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Oct. 13, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:18
Making America Godly Again Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep426
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Hi, everyone. I'm Danielle D'Souza-Gill, your guest host this week.
My dad is still out of town this week, and so is my stepmom, Debbie.
She's with him, so it's just me doing the podcast all week.
I've heard they are having a great week, and it's been a blast for me to be here.
But hey, if you guys like my content, tune in to my regular show.
It's called Counterculture with Danielle D'Souza Gill.
It's with the paper Epic Times.
They have a streaming platform called Epic TV. And my message to people there is we need to be the counterculture.
Countering the left's very gross, uncool ways, embracing tradition and God and conservatism is the cool counterculture now.
I've been doing that show for almost a year and a half now.
I've written two books, one on apologetics and Christianity, titled Why God?
An Intelligent Discussion on the Relevance of Faith, answering questions like, are faith and miracles compatible?
Is there a God who cares?
Which I wrote when I was 17.
My other book is titled The Choice, The Abortion Divide in America, where I rebut pro-choice arguments, and every chapter tackles a different argument in a new way.
If you want to get signed up on my email list or receive information from me, you can go to my website, americanabydanielle.com.
Also, I post videos and content all the time on my social media, so please follow me there.
I have about 2.5 million Facebook followers now, so I'm slowly catching up to my dad's 2.7 million followers.
So, he may be a bit surprised to find out that, hey, mini-me is not so bad.
I'm kidding. But no, once I do surpass his following, I will ask my followers to drop him a follow or hit the like button on his page because I am always his number one fan.
So I might spend some time on future shows giving you some inside scoop and fun facts on stories about him, but we'll see next time.
I actually want to dive into our show today because we have a lot to cover.
We are going to speak to a phenomenal pastor who is bold and on the front lines of the culture wars.
Pastor Chris Toma.
We're also going to speak to Brad Smith from National Right to Life Michigan, and he will fill us in on what's happening on the ground and what is happening with the pro-life battle, particularly in Michigan.
Because believe it or not, the left has some tricks up their sleeve for this November election, and they're doing this all over the country, state by state.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
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One fateful Vermont day in 1848, a railroad construction demolitions expert named Phineas Gage suffered a freak accident that sent a 13-foot metal rod clean through his head.
Miraculously, he survived and went on to live for another six years, but not without certain effects.
Scientists determined that the accident destroyed about 11% of the part of Gage's brain that is called the frontal lobe.
It is the frontal lobe that controls functions like decision-making, inhibition, language, empathy, and creativity.
The damage to the part of the brain that controls his impulses turned Gage into an alcoholic.
But more than that, he became surly, rude, and frequently made inappropriate sexual remarks.
He became a total jerk.
Modern research shows that people can experience similar symptoms even without taking direct physical damage to the brain.
As the life story of Hunter Biden shows, it is possible to burn out the frontal lobe through the process of overindulgence.
Drug abuse, overeating, pathological gambling, and sex addiction like prostitution or internet porn all cause severe damage to the frontal lobe over time.
It doesn't take much to see that these are all very big problems that are ravaging the country today.
Predatory pharmaceutical companies and open borders have pushed the abuse of both legal and illegal drugs to epidemic proportions.
Just about all the other vices are facilitated to an unprecedented degree by the internet and smartphones.
In other words, our modern conveniences, technology, and wealth give us access to great harms that are equal to their great benefits.
And just as decadence destroyed Rome, we are well on the path to becoming another great but fallen and failed society.
But it doesn't have to end this way.
We do not need to enter a second dark age of lost knowledge and technology.
The only path forward, the only path of true progress that will allow our society to achieve even greater heights of intellectual and technological development is to re-embrace faith.
Religion is the only institution that can counteract the corrosive effects of increasingly pervasive excesses.
And it is not simply because most religions advocate practices that increase self-control, such as fasting and prayer.
Our religions also serve to constantly remind us of the dividing line between good and evil, and the eternal perils we face as a matter of daily life.
An immoral society is a fallen society.
A godless society is a predatory and utilitarian society.
And a society that does not value self-control becomes warped and chaotic.
For over a century now, the political left has been preaching the exact opposite.
That progress cannot be made unless we jettison the superstitious and outdated ideological baggage of the past.
