachings.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it leads Christians, I think, often to scorn fellow believers to their right who are more out of step with the cultural consensus.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Mitchell calls this innocent signaling.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Carl Truman calls it progressive privilege.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh also, since culture has shifted in these certain ways we've been talking about, I think no matter how nicely Christians present traditional biblical positions on certain hot button issues, they will be viewed as backwards and bigoted.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Colin Hansen, the biographer of Tim Keller and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, says this about the niceness point.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: I guess a question just related to Keller's legacy is how much credit does he deserve for being the vice president of the Christian ministry that spoke more often, more directly, more loudly about the moral issues of transgender ideology and abortion than any other in the world.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, how does that fit a winsome third-way structure?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Perhaps people forget the ways in which the Gospel Coalition, which Tim Keller founded alongside others, has actually forthrightly contended for issues in the culture.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's the winsomeness point.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: As to the third way point, Colin Hansen points out that Tim Keller largely uses the third way as a way of describing two ways of being: licentiousness versus legalism, and how the gospel is something else.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think it's accurate to talk about Keller's uh third way and primarily in a culture or political framework.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: The vast majority of references are to moralism or licentiousness.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they're theological categories, more broadly moral, as opposed to more narrowly political.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, what should we make of the third way?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: I've got two points for this video.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: The first is that doing third way is inevitable, and we'll see that everybody I've mentioned here actually does third way, even its greatest critics.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: But that secondly, being third way is untenable.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: It is crucial to do third way, it is deadly to be third way.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: What do I mean by that?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get into it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Doing third way is inevitable, and actually it's something that even Russell Johnson does.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: So remember the church pastor whose viral clip we began with?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: He has been a great critic of third wayism.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: He recognizes that every way you travel has a ditch on either side.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: Here he is in conversation with Roslan.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for every mile of road, you got two miles of ditch.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: For every movement, every denomination, every theological camp, you're gonna have strengths and weaknesses, you're gonna have pros and cons.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: Every mile of road has ditches on either side, ditches that you want to avoid.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what do you call that road that you are then traveling?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: That is, I guess, a third way.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Russell Johnson does third way, so do you, so do I, it's inevitable.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: Fascinatingly, after Russell Johnson went viral for being against the third way, Alyssa Childers tweets out about this third wayism and how she's also against it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then someone gets in touch and says, Oh, I'm not sure that we want to be associating with Russell Johnson because of his links to X, Y, and Z.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not interested in or qualified to adjudicate on that matter.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: But it's interesting to me that Alyssa Childers then invited somebody onto her podcast to say, oh, we are against third way, but we're also wanting to distinguish ourselves from Russell Johnson.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And what do you call that?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's a kind of third wayism.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: We have to be discerning.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: If they didn't because they're scared of offending the other third wayers, that's a problem.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: If they didn't because they don't want to ruffle feathers or get out of their position with this group or that group, that's a bad reason.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can apply that to the other side of the aisle.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: If they're not calling out someone like Paula White or Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland or some of these people who are obviously false teachers, um, why are they not doing that?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Powell So they're having to do a third way about the third way, and then Alyssa Childers says this about the Charlie Kirk Memorial.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: There's good and there's bad, and we need to differentiate.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: There was some really bad theology spoken from the platform.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna unpack it.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, there was some really good theology spoken from the platform.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Ross Powell Which is good and necessary.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: We all do third way.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's inevitable.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: James Wood, as a critic of Tim Keller, also does all sorts of third-way things.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: There's this question that was asked of him at the event with Colin Hansen and Peter Lighthart, reads out the question.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_05: I'll put this under the in the Choche category of questions.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_05: Regarding the spiritual openness or curiosity in the late teens, early twenties, that it'd be that they had become disillusioned by the whoop left and well the mega brand of Christianity and are therefore looking for a third way.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's always and there are chuckles in the room because everybody recognizes that we all do third way.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then James Wood does third way.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but the young Gen Z guys, that were that's where a lot of the there is some data even on this, that they are more spiritually open, they're attending churches at higher rates.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: There there is data on this.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and I do think that some of that is probably the overreach of the left.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I I one of the terms I toyed with a couple years ago before I came up with the term reality respecters, which seemed to catch on more, is uh refugees from the woke and sexual revolutions.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: That phrase, refugees from the sexual revolution, I think the originator of that phrase is Russell Moore, whose name often comes up in these conversations as somebody who is a proponent of the third way.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but he is somebody who has been saying for a long time, we need to be refuges for the refugees from the sexual revolution.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: Just interesting that Russell Moore is the originator of that phrase as I understand it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And now James Wood is saying, yes, we we need to be the sorts of people that Russell Moore was encouraging us to be.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: We also need to be places of refuge for who?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe for MAGA refugees.