Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / John Cooper: Wimpy, Weak, And Woke; Truth vs. Destruction (Replay)

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John Cooper: Wimpy, Weak, And Woke; Truth vs. Destruction (Replay) · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
• 0:10
  defending biblical Christianity.
• 0:13
  No topic off limits.
• 0:16
  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
• 0:19
  Hey guys, welcome.
• 0:21
  We've got a real treat for you today.
• 0:23
  We're going to talk about a book called Wimpy Week and Woke, and we are blessed to have
• 0:28
  John Cooper with us.
• 0:30
  Let me just read some of his bio.
• 0:32
  This is amazing.
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  I'm so impressed with this man of God.
• 0:36
  He's lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter, producer for Skillet.
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  If you're not familiar with Skillet, one of the best-selling rock bands of the 21st century,
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  two-time Grammy-nominated, 17-time platinum band inducted to Pandora's Billionaire Club
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  after garnering two billion streams, and also to come a Billboard Music Award.
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  You've got their breakout single, Monster.
• 1:00
  I remember that when the ESPN was using it.
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  Anyway, John and his wife, Cory, have toured together for all of their 27 years of marriage.
• 1:09
  That's got to be a story.
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  And along with their two children, they're passionate about the truth of Christ defending
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  and proclaiming the truth of Christ.
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  He's got a podcast.
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  It's called Cooper Stuff Podcast.
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  There are two skillet graphic novels.
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  And John has written two amazing books that you've got to check out, friends.
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  The first one was called Awake in Alive to Truth, Best Selling Book, and I just checked
• 1:33
  over on Amazon.
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  The recent book is also a best-selling book.
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  It's called Wimpy Week and Woke How Truth Can Save America From Utopian Destruction.
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  Welcome, John Cooper, to World View Matters.
• 1:47
  How's it going?
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  It's so good.
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  I love the intro, too.
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  No topic off limits.
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  It sounds like a show for me.
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  Exactly.
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  That's why I'm so excited to talk to you, brother, because, of course, I've had
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  Alisa Childers on, Frank Turic, and a lot of the troublemakers for the Kingdom of God,
• 2:03
  a lot of apologists.
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  And I saw you on Eric Metaxas.
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  You and Cory were in the studio in New York.
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  I'm going, Metaxas says Cooper, I got to get them on, but I want to go over to your Facebook
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  page.
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  You're just always stirring up trouble, John.
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  And by the way, friends, you can find John on Facebook.
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  It says, should pastors stay away from politics?
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  Brother, this is a drum I have been beating for two decades.
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  The pulpits have been silent on politics, and that's why progressive Christianity has
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  taken off, and that's why there's so much confusion and deception.
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  So before we get into Wimpy Week and Woke, share a little bit about your heart for pastors
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  to address the issues that are affecting all of us.
• 2:47
  Well, you're right.
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  I mean, you see eye to eye on that is so important because what has happened is that I don't
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  know, I don't know what exactly it is.
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  I'm sure there's a bunch of different people's explanations, whether it's that we tried
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  to say, hey, let's make an evangelicalism that is so maybe ecumenical or so distilled
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  down, you know, so distilled down that we can agree on this group of things.
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  And then we don't have to fight about anything else.
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  And so because of that, we just stopped talking about morality.
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  I mean, really, all politics is morality applied.
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  So, you know, I don't know why we wouldn't be talking about what that means in the culture.
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  But now what you have is, I think starting in the, I would say the mid 2010s, probably
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  2013, 2014, 2015, all of a sudden you had a lot of Christian pastors who were theologically
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  orthodox, who were also sort of open to Marxism, open to socialism, open to, they weren't
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  pro-choice, but they were sort of like, they weren't offended by the pro-choice movement.
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  Let's put it like that.
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  And they were sort of like, they're not offended by a lot of things.
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  They should absolutely be offended by.
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  And so because of that, you've just got, I call them normies.
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  We're normies.
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  We're lay people.
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  We're a church.
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  We're raising our kids.
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  I want to live for Jesus, pastor, and EG to teach me how to live for Jesus.
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  I'm just doing the best I can.
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  I don't read Hebrew and Greek.