But anyone who understands Western history and the Christian underpinnings of science itself knows that this is the biggest lie of all.
Far from propelling mankind into new levels of consciousness and understanding, atheism and secularism have wreaked unprecedented societal damage and are heirs to the most blood-soaked legacy in human history.
Instead of learning from these tragic mistakes, the left is doubling down on aggressively anti-religious and anti-Christian tactics.
Is it working? Well, the great thing about living under the control of a single party like we do today is that we have no shortage of angles from which to view our situation.
And we can say confidently that it's impossible to fail harder than our current institutions are under leftist control.
Think about it. Schools force students to unlearn facts.
Doctors, hospitals and drug manufacturers subject the healthy to dangerously irreversible procedures.
The Department of Justice facilitates or commits crimes and arrests law-abiding citizens.
The entertainment industry is aggressively boring and uncreative and don't even get me started on lifting the lid on the satanic underpinnings of some of Hollywood's biggest fish.
And like much of corporate America, they follow PayPal's example by deliberately destroying their own bottom line.
Journalists censor and attack real reporters.
Unions back border policies that lower worker benefits and pay.
District attorneys brag not about catching criminals, but about letting them go.
The people who regulate agriculture now think we should eat the same bugs that endanger our crops.
And the people who run our government have turned this nation into an energy-starved totalitarian laughingstock.
Every leftist institution has become some sort of alternate mirror universe evil opposite of what it's supposed to be.
Hopefully they'll never get involved in refrigerator manufacturing or we'll have to start grilling in our freezers.
It's hard to imagine a single principle where the left and the Democrat Party can claim some kind of moral high ground.
They've gone from hating war to pushing nuclear Armageddon, from hating cops to praising the cop who shot the unarmed protester Ashley Babbitt.
The only real consistency in their stances is not liberalism, but narcissistic godlessness.
It's no surprise that the same party that booed God is full of parents who will sacrifice their own children and leave them to take medications and get irreversible surgeries.
What then is our response?
As God-fearing and faithful Christians as well as conservatives, what should we do?
We get daily confirmation that there is no shortage of people for whom the leftist policies are a source of sick pleasure.
And the people who carry out their sick deeds are people who we can no longer reason with because we don't share a moral fabric, a common ground.
Right and wrong for us is the complete opposite to them.
What we see as a child abuser, they see as a hero.
And vice versa. As they embrace philosophies that eat away at civilization and human dignity, we must endeavor to embrace the philosophies and values that made the West the great civilization it is in the first place, the philosophies and values of Christianity.
In the past few years, we discovered the hard way that when, in the name of fairness, we allow the left to make our institutions puritanically secular, those same institutions don't become a place of coexistence, but become unfettered monsters.
Government-enforced secularization of our institutions has worked towards the same bloody end as the atheistic experiment of communism.
The evidence shows conclusively that, for the left, progress is merely an affectation, whereas for religious conservatives, progress is a proven product of faith.
In order to safeguard the progress we've made and continue to advance good over evil, we must turn to God and allow the power of His love and grace to transform us once again, but to also let it give us courage.
By turning to God, we may revive science and rediscover God's ordered universe.
There are still many new and astounding wonders which await us between the atoms and among the stars.
We need to reclaim our sense of what Christian compassion really means when it comes to medical procedures.
So our medical and educational institutions will once again work to heal and nurture instead of provide money and entertainment for sadists leading children down a path of misery.
We need to reject the truthless morass of relativism and center our society around an external and objective truth.
How can we ever hope to re-establish a fair system of justice if the only standard our judges accept are people's political beliefs?
Most importantly, we need to embrace traditional morality.
Without a time-tested sense of right and wrong, we will never form a sustainable social contract.
It's wrong to lie.
It's wrong to kill. It's wrong to sell out your country or your countrymen.
But why? Left-wingers today don't know.
So we're operating in a vortex where there's no sturdy ground, at least for them.
For us there is.
And we need to stick to it.
The epiphany Tulsi Gabbard had on Tuesday when she announced her departure from the Democrat Party is very similar to the epiphany Republican voters had in 2016.
That our representatives were malevolent grifters who sneered at their constituents.
