Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Liberalism Isn't Cruciform. Neither Is Conservatism.

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Liberalism Isn't Cruciform. Neither Is Conservatism. · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking
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  Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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  Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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  Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everybody, welcome to this
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  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer. I'm joined
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  Speaker 1: by Dr. Ashish Varma. And today we're going to talk about,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what we're going to talk about.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to start by talking about this survey that
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  Speaker 1: kind of a friend of the show, I'd like to
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  Speaker 1: count her as a friend of the show, Beth Allison Barr,
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  Speaker 1: she's been on a couple of times. She posted this
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  Speaker 1: on her Instagram. It's a graphic from Billy Graham Center's
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  Speaker 1: Gen Z survey that was posted by the Religious News Service.
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  Speaker 1: And it says this, In the sample of Gen Z,
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  Speaker 1: nearly half, 48%, agreed with the following statement. Christian support
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  Speaker 1: of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.
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  Speaker 1: And then it says about one in five young adults
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  Speaker 1: said they strongly agreed with that sentiment. And so the
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  Speaker 1: graph has actually, you know, strongly agree. It counts for 19%.
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  Speaker 1: And another 14% agree with that statement. So you've got,
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  Speaker 1: you know, good 33% who are in the strongly agree category,
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  Speaker 1: another 15% slightly agree. And then you've got about 21%
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  Speaker 1: that strongly disagree. It's interesting, you know, they're counting the, the,
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  Speaker 1: all the agrees together there, but you can, you can
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  Speaker 1: strongly say about a third, I think. 48% might be
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  Speaker 1: stretching it, but I would say a third of these
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  Speaker 1: folks agreed that Christian support of Trump has made me
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  Speaker 1: less likely to go to church. Now, there's no other
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  Speaker 1: context to this survey. There's no other real, like, texture
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  Speaker 1: to it. It's just one infographic. And I'll be honest,
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  Speaker 1: I looked up the Gen Z, you know, sort of
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  Speaker 1: survey that was done and it didn't give a lot
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  Speaker 1: more than just what I saw on that Instagram post.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't have the time to like dive in and
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  Speaker 1: ask why, you know, is it about Trump or is
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  Speaker 1: it about politics? You know, if they, if, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the church had supported some other candidate, would it bother
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  Speaker 1: you as much? So it's unclear whether this is a
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  Speaker 1: political issue or whether it's a theological issue, you know,
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  Speaker 1: sort of in that if we're going to split the
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  Speaker 1: baby sort of way, right, and segment these things out.
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  Speaker 1: But my sense is, you know, especially given the conversation
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  Speaker 1: we recently had with William Kavanaugh that is yet to
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  Speaker 1: be released or some of the conversations we've had with
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  Speaker 1: Kevin Flatt about sacred social orders, that these things are
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  Speaker 1: just deeply intertwined and that what we're starting to see
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  Speaker 1: is that There's a rejection of this sort of rival
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  Speaker 1: sacred social order that has said the church and politics
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  Speaker 1: need to be joined at the hip. And more than
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  Speaker 1: they need to be joined at the hip, that there
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  Speaker 1: is a conservative political stance that the church has to take.
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  Speaker 1: And it needs to toe that line almost disregarding anything else.
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  Speaker 1: And so to me, if we're putting it in Kevin
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  Speaker 1: Flatt's language, I think this is a rival sacred social
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  Speaker 1: order issue that what maybe Gen Z is seeing is
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  Speaker 1: that the church is no longer really reflecting, particularly in
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  Speaker 1: this aspect, God's order. So I'll leave the preamble there,
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  Speaker 1: and Ashish, let you weigh in a bit. I agree
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  Speaker 1: that the issue is intertwined.
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  Speaker 2: It's hard to separate the theological from the political.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: The immediate anecdote that comes to my mind is when
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  Speaker 2: I was on the faculty somewhere, I was accused repeatedly
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  Speaker 2: of being politically motivated for some of the things I
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  Speaker 2: was saying, even though I never once advocated for a
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  Speaker 2: political candidate party. I never told people to go vote
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  Speaker 2: this way or that way. I never even told them
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  Speaker 2: to vote. My arguments were theological, they were sociological, they
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  Speaker 2: were philosophical, but Well, the person who most frequently wanted
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  Speaker 2: to accuse me of being politically motivated one day was
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  Speaker 2: sitting in a meeting and all of a sudden blurted out,
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  Speaker 2: so in fairness, the conversation was on issues in abortion.
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  Speaker 2: It was an attempted colloquium. And I think it's a
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  Speaker 2: complicated issue. I also had learned that trying to nuance
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  Speaker 2: in that environment was, you know, was mental and emotional suicide.
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  Speaker 1: Let's say that.
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  Speaker 2: So I didn't say much. I just sat there. I
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  Speaker 2: asked a couple clarifying questions to a couple comments that
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  Speaker 2: I thought were pretty bewildering. And I'll leave that at that.
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  Speaker 2: I won't even give what those comments were. No, I'll
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  Speaker 2: give one of them. One colleague said that the Old
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  Speaker 2: Testament cited a biblical passage in which there was a
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  Speaker 2: punishment given for a pregnant woman that was different for
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  Speaker 2: the punishment given for a non-pregnant woman. And his conclusion was,
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  Speaker 2: the Bible seems to take the life of the baby
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  Speaker 2: inside the womb as more important than even the mother.