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you know, experiencing the ravages of these kind of uh uh these cultural forces that are destroying, in many ways, civilization, and also just uh being hammered down your throat when you can't speak against them, otherwise you'll get canceled or whatever.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of guys, a lot of young guys felt that especially, and uh are that's part of I think they're refugees from that direction, uh probably predominantly more so, but we'll have to see.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen enough data on that.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: But that's my guess.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the danger, though.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I said there's bad ways to respond to this moment.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the dangers generally about any of these types of shifts that are flitting about the surface that we've talked about, is that you overplay your hand when you get when a door cracks open, you want to kick it open, and you overplay your hand, and it will backfire.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it and I call them beware of the Pyrrhic victories in the culture war.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my guess.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably more from that right now.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: But again, the danger still, even if that's true, is the danger is you might get refugees from MAGA in the near future as well.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: James Wood does third way.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: We all do third way.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's no shade on anybody to do third way, doing third way, differentiating from other positions, not buying into the binary that the world presents to you, identifying the ditches on either side of your road and being able to stay true to your mission, that is something we all must do.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: Necessarily, doing third way is inevitable.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Charlie Kirk did third way.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Of course Charlie Kirk did third way.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: When the anti-Semite racist Nick Fuentes tried to have his people infiltrate a turning points USA event, Charlie Kirk was very clear that that is a ditch that he wanted to avoid on his right, and he absolutely had no time for enemies to his right.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: Here's how this particular QA went down.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_08: But if you go back to the original Founding Fathers, they intended this to be a European nation for white men of good stock and character.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_07: So can you show me?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: Let me f let me answer the question.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_07: Can you show me where in the United States Constitution it says that?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't in the Constitution.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't in the Constitution because they didn't believe it.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: What does the phrase e pluribus unum mean?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_07: What does the phrase e pluribus unum mean?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_08: Why is that relevant?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_07: Because it was on every founding document and presidential seal from our founding.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_07: Which means of many user and your ideology is not conservative.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_07: It is right wing, identitarian, and has no place in the conservative movement, my friend.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_07: Get out along.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_07: Get out along.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever you think of Charlie Kirk, that was a great moment, and that was a great moment of third wayism, actually.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: That was actually him identifying his enemies to the right and distinguishing himself from them.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: The alternative to doing a third-way move at that point is to say, oh, we should have no enemies to the right, therefore let us unite with the Nick Fuentes crowd.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: If your critique of third wayism is that it's a kind of a both sidesism, maybe your problem is that you want to be one side.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that one side has aspects to it that really need calling out.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: And you're going to need to flex your third way muscle.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: Now you might not want to call it a third-way muscle, that's fine, but you do have such a muscle, that muscle needs flexing.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: We all do third way all the time.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Take Doug Wilson, it's November, and so he has his no quarter November, in which he takes the handbrake off even further on some of the things that he wants to say out into the culture, and usually it involves him blowing something up or setting something on fire.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Doug Wilson, this November, has wanted to set fire to a Trojan horse that is trying to get into the church, and that Trojan horse is named respectability.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: He has identified, and I think correctly, one idol that the church is in danger of succumbing to.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Respectability is a hell of a drug, as they say.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, as we press into what this Trojan horse represents, notice that far right flatulence is one of the things that we need to be very wary of.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: Doug Wilson is very attuned to the squishiness of a certain evangelicalism that has no backbone and that capitulates to evils in the name of respectability.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: He's very attuned to that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: He's also attuned to far-right flatulence to the Nick Fuentes types and wanting to distinguish himself from that.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: What do you call that?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: You might not want to give it the name third wayism, but he is doing third wayism.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: He is saying that there are evangelical elites to his left and he's distinguishing himself from them, and there is far right flatulence to his right, and he's distinguishing himself from that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care what you want to call it, but he is rightly and inevitably flexing a third way kind of a muscle.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: So this is my first point for this video.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Doing third way is inevitable.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody does it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Russell Johnson does it.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: James Wood does it, Doug Wilson does it, Charlie Kirk did it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: We all do and we all must resist the binaries that are offered to us, the package deals that are offered to us, and we need to not invite into Christianity things that do not belong.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe respectability is one idol we need to recognize.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: Also, far-right flatulence is something that we must identify.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: But if third way isn't something we all do, what is going on when it takes such a beating online?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: When people are dead against it, what is it that they're actually against?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: If they're all doing something that you could label third way and yet they're against third way, what is the actual critique?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think actually this Trojan horse in Doug Wilson's video describes well the sort of thing that people are actually concerned about.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: They're actually concerned that in the name of respectability, any number of compromises with evil are being brought into the church.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: And respectability is a hell of a drug.