NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Jordan Peterson | God’s Gift Or Judgment To The Church?
Aired: 2022-08-09
Duration: 01:26:00


=== Welcome to the Conversation (08:49) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
[00:00:03]  If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show, would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five star review?
[00:00:09]  This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible.
[00:00:17]  Thanks.
[00:00:18]  Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:23]  In this episode, I was privileged to be joined by, I believe, the 147th time by John Harris.
[00:00:30]  I think it's like our fourth or fifth time, but I'm always a pleasure to have John Harris.
[00:00:33]  Friend of mine back on the show talking about a bunch of stuff.
[00:00:37]  We really, it's kind of, you get to be a fly on the wall for a friendly conversation of me and John catching back up.
[00:00:43]  We talk about Jordan Peterson, we talk about the SBC, we talk about Megan Basham and the Daily Wire, and we talk about Tim Keller.
[00:00:50]  And I guess if I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be how come conservative Christians, myself and John included, right now feel like we have more in common with Jordan Peterson than Tim Keller?
[00:01:02]  And are there problems with that?
[00:01:03]  How should we feel about that?
[00:01:05]  How do we dissect that, think about that?
[00:01:07]  And so, where do we go from here?
[00:01:09]  So, that's kind of the conversation that we have.
[00:01:10]  I think you're going to enjoy it.
[00:01:11]  Thanks for tuning in.
[00:01:13]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:01:16]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:01:22]  All right.
[00:01:23]  Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:01:25]  I am your host, Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries.
[00:01:28]  And in this episode, I am privileged to welcome back for the 17th time.
[00:01:34]  I'm not sure.
[00:01:35]  It's been a few, but one of my good friends.
[00:01:38]  John Harris with Conversations That Matter.
[00:01:40]  John, welcome to the show.
[00:01:42]  Thanks, Joel.
[00:01:43]  It's good to be here and good to be a frequent flyer.
[00:01:45]  I don't have many places I'm like that.
[00:01:47]  So, we enjoy you here.
[00:01:49]  So, tell our listeners in case they're stopping in for the first time and aren't really familiar with your ministry and who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:01:57]  I am a misogynistic Christian nationalist.
[00:02:01]  Amen.
[00:02:03]  Right, right.
[00:02:04]  No, I'm, yeah, I've written a few books on social justice.
[00:02:08]  I've, in the church specifically, I have a podcast, Conversations That Matter.
[00:02:13]  And I do a little bit of film work with Last Stand Studios, and you can find links for, I think, all of that at worldviewconversation.com.
[00:02:21]  And next thing coming up is a men's retreat on the last weekend of October with Dr. Russell Fuller, and that's kind of what I'm putting a lot of energy into right now.
[00:02:30]  So, yeah.
[00:02:31]  Awesome.
[00:02:32]  Name real quick, name your books and where people can get them.
[00:02:34]  They can go to worldviewconversation.com or they can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
[00:02:40]  The first one is Social Justice Goes to Church, and then the second one is called Christianity and Social Justice.
[00:02:47]  They're both about the social justice movement.
[00:02:49]  The first one's kind of a history of how social justice got into evangelicalism.
[00:02:53]  The second one is more of an apologetic against social justice and for biblical justice and all of that.
[00:02:59]  Cool.
[00:03:00]  Great.
[00:03:00]  All right.
[00:03:00]  Well, let's go ahead and dive into it.
[00:03:02]  So we corresponded a little bit before we started recording, and it sounds like there's things to talk about.
[00:03:08]  You've already done an episode on this on your platform, but I think it could be cool for us to just chat a bit back and forth about the phenomenon.
[00:03:16]  That is Jordan Peterson, and not only Jordan Peterson, but kind of a larger conversation of what do we do as evangelical Christians who want to be not pietists, but also not progressives, right?
[00:03:29]  So we want to have this orthodox, robust, conservative biblical doctrine that we apply, that we not just in our marriage and parenting, but we go into the voting booth as Christians.
[00:03:40]  We don't leave our Christianity behind in every realm of life.
[00:03:42]  We're seeking to do what the Bible says, right?
[00:03:45]  So we're not pietists, but we're also not progressive.
[00:03:48]  And what we keep finding is that guys like Jordan Peterson, or with the whole SBC debacle that's going on right now about sexual abuse, someone like Megan Basham, I keep finding myself having, in some sense, more in common with some of these guys than the Gospel Coalition or leaders in the SBC.
[00:04:10]  And I'll say that, at least in the case of Megan Basham, who is a Protestant Orthodox Christian, I've spoken with her.
[00:04:17]  But what do we do with that?
[00:04:18]  That when we find ourselves aligning with some of these guys who are.
[00:04:22]  They're politically conservative and culturally conservative, but some of them, like Jordan Peterson, I don't think the guy's a Christian.
[00:04:29]  I'm pretty certain he's not a Christian.
[00:04:32]  But then I feel like when he's talking, I can amen more to Jordan Peterson than I can to Tim Keller.
[00:04:39]  What's going on?
[00:04:40]  And how do we live in this weird world?
[00:04:43]  Because I'm hesitant.
[00:04:44]  In fact, more than that, I won't just throw my lot in with the Daily Wire.
[00:04:49]  I appreciate them, I'm grateful for them, but we're not the same.
[00:04:53]  I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm not Catholic.
[00:04:56]  I'm not Jewish, you know.
[00:04:58]  So, what are your thoughts in navigating this just this weirdo upside down world that we're living in?
[00:05:05]  Yeah.
[00:05:05]  Well, Joel, I think you're a good theologian and you can understand the concept of providence and how the rain falls and the righteous and unrighteous, and how even pagan philosophers at times can get things right.
[00:05:19]  In fact, we were just reading today where Paul, in a discipleship thing I was doing, where Paul quotes a pagan philosopher and I kind of like, you know, I noticed it.
[00:05:35]  It just, I thought, wow, that's so interesting that Paul would do this.
[00:05:38]  And he does it more than once.
[00:05:39]  And pagans can sometimes have a right metaphysic, or at least one that's right often, most of the time.
[00:05:49]  It gets basic things like there's men and women right.
[00:05:52]  Right.
[00:05:53]  Whereas some Christians, or professing Christians, I should say, out there who, They have the word of God, right?
[00:06:04]  They have this book.
[00:06:07]  They have revelation that they should be able to appeal to.
[00:06:11]  Really, what they're doing, though, they say that's what they say.
[00:06:14]  We're biblical Christians, but really, I think what they're doing is their authority is not the word of God.
[00:06:19]  It's whatever's going to save them from the ire of the media or give them perhaps positively the praise of the media and cultural influential people.
[00:06:31]  So I think that's.
[00:06:34]  Really, the difference.
[00:06:35]  You have some pagans who are committed to at least a concept of objective truth in some sense, even if it's just based on their sense perception and natural revelation of some kind.
[00:06:45]  And then you have Christians who say one thing, but actually they don't even have as principled a stand as some of these pagans.
[00:06:53]  Right.
[00:06:55]  And then so I think in influential positions in politics, you have, well, in especially conservative politics, there's Somewhat of a lagging behind.
[00:07:09]  It's a shadow that follows progressivism, but it lags.
[00:07:13]  And so the popular political conservatives today that have influence tend to carry with them the ideas that were in vogue a decade, two decades, three decades ago.
[00:07:25]  And now that's changing, of course, and we can talk about that.
[00:07:28]  But just today, I saw an ad on Facebook, I think it was, for this documentary.
[00:07:35]  This is going to sound unrelated, but it's related.
[00:07:38]  For a documentary about country music, right?
[00:07:42]  But it was a BLM style documentary, which had as predicated that it's black people who invented country music and it was stolen from them and they've been kept out of the industry.
[00:07:52]  And so, right, it's this BLM kind of narrative.