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  Speaker 2: I can't make this stuff up. So I asked some
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  Speaker 2: clarifying questions on things like that. But just to be clear,
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  Speaker 2: I find that to be an utterly absurd and bizarre
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  Speaker 2: takeaway from the passage. Now I don't even remember what
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  Speaker 2: the passage was at this point. Someone else then piped
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  Speaker 2: up and he said, same person who had been repeatedly
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  Speaker 2: calling me politically motivated, he said, I don't understand how
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  Speaker 2: anyone can vote for, at that point it was Joe Biden,
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  Speaker 2: because Joe Biden is a murderer. Democrats are murderers. They
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  Speaker 2: support abortion. They're killing babies. How can you vote for
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  Speaker 2: someone like this? And all I thought they're thinking was, um,
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  Speaker 2: I actually did respond to him, but, uh, All I
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  Speaker 2: could think was, frankly, why is it that you can
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  Speaker 2: make these overt statements about voting and who you should
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  Speaker 2: and should not vote for on supposedly purely theological grounds
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  Speaker 2: that are far more complicated than he was giving them
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  Speaker 2: credence for? And I'm politically motivated, but you're not. Now,
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  Speaker 2: that's one instance, but it is a pretty regular thing
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  Speaker 2: that I've noticed. And I think historically, truthfully, this is
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  Speaker 2: the Constantinian thesis, right, that And Hauerwas loves to talk
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  Speaker 2: about this. Many others have built upon it. But the
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  Speaker 2: idea that the church, in Hauerwas' case, made a bad move.
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  Speaker 2: I tend to agree with Hauerwas, but we'll leave the
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  Speaker 2: value judgment on for the moment. But the church made
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  Speaker 2: a move, and a pretty decisive, significant move that shaped
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  Speaker 2: much of the rest of its history, at least in
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  Speaker 2: the Western world. The moment that the church... not just
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  Speaker 2: accepted that Constantine had taken up the sign of the
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  Speaker 2: key row, the first two letters of Christ in Greek
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  Speaker 2: as his symbol to conquer by and his claim that
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  Speaker 2: God had given him a vision to conquer in the symbol.
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  Speaker 2: But specifically then when he takes up in three 25,
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  Speaker 2: the mantle of being able to call the church to
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  Speaker 2: a council to work out its issues with what became
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  Speaker 2: the nice scene versus Aryan split.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Um, That's a pretty remarkable moment, right? Where we go
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  Speaker 2: from the church having waves of persecution against it and
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  Speaker 2: the church being a marginal community to we're in a
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  Speaker 2: position now where the church has to decide whether they're
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  Speaker 2: going to heed the call of the emperor to a
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  Speaker 2: theological meeting. That is the ultimate beginning of accepting the
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  Speaker 2: theological political intertwinement. And you can't go the rest of
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  Speaker 2: Western church history without seeing it, right? The medieval period
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  Speaker 2: is characterized, among other things, as this battle between papacy
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  Speaker 2: and throne. Who annoys whom? Who affirms whom? There's this
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  Speaker 2: period in the medieval period known as the Babylonian captivity
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  Speaker 2: of the church where the political rivalry had resulted in,
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  Speaker 2: at one point, three people having been claimed as the pope, right?
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  Speaker 2: Three sets of cardinals electing three different popes And these
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  Speaker 2: were all on political grounds. The Reformation in many ways,
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  Speaker 2: especially the magisterial part of it, you can't untwine that
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  Speaker 2: from political issues. You can't understand colonization, whether it be
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  Speaker 2: the doctrine of discovery in the Catholic Church or the
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  Speaker 2: parallel beliefs and opinions in various Protestant churches and countries,
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  Speaker 2: and understanding colonialism and the carving out of the world
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  Speaker 2: as we know it. And you can't understand the United States.
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  Speaker 2: And the question here isn't whether the US was founded
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  Speaker 2: as an explicitly Christian nation. There's a lot of important
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  Speaker 2: nuance here. That's its own conversation. But you can't understand
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  Speaker 2: Christian formation of the idea of America and within the
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  Speaker 2: idea of America without understanding this deep sense of Christian
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  Speaker 2: theology meaning political action and Christian political action meaning formation
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  Speaker 2: of theological ideas. Now that's a really truncated look at it,
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  Speaker 2: but it's impossible to get away from. And when we
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  Speaker 2: come to the present, to sort of make the claims
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  Speaker 2: that only one group that you don't like is politically motivated,
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  Speaker 2: and I really don't think I'm politically motivated. by the way,
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  Speaker 2: but people can tell me otherwise. But when you make
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  Speaker 2: a claim that is overtly political, you're showing that your
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  Speaker 2: colors play there, right? And I think when you have
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  Speaker 2: that reality of this intertwining, this entanglement, it's going to
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  Speaker 2: create a whole host of pressures. Why do we make
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  Speaker 2: the theological decisions we do? Are they being coerced or
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  Speaker 2: influenced at the very least by concerns of power, concerns
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  Speaker 2: of donors, money? What leads those donors? What leads that money?
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  Speaker 2: It's a complicated web.
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  Speaker 1: I think I want to step it back just one
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  Speaker 1: step because I think that part of the issue I
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  Speaker 1: see is we should be pushing for, and I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to use Kevin Flatt's terms, I really like his sacred
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  Speaker 1: social order sort of notion. And what a sacred social
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  Speaker 1: order in my mind, and I think the way he
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  Speaker 1: would describe it, or at least faithful to the way
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  Speaker 1: he would describe it is, a social order arranges itself
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  Speaker 1: such that it is reflecting the sacred order above. And
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  Speaker 1: that social order then entails a variety of different things,
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  Speaker 1: including laws, it includes You know, the way we interact
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  Speaker 1: with God, it includes, you know, our use of time,
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  Speaker 1: our relationship to space, like all these different sort of aspects.
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  Speaker 1: It would include government as well. How are things governed?
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  Speaker 1: And so there's in Christian sacred social order, which is,
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  Speaker 1: I think, what all of us are really shooting for. Right.
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  Speaker 1: We have a particular way of relating to government. And
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  Speaker 1: I think that way is recognizing that God has given
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  Speaker 1: the government a certain scope, or at least this is
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  Speaker 1: the way I think about it. God has given the
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  Speaker 1: government a certain scope of authority. And within that scope
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  Speaker 1: of authority, when they're exercising their God-given authority in appropriate
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  Speaker 1: ways within that scope of authority, Christians are told to
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  Speaker 1: subject themselves to that. So we don't have to, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: put up with a government that is constantly performing injustice, right?