In terms of reform, the GOP is at least four years ahead of her and has been undergoing a very long process of transformation, something that Joe Biden derides as MAGA Republicans and Carrie Lake calls the new Republican Party.
The only reason why the Democrats suddenly became the warmongers, Gabbard decrees, is because of this change in the Republican Party.
We bucked the establishment and the Democrats could no longer pretend to be against what they personally profited from.
We have one man to thank.
Donald Trump. He not only freed the Republican voter from the establishment narrative, he became the president who actually furthered the goals of Christian America.
Where previous Republicans only gave apologetic lip service to being pro-life, Trump kept his promises and delivered in the biggest way possible.
He saw abortion for the grave moral evil that it was and treated it as an ethical priority.
He did not make excuses about how the problem was complex or pretend that he was conflicted by the fact there were arguments on both sides.
He did what was right.
He was the first president to speak at the March for Life, and we have him to thank for keeping his promises and appointing judges to our Supreme Court, who ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade.
The candidates in the new Republican Party are also courageously motivated by that same moral imperative to rescue our country from the clutches of the evil men in power.
They are the beneficiaries of a conservative culture that emphasizes freedom and faith.
When they succeed, all of America benefits from their moral formation.
Think of all the damage that has been done because such people have been so rare in this age, or silent, especially in politics.
Now think of all the good that can be done as more and more we as people forsake the leftist path to the second dark age by returning to the golden light of civilization that is faith in God.
Instead of a dark age, we will reclaim our birthright as children of Christ to create an age of light, freedom, understanding, and truth.
But it won't be easy.
It will require us to have backbones made of steel.
We may lose a lot in the process.
What does that mean?
But is this courageous?
No. Can we be peacemakers theoretically?
Yes. But we can never bend on principles.
We cannot bend on right and wrong in order to be loved by men, even though it's so tempting.
If we get our courage from God and stick to it, we will certainly prevail in making America a godly nation once again.
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I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Brad Smith.
Brad Smith is the Development Coordinator at Right to Life Michigan, covering Detroit and Southeast Michigan.
Brad, thank you for joining us.
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here. Well, this is great.
Well, I want to start on a positive note.
We are so blessed that Roe v.
Wade has been overturned.
It's a huge victory, something that pro-lifers have been working for for decades.
And now this issue has gone back to the states.
So that's where the battle really is now.
Before we dive into Michigan, I want to ask you a little bit on kind of what the left's goal is in all these states and what do we need to look out for as kind of their broad strategy.
Well, and I think kind of even to step back so people understand what the real battle is here.
My wife and I have a little girl with a trisomy 18, significant disability.
And the things that when we were pushed to have an abortion, they wanted us to, you know, to kill her.
And we thought when we said no and ended that fight with them that that was the end of our fight.
And little did we realize it was actually the beginning of our battle.
And I kind of feel somewhat the same way with this.
I mean, oh, we've been fighting for a long time against Roe versus Wade, but I almost feel like it started the real fight now.
Because now that it's come back to states, it's every state is battling and the battle has only grown much more intense.
And much bigger things even on the line now as we go state by state and each state is fighting this battle.
So it's going to be an interesting thing to watch as these states do it, but Michigan is a crucial one.
So it's one that we are working hard to make sure we don't lose here.
Absolutely. And I loved being with you recently in Michigan.
We got to speak to people there about just the stakes that are, you know, up this November because the goal of the Democrats right now, it's really so radical.
It's no restrictions.
But explain a little bit about what the left's goal is in Michigan.
And I know Michigan.
I mean, it's it's not a radical blue place.
So in addition to what they're trying to pull off, why are they trying to do this in a swing state?
Well, and that is.
We can be kind of a purpley state.
Sometimes we're a red state.
Sometimes we've been a blue state.
Right now, we kind of lean the blue way with our crazy governor, and not only crazy governor, but attorney general and secretary of state.
I mean, these are quite the triumvirate they are.
It is...
In Michigan, in particular, what they're trying to do is push this radical agenda by disguising it, making it look like it's this wonderful thing.
And so we're working at trying to keep them off the ballot because that's what they were doing, was working to get a radical proposal on.
But mine is, I look at this and go, this is not just about Michigan.