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  And what you had was them saying, I want you to teach me.
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  And then I think a lot of church leadership that said, hey, we're going to stay away from
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  that because that just makes people mad, it's divisive.
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  It doesn't matter.
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  We're all about the kingdom of God.
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  And I think they never quite realize that if you don't preach the full gospel message,
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  the full council of God, you may just end up with a country that has gone so delusional
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  and so chaotic that they don't even know that there's a difference between men and women,
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  between adults and children.
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  You know, I just saw a clip yesterday from Rebel News that's in Canada.
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  I believe Rebel News is about a 50 year old man who identifies as a 13 year old female.
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  He's a professor and he plays on sports teams against teenage girls.
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  So he identifies as a woman playing sports and then changes in their dressing room.
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  So I, my question for pastors would just be simply this.
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  Do you think that Christ would have you, if it was 1850, do you think that Christ would
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  have you speak against Chatelle slavery?
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  If it was 1940, do you think that Christ would have you speak against the Holocaust with
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  Bonhoeffer?
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  Would you stand up with Bonhoeffer or is that not an issue of the gospel?
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  And if you would say, Oh, I absolutely would have done it then, I would say then you
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  must do it now.
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  You just have to have the eyes to recognize the times we're living in.
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  Oh, brother, you said so much there and I absolutely agree.
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  Bonhoeffer, my goodness, silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
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  So a lot of pastors, they might mean well, John Cooper, but they want to be about the gospel.
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  But yeah, the saints are not being equipped and they're not being prepared for what's going
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  on in the government run schools in Hollywood corporations, most of the music industry.
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  And but they want to preach the gospel, but they're not really, they're being inconsequential
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  for the kingdom.
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  So I really appreciate your voice and again, friends, we're talking to John.
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  We will talk more about the book Wimpy Week and Walk, but these are some issues that I'm
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  sure you tackle.
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  I'm glad you brought up Marxism.
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  I believe social justice has been redefined and it's become a cancer in the church.
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  Go ahead and share whatever you'd like on that.
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  Oh, absolutely agreed.
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  Secular social justice really is just, you really could just call it Marxism applied if you
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  want to.
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  Maybe it'd actually be more accurate to say neo Marxism.
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  So I don't know who cares about these terms or not.
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  The neo, sorry, the Marxist worldview, which is the view that everything in the world
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  is nothing more than power.
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  That's all that it is.
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  It's just power dynamics and you have oppressed groups of people and you have the oppressors
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  and everybody is broken up and that those groups, that is a totalizing way to see the world.
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  And if Christians just understand, that's what Marx is saying.
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  If you understand that that that is a totalizing worldview, then really anything that happens
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  in the world is no longer a shock.
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  You know, remember a few pastor friends of mine hitting me October 8th and 9th of last
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  year after the Israel tax.
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  So remember the Israel tax was on October 7th, I believe.
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  Yes.
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  Hamas attacks Israel within gosh 24, 48 hours.
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  You had American college students saying that they support Hamas.
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  They think it was a justified act.
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  They were praising Hamas.
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  So you had a lot of pastors going, we just don't understand how this is possible.
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  And I said, that's because you have not believed the Marxist worldview of oppressors and
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  oppressed groups.
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  If you understand it, nothing that happens in the world will ever surprise you again.
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  That's how they see everything.
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  And so now social justice is viewed through that lens.
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  Why is that 50 year old man that identifies as a teenage girl allowed to do that?
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  Because he's oppressed.
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  Well, why is he oppressed?
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  Because he's a minority.
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  He's a minority group and of some sort.
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  So what they want is say, so therefore 99.9% of all the females have to suffer because
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  there is not equity for this one guy.
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  And so we're going to redefine everything in this system to help out this person that
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  is apparently oppressed and make everybody else's life worse.
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  And so there's no static metric of morality.
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  And that's the same reason I was this I'll end with this.
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  I live in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
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  Three blocks from my house is where Kyle written house shot three people.
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  Okay.
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  I can see it from my house.
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  This city was burned to the ground and churches in this city, including my own that I love,
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  never spoke about it one single time.
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  They dare not speak out against the BLM movement because they have in some degree let that
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  disgusting Marxist worldview about oppressors and press permeate into the faith.