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  Speaker 1: We can sort of resist that by certain means, but
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  Speaker 1: we can't just, you know, if the government's trying to
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  Speaker 1: do good for us, we can't say, ah, we don't
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  Speaker 1: want to deal with that. We're just going to answer
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  Speaker 1: to God, right? The government is in some degree, some way,
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  Speaker 1: shape or form, it is a vehicle that God is using.
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  Speaker 1: And so again, that's sort of truncated. But I think
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  Speaker 1: what's starting to happen is we're starting to pull in
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  Speaker 1: political procedure and allowing that to shape our behavior and
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  Speaker 1: our thought process. So we begin to think that what
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  Speaker 1: we're trying to do is we're trying to arrange America
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  Speaker 1: as the social order. And when we're trying to turn
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  Speaker 1: America into the social order, that reflects the sacred order,
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  Speaker 1: we do that through political procedure. But it turns out
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  Speaker 1: that when we start using these political procedures, when we
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  Speaker 1: start leveraging money, when we start lobbying, when we start
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  Speaker 1: becoming advocacy groups, when we start to try to elect
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  Speaker 1: particular officials, all of a sudden, without really noticing it,
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  Speaker 1: we become disciples of something other than the way, the truth,
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  Speaker 1: and the life of Jesus. And I think that Part
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  Speaker 1: of what we're struggling with, at least part of what
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  Speaker 1: I'm struggling with, is I don't want to say Christians
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't participate in government. That's not at all what I
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  Speaker 1: want to do. But I also want to say that
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  Speaker 1: there's a way of being captured by our political apparatus
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  Speaker 1: that deforms us. It conforms us to something other than
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  Speaker 1: the image of Christ. And I think a lot of
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  Speaker 1: times that's what we're seeing in these conversations. I think
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  Speaker 1: this person you're talking about in the meeting who's very
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  Speaker 1: happy to say you can't vote for Democrats because they're murderers,
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  Speaker 1: is captured by that sort of political process and procedure,
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  Speaker 1: as opposed to being held captive by the word of God.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I really could
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  Speaker 1: care less who people vote for. I think what my
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  Speaker 1: big concern is, is that people recognize God's word is
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  Speaker 1: the final authority for life and faith, that they are
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  Speaker 1: reasoning through that well, discerning who they should vote for,
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  Speaker 1: whether they should vote, how often they should vote, should
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  Speaker 1: they vote locally or nationally, like all those choices sit
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  Speaker 1: underneath the governance of the word of God. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think that it should be like hey, Christians, there's only
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  Speaker 1: one side you could ever vote for, and if you
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  Speaker 1: vote for the other side, you're anti-biblical. I think that
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  Speaker 1: gets us into a real mess, and it creates, oddly,
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  Speaker 1: a rival sacred social order to the kingdom of God.
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  Speaker 1: We're now reflecting something that I don't actually think is
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  Speaker 1: on earth as it is in heaven. I don't think
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  Speaker 1: this is reflective of what God is doing. I think
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  Speaker 1: that either way you go in any political issue, you're
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  Speaker 1: running afoul of God's word because these systems, political, and
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  Speaker 1: when I say systems, I mean these political parties are
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  Speaker 1: going to bend away from God's order in different ways.
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  Speaker 1: But they're both bending. There's no perfect choice here. Neither
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  Speaker 1: are perfectly aligned with it. And thus they create these
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  Speaker 1: different sort of sacred social orders. When I have these
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  Speaker 1: political conversations, I find that when people tend to talk
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  Speaker 1: like care for the poor, it automatically goes to welfare.
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  Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's just a capture of the imagination
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  Speaker 1: of the political system that we're in. Welfare is not
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  Speaker 1: the only way to solve that, right? It goes to
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  Speaker 1: communism or Marx or whatever, right? But those aren't the
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  Speaker 1: only ways for us to solve this. These aren't the
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  Speaker 1: only ways for us to address this. In fact, The
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  Speaker 1: church is called to care for the poor multiple times
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  Speaker 1: in scripture. One of my favorite passages, Romans 15, Paul's
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  Speaker 1: been aching to go to Rome for forever. And he's like,
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  Speaker 1: I finally have an opportunity to come to you. But first,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to deliver this gift from the Corinthians to
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  Speaker 1: the poor in Jerusalem. And I may not make it back.
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  Speaker 1: But he sees that as so crucial and important, partly
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  Speaker 1: because I think he wants to care for the poor,
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  Speaker 1: partly because he wants to demonstrate the unity of the church.
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  Speaker 1: But either way, it's an example of of the church
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  Speaker 1: caring for the poor that is not socialist. It's not
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  Speaker 1: welfare system. It's not, you know, Marx. It's the church.
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  Speaker 1: And so I just feel like we're sort of adopting
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  Speaker 1: these procedures and these ways of thinking, um, that only
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  Speaker 1: give us certain buttons to push and levers to pull.
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  Speaker 1: And that that is a big part of the problem
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  Speaker 1: we're having in these conversations.
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  Speaker 2: So what I hear in the way that you're describing that, um,
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  Speaker 2: makes me think of Augustine's City of God. And the
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  Speaker 2: real issue he's trying to address there is this is
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  Speaker 2: just after that Constantinian shift, right? Just after, you know,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: about 100 years, roughly, after that. And in some ways,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the City of God is a magnus opum apologetic work
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  Speaker 2: by Augustine responding to the remaining intellectual pagans who've said
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  Speaker 2: the decline of Rome is because of you Christians.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: You Christians have undermined our traditional ways. That is what
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  Speaker 2: built up this city and this empire. And specifically, that's
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: meant you've undermined the traditional gods that lifted it up.
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  Speaker 1: That's right.
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  Speaker 2: My understanding of Augustine is he's wanting to say, nah,
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  Speaker 2: it's really because of Christians that we've lasted this long. Now,
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  Speaker 2: I think the strength of Augustine's argument is in his
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  Speaker 2: description of these two cities. I'll say to start out
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  Speaker 2: that I actually disagree with Augustine. I do actually agree
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  Speaker 2: that Christianity was a big reason for the demise of Rome.
