Oprah, The Biggest Heretic? | A Bee Interview With Erik Thoennes
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Hey everybody and welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
I'm Kyle Mann, the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee, and I'm hanging out with Jarrett today.
Yeah.
And today we're going to talk to Eric Thones.
Actually, it's Eric Thanis.
Eric Taunis.
Eric Tanis.
And he is the dean of theology at Piola University.
At Talbot, and he also works with undergrad there, too.
Talbot.
Yeah.
And he also works at undergrad.
And he writes a lot.
He's a writer, too.
And he also writes a lot.
And this was a great conversation.
We talked about the atonement.
Yeah.
We talked about the jealousy of God.
Oprah's misinterpretation of the jealousy.
We talked about Oprah.
Oprah.
We talked about the culture war.
Christian nationalists.
Do Christians fight in the culture war?
Should you enlist in the culture army?
We're going to find out.
Anyway, you can just listen to the interview.
So here it is.
Well, thanks for joining us, Eric.
We appreciate you coming out.
Good to be here with you guys.
It's great to be here.
Thank you.
We wanted to break the ice with you with some rapid-fire icebreakers.
And the first one is, what is your favorite sin?
To personally engage in or to denounce?
It's a question, take it or leave it.
However you want to interpret that question.
My favorite sin to fight is idolatry.
It's an interesting way to say it.
My favorite sin to fight is.
Well, you got to pick your battles carefully.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can see that.
I feel like that's the sin that I most encounter in my own heart and also in other people's hearts.
Actually, the Bible describes sin as idolatry more than any other thing.
It's a worship problem.
Fundamental problem.
Sin is a worship problem fundamentally.
Everybody worships.
Right.
It's just, is the object of your worship worthy of your worship?
And the only thing worthy of your worship is the one true God.
So yeah, anything that gets your worship besides God is idolatry.
It's like all sin is idolatry.
So you're saying your favorite sin is all sin.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I'm an impatient person, so I don't want to fight enemies that aren't the big ones.
That's the big ones.
Yeah, that's the fundamental.
We talked about this with my worship team yesterday.
I was reading 1 Kings 11, where Solomon ends up setting up Molech, like on the Mount of Olives, like within visual shot of the temple.
Yeah.
He's setting up all these different idols like all over Jerusalem.
And we're talking about Solomon, highly successful, supposedly blessed by God, gives all this.
Supposedly, he was blessed by God.
Well, and even after he becomes an idolater, the Lord, it's like, I'm not going to take you off the throne.
They'll still be blessed all the way to the end.
Just because of David.
I love that you're doing that with your worship team, that you're digging into historical books in the Old Testament, looking for ideas to drive worship ministry.
That's beautiful.
Oh, I'm telling you.
I was like, we have to be people who worship the one true God.
And there's other things that we can do.
And we still went through like our own personal idols.
And you've got to wonder if contemporary American worship ministry has all kinds of idolatry driving what we do and how we do it and why we do it.
Yeah.
Celebrity, kind of a celebrity culture.
Yeah, the place where we're being led to worship can be filled with idolatry.
That's very interesting.
Okay.
Second question.
Yeah.
That was a really good answer.
So who's the biggest heretic right now?
So you're a theologian.
So with that, we're going to ask you all these questions.
Who's the most influential heretic right now?
Oh, it's a great question.
Well, for a while, I think it was Oprah.
Because people wouldn't have thought of her as a religious teacher, but she for a long time may have been the most influential religious teacher and used a lot of Christian terminology.
And I'm not sure if it's still the case, but for a long time would say she was a Christian, but was constantly teaching things in a way that veered from Christian teaching, but seemed really good to a lot of people.
So I think she was profoundly influential.
After 9-11, which we just remembered yesterday, Yankee Stadium brought Oprah in basically to preside over an interfaith service as the high priestess of American pop religion.
And so I think we tend to think of religious teachers as the heretics if they're veering from the truth.
But I think it tends to be folks like that who clearly are dipping into religious ideology but doing it in a way where it's veering from truth.
That sounds really compelling.
So Oprah for a while, but what about right now?
That's a good question.
Oh, who is, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure who I would say.
Oprapers are still alive.
Yeah.
It'd still be Oprah.
Yeah, and I think Oprah has led to a lot of people who've embraced that ideology, who perpetuate it, even not directly related to her.