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  And they both can't live together.
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  That's where I have to say Christianity and secular social justice, Marxism, they cannot
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  both exist.
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  Absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  And by the way, it's that we always call it the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation
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  Network because it is an organization's worldwide and it is it is global.
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  It's not a new thing.
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  It didn't come up just because George Floyd was murdered.
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  This was waiting in the wings to be unleashed.
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  And unfortunately, Christians, we felt guilty.
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  It's like, yeah, I guess we better say, yeah, of course Black Lives Matter, but people
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  were just not, they didn't do their due diligence.
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  They weren't informed.
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  I just had a pastor on last week from Southern Wisconsin who had some of his people go out.
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  They had guns.
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  They were out there protecting citizens.
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  We're protecting the local businesses out there.
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  But anyway, that's for another story, John.
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  Let's talk about one word in your title, Wimpy Week and Woke.
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  When you said something earlier about the guy up in Canada and one of the first thoughts
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  was, where are the men?
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  Where are the men?
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  And where is the church?
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  Where are those who need to stand up not only to this delusion and stand for truth, the
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  truth of God's word, but to protect women and children?
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  Where are the men in our culture?
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  What are your thoughts about that?
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  It's really, it's really beyond me.
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  I don't even know if I have the right words to say how passionately I feel about it.
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  And A, yes, where are men?
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  Now if one thing, men are hated and that has been, of course, a work of the enemy for
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  all these years and the church has become so feminized that not even the church will
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  even stand up for the fact that it is good to be a man, God created men, God created
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  women and they're both wonderful and we're both created in his image.
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  It's wonderful.
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  The church won't even stand for that.
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  The culture has just kind of let all these lies slowly erode us to the place that now
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  even Christian men will stand up.
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  I mean, I think of like, you know, John Knox or somebody, I think it was John Knox who
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  said something like, you know, trust God with all of your heart and keep your powder
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  dry.
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  You know, it's like, where are these people to where we used to believe that the, the
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  godly thing to do would be in the name of Jesus, we will not let you, grown man go into
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  that little girl's dressing room.
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  And we're doing that because we love Christ and we because we love our neighbor.
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  But now to love your neighbor is transformed into allowing that grown man to do whatever
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  he wants to do because apparently Jesus was just so super polite.
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  He never hurt anybody's feelings and I hear this from these, from Christians all the
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  time.
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  They just, everybody wanted to be around Jesus.
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  He was just so wonderful and amazing.
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  He never turned anybody away, always affirmed everyone.
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  And I'm just like, I don't even know what Bible you're reading.
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  But I do believe with all my heart, the Christian response is no, we do love our neighbor,
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  which means it is loving to put guardrails onto society and to promote the good.
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  Oh, man, praise God for that.
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  Absolutely.
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  I'm just thinking we've had former transgenders on former homosexuals on this program.
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  And they say the loving thing to do is to tell others the truth, not to affirm a delusion
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  or a lie, but we'll continue when we come back from our break.
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  We're with John Cooper, the website john L Cooper dot com.
• 13:12
  The book is called Wimpy Week and woke.
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  We'll be right back and world v matters.
• 13:16
  Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily.
• 13:19
  World news biblically understood, stay informed at Harbinger's Daily dot com.
• 13:34
  Okay, so John Cooper, many people define woke differently.
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  And some say it's a boogeyman term.
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  So your definition of woke as it relates to your book, Wimpy Week and woke.
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  Yes, in fact, you know what, I just got this ready.
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  I didn't know you're going to ask me when I get ready.
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  I'm going to read from my book on page 45.
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  Are you ready?
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  Carrying about the poor, hating racism, desiring to raise the standards of education
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  and minimize disparities between groups of people is not being woke.
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  In my view, these are the actions of people who have been rescued and changed by the gospel
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  of Jesus Christ.
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  A love for Christ will naturally be get a love for people.
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  It will also cause us to begin to hate the things that God hates, such as racism and bigotry.
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  What makes Wokeness problematic is when we buy into the secular, humanistic,
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  origin story and telos of man that is biggest problem is trauma inflicted on him
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  by his fellow man, nature, psychological harm, etc.