The way I always kind of look at how we're fighting this is we have to see it as more like a presidential campaign.
The left can't lose Michigan.
There's certain states they just can't lose.
Or they lose the election, right?
And I think this is very much the same situation with the abortion battle here in Michigan and some other states, but particularly right now here in Michigan.
They can't lose.
If they lose here, we'll put them on the run.
And so that's where we're at right now.
Right. And people need to, if you live in Michigan and are listening, need to vote no on Proposal 3 in Michigan because as Christians, conservatives, we cannot support this kind of radical abortion policies.
But Brad, where can people stay in touch with you and how can they connect with you?
Well, they can easily get in touch with us and help support us.
There is a, well, two different ways.
You can look up noproposal3michigan.org, and that'll take you to a website where you can learn much more.
But we've also done a campaign, Give, Send, Go campaign, where you can see some of our commercials and what we're doing to fight this thing here in Michigan.
And it's just give, send, go.com slash abortion amendment.
That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Brad.
Good luck. I'm very excited to see what happens here because I don't want Michigan to go the way of Kansas when the left does these crazy media blitzes.
So thank you so much, Brad.
I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me.
And we can win here.
We can absolutely win.
Our polling shows it. So thank you very much for any help you can give us.
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Or call 972-PATRIOT. I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Pastor Chris Thoma.
Pastor Thoma is the author of several books, including one I had the honor of endorsing.
He's also the senior pastor of our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School.
Pastor Thoma, thanks for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here. Well, Pastor Toma, firstly, I want to thank you for being here with us today.
And also, I had so much fun with you recently in Michigan.
We were at a pro-life event, which was awesome, and you were so kind to facilitate some Q&A with me.
That was really insightful.
So thank you, Pastor Toma.
But I now want to play a short clip because Pastor Toma actually recently got to speak at a Trump rally, which is so exciting.
So take a listen.
If you are able, let us rise for prayer.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Almighty and most merciful God, your holy word teaches that all authority begins and ends with you.
And so you are the divine author of earthly governance.
Your word reveals that you do this as you employ men and women for service within the three estates of the church, the family, and the civil government, not ordaining for anyone within these domains to use them as tools of self-privilege or tyranny, but instead for the well-being and protection of those they serve.
Continue to raise up among us servants who are mindful of this, namely those who will stand as President Trump has stood.
Let them seek to preserve religious liberty, desiring to maintain the freedom to live peaceful and quiet lives according to the doctrines of faith.
Use them to impede all attempts to burden godly consciences with unjust laws.
Employ them as ramparts against anyone who would confuse the objective truths of your natural law demonstrated quite clearly in human sexuality.
Restore among us the authority of parents and the admiration of family, reminding all in our nation of this holy estate's role as the most powerful agent for a free society's stability and longevity.
Within these same ranks, let children be cherished and protected.
Let our girls be girls and our boys be boys.
Unravel the wicked agenda that calls an unborn child a mistake, a tragedy, an inconvenience, a non-person whose life is inconsequential.
Step forth, we pray, and crush the absolute devilry of Proposal 3.
The effort to memorialize in Michigan's Constitution the unrestricted slaughter of the unborn.
Use us to wipe this ungodliness clean from Michigan's history.
Convert and convince all leaders away from such atrocities born of radical individualism, the worship of self as the first and last to all things, a false liberty that emerges when a nation is divided from your moral and your natural law.
Hear us, we pray.
Cast the bright beams of your love upon this gathering.
Bless and protect all in attendance.
Equip us with the desire and patience to pray for all in need, especially those suffering the effects of Hurricane Ian.
Assign to each of us now an unshakable resolve to stand and support those candidates in alignment with your will and pit us mightily against those who are not.
By your Holy Spirit, grant us the courage to act when action is required, and by this same courage, lead all of us to sunlit horizons that would see this state and nation known among the ranks of heaven as good.
As all of mankind dwells in sin and is unworthy of your help, still the Gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world heralds your great love for all, and so even now we implore you with contrite hearts, confident that you will hear, mindful that you will work for the good of those who love you, who are called according to your purpose.
We pray these things through the merits.
And the mediation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the only Savior from sin and the only way of eternal life, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen. All right, Pastor Toma, let's get started.