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  Speaker 2: But I think it's because of what Augustine says that
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  Speaker 2: it's hidden within what he's saying. I think he missed
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  Speaker 2: the entailment. And what he points out is that these
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: two cities have two sets of a citizenship with two
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: sets of allegiances. They're about different things. This isn't the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: same kind of different things as if we describe the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: United States versus, fill in the blank, Russia, China, Iran,
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  Speaker 2: some other country where we have different constituents, different ideas.
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  Speaker 2: We're vying for the same kind of power, the same
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  Speaker 2: kind of wealth amid the same kind of global structures.
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  Speaker 2: Those are rivalries within the same kind for who's going
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  Speaker 2: to be preeminent. But what Augustine's describing is not that
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  Speaker 2: kind of a rivalry between two citizens. but rather citizenships
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  Speaker 2: that overlap. So you can have a Christian who's also
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  Speaker 2: a Roman, but because they have two different priorities, it's
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  Speaker 2: going to mean two different ways of engaging reality.
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  Speaker 1: That's right.
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  Speaker 2: So case in point might be like the early church.
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  Speaker 2: They were pretty notorious in the Roman world in the
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  Speaker 2: early church for Christians for refusing military service. And it's
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: because they had, frankly, a pacifist understanding of long before
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: we have the movement of pacifism we think of today
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  Speaker 2: as politically motivated. These are Christians who said, our job
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  Speaker 2: is not to take life. Our job is to bring healing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: When they were criticized for it by the Roman authorities,
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  Speaker 2: and this was used as one of the markers to
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  Speaker 2: show that they were subversive to the empire, and for pagans,
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  Speaker 2: it was a marker later on to say, see, this
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: is one of the ways you subversed the empire. And
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  Speaker 2: I actually think that's true in some ways, but their
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: response was, No, we're actually uplifting it because instead we
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: commit to prayer, and we commit to helping those who
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: are hurt.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: But the goals were different, and they knew that that
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: meant for them that they could not be part of
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the Roman military and its goals of conquering, its goals
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: of bringing under its controls, its goals of ordering creation
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: in a way that wasn't bringing life to all of creation,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: but rather bringing some subservient to the good of a
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: few that supported Rome, right? Yeah. The idea of conflation
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about now that I'm hearing in what
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: you're saying is I don't hear that kind of distinction
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: being made, right? Occasionally there might be lip service to it,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: but instead the idea of the pulling of the levers
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: of this system isn't just simply, well, these are the
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: levers available for this task that is deeply Christian, but
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: rather these are the levers that I need to make
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: sure are bent towards the will of the idea of
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Christian empire.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And that's actually precisely the opposite of what, as you said, church,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the church was advocating early on, right? The idea of
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Christian empire was, in this early stage, an oxymoron. Because
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: the very mechanism of empire entailed a certain idea of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: emperor and king and power and control and hegemony, right?
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And for Christians, it meant an overcoming of that sort
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: of hegemony, an overcoming of that sort of idea of
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: a certain kind of king, right? Right back to the
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Old Testament. God doesn't want a king like the nations
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: among his covenant people. And the impulse that we're talking
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: about in this conflation in the present, which is long-rooted,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: this isn't new, and that's kind of the point that
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to bring out, that it's not new, but
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: it's a conflation that is at odds with the text.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: And so we find ourselves now having to do creative enterprises,
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: and I'm for creativity, but when the creativity is to
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: explain away The differences in goals, agendas, ideas of the world,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: of creation, of what makes creation thrive. What we end
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: up with is still a kind of sacred social order, right?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: But we now have a kind of sacred social order
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: in which the ideals of empire building are what the
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: church is playing with, and we no longer have an
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: idea of two cities. We have an idea of bending
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the one city to our purposes that look strangely like
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: the purposes of empire building just with a cross on it, right?
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: It looks like Constantine, the hero.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. That's a sharper way of putting it
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: than I was explaining, but you're getting the gist of
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I think that we've become so enamored
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: with the world that we want that we're no longer
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: pursuing the pattern of the world that God has given us.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And so I take it back to like, as a
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: strange person, reference, but Exodus 31. Exodus 31 is the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: first time that anyone is referenced as having been filled
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: with the Spirit of God. Now, there is a previous passage.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I think I'm citing the later one. I think it's
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: in Exodus 28, where Bezalel, same guy, is said to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: have been filled with the Spirit of God. Moses is
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: given the pattern for the tabernacle that is to be built.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And then God tells him that Bezalel and Aholiab are
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: given the wisdom and the craftsmanship to make the tabernacle
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the speck. And Bezalel is specifically said is filled with
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the spirit of God in order to do this. And
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: so when you reference creativity, I think part of our
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: problem with creativity is that we're trying to be creative
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: in a way that is not patterned after something God
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: has given us. Our creativity should be constrained by God's vision,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: not expanded with our own. Right? That kind of idea. So,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Bezalel doesn't get the option of, you know, adding a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: second holy of holies to the temple. Right? There's only one.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how convenient having a second one might be.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: There's only one. Because the creativity is in service of
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: a particular vision. It's in service of a particular pattern.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And I think that's part of what we're running into
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: here is that we are trying to do something by ourselves,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: through our own power, for ourselves, however we want to
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: sort of describe that, that we should be waiting on
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: God to do. And in that waiting on God to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: do it, we're doing something that very much is in
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: keeping with what the Christians in Rome were saying. No,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: we're praying for the empire. We're lifting the empire up.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: We're doing the things that God has told us to do.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And that's our best strategy. And guess what? It's also
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: your best strategy. And so I think that there's a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: sense in which we've just sort of lost this notion
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that governments are not trivial governments. but they are to
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: some degree provisional. I think, you know, Acts 17, you know,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: God establishes these things within a certain degree of boundaries and,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you know, with certain limitations. But I think at the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: end of the day, where I kind of sit, this