[00:07:54]  And I thought to myself when I saw this, I thought, wow, like country music, I think of more kind of traditional middle America, a little more at least in line with what I would think would be family values more than like pop or some other genres.
[00:08:08]  But here we have what was considered a traditional art medium.
[00:08:12]  Is changing so fast.
[00:08:14]  It's caving to this postmodern Marxist narrative.
[00:08:18]  And I see that in everything sports.
[00:08:20]  I mean, it's everything.
[00:08:22]  Political conservatism, I think, has lagged more.
[00:08:25]  Christianity, even like the industry of Christianity, Big Eva, right?
[00:08:29]  They've been a little more current with trying to keep up with this Marxist move than political conservatism.
[00:08:36]  So I think it'll be interesting to see what happens in like two decades to see where political conservatives are at at that point.
[00:08:43]  But for right now, they're still trying to conserve 1998.
[00:08:47]  Yep.
[00:08:48]  They think that was a good year.

=== Cultural Winds Shift (15:25) ===

[00:08:49]  We should just keep that, right?
[00:08:51]  Right.
[00:08:52]  No, you're absolutely right.
[00:08:53]  I think that's really helpful because it's not, they're not led by this guiding moral fabric of the word of God is inerrant and sufficient and the final arbiter of all truth.
[00:09:07]  No, it's just, man, we'd like to get back to 1998.
[00:09:11]  Things seemed nice back in 1998 when tough on crime policies and cleaning up New York and the war on drugs and.
[00:09:21]  Men were men and women were women.
[00:09:23]  And, you know, it's like, yeah, well, that is better than now, certainly better than now.
[00:09:27]  But, yeah, you're right.
[00:09:28]  It's just, it's the, I always say it's the principles of Christ while rejecting the person of Christ, which never leads to the peace of Christ.
[00:09:35]  And so, but what you said earlier, I think is really insightful because I think one of the reasons why we're finding more common ground with some of these conservative pundits, you know, culturally and politically conservative guys, whether they're Christian or not, is because really it's like the woke progressive social justice.
[00:09:55]  Christians out there, they're no different than the conservative non Christians.
[00:10:02]  Both, what they have in common is neither one sees the word of God as the final authority, right?
[00:10:10]  So, if it's the woke social justice peddlers within Christianity, they'll claim to be Christian and they may affirm the Trinity and they may affirm this and may affirm that.
[00:10:22]  But the Bible is never the final say.
[00:10:26]  It's not the final arbiter for.
[00:10:28]  Truth, just like these conservative pundits who don't even claim to be Christians.
[00:10:33]  So, really, they're just, in a sense, they're just more honest.
[00:10:36]  So, Jordan Peterson, when he talks about the Bible, it is abundantly clear, he's honest at least, it's abundantly clear that he thinks the Bible is really helpful, but it's his intellect and its psychology and it's these other sources that lie underneath the Bible.
[00:10:56]  The Bible is true because this tells me.
[00:10:59]  And this tells me, and it's only true in certain ways, allegorically.
[00:11:03]  And it's, you know, like, so the Bible is true in a sense, I should say.
[00:11:07]  And it's only true in a sense because this higher authority of psychology and sense perception and experience tells me that the Bible is true, you know, or human history.
[00:11:18]  Whereas, you know, for me, like, so I'm, you know, a presuppositional guy.
[00:11:22]  So for me, it's like the Bible always has to be on the bottom.
[00:11:25]  It's like, you know, you can point to other sources and you can, you know, you can do these kinds of things.
[00:11:29]  John Frame used to talk about with his.
[00:11:31]  Presuppositional apologetic.
[00:11:32]  You say it is circular logic.
[00:11:34]  He said, but it's a big circle.
[00:11:36]  He's like, it is circular logic, to be fair.
[00:11:38]  But it's like we take them on a big circle and we can show them this source and that source.
[00:11:42]  And at the end of the day, we know the Bible is the word of God because it says so.
[00:11:47]  You know, and it's like, and I know that R.C. Sproul would disagree with that and classical apology.
[00:11:51]  But I think of the apologetic, I think of the precept kind of argument because I feel like both of these guys, whether it's the conservative pundit who doesn't even claim to be a Christian, or it's your Tim Keller, you know, woke social justice guy who does claim to be a Christian, at the end of the day, what they both have in common is neither sees the Bible as the final authority, one says it.
[00:12:09]  The other just admits it, but neither of them in practice actually view the Bible as the supreme authority.
[00:12:16]  Is that what you're saying?
[00:12:18]  Yeah, I think you're hitting it that Jordan Peterson, I think, is more stubborn than Tim Keller as far as when the cultural winds are going to blow really strong.
[00:12:28]  Jordan Peterson may be more resistant to those cultural winds, and he may even appeal to the Bible as one of the sources of inspiration, truth that hedges against these winds.
[00:12:41]  Ultimately, undergirding that is going to be probably a psychology or some scientific basis, or even just an appeal to tradition, just tradition as tradition.
[00:12:52]  And this is what's worked for so many years.
[00:12:55]  Tim Keller, I think, will have a more right theology that he can articulate to you about what the Bible is, the nature of it.
[00:13:01]  But when those cultural winds start blowing, Tim Keller figures out ways to do gymnastics with the Bible, to cram in understandings of justice where he's going outside the text to get these, but he doesn't tell you he's doing that.
[00:13:16]  Jordan Peterson, it's obvious he's doing that.
[00:13:18]  And he'll tell you that's what he's doing.
[00:13:19]  And so I appreciate, in some ways, the honesty of Jordan Peterson and the stubbornness, and maybe that's phrasing it too negatively, but the courage, really positively, to stand against immense pressure from the world on this particular subject, social justice, or whatever iteration of that.
[00:13:38]  And so I really do think that Christians who love biblical truth, want to preserve it, are looking to Jordan Peterson now, some of them at least, or their They feel more in common with Jordan Peterson than they do Tim Keller, which is really sad to me because who should know more about the Bible?
[00:13:57]  Tim Keller, obviously.
[00:13:58]  But Peterson.
[00:14:00]  Well, and for the record, I think Keller probably does know more about the Bible.
[00:14:03]  Right.
[00:14:04]  Yeah.
[00:14:05]  But he hides things.
[00:14:07]  You know, that's a scary thing.
[00:14:09]  I don't think it's ignorance on Keller's part.
[00:14:11]  No, I don't think so either.
[00:14:13]  Go ahead.
[00:14:13]  Yeah.
[00:14:13]  No, I'm agreeing with you.
[00:14:14]  I don't think so either.
[00:14:15]  I think with Keller, it's a motivation.
[00:14:19]  It's really an ethical issue with Peterson and Keller, not so much an issue of.
[00:14:23]  Knowledge they both have.
[00:14:26]  I mean, Keller's knowledge is superior, but I think Peterson has at least a character that he seems to have where he doesn't want to bend to just because the culture says something.
[00:14:39]  Now, on that note, we do see Peterson bending on some things, so you see Peterson trying to, as he and I don't know his motivation, I can't completely, I don't, but there's a sincerity that he exhibits when he's wrong.
[00:14:56]  When he's wrong, he's very sincerely wrong about it.
[00:14:59]  And it would probably be easier to have a discussion with Jordan Peterson when he's wrong than it might be with a Tim Keller, who you don't even know what fortune cookie he's going to open the next thing he says.
[00:15:12]  And yeah, I think that, yeah, in a nutshell, it just seems like the big difference between someone like Peterson and Keller is Keller just, it seems like it's more deception.
[00:15:20]  Where Peterson, it seems like he's wrong, but when he's wrong, he's genuinely wrong.
[00:15:25]  And when he's right, he's genuinely right.
[00:15:27]  We sense that genuineness.
[00:15:29]  Right.
[00:15:29]  And because one of the things that he regularly says is, you know, I've been thinking about this for, you know, for 400 years.
[00:15:34]  You know, he always said, I've been thinking about it.