How would you describe her ideology?
What is that?
Yeah, it's a selfism that is a spirituality emphasis without a kind of religion.
So this spirituality, I'm spiritual, but not religious, is a really popular way to think about it.
It's been interesting in my lifetime to see people become more and more interested in spiritual things, more and more open to the miraculous, more and more open to even somebody rising from the dead.
But then the final question is, but what difference does that make for me?
I'm not sure how that helps me.
I'm happy for you, but it's not going to be helpful for my life.
So I think that real self-focus and a spirituality without clear doctrine and definition is something that she perpetuated for a long time.
But that was representative.
She was brilliant at tapping into what was big in the culture at the time and then advancing it for a while.
So I would love to have lunch with Oprah.
She started off as a believer, I think, in Christian truth, but in her early 20s said she left it because a preacher was talking about the jealousy of God that she just couldn't handle.
She misunderstood the term, right?
And her name is a typo.
Harpo.
It was supposed to be Orpa.
Oh.
Out of the Bible.
Yeah.
They flipped the letters around by mistake.
And she's a brilliant woman, and she's admirable in so many ways.
That's true.
Question number three, have you ever cast a demon out of somebody?
I've definitely, yesterday, prayed with someone who I think was having demonic influence.
But it's not like the movie is like Christ compels you to throw in holy water.
No.
No.
No, but the spiritual realm is real.
Why do they always speak in Latin in the movies when they're casting demons out?
I think that's what demons speak.
they're always catholics that's why they only tell stories about catholic uh catholic demon casting out or what do you call those guys Demon caster outers?
Demon caster outers?
That's what they call them.
It's because it always takes so much longer if it were like somebody else.
Latin sure sounds more authoritative.
Yeah, I think for sure.
Sounds good.
Next question.
Okay, next question.
Have you ever seen a miracle?
Yes, I think the greatest miracle we see is someone who goes from darkness to light through conversion, through becoming a new creature in Christ.
To take a rebellious, God-hating sinner, which is what we all are when we start out and turn him into a worshiper by the power of the Spirit is, I think, the greatest miracle we've seen.
So I've seen that a lot saw it in my own life.
I love that because I feel like people have a tendency to think of miracles only as like, have you ever seen a person raise from the dead?
Yeah.
Or somebody grow back their arm or something.
Have you ever seen someone grow back their arm?
No, that's never happened.
I haven't.
Okay.
Did dinosaurs have feathers?
And is the Earth 6,000 years old?
I think some dinosaurs had feathers.
As far as I could tell, a pterodactyl, which is a fun game to play.
I don't know if you've ever played the game pterodactyl.
Have you ever played the game pterodactyl?
No, I don't know what that is.
Sounds like a great game.
That's just a name.
How can it sound like a game?
Oh, it sounds game.
You tuck your lip up here, and then everybody does.
And you go around and you say pterodactyl to your friends.
And if they laugh, they're out.
And so you say pterodactyl and really pterodactyl.
But you say like, pterodactyl, and you try to get your friends to laugh.
It's a really fun game to laugh at.
That's the funny play.
It seems like it would be a fairly short game.
Because a lot of people would laugh.
Some people are steely-minded and they're able to pull that off and not laugh at it.
Like Kyle.
Someone's screaming.
Is Kyle.
I have no joy.
There's no Joey in my life.
There's no Joey.
He's got a steel countenance.
You dodged the question.
Is the Earth 6,000 years ago?
No, no, no.
Pterodactyl's probably had feathers as far as I know.
That's not dodging it at all.
But is the Earth 6,000 years old, though?
These are the hard questions that we're going to ask.
No, I wouldn't say it's 6,000 years old.
Younger?
I'm not sure how old.
2,000.
I'm not sure.
What about 7,000?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, sad.
So you're kind of in the old earth creationism camp, maybe?
Depends what day you ask me.
Yeah.
What literal 24-hour day we ask you?
What literal 24-hour day?
Or did you mean age when you said that?
We had Hugh Ross on recently, and these guys also went and interviewed Ken Hamm.
At the Ork.
So we actually, we have a big debate in the office as to how old the earth is.
Yeah, I certainly think it's possible that God did it in literal 24-hour days.
I don't think that's a stretch in the way you interpret that, but I don't think the kind of literature we're dealing with in Genesis requires that strict literal scientific approach.