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: conflation of the conservatism with the Christianity is very much
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: driven by the selective use of biblical texts and that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: selective use of biblical texts on some level undercuts the
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: authority of the scriptures. I think it's very difficult. And
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I know this isn't the way we usually think of it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: We usually think of it as I'm going to wholesale
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: reject the Bible because Right. That's definitely a rejection of
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of that authority. But if I just say, no, I'm
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: only going to I'm only going to listen to the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: parts of the Bible that are really convenient for me.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: That's also a rejection of its authority. And so there
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: isn't it isn't a question of. I guess what I
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: want to make sure people don't hear me saying is,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: you know, be liberal, don't be conservative. I think the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: liberal side has the exact same problems, right? They're just
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: sort of mirror images of each other. But the point is,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't be following the doctrines of conservatism or liberalism.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: We should be following the doctrines that are taught in
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the scriptures. We should be developing a shared understanding of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: what our lives are supposed to look like on this earth.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: from that text. Some of those are going to entail
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: political decisions, but they're never going to be able to
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: align us with a political party. One of the things
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I mentioned when I was at this Politics in the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Pews event with Christian Post a couple of years ago now,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I basically said, Christians can be conservative. I don't really
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: have a problem with Christians holding some conservative values. But
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think that conservatism In fact, I think I
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: said it even stronger than this. Conservatism can't encompass Christianity
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: because it has no place for Christ. And I mean,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's the real issue. Conservatism isn't cruciform. It's
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: not following Jesus. It's not patterned after him in any
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: particular way. There are points where it may intersect and
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: you see these sort of points of contact where you say, oh, okay, yeah,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: that part of conservatism makes sense with Christianity. You could
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: do the same with liberalism. But neither of them has
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: real space for Christ. Neither of them cares one way
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: or the other whether we are conformed to Christ's image, right?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: That's sort of incidental to those philosophies. If we can
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: be conformed to the image of Christ, but still uphold
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: all the conservative doctrines or all the liberal doctrines, that's great.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: But what Christians are called to is something very different.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It's the reverse of that. We're to be cruciform, and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: then we're to interact in the world in ways that
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: deny these other entities any level of sway over how
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: we think or how we behave.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the way that you describe the conservative and
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: liberal as, I think you said, negative images of each other.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I tend to say two sides of the same coin,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: by which I don't mean that they're saying the same thing.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I mean that they belong to the same kind of program.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: And it's that program that I think is ultimately at stake, right?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: In this country, most Christians tend to be on the
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: conservative end. But that doesn't mean that we've solved the
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: problem if we make most Christians on the liberal end. Right. Right.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: conservative and liberal, right? Where we have to ask the
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: question of conservative what? To what? What is the full premier?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Progressive to what? And for both of them, the idea
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: is empire building. It's even a related image of empire
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: building insofar as what is it that we want to create?
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: What are the values that we're working off of historically
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: or tweaking historically that we're trying to get there? What
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: is it that we We desire out of people. What
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: is our view towards the land, right? It's worth noting
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: that progressive American regimes and Canadian regimes were involved in
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: trying to suppress Native Hawaiians who were saying, you cannot
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: use our holy land to build your observatory. And the
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: language that was returned to them was, we need to
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: use this land because it is one of the most
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: ideal places for us to get deep looks into space
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: and without having to launch into orbit another grand telescope, right?
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So the idea of caring about other peoples that is
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: often tied to liberalism or progressivism apparently comes to end
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: when that program is at risk. Now, my point in
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: saying this is that as two sides of the same coin,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: we got to ask, what is that program? And that
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: gets us to this notion of the city of God
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: and the city of humanity, right? The structures of this world.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Where we do recognize it's not we can choose the
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: city of God and ignore the other. We live within
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: them both. But the tensions that are created are real, right? Now,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of things entailed within this
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: that is worth bringing up in other conversations because we
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: have to ask the question then historically, who is elevated?
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Who is not elevated? Has that changed in the present?
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Do we think it's changed? Has it really changed? Or
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: does it just look a little differently? I think those
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: are questions worth doing in an episode into itself. But
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: what we gain within this is a recognition then of
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: even when we say we're Christians who have certain conservative ideals,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: certain progressive ideals, we still have to ask the question
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of where did those ideals come from? So perhaps one
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: of those ideals is we need to take care of
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: the poor. And that's why we have a program like Welfare.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: But to your point, that's a command given to the church.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: So if we want to say the government is not
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: in that business and that's not what tax dollars should
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: go to, we haven't solved the question given to the
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: church of why aren't you doing.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: It?
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: And I would argue that perhaps the reason that has
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: had to be taken up by the government is because
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: the church is not doing it. That's an abandonment of
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: the requirements of citizenship. or the markers of citizenship within
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: the city of God, in Augustine's language again. And that's
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: where the conversation has to be. That's what churches need
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: to be attentive to. What is this text saying? Not
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: just what do we want the text to say, or
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: what are the parts of the text that bolster our
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: particular doctrinal formulations that give us mastery or control or
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: power or influence or whatever. What does the text say?
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: And that's one of my deepest concerns that goes on
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: within evangelicalism, that for all the concern formally about interpreting scripture,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I actually find that if you try to engage difficult
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: passages of which scholars have noted tons of different ways
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: of looking at a text, if you try to address
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: trying to understand that text, you get met with a
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: stonewall of, well, that's political motivation here, or that's heresy there.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: And I okay, there are things that the church has
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: historically called heresy, but let's not arbitrarily expand those boundaries, right?