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  And that man can fix his own problems without God's ways.
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  I read that long thing because people go, I care about the poor.
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  So you're saying I'm being woke.
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  No, no, no, no, no.
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  No, the Western civilization cares about the poor because of Christianity.
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  It's not like the secular world went out and just loved the poor.
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  That is what Jesus said to do.
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  That is what the apostles did.
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  That's what the New Testament church and the church throughout the ages has done.
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  What Wokeness does is it redefines who, what it means to be poor.
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  Woo, that's good.
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  Here's what I'm saying.
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  Price has to help the poor and the oppressed.
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  The secular social justice folks then redefine who is oppressed.
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  The 50 year old professor who says he's a little girl.
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  He is now defined as the oppressed and we have to restructure society
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  in order for him to have, quote, equitable outcomes as people who are 50 years
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  old, who don't identify as little girls.
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  So we have to make sure that he has all the same outcomes and they do this with
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  everything, but they also do it not as individuals, not to help.
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  In other words, if you say I really want to help, you know, let's say people of color.
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  I really want to help people of color and education standards.
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  And so I'm going to spend money on after school programs to help kids read and yada yada.
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  They don't care about the individuals.
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  They only care about the group dynamic.
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  And so whether that kid actually ever learns to read or not,
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  does it really matter in their worldview?
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  All that they are trying to do is to create a to impose, I should say,
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  to impose some sort of national equity where everybody has the exact same thing,
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  which means that nobody is responsible for their own decisions.
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  And so woke this redefines what it needs to be poor or oppressed.
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  And it does this group dynamic thing.
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  And so what it ends up doing is actually supporting injustice,
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  but they call it justice just like BLM and in my town.
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  Why did churches not want to speak out?
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  Well, because they feel like if they don't speak out, if they speak out against BLM,
• 16:48
  they might be looked at as not caring about justice.
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  It doesn't matter that what BLM was doing was quiet and unjust,
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  burning down people's livelihoods, putting people's lives at risk.
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  So you they they support really horrible things.
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  And then they call it justice and the church is just, we have no confidence in our moral voice,
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  because we have no confidence in the Bible any longer.
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  We have redefined God's justice to whenever you put a word in front of justice,
• 17:15
  by the way, doesn't that mean it's something else?
• 17:17
  Yes, something other than like social justice, environmental justice.
• 17:23
  What do they call it reproductive justice?
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  Oh my goodness.
• 17:26
  So you're you're taking any kind of a sin or movement and saying, let's put a nice word
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  in front of justice and we can, you know, push our cause.
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  But John, why is the revolution against America in reality,
• 17:39
  a revolution against Christianity?
• 17:41
  It's one of the topics in your book and then the broad overview.
• 17:45
  Oh, this is so important.
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  And the reason this is so important is because a lot of Christians today,
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  even well-meaning, really good-hearted,
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  viable-believing Christians that I love.
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  I would say we are brothers, okay?
• 17:58
  And I think this is a good point to make.
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  So it's not just like I've come and you're just beaten up on everybody.
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  This is so important.
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  These are people that love God.
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  They want to do what the Bible says.
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  They have been told over and over and over again.
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  If they care about some of this stuff,
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  that they are being politically idolatrous or they are being Christian nationalist
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  or they are they are trying too hard to make, you know, the kingdoms of this world,
• 18:24
  the kingdom of God or something like that.
• 18:26
  You know, they have all these things.
• 18:28
  This is the reason it's important for them to understand the destruction of the West,
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  which is what we are in right now, the destruction of male and female,
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  the destruction of roles of fathers and mothers,
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  the destruction of our society from capitalism to Marxism,
• 18:46
  the destruction of truth in our country,
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  meaning that there are absolute moral standards that are true yesterday,
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  today and forever, okay?
• 18:54
  The destruction of all of that to relativize morality,
• 18:57
  all those things may sound like political motives to destroy America,
• 19:03
  which they are, but what they really are going for is the destruction of Christianity.
• 19:08
  Christianity is seen as the enemy.
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  And I've got quotes all throughout my book, just so people know,
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  I have 650 put notes in this book.
• 19:19
  Yeah, but because I get really tired of Christian saying that I'm making this stuff up.