[00:15:37]  And when he says that, like, I believe him.
[00:15:38]  I believe, like, he's probably just sat in a room for two weeks straight thinking about something, you know, but, and that's part of his problem is he puts, I think, too much trust in his own, you know, mental faculties.
[00:15:49]  But he, you know, I've been thinking about this.
[00:15:50]  I've been thinking, but my point is to say that he's very much in process.
[00:15:54]  And he also would be quick to say, I haven't thought about that.
[00:15:56]  I hear that phrase often out of his, haven't thought about that yet.
[00:15:59]  And so I think that, like, Jordan Peterson, so one thing that, you know, if I was talking to him that I say, you need to think about is, you need to think about, The reality that a society can either worship women or protect children.
[00:16:15]  You need to think about a society can either protect children or protect sodomy.
[00:16:22]  You need to think about like that, these things are diametrically opposed.
[00:16:27]  So, I and and I honestly want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he may not have yet connected those dots that, like, okay, I'm having this conversation with Dave Rubin.
[00:16:39]  And if this, then that.
[00:16:42]  Meaning that I think as long as America protects same sex marriage, for instance, we are subjecting children to abuse.
[00:16:52]  I think that that's a one to one correlation.
[00:16:55]  I don't think that that's like some intricate mosaic.
[00:16:58]  I think it's just one dot to the next dot.
[00:17:01]  That if we're going to legitimize same sex marriage and it has all the benefits and all the protections, and with adoption, for instance, yeah, then you're going to have.
[00:17:11]  Harvested eggs, so from you know, from this guy's sperm to that woman's egg to that woman's womb to the you know, and and what are you doing?
[00:17:19]  You're you're you're taking a child away from their mother, you know, so you're depriving the child of that um ordinary natural uh habitat that God created with a with a father and a mother, and it yeah, it's not it's not good for the child, no matter how loving Dave Rubin might turn out to be.
[00:17:37]  Um, it's yeah, it's it's selfish, I think it is, and that's the irony is he's talking about like, well, I don't want to be selfish, and so I want to.
[00:17:44]  Have kids and give my life for someone else.
[00:17:46]  But you are being selfish.
[00:17:47]  You want to have kids on your terms, but the terms that you're stating are not the best terms for the kids.
[00:17:53]  They're just the best terms for you, you know?
[00:17:56]  And so I think connecting those dots, but my point is to say that I think Peterson, I don't know, it's possible that he just really hasn't gotten there.
[00:18:03]  Whereas someone like Keller, you know, or the gospel, like they should know better.
[00:18:07]  So I just, I find myself much more angry.
[00:18:09]  And I guess I'm asking you because I want to see like how much personal bias, I'm a sinner.
[00:18:14]  It could be personal bias.
[00:18:15]  How much personal bias is it that I like, Jordan Peterson just hasn't offended me nearly as much as the Gospel Coalition has over the last few years.
[00:18:22]  Because Jordan Peterson didn't sell me out.
[00:18:25]  Jordan Peterson didn't stab me in the back.
[00:18:28]  I'm coming out of the Acts 29 movement, and I've got people who left my church because they were reading the Gospel Coalition, and the Gospel Coalition they trusted as a higher credibility than their local pastor.
[00:18:39]  And the Gospel Coalition said that I wasn't winsome enough.
[00:18:42]  The Gospel Coalition, they're the ones who are coming out with it, like, okay, Rose overturned, but we need to sympathize with, like, I mean, we've done this exercise a million times, but just replace that sin with any other sin, right?
[00:18:55]  Okay, let's say that pedophilia was, you know, people were raping kids and it was legal in our nation, and then that law gets overturned, right?
[00:19:04]  And then Gospel Coalition writes an article that says, hey, like, this isn't a time for celebration.
[00:19:09]  This is a time for sympathizing with pedophiles that can't rape kids anymore.
[00:19:13]  That's really hard on them.
[00:19:16]  Yeah.
[00:19:16]  Like, I mean, that's insane.
[00:19:18]  And you're like, oh, that's an extreme example.
[00:19:19]  No, no, no, because the actual example we're talking about is murdering babies.
[00:19:23]  So it's not, you know, it's not that.
[00:19:25]  And that's the gospel coalition.
[00:19:27]  And so it's just like because I've been battling that as a local pastor, right, for so long, I wonder and I'm genuinely asking, is it, am I just personally so bothered by that brand of Christianity that I'm being more gracious towards your Jordan Petersons?
[00:19:45]  Well, your expectations aren't as high, right, because Jordan Peterson doesn't claim the kinds of convictions that you believe, whereas Gospel Coalition does.
[00:19:54]  So you're going to hold them to a higher standard.
[00:19:56]  You're not expecting, A converted man's thinking in Jordan Peterson.
[00:20:00]  Right.
[00:20:01]  So I think there's that does factor into it to some extent.
[00:20:04]  We have a different standard, perhaps we're going to measure him by.
[00:20:06]  And so when Jordan Peterson does something that's even more bold and in favor of Christian morality than the gospel coalition is willing to go, we applaud and we're pleasantly surprised and we're thinking, somebody finally said it.
[00:20:21]  You know, Trump even did this sometimes where it's like, well, somebody finally said it, right?
[00:20:26]  No one seemed to have the courage.
[00:20:27]  Do any of us think Trump's an orthodox?
[00:20:29]  Believer, no.
[00:20:32]  His moral lifestyle doesn't even reflect that.
[00:20:35]  But he was willing to have the courage to at least say some true things when it was obvious.
[00:20:40]  And you don't see that courage with many of the members of the Big Eva Guild.
[00:20:45]  I was talking to a friend of mine who's a pastor who's at one time was very influenced by Gospel Coalition and has been very red pilled on them and has realized kind of where they've gotten to today, just about them on this whole issue.
[00:21:01]  And I wonder how many people are like him that have.
[00:21:04]  Really wanted to follow that winsome path, love Keller books.
[00:21:08]  And then when all these really big ticket issues came up that conflicted completely, diametrically opposed to Christianity, and they saw the way that gospel coalition types kind of massage things and just the fecklessness, the lack of stand, I wonder how many people are just like you, Joel, and have turned away from them.
[00:21:27]  And I think it's a bigger number than we probably even realize.
[00:21:32]  Yeah, no, I was thinking about this today.
[00:21:33]  I thought, I bet you half.
[00:21:35]  Of the YouTube views for the Gospel Coalition are Adi Robles re watching their materials so that he can do his next bit.
[00:21:42]  I bet you, I bet you it wasn't for you, John, and Adi Robles, and a bunch of other guys out there, you know, like who are, I was thinking the other day, I was like, I bet you Gospel Coalition would lose half of their views if it wasn't for people watching their stuff to, you know, to refute them.
[00:21:57]  To refute it.
[00:21:58]  Yeah.
[00:21:58]  So, anyway.
[00:21:59]  Yeah.
[00:21:59]  And they have, I think, a staff of like somewhere around 30 people.
[00:22:02]  They have a lot of money coming in.
[00:22:05]  Um, Right.
[00:22:07]  Like Kern Family Foundation gives them money.
[00:22:08]  They have different foundations and stuff.
[00:22:11]  Well, if I was the Democrat Party, dude, I would be absolutely funding the Gospel Coalition.
[00:22:17]  And I know that they have, what was it when they did the MLK 50 conference?
[00:22:22]  And was that the Gospel Coalition?
[00:22:24]  Who put that on?
[00:22:26]  It was a combination of sponsors.
[00:22:27]  The Gospel Coalition was one of the sponsors.
[00:22:30]  The ERLC was another sponsor.
[00:22:32]  Sounds right.
[00:22:33]  That sounds about right.
[00:22:34]  But didn't they get a I think a $50,000, you talked about this, I think, with Judd Saul, but they got a $50,000 grant from what organization?