It's a good answer.
It's a good answer.
All right, so number six, I'm asking for a friend.
How do you stop sinning?
Well, I think it's really important to believe you can stop sinning.
I don't think we'll ever stop sinning entirely until we see Jesus face to face again, but we're commanded to put sin to death.
And by the power of the Spirit and the power of the gospel, I believe that believers should see sin put to death progressively in their lives.
And I've been sinning a long time, 58 years.
And I'm delighted to say I've seen some sin be killed off in my life.
That's not even a remote temptation anymore.
And that's a foretaste of heaven.
And I'm really grateful for that.
Because in heaven, all sin will seem absurd to us and foul to even think about.
So yeah, I love the fact that the spirit and the power of the gospel taking over in our lives enables us to really put sin to death.
I like that.
The sanctification process.
Yeah, holiness, growing in holiness.
Growing in holiness.
Starting with the fact that all Christians are saints.
This idea that it's just a select few is so not New Testament.
And so the fact that when we become believers in Jesus, we're saints.
We're the Hagioi.
We're the ones set apart, devoted to God, and declared holy by him.
And then our lives, as Paul says, progressively live up to what we've already obtained in him.
So it's a beautiful aspect of being a Christian and increasing freedom from sin.
I think psychology very often teaches us we're sort of stuck with our psyche or our experiences have now imprisoned us because of our past or our trauma or whatever.
But the Bible thinks sin is something we can really put to death.
Wow.
I like that verse in one or two Corinthians or whatever, where it says, stop sinning.
Paul just gets fed up at the end of the day.
He's like, stop sinning.
Or that one in Peter where he's like, be perfect.
Yeah.
It's like, okay.
I'll do that then.
I guess I'll do that then.
I'm trying.
Do you have a cyborg eye or something?
Is your eye like cyborg eye?
I have a fake lens that they put in there.
It's like reflecting.
It's reflecting.
Every once in a while, the light hits it depending on the angle and it looks like the termination.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's cool.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, I'm seeing into your soul records now, Michael.
Yeah.
You see flashing light on the side.
Can you see danger coming?
That was not one of the questions.
Did Adam poop before the fall into sin?
I believe so, yes.
So the digestive system was a thing.
Yeah.
I'm not sure the bacteria content we presently have was there.
So maybe different.
Okay, yeah, I got you.
But yeah, the digestive system is miraculous.
It's wonderful if you've studied it.
Yeah.
That is miraculous.
Okay, this is kind of off topic, but what is your favorite dialect of the English language?
Oh, that's a great question.
I love dialects.
I'm from New England.
Oh, yeah.
Me too.
Where they're all over the place.
I mean, neighborhoods have different dialects.
So I love a southy Boston accent.
And, you know, a lot of the New York boroughs have just great accents.
Bronx is a great accent.
That's really cool.
So that's interesting.
So you're from, are you from Massachusetts?
I'm from Connecticut.
Are you from Connecticut?
All right.
So I'm from Massachusetts originally.
Yeah.
So I learned how to speak from all these people.
Yeah.
Did you know that?
I don't know.
Yeah, I was born in Massachusetts.
We only stayed there for like two years.
I can't really claim it.
But all the family members, so you learn how to speak your family.
There's so much more to know.
Yeah, I'm an endless well.
We're going to interview Jared.
So I was going to say, you learn your particular idioct, not a dialect, but you have a personal idiolect that you learn from speaking to your family and people that teach you English.
And so I had a dialect coach one time and I asked her where I was from.
I was like, where's my family from?
You know, because I learned English from my father and my mom.
She goes, well, one of them's from New England, definitely.
And then the other one's from the valley, somewhere like Fresno.
And I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
No, what?
This lady was a total, she nailed it.
She nailed where my parents were from based on my own personal idiole.
Where do you think my parents are from?
I'm not an expert in that.
I just guess, like, two.
Chino.
Pomona, yeah.
One of them is Pomona.
Okay, Pomona and Texas.
No, that is completely wrong.
Okay, where's the other one?
Michigan.
Okay, Michigan.
That's right.
I guess maybe you have that.
That your personal idiolect is, so anyway, so I have a little bit of that New England bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it when dialects really match the attitude of a subculture.
Yeah.
Yeah, which you get a lot of in New England.