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  And I keep trying to prove it.
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  And they're like, that's just your opinion.
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  I'm like, okay, 650 footnotes.
• 19:29
  You can read the original words from Karl Marx.
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  You can read Freud.
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  You can read Nietzsche.
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  You're reading these people and you realize their war is not actually against America.
• 19:41
  Their war is against God.
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  They do not like God.
• 19:45
  Well, they're all atheists.
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  So they don't, they don't believe in God, but they hate him.
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  It's got like, I don't believe in him, but I hate him.
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  And he is the reason this is what Christians don't understand.
• 19:55
  They believe that Christianity is the reason that people are suffering.
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  Now, and this is going to blow some people's minds because they haven't read the original work.
• 20:04
  But they actually believe the reason that people commit crimes is because they are suffering.
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  Why are they suffering?
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  Because society puts restrictions on what they are allowed to do, either sexually or to do with private property.
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  And where do those ideas come from?
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  They come from the Bible.
• 20:23
  Private property is a biblical thing all the way from Old Testament, you know, so they don't like that.
• 20:29
  And so they they're against private property.
• 20:31
  Private property has to be abolished in Marxism.
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  Where does it come from?
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  It comes from God.
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  So God is actually the enemy.
• 20:37
  They do the same thing with sexual liberation, the sexual revolution, parenting,
• 20:44
  even the institution of marriage.
• 20:45
  Karl Marx hated the institution of marriage.
• 20:48
  As do the sexual revolution people because they believe that it inhibits man sexually.
• 20:55
  And that's the reason that man commits crimes according to Freud, of course,
• 20:59
  because he is not satisfied sexually and you can't be satisfied sexually if you're just married to one person.
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  And so marriage is bad.
• 21:08
  Everything evil in this world is because of Christianity.
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  So if we kill God, if we kill Christianity and we create a new humanistic social
• 21:17
  program to lead us to utopia for equity.
• 21:21
  So everybody has the same stuff, communism, et cetera, then everybody's going to be happy.
• 21:26
  But the number one thing you have to do is kill God.
• 21:28
  So the destruction of America is not actually just political.
• 21:33
  It is spiritual, not because we confuse America with the kingdom of God,
• 21:37
  but because America represents a system of belief grounded in the ethics of the Bible.
• 21:43
  Well, in this utopian postmodern world, it doesn't sound like Christians could exist
• 21:50
  because they want to attack God and Christianity.
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  But what about the representatives?
• 21:55
  What about his ambassadors?
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  What about those who truly want to live?
• 21:58
  They are already, we know they're intolerant toward the faith.
• 22:01
  So how does that work out, John Cooper?
• 22:03
  If there's no objective truth, how do postmodern think we can all live together in this?
• 22:09
  By the way, utopia, that's your subtitle, how truth can save America from utopian destruction.
• 22:16
  And so go ahead and share your thoughts on that.
• 22:18
  I would love to hear it.
• 22:20
  You know what?
• 22:20
  This is beautiful.
• 22:21
  You just wrapped it all up in a bow because I'm going to give you the answer to that,
• 22:25
  which is also the conclusion, like what I consider to be a positive vision,
• 22:29
  because Christians go, okay, then what could I do about it?
• 22:32
  You know, so for anybody who wants to read that conclusion, go to john l Cooper dot com.
• 22:38
  That's where you get the physical book.
• 22:40
  Here's the answer.
• 22:41
  You are dead right.
• 22:42
  This idea that we can all live together in some sort of pluralistic utopia,
• 22:48
  where everybody has their own truth and nobody steps on somebody else's values, etc.
• 22:54
  That is an impossibility.
• 22:56
  And we're seeing it play out in America.
• 22:58
  How do you live in America?
• 23:01
  When half the people say, I believe in human rights,
• 23:05
  I believe that every single human is born in the image of God and is worthy of individual liberties.
• 23:10
  Therefore, I oppose abortion.
• 23:13
  And the other half of the people say, well, no, actually, I believe
• 23:17
  and everybody's right to do anything they want to with their own body.
• 23:21
  And because of that, it is unjust to put any laws in place that make it where I can't,
• 23:28
  you know, in the, in the life of my own boy child, you can't actually continue to live like that forever.