[00:22:42]  Oh, man, my mind's rusty on that.
[00:22:44]  But am I, I'm right about that, right?
[00:22:46]  They did get, I believe, yeah.
[00:22:48]  And it was, I want to say it was the Open Societies.
[00:22:50]  It wasn't them, though.
[00:22:51]  It was, it was a different left wing organization.
[00:22:55]  And I can't, I think it was a Democrat.
[00:22:58]  It was a Democrat group.
[00:23:01]  It was, yeah, it was a very pro Democrat group that gave them money for that.
[00:23:04]  Which totally, you know, like when I first heard that, I was like, oh my gosh, you know, like shock slash anger.
[00:23:09]  But then I think like, Well, of course.
[00:23:11]  Like, if I mean, think about that.
[00:23:13]  Like, who are the people that, you know, the Democrat Party, their platform has historically missed in our nation in terms of their vote?
[00:23:21]  It's white evangelicals, right?
[00:23:23]  And so, but if you could put on your payroll, I mean, think about that.
[00:23:28]  This is what politicians do all the time.
[00:23:30]  You have people to run campaigns, you have people to turn voters and to turn counties and to raise awareness and to work with this group to turn this minority group over to red Republican or that.
[00:23:42]  Well, okay, here's a huge group that Democrats have been missing white evangelicals, Christians.
[00:23:48]  And why wouldn't you put on your payroll one of the most effective organizations in turning?
[00:23:55]  White evangelicals, progressive, aka the Gospel Coalition.
[00:24:00]  I mean, they, I mean, they, if they're not paid on a monthly basis from the Democrat Party, they should be.
[00:24:06]  The worker is worthy of the wages.
[00:24:08]  I don't know if anybody has gotten more Christians to vote for Democrats than the Gospel Coalition.
[00:24:14]  Yeah.

=== Truth and Elders (10:20) ===

[00:24:15]  I mean, I don't, I mean, there's, there's a competition there.
[00:24:17]  You can, Christianity Today, I'm sure, has done their fair share of convincing as well.
[00:24:20]  And there's other organizations, but I think you're onto something with that.
[00:24:24]  And, and it just goes back to, um, This is the organization of people who once found Jerry Falwell's politics attractive and would have been part of probably the moral majority and those kinds of things that are now, you know, fast forward, their children are now in gospel coalition circles and their ethics in the Southern Baptist Convention are led by the ERLC, which can't even tell you whether or not a woman is responsible if she pays it, wants to have a doctor give her an abortion.
[00:24:54]  I mean, it's moral insanity.
[00:24:57]  It's great.
[00:24:59]  And that's only one generation, really.
[00:25:01]  It really didn't take all that long for things to change that much.
[00:25:04]  So, in that sense, yeah, I mean, the Gospel Coalition, they can't go too far left too quickly because everyone's going to see that.
[00:25:11]  So, it's been a move, a slow move over time.
[00:25:13]  And when they get stalled, I've just noticed, for instance, a few years ago, there were more aggressive articles, I think, on like, I think there was a Gospel Coalition article I remember that talked about Jesus kind of having like a body dysphoria almost because he was God and man, right?
[00:25:31]  So, there were weird stuff like that coming out.
[00:25:34]  And I think that they paused a little.
[00:25:36]  They've hit the brakes a little on that because people were waking up to these things.
[00:25:40]  And they, I mean, this recent debate series they've had, I think, has shown that they realize they have a serious right flank that they have to try to at least do something about.
[00:25:51]  So, oh, yeah, the debates seem like completely like just put together to appease, to say, hey, look, this position also exists within the gospel coalition.
[00:25:59]  We like these guys too.
[00:26:01]  And we're just giving a voice to both sides.
[00:26:03]  Right.
[00:26:04]  Exactly.
[00:26:04]  Like as if these are secondary issues.
[00:26:06]  But they were treating so many of them like, Primary issues, and they still do.
[00:26:09]  So it's very confusing, but the only way it makes sense in my mind is that it's kind of a left wing operation.
[00:26:16]  It is to try to over time desensitize, get the church, get Christians to move in this direction.
[00:26:22]  Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, the intellectual dark web folks, they never really were in that.
[00:26:29]  They weren't trying to take the mantle of Francis Schaefer, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, any religious right type group and say, That's our, those are our people, and we're the leaders.
[00:26:43]  They never did that.
[00:26:44]  They were always outsiders.
[00:26:46]  And so we don't have the same expectation.
[00:26:49]  And we, like you said, you don't feel betrayed, I think.
[00:26:52]  And there is just a common ground that we have.
[00:26:55]  At least I can have a conversation with them on truth.
[00:26:59]  And they're not going to call me like a bigot right away.
[00:27:01]  Right.
[00:27:02]  They're not going to, that's not going to be an insinuation that I get from them, they're so worried about my conspiracy theories or my Christian nationalism or, My misogyny, or something, you know, that's the kind of thing that you get from the gospel coalition.
[00:27:16]  And you can't really, we're speaking broadly, obviously, but I'm saying many of the authors there, you can't have a conversation with them.
[00:27:24]  And that's the way that we feel about leftists.
[00:27:26]  You can't have a conversation with them.
[00:27:27]  And today, that's really the thing that's dividing people it's like really basic fundamental things now.
[00:27:33]  Can we have a conversation?
[00:27:34]  Is there truth?
[00:27:36]  Can we come around and this idea that there's objective truth and start talking about it?
[00:27:43]  Or can we not even get off the ground?
[00:27:45]  And I think I can get off the ground with Jordan Peterson.
[00:27:47]  At least that's the way it feels when you watch him.
[00:27:50]  Right.
[00:27:51]  And you see him, he cares about truth.
[00:27:54]  Even the thing he did with David Rubin, which I really kind of ripped apart because I think it was his ethics were nuts.
[00:28:01]  Right.
[00:28:02]  It was terrible.
[00:28:03]  But even as he's doing that, you see him trying.
[00:28:07]  That's why there's so much tension in his position because he's desperately trying to go back to the rootedness of there is a male and female binary and they are significant and they're important.
[00:28:17]  And you, David Rubin, you're fine in what you're doing, but you got to recognize that, David.
[00:28:22]  And you better try to bring in some female, you know.
[00:28:26]  Influences and you better have a freezer full of breast milk and you better do all these other things to compensate for the fact that you're not a female.
[00:28:34]  Jordan Peterson had that in there.
[00:28:36]  Would you see the same thing from Gospel Coalition if it was one of their friendships?
[00:28:42]  Let's say it was one of these friendships, these not, because marriage, right?
[00:28:45]  Same sex marriage is wrong, but let's say it's one of these homosexual couples, but it's not really a couple, it's just these friends.
[00:28:54]  They would get as close to the line as possible and they're not.
[00:28:57]  Recognizing these rooted issues in creation, it would be what's technically still allowable in the text of the Bible.
[00:29:06]  PCA, you know, obviously not as a whole, but Greg Johnson, the Revoice guys, like they really went down that trail.
[00:29:11]  And yeah, no, you're right.
[00:29:13]  And I think, as you were talking, I think that's part of it of what it is.
[00:29:16]  It's like Jordan Peterson doesn't have the standard.
[00:29:19]  He's not born again, he's not in submission to Christ, he doesn't have a regenerate heart.
[00:29:24]  You know, he's searching for truth in a sense.
[00:29:27]  Even that we should qualify because, right?
[00:29:30]  Romans chapter three no one seeks for God.
[00:29:32]  And if he's not regenerate, he's not seeking God, and God is the truth.
[00:29:35]  Truth is not just an arbitrary concept, but truth is, in a very real sense, a person.
[00:29:42]  He has a name.
[00:29:42]  His name is Jesus Christ.
[00:29:43]  And if you're not seeking Jesus, you're not.
[00:29:46]  So, all those things being true, both you and I, we're Calvinists.