Well, firstly, I want to say I'm so inspired by you because you are a pastor that lives boldly and is willing to stick your neck out even when very few others are doing the same right now, and you aren't afraid to be political.
So can you just tell me a little bit about what initially kind of inspired you to first maybe say something that was not what other pastors were saying because you are more bold about things and are willing to speak about, you know, Moral issues that relate to politics.
So what inspired you to first begin that step?
Well, I would say the inspiration came when I was invited to come out to Washington, D.C. to participate in something out there.
And I happened to be walking in front of the Supreme Court building.
And as I walked up to the corner there, the stoplight to cross over, there were a couple of gentlemen who saw me.
I wear my collar everywhere I go, so I sort of stand out, you know.
I was in a group of pastors, and I was the only one wearing the collar.
But these men essentially, out of nowhere, just said to me that I'm what's wrong with America.
I mean, they just sort of came out swinging.
I didn't know them from anybody.
And I had a nice conversation with them.
I was able to explain to them what I was doing there.
But I left that conversation uneasy, and I knew that I needed to get involved.
I needed to get in the game.
I needed for people, not only the church itself, but for the state to understand the church's role in that relationship between church and state, or as we Lutherans refer to it as the two kingdoms, the kingdom of the left, the kingdom of the right.
So that's kind of where it started.
And ever since then, I've been engaging wherever I can, doing whatever I can to make sure that the church...
Engages in the public square, is speaking faithfully for the preservation of religious liberty, for the preservation of life, for the preservation of marriage, for all of these things.
Yeah. And before we dive into the issues of today, what do you think led the church to become so sleepy today?
Because I feel like, you know, when we look back, we think back, the church was so robust, and especially in our founding, so many people were religious at that time.
And as we kind of fast forward to now, we see that, you know, religious attendance has been declining and things like that are really disturbing.
So how do you think we got to this point where even the church itself is almost silencing itself?
Well, personally, I think it's fear.
There's been a gradual steamrolling of the church into fear.
And that fear comes at us in a lot of different ways.
I think most pastors, one, they have a very shallow understanding of the two kingdoms' theology, of where church and state actually do combine, where they do meet.
The scriptures speak to these things, but I think a lot of guys don't have a handle on that.
And because they don't have a handle on that, they don't know what they can say, where they can say it, how they can say it.
Combine that with the Johnson Amendment, you know, a horrible understanding of the Johnson Amendment, what they really have to know about that.
And then you add to that, you add to those fears, the fear of offending people in the pews.
You know, the church is in the middle of the great decline right now.
I always tell my wife I'm about five seconds away from saying something that's going to tick somebody off.
But that's the reality.
If guys can't get past that delta of recognizing that they can't love the people in their pews unless they love God more, unless they're willing to speak the truth of Christ more, they're going to be afraid of losing money, losing attendance, losing all of these things. So a lot of the reason we are where we are is because of fear.
Pastors are, they don't know, and without that knowledge they become fearful.
Right. They live in fear.
They're so worried their congregation will shrink.
They'll lose certain people.
They want to be liked by everyone, which is virtually impossible to be liked by everybody.
I stopped worrying about that a long time ago.
Oh, yeah. No, same here.
You can't be faithful if that's what you're worried about.
Right. And I think when we put God first, then that does lead us to love people because sometimes people who give that up and say, oh, but I'm loving people.
It's not really actually that loving a lot of the time.
What happens there, it becomes enabling or it becomes changing, you know, what scripture actually says, things like that.
And then it takes a very dark turn.
Have you seen that happen?
Yeah. I have, and I've seen, I think it sometimes plays out in relation, or in the middle ground between the law and the gospel.
You know, the law of God, His Ten Commandments, telling us how we should live.
You know, there's somewhat of a fearful side of Christians where, you know, don't judge.
You hear everybody say, we shouldn't be judging anybody.
But what we miss, and I think you just touched on it by talking about loving others, is that by expressing the law of God, communicating that which is righteous, we're actually expressing the God's love for someone as a parent would love their child and keep them from walking off a cliff.
God gives us his holy law and says, don't go there.
This is bad for you.