• 23:34
  It's, it's going to come into every single aspect.
• 23:37
  So what they have to do, this pluralistic vision, they have to finally get to a place where they say,
• 23:41
  okay, here's, here's the deal.
• 23:43
  John, here's you'll see, you can believe in God if you want to.
• 23:47
  It just needs to be privatized.
• 23:50
  You can believe it in your heart.
• 23:51
  You can even believe it in your home, but you may not say it on Twitter.
• 23:56
  You may not say it on, on, you know, the TV, you may not put it on social media.
• 24:01
  You may not teach your kids these things because the state is going to decide what your kids have to learn at state,
• 24:08
  sponsored schools.
• 24:09
  So you privatize your religion, but in public, you have to admit certain things that now this is happening in
• 24:17
  communist China right now.
• 24:18
  They're at a place now where they go, hey, you can be a Christian if you want to.
• 24:22
  As long as you publicly say that President Xi Jinping is the head of the church is long as he's the head of the church,
• 24:30
  you can believe in Christ, all you want to, which of course is a blasphemy, which we could never actually say,
• 24:36
  Christ is the head of the church, right?
• 24:38
  So you're absolutely right in this utopia.
• 24:42
  We will not be allowed to go to church and worship the one true king of kings, Lord,
• 24:46
  the Lord Jesus Christ in, in the way we believe, but that actually answers the question for what is the positive
• 24:52
  vision, which you just said, how is it that we changed the world for Christ?
• 24:57
  Do we do it through, through bullets and bombs and guns?
• 25:00
  Absolutely not.
• 25:02
  That won't work.
• 25:03
  And that's not what we're even called to do.
• 25:05
  We are ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 25:08
  We are salt and light.
• 25:10
  And what do we do?
• 25:11
  We taste good to the world.
• 25:13
  We show the truth and the order of the world in a world chaos and the world becomes convinced through the power of the spirit.
• 25:21
  Of course, that this word is true.
• 25:24
  And one by one by one by one that Kimukov starts like a little mustard seed and it grows and it grows and grows into a more and more people begin to say,
• 25:34
  we want the truth of Christ to be public because there's so many of us.
• 25:40
  We believe it.
• 25:40
  It's got to be public and it becomes more public as it grows.
• 25:45
  And eventually we say, you know what?
• 25:47
  We have some ideas that we frankly think should be privatized.
• 25:51
  You're weird stuff about being a grown stinking man at 50 years old and you think you're a little girl.
• 25:57
  You can privatize that in your home if you want to, but you may not bring that into our public school system and go into our kids locker rooms.
• 26:05
  We have some things that need to be privatized and the Lord Jesus Christ will teach us what those things are through his word.
• 26:12
  Amen.
• 26:12
  And thank you for bringing up salt and light.
• 26:14
  We've kind of lost the idea that we are supposed to take the faith beyond church walls and influence culture for Christ and righteousness.
• 26:22
  And this is the battle we're in.
• 26:23
  It has a spiritual battle at its root.
• 26:25
  And I know you've spoken about that as well.
• 26:28
  John, I admire you because I've been in music myself and to do what you've done.
• 26:33
  I'm sure you've alienated some, maybe the intolerant skillet fans because of some of the stands you've taken and some of the things you've talked about.
• 26:42
  So I know there's a risk, but you are to glorify Christ.
• 26:46
  And that's what you're doing.
• 26:47
  And so Kudos brother, keep fighting the good fight.
• 26:50
  We just want to pray that God will enlarge your territory even more.
• 26:55
  And I just thank you for your time today.
• 26:56
  We really appreciate it.
• 26:57
  John L. Cooper dot com.
• 26:59
  Thank you, brother.
• 27:00
  All right, in the book, Wimpy week and woke guys, check that out.
• 27:04
  Best seller already.
• 27:06
  John L. Cooper, guys, we appreciate it.
• 27:08
  Keep sharing the podcast.
• 27:09
  That's how we're getting out there because we're somewhat censored shadow band.
• 27:12
  You know how that works on social media.
• 27:14
  So it's because of you that we're growing.
• 27:16
  God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.