So in the Northeast, yeah.
Out there.
I tell you what.
How often should I examine myself to see if I am in the faith?
Seven times a day?
No, I think when Paul says that to the Corinthians, there's good reason to question whether or not they really get the gospel because they got serious problems in that church.
And people come drunk to the Lord's Supper, people incest is going on, horrible divisions.
They're giving good evidence that they should question whether or not they're really in the faith or not, or if they're found wanting.
So the only time we question our salvation is when there's good reason to because of incest or something.
Well, unrelated since ongoing unrepentant sin that's going undressed is a good reason to say, and I wonder if I'm real.
You know, when a student at Biola comes to me and just is plagued with their sin, I'll often say, well, great.
Let's thank God for the obvious evidence of the Spirit's work in your life by the fact that you're plagued by your sin because conviction is one of the main things he does.
And so that's a great evidence that you're real.
And it bothered you.
I heard somebody say one time that the difference between Christians and non-Christians is not that non-Christians sin and Christians don't.
It's that Christians can't enjoy it like they used to.
Sin used to be so much more fun.
Right.
No, it's a sign of life.
Yeah, that conviction, sign of life.
It doesn't feel good.
No, but it's a sign of life, exactly.
I like that.
I like that.
Okay, amillennial or premillennial?
Pre.
So tell me exactly what your eschatology is.
Lay it out.
Lay it out.
When's Jesus coming back and how long?
I think it's pronounced all millennial, not amillennial.
You said amillennial.
Are you sure?
I'm pretty sure it's all.
I think it kind of.
Depends what your dialect is.
Your idiolect.
His ideolect.
It's all millennial.
Let's see.
Dan, am I right?
Knock three times if I'm correct.
All right.
He knocked twice.
No, no, no.
That was three.
I only heard two.
No, it was like done.
Dun ten.
I think Dr. Thanis is probably correct about it being able to be pronounced either way.
No, it's Amo.
Pre-mill, that's a good answer, though.
Yeah.
Okay, so pre-mill.
Was the flood a global flood or a local flood?
I think it was global.
Global flood.
The Bible agrees.
The Bible agrees.
Who's right?
The Roman Catholics, the Protestants, Eastern Orthodox.
Who's right?
You tell us.
What versions of those things you're talking about because there are lots of different versions of them.
I like the broadness of that question.
Who's right?
Who's what?
It also depends on the topic.
Yes, that is true.
That's true.
All right.
End of rapid fire.
Okay, end of rapid fire.
Hey, you look good, man.
Like, you look good.
Like, you, you know, physical.
You physically look good.
You're a handsome.
We're saying you're a handsome guy.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
My mother will be happy.
Yeah, have you had any work done?
No.
Not yet.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, the cyborg.
This one's this one.
Well, at least the left one, the other one.
Oh, yeah, it's this one.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the one.
Yeah, that's really cool.
Do you do anything like workout?
Yeah, since I was a kid, I played sports a lot, played football for 16 years.
It was a huge part of my life.
Yeah, so it's been a regular day.
Still yeah.
Workout and stuff.
Cool.
That's great.
So seriously, though, your research includes theology of culture.
Like that's one of the things that you like to study, which I like.
I love that conversation.
So what is culture?
Like how do you do theology and culture?
Like what do those things have to do with each other?
Can you just expound on that a little bit?
So I don't think you can be a good theologian if you're not a student of culture and always exegeting culture.
So when I walked in here, I wasn't super conscious of it, but I was exegeting the culture of the Babylon B.
So what did you exegete, bro?
Well, I just mentioned it before we started.
I just think it's funny that you guys are really serious about being funny.
I like coming in and saying, do we have that trumpy bear?
And get on that order.
There's just this really wonderful.
I would like to steal that as our tagline.
We're serious about funny.
We're serious about funny.
Yeah.
We're serious about funny.
Yeah.
By the way, you signed a thing when you came in.
Anything you say on the podcast?
No, no, no, no.
That sounds like a good t-shirt.
I need a cut of.
Yeah.
We're serious about funny.
Could have Eric Thonna's face on it.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I've actually written on a theology of humor from a Christian perspective.
And I'm very serious about humor being a part of the Christian life, which is why I love what you guys are doing.
That's so good.
So you think that satire is valuable and is a useful tool for a theologian or a person that's exegeting culture.