So the church is actually showing love as the scriptures would define love when we are reaching out into these areas to say, hey, don't go there.
Don't do this.
Abide by natural law.
Abide by moral law.
These are things that God has established for our good, not to make life harder on us, but for our good.
There are blessings that come with these things.
Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about a conference you had recently where you had Matt Walsh come visit and you guys talked about some of these topics.
Yeah, we have a conference every year here at Our Savior called The Body of Christ in the Public Square, and we bring various folks in to speak.
Your dad has come to be with us several times.
You've come to be with us several times.
Well, once so far, I think.
I want to get you back out again.
I'd love to have you. And we just had Matt Walsh.
He was our keynote speaker this last week.
He had a lot of great things to say.
A very vivid discussion.
I would add, do I have a minute to add something to this?
Do you mind? Yes, no, I want to hear what you guys discussed.
What did you guys come up with?
Yeah, Matt, bold guy.
Very faithful in his exegizing of all of the situations going on in the United States.
Very devout in his love for children, protection of children from everything that the LGBTQ incorporated.
He's trying to impose upon everybody.
He made some comments, though, on his show on Monday that sort of concerned me.
And here's what I mean by that.
He talked a little bit about our conference and how it was a great event.
But he went on to really sort of hammer the church, sort of along the lines of his book, The Church of Cowards.
You know, really hammer the church and say that nobody's getting involved.
No one is engaging. Nobody's doing anything.
And I want folks perhaps in Dinesh's line or Matt's line or Ben's line, any of these guys, to know that the church is engaging.
There's not a lot of us. There's not a lot.
But if we want more to do it, Some of these platforms right here, it would be good for these guys to be a conduit to get folks to us.
So if there are guys out there who are afraid of engaging, doing the kinds of things that we're doing, if they could be a conduit to get folks to us and say, hey, you want to learn more about how to do this or what not to do here?
Here's a guy you can talk to.
You should talk to this guy or this guy or this guy.
So that's something I took out of our conferences last weekend.
Matt, very bold, very solid, very good content.
But platforms, I think like his and platforms like Dinesh's, like yours, it serves guys in my shoes very, very well if folks can come together, if people can be a conduit again to get them to the right people so they know how to navigate these waters.
Yeah, no, of course.
And that's why I'm so glad you're here, because I think people need to hear, you know, these very strong voices from pastors who are doing really good work across the country.
And I feel like, you know, whenever I'm hosting a show, I'm like, all right, let's hammer home these really important topics, but also lead people to what they can do next.
This is kind of random, but something that Dave Ramsey does, he's a radio host, he will say, oh, you know, do you have a local church?
Can you go talk to your pastor if they're having a problem?
And I think that we should do that more.
I mean, this isn't a financial show, but even if you're just talking about politics or whatever it is, you can say, wait a minute, why don't we take this back to the local church to continue this discussion from here?
Because this is to get the message to everybody, but then take that back to your community.
Talk to people at your church about this.
Talk to your pastor about this.
What do you do if you get someone in your congregation who says, I don't like the way you think about politics, I don't like that, and then they try to cause a ruckus for you in your church?
Maybe that's not happened with your church, but if someone else was experiencing that, what would you maybe suggest to them?
Well, it has happened to me.
It hasn't happened on a large scale, but there's a reason for that.
And if I were talking with other pastors who were afraid of those kinds of things, I would share The organic nature of how I handled it.
So when I first started getting into these kinds of things, hopefully this will answer your question, when I first started getting into these kinds of things, I was unsure about it too.
I wasn't sure what I could do, what I couldn't, and I had to study.
I had to dig in, namely with the Word of God.
But as a pastor, again, my job is to care for my people.
And as I learned, I brought them along with me.
So, Bible studies, council meetings, congregation meetings, any of these kinds of things.
When I would go to D.C. or if I would do something in Lansing here in Michigan or I would do something anywhere, I would tell the people about what I was doing.
And I wouldn't just tell them, hey, this is what I did, but I would show them from the Word of God, here's why I did what I did.
Here's how I discern these kinds of things.
So, over the course of the years, I brought the congregation along with me.
And they learned and they grew alongside me.
So we more became a collegium of God's people who are all of the same mind.