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: To which I would say, yay, and our men, respectability is a hell of a drug.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: But it is not the only idol that we should address.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Respectability is a hell of a drug.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Pugilism is a hell of a drug, too.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Coddling the elites is a certain kind of a drug.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Giving the middle finger to the elites is also a hell of a drug.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: Desperately seeking a seat at the table of power is a hell of a drug.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Burning down the table, blowing stuff up, that's a hell of a drug as well.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: And do you know what I'm doing here?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing a bit of a third way.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm saying there's not just one thing that we need to reject, i.e.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: respectability.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: There are multiple things, multiple idols that are vying for the attention of our hearts.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: And classically, elite types are suckers for respectability, but also classically, those who are outside the inner rings of respectability are suckers for factionalism.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: And there might be more than one thing that we need to reject.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: And those are temptations that have existed for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Chris Watkin put me onto this idea, the difference between the city and the country has been an ancient concern.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: There are the elite types in the city who think they are better than everybody else, and there is the countryside that actually ends up feeding the city, but feels an outsider to power and perhaps resents the power of the elites.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: City versus country is a binary that is as old as human civilization.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And sin manifests itself differently in the city and in the country.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: In the city, there is a smug superiority.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: In the country, there is an angular arrogance.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And how much of that is going on in this third-way conversation?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think quite a lot of that is going on.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Tim Keller in New York City, Tim Keller founding city to city church planting networks, and those who are in the flyover states wanting to set fire to a Trojan horse called respectability.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Classic city versus country energy, if you ask me, and what's the answer to that?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: It is not to say the city is right or to say that the country is right.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: We need to do third way to this city versus country dynamic.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe there are things we can learn from the city, and maybe there are things we can learn from the country.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: But as the West, and particularly the United States, sorts itself into these binaries, never has there been a greater need to do third way.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: There is something that the city gets right, and there's something that the country gets right.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's something that red gets right, there's something that blue gets right.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: America is polarizing.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: The rest of the Anglosphere, through social media largely, is following their lead.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: Never has there been a greater need for third way.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: But third way is something that you should do, it's never something you should be.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's my second point.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Doing third way is inevitable.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Being third way is untenable.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: If you take your identity from being third way, you will end up being a squishy centrist.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: You will end up being defined by the political binaries and the social and cultural binaries that are being offered to you.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: All the package deals that come your way, you will define yourself in relation to them rather than by the pole star, which is Jesus Christ.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: This is why we need the Abraham option.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: The Abraham option, what is that?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: You say, well, Rod Dreher made famous the Benedict option as a response to the polarization and to the dechristianization of the West.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: We need to strengthen our institutions the way that Benedict did.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: We need to strengthen particularly Christian institutions rather than through respectability trying to gain a seat at the table of elite Western power.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: We need to strengthen what is particularly Christian and build up distinctive Christian civilization as Benedict did.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: I see wisdom to that, I see some weaknesses to that as well.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I've come up with the phrase the Abraham option, and it's based on Genesis chapter 14.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's the first mention of cities in the Bible, it's also the first mention of warfare in the Bible, and those two things are linked.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as you have concentrated power, you're going to have power plays and power struggles.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: But what does Abraham do?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Let me read to you from Genesis 14, and you can watch me draw it as I explain it to you.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, here we are in the ancient Near East.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: We've got the Red Sea, we've got the Dead Sea, we've got the Persian Gulf.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Up north you've got the superpowers.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: The kings of Shina, Elassa, Elam, and Goyim.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: They go to war against smaller kings, the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admar, Zeboyim, and Belah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: They are under the thumb of this superpower for twelve years.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: In the thirteenth year, verse four, they rebelled.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: One side in the culture war rebels against the other side in the culture war, and a year later, Kedalama, one of the kings from the north, fights back, there's a massive battle, and in verse 11 the four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Then they went away.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: They also carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions since he was living in Sodom.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Lot was living in Sodom.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: Lot was living in compromise with one of the great powers in this culture war.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: In verse 13, a man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is the first use of the word Hebrew.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Hebrew means one from beyond.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's what foreigners call the Israelites.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: They are from beyond the river.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: They are also from out of this world as regards the way that they live.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Abram is defined, and his people are defined as those who are from beyond.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: They are not caught up in the same worldliness as everybody else.