[00:29:50]  We agree on that.
[00:29:51]  But with that, I think that's why we're not sitting here angry at Jordan Peterson.
[00:29:57]  That's why we're sympathetic.
[00:29:58]  That's why, because he is blind.
[00:30:02]  And so I'm like, well, good Lord, this guy who is blind.
[00:30:07]  Didn't Jesus have something to say about, but because you claim to see, right?
[00:30:13]  That's why he went after the Pharisees because they claimed to see, because they should know better.
[00:30:16]  I mean, he says, Nicodemus, you are a teacher of Israel and you don't know these things.
[00:30:22]  And we look at that and we're like, well, yeah, but that's because Jesus is bringing something brand new.
[00:30:25]  No, he wasn't.
[00:30:27]  No, Jesus is talking to him about Ezekiel chapter 36.
[00:30:30]  Nicodemus knew these things.
[00:30:31]  Nicodemus knew about being born again, he knew about a heart of stone being removed and the heart of flesh.
[00:30:37]  And Jesus expected him to know it.
[00:30:40]  So, it's not just this lofty, spiritualized language.
[00:30:43]  He's like, You're a teacher in Israel.
[00:30:44]  You should know these things.
[00:30:47]  And you don't.
[00:30:47]  You're dumbfounded.
[00:30:48]  And so, I think that's the standard.
[00:30:50]  We have, I guess we should say, we have a double standard, and we should have a double standard.
[00:30:54]  I have one standard for the Gospel Coalition, I have one standard for Jordan Peterson, because we're talking about two different people.
[00:31:00]  We're talking about a group that they're not just Christian.
[00:31:03]  We're talking about leaders in evangelical churches, we're talking about elders, we're talking about the Bible gives us a standard for these people.
[00:31:10]  And that brings up a question I'll ask you, Joel.
[00:31:12]  Do you think Jordan Peterson and maybe others, because we've talked about the Daily Wire, Michael Knowles and Ben Shapiro, and some of these guys that take very wrong positions on some things, but they also get some things right that evangelical elites aren't getting right?
[00:31:26]  Do you think that God is raising up these figures, in a sense, as influential in conservative Christian circles to judge the leaders that are there?
[00:31:38]  I mean, God can use Balaam's donkey.
[00:31:40]  Do you think God is using these men?
[00:31:42]  Yes, I think it's the same as Deborah, right?
[00:31:45]  So people always, you know, anytime I talk about patriarchy or I talk about, you know, male headship with elders, and I would hold to a male diaconate and all these different things that I think are thoroughly biblical, you know, well, what about Deborah?
[00:31:55]  What about, and I would say, yeah, Deborah, Deborah is not, for one, of course, Deborah is not the norm, but even as the exception, what is God doing with that exception?
[00:32:06]  Deborah is a gift to Israel in terms of practice, what she practically accomplishes, but in terms of the divine statement being made with Deborah.
[00:32:17]  Deborah is an indictment of the men in Israel.
[00:32:20]  Deborah is an, she is a judgment from God.
[00:32:24]  And so, absolutely, I think, you know, I think of like 1 Corinthians, you know, like God confounds the wisdom of this world with those who are foolish, right?
[00:32:33]  Not many of you were wise.
[00:32:34]  And of course, that's speaking to the church in Corinth that are now regenerate, now converted.
[00:32:39]  Not many of you were wise, you know, but God takes these foolish things.
[00:32:43]  So, yeah, exactly.
[00:32:44]  Balaam's donkey or Deborah or Gideon, or that's what God does.
[00:32:49]  He takes, Weak things.
[00:32:51]  And yes, there is obviously a clear pattern of God doing that with the church throughout the scripture, using his people that are weak to gain great victories.
[00:33:04]  But that's not the only way that God does it.
[00:33:06]  We see God do the same thing with the Assyrians, with the Babylonians.
[00:33:09]  We see God use enemies, his enemies who are not his people, who are not in covenant with him, when his people are being disobedient.
[00:33:18]  And he uses other nations, even when they're at their weakest.
[00:33:23]  And gives them a great victory, supernatural victory over his people as an act of his judgment.
[00:33:29]  And so, yeah, I think that absolutely, that in God's common grace, he is raising up and giving platform to some of these guys who are a benefit to the church that has been obedient, because God's not disciplining his children who aren't disobeying.
[00:33:47]  Not to say that anyone's sinless, but I think God is particularly, he's disciplining the sector of his church, which is, I think, a lot larger than I wish it was, that has been.
[00:33:57]  Rebellious and saying, Oh, yeah, Big Eva, nobody listens to you anymore.
[00:34:06]  Doesn't that hurt?
[00:34:07]  And they're all listening to Ben Shapiro.
[00:34:10]  They're all listening to a Jew who denies the divinity of Christ.
[00:34:14]  It's sad.
[00:34:15]  And Big Eva would say, Oh, well, see, that's just a sign that you, right wing Christian nationalists, that you don't care about the divinity of Christ.
[00:34:21]  No, when I listen to Ben Shapiro, I'm not listening to him for theology proper.
[00:34:25]  I'm not listening to him for the hypostatic union.
[00:34:26]  I'm listening to him because I have to go to a Jew.
[00:34:30]  To get some common sense, because I can't find it over here.

=== Counter Worldview Needed (10:09) ===

[00:34:35]  So it's, yeah.
[00:34:36]  So I think it's an indictment on leftist liberation.
[00:34:39]  Well, Bobby Scott at T4G did exactly what you just said.
[00:34:43]  He brought up Ben Shapiro in front of everyone to basically, and I don't know, it might have been Fault Lines.
[00:34:48]  I'm not sure what book.
[00:34:49]  There was a book that was there, I think, being sold, and Ben Shapiro had endorsed it.
[00:34:55]  I believe it might have been Fault Lines.
[00:34:56]  Anyway, Bobby Scott went off on that.
[00:34:59]  You know, this is someone who denies the divinity of Christ.
[00:35:02]  And we're reading a book that he recommended as if it, because they love playing that guilt by association thing.
[00:35:07]  Right.
[00:35:08]  And it might have been Carl Truman's book, because Ben Shapiro.
[00:35:11]  Oh, maybe it was Carl Truman's book.
[00:35:12]  You always say The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
[00:35:15]  Rise and Fall.
[00:35:16]  Yeah, Rise and Triumph.
[00:35:18]  Okay.
[00:35:18]  The Rise and Fall of the Gospel.
[00:35:20]  Wait, no, that's A.D. Rovis.
[00:35:21]  That's different.
[00:35:22]  Yeah.
[00:35:24]  I actually just listened to that book on Audible.
[00:35:26]  I literally just listened to it.
[00:35:27]  It was great.
[00:35:28]  And Carl Truman, actually, I just had a conversation with him because he came out here and did a lecture at one of the churches that we know.
[00:35:37]  And the lecture was great.
[00:35:38]  His principles are great.
[00:35:40]  That book is fantastic.
[00:35:44]  I think it's just when you get into practical application, when I ask him some questions, like, okay, so what does this mean?
[00:35:50]  That's where he's.
[00:35:52]  Well, that's where I'm like, all right, man, come on.
[00:35:55]  The greatest on his own college.
[00:35:57]  Exactly.
[00:35:57]  It's the practice.
[00:35:59]  But if you want someone to outline where do these ideas come from?
[00:36:03]  And what are the underlining heart issues of why there's such this need for finding identity within and self actualization and a rejection of.
[00:36:15]  He's fantastic on that.
[00:36:16]  Right.
[00:36:17]  But yeah, no, I enjoyed the book.
[00:36:18]  I thought it was good too.
[00:36:20]  And there's some things I'm chewing on right now.
[00:36:22]  There's a few kinks in the armor that I'm trying to work out in my mind.
[00:36:26]  I don't have fully developed thoughts.