And the people who just couldn't exchange, perhaps, their personal agendas for the faithfulness to the Word of God, which is driving everything that we're doing, those people left.
And, you know, there's really not much of a discussion to be had with folks like that if they can't Embrace what it is that the Word of God is challenging His people to do and how to be involved.
There's really no discussion because the Word of God is the foundation for faith, life, and practice.
If we're not on the same page in that, I don't know what else to do.
But again, I would encourage guys, you can get through a lot of that just by being open and honest and communicating and catechizing and teaching, leading the people along and keeping them connected to the Word of God all along the way because that's where it's at.
Yeah, for sure. And just a quick note I've noticed is sometimes, you know, the left, when they see something happening, they see a pastor saying something that they don't like, they then say, how can I take over?
How can I get involved more and kick this guy out and he can lose his job and we'll reinstall someone who's more progressive?
Whereas sometimes conservative Christians who go to a church, if they think the pastor's off, they'll just say, oh, I'll go to a different church.
That's okay. I'll just find a new one and...
Not plug in there. As opposed to trying to change things, and I think the left is much more focused in that groundwork of making that change, and I do think conservative Christian people attending church should say, wait a minute, if my pastor's really good, I need to defend him if this person is, you know, maybe gone too far off, then maybe they need to speak with them. But I think that sometimes our conservative tendencies tend to lead us to say, well,
that's okay if they do that, we'll go to a different church.
So how do you get people to stay involved and actually bring the church to a good outcome?
Well, you pointed to something before about people are hesitant to necessarily get up and defend their pastor.
Remember, the pastors, a lot of the reasons that they do what they do, at least the squishy ones, the wobbly ones, they do what they do because they are afraid of the people.
They are afraid of offending them, they're afraid of losing them, or they're afraid of losing their dollars.
The people themselves, the ones you're describing, they can actually help them get over that, meet that delta of fear and surpass it simply by going to them, supporting them, being somebody who may be That is a benefactor for them.
So, you know, going to conferences and getting out to D.C. and doing the things that will help them understand what's going on in our world more deeply costs money.
Pastors, I don't know about your pastor, but pastors in my denomination are not the best paid guys.
I mean, we don't make a lot of money.
So, being willing to help pay for things like that.
Getting them invested.
You know, pastors have a lot of skills.
They have homiletical skills, hermeneutical skills.
They have all these kinds of skills that can be employed in the world around them.
Be someone who comes to them and says to them, you know the sermon you preached last Sunday pastor, you know the first ten minutes of that hour long nonsense, no I'm just kidding.
You know there's some good stuff in there pastor that people in our community should hear.
How about you, I've already talked to the local editor and he's willing to run that portion of your sermon as an editorial.
So be someone who helps connect them in ways.
Not only are you going to form a wonderful barrier, a wonderful hedge around your pastor that gives him confidence to use the skills God has given him that he's trained for, but it's going to help bolster his courage.
To move more and more and more in these directions, so that when those clandestine things start happening behind the scenes, that's cake.
That's going to be cake by comparison to the forces he runs into out in the world.
I've been spit on before, just without saying anything at all, that when my people are, if I'm going to struggle with my own people, I have the ability to To love them, to care for them, to talk with them.
They know me. I know them. I can't do that out there.
I can face that in here without losing a whole lot of sleep.
Out there, those challenges are so much worse.
And we can help guys become pastors who can navigate those waters.
Yeah, no, for sure.
This is kind of a different analogy, but something I notice with young people, too, is they're afraid, you know, they're afraid to lose their friends, afraid of those things if they speak out on any of these topics.
And I always think it's best if they make friends with other people who are Christian and conservative, because then they feel like, oh, wow, you know, at least there's some cake, like you mentioned.
You kind of, you still get some support there.
You're not just completely out there alone and I do think that that does happen.
We do end up out there alone a lot of the time, but that's not what we want.
We want greater community, and we want these people to be flourishing and thriving and be happy.
And so whenever I do something with young conservatives, I'm like, why don't you guys connect on social media?
Stay in touch with each other, because I think that support system is very important.
But you mentioned with the pastors, talking to them and supporting them.
I one time had this ministry fellow in a Christian group I was in who was being accused of being a racist.