I do.
And part of the reason I do is because I've exegeted our culture.
I've thought about assumptions, ideology that's driving a culture, the way we do things, the way we relate to each other, the language we use, all these aspects of culture that create subcultures within a broader culture that is fascinating as well.
So as a pastor, I'm always thinking about creating a subculture within the broader culture that is my local church that, for instance, has a longer attention span than the average person in our culture does and thinks more deeply, thinks five questions deep, ten questions deep, instead of a half a question deep about what we believe.
So I'm always thinking about creating a subculture within the broader culture that is distinctively Christian and looks like true discipleship.
So I think if you don't understand the culture you're teaching into and preparing people to have an impact in, you're not doing a good job as a pastor, a leader, a theologian, unless you're both thinking about what's true, but then how to wisely bring that into the culture.
And one of the reasons I value what you guys are doing is because I think for far too long, Christians have just allowed the non-Christian culture to do a really good job with being funny, to really do a good job with satire and with doing things in creative ways.
And I'm glad you're reclaiming some of that territory for Christian ideology.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, you sent me a really good book by Doug Wilson called The Serrated Edge.
I read that.
It's very interesting because I was getting a lot of criticism for being satirical and using the different types of satire.
So a lot of Christian friends of mine were like, we can't do that.
You know, you can't be mean.
That's like, you know, and it's like, well, you should read Matthew 23 sometime.
You know, like, have you ever read Matthew 20?
Yeah.
Yeah.
See, we're just like, we're pretty much like Jesus.
Well, it's just at least it's at least it's a tool that Jesus used in communication, right?
So it's so then if Jesus used it in communication, then by, I think if we're his followers, then we can, we're like, we are given permission to use that type of communication as well, right?
I mean, like, that's the, at least the logical train of thought.
Right.
So yeah, wisdom is what has to determine what kind of communication we use and when we use it and how we use it and with whom we use it and what our motivation is in it.
Because one of the reasons I was drawn to study humor from a Christian perspective is because I hung out with a lot of funny people and a lot of them were from Brooklyn and the Bronx and I played football with them.
And so often that humor could be really demeaning of other people and be very un-Christian in the way you used it.
And so I wanted to understand humor in a way that was redemptive, that was edifying, that was helpful, and helped tell the truth, sometimes in pretty direct ways.
And so yeah, I wanted to understand it in a way because I've probably sinned more in the name of humor than any other way in my life.
But it's also been one of the most life-giving things in my life.
And so because I easily sin in the name of humor, I don't want to just give it up and think I need to abstain from it.
You can do that with food, sex, anything, because it gets you in trouble quickly.
And so I just want Christians to think well about the use of humor and how life-giving it can be in a fallen world, especially.
Did you have any favorite jokes growing up?
Can you tell it right now?
Actually, I wrote an article called Laughing Through Tears, the Redemptive Role of Humor in a Fallen World.
And one of the things I talk about in that article is they did a massive research project on trying to find the funniest joke in the world.
And they went to all these countries and they asked people what they thought the funniest joke they ever heard was.
And they got all the submissions and they collected them.
And they figured out what in each country the funniest joke was.
And then they sort of boiled it down to, you know, like Scottish humor is really dark and cutting.
And so there's just a different complexion to humor depending on the culture.
But the funniest joke in the United States was a Harvard grad talking to a Texan.
And the Texan says, where are you from?
And the Harvard grad says, I'm from somewhere where we don't end sentences with prepositions.
And the Texan says, oh, okay.
Where are you from?
Donkey.
That's a good joke.
That is a good joke, isn't it?
But that's quintessentially American because we don't like people who think there's something special.
We love to bring people down to the level the rest of us.
And that's built into American culture.
And so that joke typifies that, okay, we're going to bring you down a notch.
Well, we're going to bleep the word that you said, so it's not going to be as funny.
That's an animal.
That or they will think.
That is a specific word.
I think you said something worse.
People have been upset when I've told that joke.
Sorry.
So if you had to describe American culture with five words, what would those five words be?
Well, unfortunately, I think negative words come to mind first.
So let me, I think of individualism, consumerism.
I thought you said negative words.
Well, I think those are negative.
And individualism, consumerism, entertainment, entitlement, narcissistic.
I was going to say, really, really cool.