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: What's significant about the church having called things heresy was
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: the sheer buy-in from vast geographic spaces to recognize together,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: not for one person to look at another and say,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: you're not saying the thing that I want you to
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: say or that my community has decided for a long time,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: and that's therefore heresy. Whereas conservatives like to say, you're
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: just being a liberal. do you know what a liberal
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: is why is this a two-dimensional spectrum here why are
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: there not more options what if i'm not working off
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: of your presumption about the goals of citizenship right then
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: i'm not a liberal right or on the other side
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: liberals love to call anyone more conservative than them fundamentalists
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: need to break it to you but there are a
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: lot of liberal fundamentalists if we want to be true
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: to the language of fundamentals right yeah The church needs
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: to be attentive to the church. It needs to be
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: attentive to the things that it says it's attentive to,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: like scripture. It needs to be attentive to history, both
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: positively and negatively, right? We need to learn from history.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: We need to be honest and repentant about our past
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: so that we can move forward, not merely repeating.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think part of that, you know, we've
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: sort of come through that, you know, you're saying be
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: honest and attentive to your past so that we don't
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: repeat it. I think sometimes people hear that it gets
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: tied into, again, these sort of governmental or policy concerns
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: about like paying reparations or something like that, like very
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: particular policy issues. I can remember reading Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: thank you. And there's a line in the book, and
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing it, so I'm hoping I'm getting this right.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It was something like, The only way you can be
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: anti-racist is to be for the payment of reparations. And
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: it's like that sort of closure, I think, when you
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: say we need to attend to our history, that's what
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: people sort of ultimately go to. But I don't actually think, again,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: that's what the Bible is teaching us. You can cite
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: numerous examples in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, where
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: there's a looking back on the mistakes that Israel has made.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and an encouragement for the church not to make those
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: same mistakes. There's this sort of cautionary tale that comes
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: along with Israel's life and the failures that they exhibit
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: in their life. That is then the church is called
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: not to repeat that pattern. And I just, so I
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: find it interesting when we get kind of stuck in
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: that loop, which I can understand why people are leery
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: of getting stuck, you know, like, They don't want to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: agree to some of these things, and they don't want
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to get stuck in that sort of, hey, this very
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: specific thing is what has to change. But at the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: same time, to your point, we do have to learn
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: from our patterns of history. And part of that, part
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: of what we're learning from those patterns of history is, look,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: this aspect of our society was not aligned with God's order,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and we need to be realigned to something different. Um, it's,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: it's not necessarily, Hey, we have to make up for
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: all these things in the past. Part of it is
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: just in order for us to be different in the world,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: we have to make sure that we're not just going
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: along with the flow and never seeing the problems that
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: we're living into on a day-to-day basis. Um, and so
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that analysis I think is really crucial. Um, One of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the things I'll throw out there, you had mentioned, you're
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: talking a little bit about the church's abdication of care
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: for the poor as being part of the problem or
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: part of the impetus for why welfare has to come in.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I've done some research on Engel versus Vitale. It was
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the court case where prayer was banned from public schools.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: And people were really frustrated by this. But I don't know.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I've been to prayer meetings at churches that I've attended previously,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, three people on a Wednesday night.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: And so as frustrated as Christians got about the elimination
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of prayer from public schools, and as much as we're
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: starting to hear sort of rumblings about bringing some of
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: those things back, let's post this kind of commandments. Let's
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: bring prayer back into public schools. Let's, let's put Bible
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: back into textbooks. Um, You know, that sort of is
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: what it is, right? I don't feel like I have
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the time to weigh in on all that right now.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: But I guess my point is, nobody seems all that
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: upset about the three people at the Wednesday night prayer meeting.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that's so interesting because that is the church's,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: that is sort of the, that is the church's vocation, right?
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Show up, study the word, pray, like do the hard
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: work of faithfulness. Don't try to outsource this all to
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the government because the government doesn't exactly have that particular,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: they're not, the government has no vested concern or vested
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: interest in conforming us to the image of Christ. And
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: so anything it's going to do is going to be
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: in service of civil advancement. Not saying those two can't overlap,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: not saying they're mutually exclusive, but the reality is that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: If the church wants to pray, it doesn't need permission
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: to pray in public schools. It can pray whenever it wants, right?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: But we've sort of lost the lack. We've lost the
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: coordination necessary to do that as a people to a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: large extent. And so many times what we see as
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: sort of national prayer gatherings are just that. They're prayer
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: gatherings arranged by the nations. where we're involved as Christians,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: but so are you know, Jews, Muslims, you know, everybody
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: is involved. The church isn't doing that. The church is
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: involved in that. We're not coordinating that. We are coordinated
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: into it. And it's just such an interesting sort of, um, challenge,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I think, for the church to face up is to say,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: we need to be better about coordinating amongst ourselves and
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: making sure that the body of Christ doesn't look like
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: a gawky teenager who just, you know, grew seven inches
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: in a year and hasn't grown into his, you know,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: his limbs yet. Like we need to be, we need
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to have that fluidity about us, right? Where we're moving
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and addressing and adapting to these other, you know, these
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: things that we're seeing in society in service of Christ.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that never happens, but I am saying
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: that I think we're being out-coordinated in a number of
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: different areas by a governmental bureaucracy.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: I see you, and I'm going to raise you a
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: tad bit more cynicism.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Go for it.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: It's not just that expecting the government to do this, that,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: and the other for us or to educate us. is
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: an incomplete work, or to expect government to make policies
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: for us is an incomplete work. It's also an agenda-oriented work.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: The government has no vested interest in helping us understand issues.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: The government, divided into parties, has a vested interest in
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: recruiting our support. And the blinder, the better. And so
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: part of the task of recognizing what seemed like really
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: common sense things of we're, we're making a big deal
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: out of prayer in school, but we're not actually praying, right?
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: We're not praying on Wednesday nights. So why do you
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: care about praying before math?
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: You know, or what's to stop you from praying before
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: math or what's to stop you from grabbing your three friends.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: And as you walk into class, Saying a quick prayer.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Isn't that the point? That's not a government problem in
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: the sense of we can't do something that we need
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: to be able to do. It's that the government has
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: no vested interest in saying, hey, you have other options.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: But I think even on a more cynical note than
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: that even is the fact that I mentioned, I just
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: used the example of welfare, and I It's learning from
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the past, but there's even more to learn from it, right?