And so I knew this person wasn't racist.
So I told him and I told others, I was like, no, he's not racist because I was leading the women's Bible courses.
So we kind of were able to squash it.
But I do think it's important.
You know, you might not be the pastor listening.
If you're a listener, you might be someone who can help them, though, who can advocate for them.
If you are able to stand up for them when someone comes out against them, that's always really helpful because this person had been doing faithful work a long time and this person who came in literally didn't even know him, wasn't even really part of the group, probably just a leftist who wanted to come in and wreak havoc.
So they think, oh, what can I go after?
Me too, racism, all these things.
And everybody freaks out and immediately wants to be silent because we're Christians.
But in reality, none of that was based on any truth.
So, I do think there's a lot that people who are just churchgoers or who are involved in the church can do to help these pastors who are sticking their neck out in that situation.
Well, the Lord mandates that we do that.
He speaks that way in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
He speaks that way throughout the scriptures.
I mean, we are in this together.
There's a reason we're called the church.
We're the body of Christ.
And the pastor is like everybody else.
He's a sinner. He's someone in need of God's grace.
He's going to make mistakes, certainly.
But God willing, he's not waking up every morning trying to figure out how he can take everybody off.
He's seeking to be faithful to his Lord.
And his people, God willing, will know this about him.
And they are a part of that body of believers alongside him.
So it's good for them to step up and engage, to defend him, to help him.
And the more that they do that, again, honestly, the stronger his courage will be.
They will... Fan the flames of his spirit for engagement in some pretty incredible ways, ways that he never expected.
And I'd also add, too, that I never expected to be doing the things I'm doing today, talking to the people I'm talking to, finding myself in places that I just never, ever expected to do.
I have no desire. I never had any desire to connect in these ways.
But all of a sudden, I'm here now.
Well, what am I going to do?
The Lord is blessing faithful.
He's pushing us forth with the promise that He loves us.
He cares for us. He's never going to leave us or forsake us.
Go and be His people in the world.
Be that salt, be that light.
Oh boy, when you have a congregation wrapping its arms around you and firing you for that fight, it's a pretty incredible thing.
And you see how the Lord opens doors, how He blesses the efforts going forward.
Yeah, and I think a church like that, I mean, the church is like that.
I'm sure yours is like this and some others, some few others, will just explode and take off.
And so many people will just be drawn to that because they see that, wait a minute, this is a place where I can actually be grounded.
I can actually trust what I'm hearing from the pastor.
Sometimes, when I walk into a very liberal church, I hear a few things that I think are true, and then I hear all kinds of other things that confuse everything.
So you want to be able to trust the pastor you're listening to.
So I think that that kind of church would be very powerful.
A church that's standing on the Word of God, standing on the confession of faith, is not going to roll over as easily as As those churches where they can sort of take and leave whatever it is they want from God's Word.
Right. You'll find that those congregations are the ones that have withstood the fires of history.
And we are where we are for a reason.
We're not unbroken from the faith that came before us.
So we carry that forth.
And it doesn't matter how regimes change.
It doesn't matter what laws change.
The Word of God is, again, the sole source for faith, life, and practice.
And if you can come into and find a congregation where the pastor believes that, where the people of God and leadership believe that, you have got something pretty wonderful.
You've got something very stable.
And you've also got something you can count on when Governor Whitmer comes challenging your church to shut its doors.
You know that as God's people together, you're going to do what is faithful to the Lord before you're going to do what's faithful to the state.
You're going to stand firm, and the Lord's going to see you through it.
Absolutely. He's going to see you through it.
Yes. Well, thank you so much, Pastor Toma.
I really appreciate your time today.
You are very welcome. Blessings to you.
Congrats on everything you're doing these days.
Good job on the books. I'm rooting for you in every way.
Oh my gosh, you too. This is going to be a battle, but I know we can all do it together, so it's going to be good.
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Well, that wraps up tonight's show.
If you'd like to send me an audio recording for me to answer on the show or for Dinesh to answer when he's back, please email your audio recording of your question to questiondinesh at gmail.com.
Make sure to tune in again tomorrow for my last day hosting the Dinesh D'Souza podcast this week.
You don't want to miss it.
I'll see you then.
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