Well, You know, as a pastor and a theology prof, I'm always trying to help my students who are primarily from an American context understand the assumptions they may be operating from that aren't biblical.
And so those are the ones I tend to think of.
But there are so many great aspects of American culture as well.
What's wrong with individualism?
When it's an ism, it emphasizes the individual over against the community.
And the New Testament is profoundly community-oriented.
The you're plural most of the time.
And so you can't have the community without the individual.
And so the individual is important.
But God's creating a people for himself that is made up of individuals that he values individually.
But there's always this corporate goal that has the nation streaming to the throne from every tongue, tribe, and nation, and a massive corporate goal in all of it.
And I think an American individualism can war against that corporate communal focus that is the ultimate goal that God's after.
And it can lead to an entitlement mentality, a narcissistic view of things, that everything needs to revolve around me.
And I go to church thinking about the Yelp review I'm going to do when I'm done instead of with a submissive posture.
The Bible says, submit to one another out of fear of Christ.
I think it's really funny that you can leave reviews of churches on Google and stuff.
Well, yeah, and it's so discouraging to read them because it's about the parking and it's about whether I was warmly greeted and what the seats are like.
It's like we believe that the church is like the body of Christ on earth.
And you go there and you're like, yeah, two stars.
Well, it's like I saw a bunch of reviews of national parks recently.
Like the worst reviews of the book of worst reviews of national parks.
So if you go to like the Grand Tetons and people are like, not as good as I was thinking it was going to be.
Oh yeah, they're like too dirty.
Too dirty.
Too many trees.
Yeah, too many bison.
Yeah, they're dangerous.
Zion was like not green enough.
You know, like, you know, it's just terrible.
It was raining.
It was raining.
Super, super dumb.
So I was thinking, the last time that we were together, we had a great conversation about, and stuff at Brotherhood of the Briar, we had this great conversation about culture war and like what the definition of culture war is.
And that's been something, again, like it's on my heart a lot because I feel like people have been accusing us of engaging in culture war because we're, you know, we're satirists and we're going after people and stuff.
So anyway, I just wanted to know in the conversation between social action and culture war and people's particular like goals and all that stuff, like what is the, what's your thoughts?
What are your thoughts on us being part of the culture?
Not us particularly, but us.
Does everybody smoke pipes and cigars and stuff and then he doesn't?
Like he just sits there?
Is that what you were saying?
Yeah.
You're angry that people are smoking pipes.
It's like it's been blown in your face.
That's not fun.
Yeah.
But yeah, I'm happy to put up with it for my friends.
So culture war, what does it mean?
What does it mean?
How do we engage in it?
Is it wrong for us as Christians?
Yeah, I'm certainly not committed to the term culture war.
I want to be wise in the way we seek to be salt and light, the way we seek to make a difference for the cause of Christ and for the priorities of his kingdom, because we represent him as his ambassadors, centrally in the gospel, but also all the things he cares about, truth and righteousness and goodness and the exaltation of his name ultimately.
So I want to go about that in a way that's wise.
I want us to think about how to advance what Jesus cares about in a way that's helpful and influential.
And so we don't play by what works necessarily, some pragmatic value that's going to bring success numerically or financially, but we do care about having an influence for goodness and truth and the honor of Christ.
So to do that in a way that makes a difference, that recognizes the way our culture thinks and the way people in our society go about making decisions is something we need to be thinking about.
And so to engage the battle that is real, realizing it is a battle against truth and lies, against light and dark.
I mean, the Bible's stark in those sorts of radical distinctions it makes.
And realize that the fundamental battles in the spiritual realm, not against flesh and blood, blood, but principalities and powers in high places and spiritual forces of darkness.
So our weapons of warfare need to primarily be engaging at that level of prayer and the gospel and righteousness.
But then the bring truth into the culture in a way that really has an influence and makes a difference is what we need to be thinking about and the wisdom of that, which should include humor and satire and things that other people are doing a great job with, often with counter-Christian ideology, but that we should be doing a good job with Christian ideology.
Christian nationalism, for or against?
Coming up next, for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Typically when people talk about Christian nationalism, they talk about an unhealthy blurring of the nation of the United States and the church.
So you teach college.
Kids?
I do.
They're going to ruin the country or?
You certainly get some concerning ways of thinking that they've absorbed from the postmodern Oprah influence culture.