[00:36:27]  One of them being that he doesn't really focus hardly on race at all.
[00:36:31]  And I'm like, well, that's kind of significant today.
[00:36:33]  I mean, it came out in 2020.
[00:36:34]  Why is that?
[00:36:36]  The other thing I thought too, and we're totally switching subjects.
[00:36:39]  Should we do this?
[00:36:40]  We'll go back.
[00:36:40]  We'll go back.
[00:36:41]  Just a bunny trail for a while.
[00:36:42]  Rabbit trail.
[00:36:43]  Go for it.
[00:36:44]  The other thing is, you know, he really does do a good job of showing, okay, here's Freudian psychology.
[00:36:50]  We're fundamentally sexual beings.
[00:36:51]  Here's the romantics.
[00:36:53]  You got to find truth within.
[00:36:54]  Here's the Frankfurt School.
[00:36:56]  Everything is systemic oppression.
[00:36:59]  So he traces these things.
[00:37:01]  The thing, though, I think that made his study different than the study I did is that Carl Truman sees these forces, it seems to me, and I could be wrong, but this is my sense after listening to the whole book, as almost like they're disconnected, unrelated.
[00:37:16]  They're related in the sense that they built on each other or the developments kind of.
[00:37:23]  You know, sequentially kind of brought about a state of affairs today that we see and we can identify.
[00:37:29]  But I don't see, he thinks he draws a strong connection between them.
[00:37:32]  Whereas I'm looking at all these things and I'm saying, hold on, all these things have something in common.
[00:37:37]  Every single one of these things is against Christian civilization.
[00:37:41]  And they're trying to rip it down in various areas.
[00:37:43]  And it's not a mystery as to, it's not like random or that all these forces converge to create what we have today.
[00:37:52]  No, they all were in cahoots in a sense.
[00:37:54]  And now people are going to say I'm a conspiracy theorist, but.
[00:37:57]  They're all against God, essentially.
[00:38:00]  There's no conspiracy with that.
[00:38:02]  Yeah.
[00:38:02]  Right.
[00:38:02]  You're absolutely right.
[00:38:03]  What it is, it's pagan men who want to sin.
[00:38:06]  So they are against the Christian church because the Christian church is just like John the Baptist saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have her.
[00:38:13]  Right.
[00:38:13]  So you got sinners who want their sin, and then you've got people saying, you can't have it.
[00:38:18]  Right.
[00:38:19]  And so we got to get rid of those guys.
[00:38:21]  We've got to get rid of this institution.
[00:38:22]  We've got to, and there are multiple building blocks in the church, but there's also fundamental truths that they hold dear.
[00:38:29]  There's the family, right?
[00:38:31]  The nuclear family.
[00:38:32]  There's patriarchy.
[00:38:33]  There's distinctions of gender.
[00:38:36]  There's all these different things that are standing in our way.
[00:38:38]  And I think, like, I really think it is as simple as we want our sin, and someone is telling us we can't have it.
[00:38:45]  And so then you come in with this, right?
[00:38:47]  So everything becomes a disease rather than a sin, right?
[00:38:51]  So I have anxiety, or I have depression, or I have, like, everything is now diagnosed as some kind of, and there's a pill for that, and there's a pill for that.
[00:39:01]  You know, and it but but then it's not just that, so like there's the sexual ethic of Freud, um, but then it's like, okay, but man, like there's still some things standing our way, like capitalism, so let's bring in the economic component.
[00:39:12]  Here's Marx, and it's like one by one between you know, between Freud, um, between uh, Marx on the economic uh side of things, between uh, who's the the Reif guy, what's his first name?
[00:39:24]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Reif, Reif, yeah, um, I don't remember, he was one of the poets, uh, but he like he had a right, one of the romantics.
[00:39:32]  Yeah.
[00:39:33]  So, anyways, but it's all my point, or this is what I was going to say Darwin, right?
[00:39:37]  So, okay, but we still got this problem, right?
[00:39:39]  We're trying to get rid of the Christian church and God and this whole institution that says we can't have our sin.
[00:39:45]  But it's really hard to get rid of God when we're sitting here in this universe with stars and a sun and a planet and oxygen.
[00:39:52]  Like, how did this?
[00:39:53]  So, we need somebody on the science side of things to explain existence, physical materialism apart from God.
[00:40:02]  And so that, I think, I'm just saying that to say I agree with you 100%.
[00:40:06]  I think it was one focus, which is I want my sin.
[00:40:08]  And there's something standing in the way, which is the Christian faith.
[00:40:11]  So then I have to have a counter worldview.
[00:40:15]  But the Christian worldview is a robust worldview.
[00:40:19]  It accounts for everything.
[00:40:20]  And so they're trying to come up with a counter worldview that allows for sin, a counter worldview that allows for their idols.
[00:40:28]  And the Christians keep poking at it, right?
[00:40:31]  So it's like we have this.
[00:40:33]  But what about that?
[00:40:33]  Oh, here's Darwin.
[00:40:34]  Oh, here's Freud.
[00:40:35]  And it took hundreds of years to concoct to make this thing called secularism or modernity.
[00:40:42]  And now it pales in comparison, but it is a full orbed view to rival the Christian worldview.
[00:40:49]  It's a religion.
[00:40:50]  It's a religion.
[00:40:51]  Exactly.
[00:40:52]  Yeah.
[00:40:52]  And that's well stated, I think.
[00:40:54]  So you have another way I think to put it is that you have an order, a natural order that God has set about.
[00:41:03]  And he reveals this to us in his special revelation.
[00:41:06]  But it exists in nature.
[00:41:08]  Men are different than women, right?
[00:41:10]  There are different nationalities, different places people live with some boundary of some kind, whether that's a border or a natural border, whatever.
[00:41:21]  There's something to the natural order, there's something to the way God created humans and the way that they perpetuate themselves that is supposed to kind of keep going after its kind.
[00:41:32]  And these different thinkers who have come in are trying to rip down all these borders.
[00:41:39]  Now, there's not a border between men and women.
[00:41:41]  What are you talking about?
[00:41:42]  There's no border there.
[00:41:43]  Oh, borders on sexual expression?
[00:41:45]  No, we shouldn't have any borders on that.
[00:41:47]  There shouldn't be any restrictions there.
[00:41:49]  And so they're trying to rip down all these things.
[00:41:52]  What Truman doesn't get into as much, too, but I mean, you can even hear it in the song Imagine the ideas of nations themselves rip down that.
[00:42:02]  We don't want that.
[00:42:03]  We want just a globalist utopia.
[00:42:06]  He doesn't really get into the globalism aspect, which is huge, I think, in this.
[00:42:09]  And the BLM is connected right to that.
[00:42:11]  To undermine Western European hegemony, quote unquote, and really Western civilization.
[00:42:18]  So there's all these different things, and it's just what Satan did.
[00:42:23]  It's going outside the boundaries God has created to make my own rules so that I will be God.
[00:42:29]  And it's mixing.
[00:42:31]  You're right.
[00:42:31]  It's blurring, right?
[00:42:32]  And that's what God said to Israel again and again, you know, with not having two different fabrics and stuff.
[00:42:37]  It was to because you were supposed to be consecrated unto the Lord, sanctified.
[00:42:41]  You were supposed to be separate, you know, and like.
[00:42:43]  In covenant with God, and no one can serve two masters, right?
[00:42:47]  So you're in covenant with God, and it needs to be a faithful covenant.
[00:42:50]  God keeps faithful covenant.
[00:42:51]  There needs to be not committing spiritual adultery.
[00:42:54]  And so, in all these, so polygamy, right?
[00:42:56]  Or polyamory, or, you know, we didn't even, you know, so there's the national eroding of national borders, but then you can talk about wealth, right?
[00:43:05]  Well, what is capitalism other than you get to keep your capital, right?
[00:43:10]  Well, no, no, no, no.