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: It's to understand why are these issues here that are
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: dividing us? It's worth looking into the birth of welfare,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and it's worth looking into all the pressures that went
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: behind it, right? Among other pressures that were into it
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: was that it was a program that was supposed to
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: be part of FDR's New Deal, and it was something
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: that was largely criticized and left out or truncated because
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: of the people who wanted to say, you know, the
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: sort of standard lines we know of, if you don't work,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: you don't eat. But the same people who were saying
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: that were the people who were getting government handouts in
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: order to buy houses. So the real question worth investigating,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: that again, the government has no interest in teaching you.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: It's just not part of their task, nor is it
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: in their vested interest. But we can learn history. Who
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: were these people? and I'll leave it to myself for
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the moment, I know the answer, but who were these
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: people that were happy to receive government handouts so that
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: they could begin wealth accumulation, but weren't willing to give
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: it to these other people? Who were those people that
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: they didn't want the money to go to, that they
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: were wanting to say, if you don't work, you don't eat?
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Could we say, if you don't work, you don't get house?
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I... Feels like we could.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: The same sorts of things can go into.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: All sorts of issues, right?
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: How did... 85% of American Christians become synonymous with the
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Republican Party. What happened in the 1970s when that wasn't true?
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Why is one issue suddenly the only issue that's born
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: in that movement? Which, by the way, was seen at
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the time to be, ironically, a Catholic issue among evangelicals.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Evangelicals refused to weigh in on it. In fact, they
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: said it's a complicated issue, right?
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Why is it that we have... Houses built the places
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: they are. Roads built the way they are. Highways built
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the way they are. If you go to the south
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: side of Chicago, the highways are built as walls. You
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: go to the north side of Chicago, they're built on beams.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: They're not as walls.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Why is that the case? This is the sort of
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: hard work of doing the history, and you might say,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know where to find it. We probably have
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: people around us that can help us do the research.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: We're not all trained historians, but we have people around
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: us that can help us do the work. And part
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: of that is beginning to help us understand that there
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: really was a motive and agenda behind these different sorts
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: of things. And do we really want to tie or
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: conflate the fullness of our Christian identity with these sorts
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: of things? My answer is, I hope not. And that's
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: a very different conversation than saying we also have civic responsibilities.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: And perhaps that civic responsibility leads us to, with a
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: well-informed and robust wrestling system, Determine who to vote for.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: But that robust wrestling is very different than the one box,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: one size fits all truncated failure to understand the depths
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: of issues. And now we all suddenly vote the same
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: way because one group of people had a vested interest
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: in getting us to be convinced that's who we should
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: vote for. Yeah.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And it's very different than the sort of advocacy that
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: we see. It's very different than the sort of campaigning
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: that we see. Um, it was interesting again, you know,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I think it was back in 2024 when I did this,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: but the Republican position had just changed. Um, so that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: it was no longer a hard line on abortion, but
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: that they wanted to make sure that these weren't being
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: done too early or I'm sorry, too late. So they
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: were now no longer advocating for a strict pro-life position.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: They were advocating for, um, An early term abortion position.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And yet the people who were and who had in
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the past advocated for the Republicans just continue to move
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: on that forward. It was a really interesting moment. Now,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: the way I think about that is, you know, in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the way that Jesus talks about the law, the law
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: is not intended to legislate the ideal. The law is
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: often intended to ensure that we don't go off the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: rails because if we don't have some sort of restraints,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: we'll be more and more and more evil. And so
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I don't have a real problem sitting back and saying, well,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: from a legislative perspective, It does make sense to restrain
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: this if you can't stop it, right? If it's going
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: to happen, it needs to happen within a certain degree
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: of restraints, and there needs to be punishment outside of
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: those constraints. Ideally, from a theological perspective, I prefer it
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: didn't happen at all. But legislatively, you look at it
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and you say the law can only do so much,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: and then other things have to kick in. And so
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: it's just one of those moments where I can remember
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: distinctly sitting back and going, yeah, my theological convictions about
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: this issue don't hinge on whether or not America passes
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: this very specific law or makes this very specific precedence
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court. And it doesn't necessarily have to
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: entail me voting one way or the other, right? But
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: you can kind of hold the two in tension and
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: recognize that there are different ways to attack the issue,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: to approach the issue, right, that may actually be effective.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: And so when the Republican position changed, I felt like
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: that was, oddly, a more consistent way of looking at
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: it than of trying to think that we are going
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: to legislate this sort of act that we find reprehensible
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: out of existence. I don't know that that was ever
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: realistic before. And so it was just interesting to watch
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the folks who were in that sort of Republican mode.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: They didn't blink. They just kept running at it. And
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: it definitely suggested something to me about their convictions about
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: that issue and how they were related to other political
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: points in that agenda. that, um, aren't always as clearly
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: articulated as the abortion issue was. Um, I'll leave that there. And, and, and, um,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I did want to just sort of to give this
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit of biblical closure. I thought maybe I'd
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: go to Isaiah seven. Uh, I think it's an interesting
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: passage to go to. It's the sign of Emmanuel. Um,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I think this, you know, in the spirit of we
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: need to look back at history and not repeat the
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: bad patterns that we've had in the past, I think
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: this serves as an interesting cautionary tale because in this passage,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Ahaz is waiting for the Syro-Palestinian alliance. Syria and the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Northern Kingdom have aligned against Judah because Judah refuses to
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: be part of their alliance. And so what they want
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: to do is they want to kick Ahaz out set
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: up a puppet king who will join their alliance, and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: then they have Syria, Northern Kingdom, and Southern Kingdom all
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: aligned against Assyria. Ahaz has already decided that he's going
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to side with Assyria. He doesn't need to do anything
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: with this Syro-Palestinian alliance. And so Isaiah comes to Ahaz,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and he delivers this message and says, hey, you don't
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: have to worry about Syria and the Northern Kingdom. That's
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: going to come to nothing. And then God offers him
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: a sign as a surety that this will happen, that
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: this alliance is not going to harm the Southern Kingdom.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: And Ahaz says something really interesting. He says, oh, no, no,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I will not ask for a sign. And I will