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Verse 14, when Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan, right up in the north.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: During the night, Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hoba, north of Damascus.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions together with the women and the other people.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Abram finally enters into the fray.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Twelve years of oppression from north to south.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't enter the fray.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: After another year, the South rebels, Abram does not enter the fray.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Then the North comes and attacks, and Abram doesn't enter the fray until one of his own is swept up in this culture war, and for the sake of the family of God, he enters into battle and he is good at it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: He has been raising up people who can mix it with the best.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Trained men in his household take on the superpower of their day and they win.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Abram is not raising pushovers in his household.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: He is raising warriors, but they are warriors who know when to fight and when, crucially, not to fight.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: For 13 years, he does not enter the fray.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: When he does, he wins a decisive victory.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then, verse 17, after Abram returned from defeating Ketalama and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shavah, that is the king's valley.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: So Abraham has been co-belligerent with the king of Sodom for a limited victory in one battle.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: The king of Sodom now thinks he is besties with Abraham.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Abraham does not think the same way.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Abraham does not think of himself as a king, even though he's got an army that can defeat the greatest superpower of its day.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he does not think of himself as in any kind of lasting alliance with the king of Sodom.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: Where does his allegiance lie?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: Abraham's allegiance is with the righteous priest king, who brings bread and wine.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Verse 18.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: He was priest of God most high, and he blessed Abram, saying, Blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and praise be to God most high, who delivered your enemies into your hand.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: He gives a tenth of everything to the priest of God most high who brings out bread and wine.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: And he so actively and deliberately distances himself from the king of Sodom.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Verse 21, the King of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: But Abram said to the King of Sodom, With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord God most high, creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, I made Abram rich.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: Absolute differentiation from the King of Sodom, even though he fought side by side with the King of Sodom to win a limited victory for the sake of the people of God.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then he goes back to the great trees of memory, and he does what Hebrews do.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: He lives like one who is from beyond, who is awaiting a city with foundations whose maker and builder is God.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: He builds the people of God.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if you lived alongside Abraham in those days, you might think Abraham was above it all, and he was making a moral false equivalence between the kings of the North and the Kings of the South and all that.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: You could throw any kinds of accusation at him.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: Or you might say he didn't enter the fray early enough.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Why didn't he enter the fray in those first twelve years when the kings of the north came down and oppressed people, including his nephew?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: Or you might think him engaging the battle at all was a compromise.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: But if Abraham defined himself as somebody who would never fight under any circumstances, then he would start to gain his identity from the world.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: That he would simply be one who never engages, but that is as well to define yourself by the world.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Always fighting is to be swept up in the ways of this world.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Never fighting might also be a way in which you're defined by the world, and Abraham does neither.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: This is why I think being third way is never a stable position.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the faithful position.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: The faithful position is to take your lead from the righteous king priest who brings bread and wine.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: The righteous position is to be informed by Jesus Christ.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes Jesus Christ will say, you need to enter the fray on behalf of the people of God and fight this battle in the culture war.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And some people will think you've entered the fray too quickly, some will say you've entered the fray too late.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: But this is not about moral equivalence between the two sides.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: And actually getting that kind of critique is really helpful.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think some of the city dwellers for whom the great idol that tempts us is respectability.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: We need people to say, hey, have you been forthright about your views on abortion, let's say?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: Have you been getting your talking points from exvangelicals, as Russell Johnson says?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Are you committed to the way of Jesus Christ even when it offends those who are nearest to you?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: And we need to be in such proximity with one another that we hear those critiques and weigh them and act on them.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: We also need to be in such proximity with one another that we can say, are you just burning things down because that's your temperament?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: Respectability is a hell of a drug, but so is pugilism.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Not standing for truth is a sin, but so is dividing the body.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: And are we going to be in enough proximity with one another that we can hear those critiques?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: Or are we going to sort the way that the US has sorted into red and blue and is sorting into coastal elites and flyover states?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Are we going to allow ourselves to be sorted in that same way?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: We lose massively when that happens.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: So let us keep talking to one another and let us keep looking up to Jesus Christ, the great priest king, who brings bread and wine, which means he brings us into fellowship with one another.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: So those are my thoughts.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Doing third way is inevitable.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Being third way is untenable.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let's keep looking up and let's keep talking to one another.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: What do you make of all this stuff?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you've liked this video, please tell the algorithm that you've liked it by actually pressing like, sharing it with others, and do subscribe to us so that we can catch you on the next video.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: God bless.