[00:43:11]  Like we, no, it belongs to every, the redistribution of wealth and that we all just kind of are a part of this global system and every, you know, so it's equality, but in this quest of equality, it's, Or equity.
[00:43:28]  But in this quest towards equity, it's the erosion of personal ownership.
[00:43:33]  So there's no boundaries with that, no fences, no.
[00:43:36]  I mean, if they had the utopia, nobody would own anything.
[00:43:39]  There would be no nations.
[00:43:41]  There would be no bank accounts.
[00:43:43]  And the result, of course, is that everybody would starve and die.
[00:43:49]  But that's what they.
[00:43:50]  You're absolutely right.
[00:43:51]  It's just the erosion of any kind of boundary you can think of, whether it be male female boundary, any of those kinds of things.
[00:43:57]  But that's the way God set up his world.
[00:43:59]  In the very beginning of Genesis, God, it's like the world is without form and void, and the Spirit is hovering above the waters.
[00:44:05]  But then God, He says, Let there be, He creates, but then He separates.
[00:44:11]  It's like God creates and then divides and then later fills, right?
[00:44:15]  So it's like it's skies and waters, the waters above and the waters below.
[00:44:20]  It's light and dark.
[00:44:22]  And then God comes back and He fills.
[00:44:24]  So the light is filled with the sun and then the lesser light to the moon for the night and the stars.
[00:44:30]  And so God fills the waters with fish and the sky with birds.
[00:44:34]  So God fills, but the first thing he does is he creates expanses.
[00:44:38]  He creates regions and sets boundaries and divides one from the other.

=== The Cross Politicized (15:45) ===

[00:44:44]  And that's the very thing that I think the left constantly wants to get rid of.
[00:44:49]  So, how's this for a segue from what you just said to get back to what we were talking about?
[00:44:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:54]  Practically speaking, you said Truman's part of his issue is he lacks, or not him, but his writings lack the practicality of what do we do with this?
[00:45:05]  Practically speaking, it's to reimplement these boundaries that God has put in place, to try to once again live as much as we can in the order that He has laid down for us.
[00:45:14]  And that's something that I think the Daily Wire folks tend to agree with, whether they realize it or not.
[00:45:21]  They're trying to still uphold certain distinctions, certain boundaries, because they see that there's something valuable to them.
[00:45:28]  And whether or not they base it simply on tradition or on natural revelation of some kind, they see that there's a value to them and they want to preserve them.
[00:45:39]  And that's part of their conservative.
[00:45:41]  Now, obviously, that's changing some things they're getting rid of or they're soft pedaling to some extent, but there's still this commitment to we want to try as best we can in this modern world to preserve true and beautiful and valuable things.
[00:45:55]  Whereas we don't get that same sense from, I think, well, let's just say I'll use some names people like Tim Keller, but it's also people like Jonathan Lehman or Joe Carter or the list goes on from TGC who, Are just it almost Jonathan Lehman being nine marks, but yeah, nine marks, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:14]  Well, and I think he, I thought he had written for Gospel Cooler, but oh, you're right.
[00:46:17]  So, um, guys who are, uh, and I could be wrong, maybe, maybe it's just nine marks, but I'm thinking of people that are very focused on cultural capital and how what's they're constantly thinking of their relationship or the church's relationship to the state and to the court of public opinion and how do we get the church off, how do we show, I mean.
[00:46:44]  Carl Truman, even actually, to use him as an example, so many right observations in that book.
[00:46:48]  But he wrote this article about Pride Month where he said so many good, true things about we can't cave to the LGBT mob.
[00:46:55]  But in the same breath, he had to say, and taking Columbus down and Confederate statues down, that was a good thing.
[00:47:01]  And we need to fight the gay flag just as much as we fought those symbols.
[00:47:05]  And it's like, what does that have to do?
[00:47:09]  Because what is it?
[00:47:10]  What's motivating that?
[00:47:11]  There's this, you have to try somehow to make sure that the culture finds us favorable.
[00:47:18]  Right.
[00:47:19]  And there's this fear that we're going to be judged by them.
[00:47:21]  I don't think Daily Wire has that fear as much.
[00:47:23]  I just don't.
[00:47:24]  I don't see it at least.
[00:47:25]  And maybe some of those guys do, but it's not as much as some of the people I just mentioned.
[00:47:29]  Yeah.
[00:47:30]  No, I think you're right.
[00:47:31]  And I think some of them, if they do, it's probably new.
[00:47:35]  And what I mean by that is like Jordan Peterson, the reason why he launched into the stratosphere is because he didn't care what people thought.
[00:47:43]  Exactly.
[00:47:43]  Like that guy was willing to be hated by everyone.
[00:47:46]  Everyone.
[00:47:47]  Now, but here's the thing though people change.
[00:47:51]  So, I can't speak for what the Daily Wire will always be.
[00:47:56]  There's already plenty of compromises and things that I personally don't like as a Christian.
[00:48:02]  But my point is with someone like Jordan Peterson or someone like Ben Shapiro, yeah, I think at least in general, there is less susceptibility to the fear of man than the Gospel Coalition because these guys became the superstars that they are.
[00:48:23]  By not giving a single care about what people thought.
[00:48:27]  Like Jordan Peterson in that interview, where he's just like, no, that's not what I'm saying.
[00:48:30]  No, I don't care what you think.
[00:48:32]  No, I don't, you know, just like going back and forth.
[00:48:34]  Ben Shapiro, like his old videos back in the day, I mean, like a lot of these guys, they didn't become big by just being talking heads.
[00:48:43]  They became talking heads and got that opportunity because they were on the streets and, you know, like whether it be like someone like, I think it's Ben Crowder is his name, but the Change My Mind or Steven Crowder, yeah.
[00:48:55]  Steven Crowder, yeah.
[00:48:56]  Louder with Crowder.
[00:48:57]  Or Shapiro and some of him, like on the street back and forth, and these kinds of things.
[00:49:01]  That's where, and then all of a sudden, you know, they became very popular because it turns out there's a lot of people who still haven't lost their minds.
[00:49:10]  There is still some sanity in America.
[00:49:13]  And so, but that's like Gospel Coalition seems to be like wherever, whatever is already known, whatever is tested, tried, and true.
[00:49:21]  So, whatever we know the culture likes and whatever they think, that's where Gospel Coalition will play to.
[00:49:29]  Whereas there's other guys who are like, I'm just going to play to this because it actually is my conviction.
[00:49:34]  Hell or high water, whether anybody agrees or not.
[00:49:36]  And I think that that's commendable.
[00:49:38]  And I think that's why we find Christians with spines saying, Yeah, I appreciate Jordan Peterson, what he's doing, and for what it is, it's not Christian, but for what it is, I appreciate that a lot more than I appreciate these slimy guys who have just been sucking up to leftists for the last 15 years.
[00:49:59]  Yeah, it's just that's not commendable.
[00:50:01]  I'm not impressed by that.
[00:50:03]  We yearn right now for a confrontative prophetic voice, in a sense.
[00:50:08]  And wartime calls for a different leader than peacetime.
[00:50:11]  So you can't see the gospel coalition running an article.
[00:50:15]  I can't see it, at least, that will call the prophets of Baal names, mock them, talk about their God being on the toilet.
[00:50:24]  I mean, I just can't see it ever happening.
[00:50:26]  It's going to be an article that's going to convince us that.
[00:50:30]  The prophets of Baal are the mission field.
[00:50:32]  And we really got to make sure that we're catering to them or at least being winsome or somehow appealing to them so that they'll like us.
[00:50:43]  And someone needs to rebuke Elijah because he's been out there lately.
[00:50:48]  But Steven Crowder, who, and I'm not saying he's a Christian and I'm not saying he's appropriate.
[00:50:55]  I think his show is crass.
[00:50:56]  I don't really listen to it, but I've seen some of the clips, obviously.