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: not put the Lord my God to the test. Sounds
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: very pious, right? Very, you know, right out of Deuteronomy.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Don't test the Lord. Don't be like the Israelites at Massa.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: You know, don't test God and try to get him
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: to prove that he's on your side and that he's faithful.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: The problem is that God actually offered him a sign
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and Ahaz is now rejecting that sign. And so this
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: is where we end up getting the sign of Immanuel.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Nothing worse going into a military battle than a new baby.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Not exactly the most useful sign to have when you're
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: about to go into a military context. But my point
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: here is Ahaz makes the absolutely wrong decision because he's
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: playing a different game than he should be. He's playing
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a political game. He's looking out at the military landscape
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and saying, siding with the Syria is going to give
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: me the best chance of survival. And so that's what
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do. Syria and the Northern Kingdom, they're
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: going to lose regardless of whether I'm with them or not.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: So I'm just going to reject them. And he's already
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: made that decision. He's already gone through that thought process.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: He knows this is the decision he's going to make.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: So he doesn't need God's signs. He's not depending on
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the Lord anyway. So it doesn't really matter whether God
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: secures the victory for him. He's already done the math.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Assyria is going to win. I'm aligned with Assyria. God,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you can go home. You can kick your feet up on,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, on the footrest and just chill, right? Like
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: hit the Barco lounger. Like this is all good. And
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: so in rejecting God and Ahaz is making this bad decision,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: but he couches it in this pious language.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: But he's already done the underlying mechanistic work to align
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: himself with a powerhouse. I think this is what we
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: need to avoid in modern day. I think we need
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: to avoid making a decision about how we're going to
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: go about changing our world, whether that's our small local family,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: our city, our nation, whatever it is, right? We need
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: to Avoid making those calls and then acting as if
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: we're really just following the Lord. We need to avoid,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: you know, deciding what we're going to do and then
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: praying about it afterwards. Right. Would be, you know, sort
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: of a concrete example about this. Because in doing this,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: in deciding what we're going to do, in looking out,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: reading the tea leaves of the world and saying, this
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: is the clear path toward victory. This is the clear
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: path toward success. And so this is what I'm going
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: to do, regardless of what God is asking me to do.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: We subtly close ourselves off from actually getting to see
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: what the God who can do more than we can
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: ever ask or think is going to do. We settle.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: We settle for our own comfort in the moment. And
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: I think that's the story of Ahaz while we usually
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: look at it in a slightly different angle. I think
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: understanding the background and why Ahaz refuses to ask for
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the sign is really crucial because it illustrates this idea
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: that it is possible for us to make decisions without
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: God and to make them seem really, really pious when
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: we do it. And that is part of what we
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: need to avoid in today's world.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: That's a really helpful passage, I think. It's a good
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: last word for speaking to what I think we too
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: often fall into.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: It's, again, really easy to pick one reading of one
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: issue spoken in one way in order to make it
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: seem like there's a righteous cause at play for the
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: entirety of a group. And that often is the case, frankly,
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: with good intentions.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: For a lot of people.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very easy to fall into it. You and
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: I can fall into it. We're all susceptible to it.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And I think that's all the more reason to be
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: clearer on what the goals are of what we mean
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: when we say we are the church, we are awaiting
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: another kind of kingdom with another kind of king in
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: the return of the sun. And I think that also
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: requires us to be very careful to not over-expect whatever
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: levers we can pull at the moment in good conscience
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: to be identical with.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: That what we theologians probably unnecessarily in a fancy term
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: called that eschatological reality, the reality of the new heavens and.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: The new earth.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We're at best cultivating local local images that are
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: supposed to point. I think the image that Karl Barth
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: would have kept behind his desk is a really powerful one.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: He had a painting of John the Baptist pointing to
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: remind himself that the theological task is always to point,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: and it's specifically to point. Like John the Baptist to Jesus,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: that he might increase and I might decrease.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The last thing I'll say, and then we can
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: close this out, but Ian McGilchrist has this Great quote.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I go back to it all the time because I
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: just love it. It's in his book, The Matter with Things.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: And he basically says that we're like the sorcerer's apprentice.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: We're messing around with stuff that we can't hope to
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: understand and certainly can't control. And so oftentimes while we
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: try to manipulate the world by pulling levers and pushing buttons,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: we end up messing things up worse than they were
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: because while we can manipulate the world, we don't understand it.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: And I think this is the point where Christians just
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: need to grapple with this really deeply. Something like Deuteronomy 30,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: 20 gives us a deep understanding of how the world works.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: In that text, God says, you know, he's given Israel
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: a choice between life and death, between good and evil,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: between obedience and disobedience. And he tells them to choose life.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: And in Deuteronomy 30, 20, he says, for the Lord
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: is your life and the length of your days. And
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: that is to me like the underlying dynamic. It's the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: governing dynamics of reality that our loyalty to the Lord
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: is what makes everything else work. And even though we're in,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of a, the midst of broken relationships
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: after the fall, that governing logic never changes. And so
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: our allegiance to the Lord is always the governing logic
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: that we are using as we're navigating life. We're going
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: to miss. That's why we have confession. That's why we
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: have repentance. We're going to miss. It's not about being perfect, right?
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: It's about, to your point, pointing to God. And in
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: our confession, when we say, I screwed this up, we're
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: pointing to God. And so to have the depth of
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: understanding to realize that when we pull a lever or
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: push a button, right, we may be manipulating something we
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: don't fully understand What we need to be doing is
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: we need to be leaning into what we do understand,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: and that is all the word that God has given
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: us and the way that we are to interact with him,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: to depend on him, to wait for him, and sometimes
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: to exercise deep restraint rather than trying to control and change.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: So I'll end it there. This has been a cathartic conversation,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: I think. And, uh, and super helpful. So, yeah, so, um,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: much appreciated and, uh, hopefully everybody else enjoyed it and
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: we will catch you next time on thinking Christian. Take care.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team
• 1:07:36
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• 1:07:38
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• 1:07:42
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