[00:50:59]  I've seen the Change My Mind.
[00:51:00]  Yeah.
[00:51:01]  Yeah, I've seen some of those clips.
[00:51:02]  He is willing to do that.
[00:51:03]  Like, he's willing to do at least a version of that where he's going to mock the prophets of Baal.
[00:51:07]  Like, he'll just make fun of them.
[00:51:08]  And I think we're so desperate for that.
[00:51:11]  So, here's a question for you for Christians.
[00:51:14]  I mean, you're a pastor, you have people going to your church.
[00:51:16]  They're probably asking you, who do I listen to when it comes to politics, okay, specifically?
[00:51:20]  So, we're trying to steward our vote well and whatever other political involvement we might have, we're trying to do it in an informed manner.
[00:51:29]  I mean, who do you tell them to go to?
[00:51:31]  And if they do go to the Daily Wire and they're trying, they realize the errors that are there, but at the same time, do you think they get better information there?
[00:51:41]  Do you think that's an alternative that's much preferable to, I don't even know, Christianity Today, for instance?
[00:51:47]  Yeah.
[00:51:48]  Yeah.
[00:51:48]  If Christians go to Christianity Today or if they go to the Gospel Coalition or they go to the ERLC, if Christians do that, babies get murdered.
[00:51:56]  It's a one to one correlation.
[00:51:58]  It really is that simple.
[00:52:00]  If you take their advice, because that's the thing, right?
[00:52:03]  If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then at some point we got to just call it a duck, right?
[00:52:08]  There's no way, there's no way, not a snowflake's chance in hell, that the majority of the staff of the Gospel Coalition didn't vote for Biden in 2020.
[00:52:19]  There's no way.
[00:52:20]  Because that's always who they're sucking up to, and they're always punching down on every conservative.
[00:52:29]  And you can't look at that again and again and again and again.
[00:52:32]  And I think that's like if you pressed, right?
[00:52:34]  If it was offline and it wasn't a public forum, it's not a panel, and it's just you and somebody with the gospel coalition sitting down and having a conversation and say, But dude, like abortion, like dude, sodomy, dude, you know what I mean?
[00:52:49]  Like, I think they'd say, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:51]  I mean, you're right.
[00:52:52]  I, I, You know, I don't vote for Biden.
[00:52:55]  And it's like, okay, but you know, everybody reading your articles and listening to your podcast, they think that you do.
[00:53:01]  They think you do.
[00:53:02]  How would they think you don't?
[00:53:04]  And like, if I had a bracelet that said, you know, like WW, you know, TD, what would Tim do?
[00:53:10]  What would, you know, what would Keller do?
[00:53:13]  Like, and I'm wearing that bracelet and trying to channel my inner Tim Keller as I go into the voting booth, who am I voting for?
[00:53:19]  Donald Trump or Joe Biden?
[00:53:20]  Straight up.
[00:53:20]  Like, so yeah, so if my options are, if those are my only options, is the Daily Wire versus.
[00:53:27]  The you know, Christianity today, then yeah, Daily Wire, because because um, are they going to learn about Jesus?
[00:53:33]  No, um, uh, they're not going to it for that, that's right.
[00:53:37]  But are they going to influence them if we're merely talking about the realm of their vote, right?
[00:53:43]  Because that's the way the question was presented.
[00:53:46]  Uh, yeah, they're going to vote better, uh, by listening to Matt Walsh than listening to Jonathan Lehman, and and and that's sad.
[00:53:54]  I'm not happy about that.
[00:53:56]  Um, I think, and this is what's so frustrating is I. Part of the problem is we have too many experts and not enough generalists.
[00:54:02]  I think we, and we, and we have too many, you know, pundits and things like, you know, like these kind of ministries are great, what we're doing, but this is why we need pastors because pastors should be, and it's a tall task and I struggle with it daily, but pastors should be generalists, meaning that a pastor should be able to tell you about the hypostatic union and tell you a little, at least a little something about a Christian ethic in the realm of economics and how that applies to your civil.
[00:54:31]  Your civil responsibilities as a citizen in the next voting election.
[00:54:36]  Whereas we have to, when it comes to the public forum and podcasting and documentaries and news sources, it's all these experts.
[00:54:49]  And for one, the experts keep failing us.
[00:54:52]  And two, I've just realized I just don't think we need so many experts.
[00:54:57]  I think we need more generalists.
[00:54:59]  And I think pastors, especially, should strive to be generalists that can say, this is the word of God.
[00:55:05]  And it has application here, here, here, here, and here.
[00:55:09]  And this is how to be consistent to not parent one way and vote another.
[00:55:14]  That's completely.
[00:55:16]  I know a lot of people who like the Gospel Coalition, and they are wonderful parents.
[00:55:24]  And their theology in parenting is completely different than their theology with politics.
[00:55:30]  And they don't see that gaping.
[00:55:33]  That's interesting.
[00:55:34]  You know what I mean?
[00:55:36]  It's just all.
[00:55:37]  It's all severed.
[00:55:38]  It's an expert for this, an expert for that.
[00:55:40]  Whereas it's just like, yeah, we just need a generalist to be able to say, no, no, the Bible applies to all of it.
[00:55:46]  If it's this here, if it's God's word here, it's God's word there, and God's word there, and God's word there.
[00:55:53]  So, yeah, I'd pick the Daily Wire over the Gospel Coalition or Christianity Today for voting.
[00:55:58]  But if we could just pick anybody, then I'd send guys to listen to you.
[00:56:03]  I'd send guys to listen to Doug Wilson, Jared Longshore, Tom Askell.
[00:56:09]  I, you know, like those guys address these kind of things not as often as I would like, but they do.
[00:56:16]  They talk about Paul.
[00:56:17]  Yeah.
[00:56:17]  And there are some Christians in that sphere more.
[00:56:21]  Oh, God.
[00:56:23]  I'm trying to think of.
[00:56:25]  There's a.
[00:56:26]  His name is escaping me.
[00:56:27]  Steve Dace, I believe.
[00:56:29]  Yeah.
[00:56:29]  He's a Christian.
[00:56:30]  Yeah.
[00:56:31]  I mean, you have Cross Politic, right?
[00:56:33]  That's a show that's great.
[00:56:34]  Yeah.
[00:56:34]  So Cross Politic is great.
[00:56:35]  Cross Politic is the only thing.
[00:56:37]  So, like, Gabriel Wrench is on our board with the right response.
[00:56:40]  Love Cross Politic.
[00:56:40]  Love Toby.
[00:56:41]  Love those guys.
[00:56:42]  It's sometimes tough when you have like, this is a practical thing, but when you got three guys on a show, and especially when the mantra is like, we're rowdy Christians and they live it, you know, and they're like three really good friends.
[00:56:53]  And so there's so much banter and laughing and those kinds of things that sometimes I'm like, I'm listening and I'm like earnestly listening.
[00:56:59]  And I can't quite tell, like, what did they say?
[00:57:02]  What was, like, I missed that.
[00:57:04]  But cross-politic, in terms of their doctrine and those kinds of things, I think cross-politic is fantastic.
[00:57:08]  And I like that you mentioned Steve Day, so I forgot him, but he came on our show a few weeks back or a month back.
[00:57:16]  And honestly, I started listening to him a little bit.
[00:57:19]  A couple guys turned me on to him, and then I invited him on the show, and he was gracious enough to come on.
[00:57:23]  And I would say that, like, okay, yeah, he's not like this.
[00:57:27]  I don't think he's memorized Calvin's Institutes.
[00:57:29]  He's not reformed.
[00:57:31]  He's not as robust of the Christian theologian.
[00:57:34]  But I really do believe that he's born again.
[00:57:38]  I think he's a Jedi.
[00:57:39]  I don't think that he's just a conservative political pundit.
[00:57:44]  I think Steve Dace is a legitimate follower of Jesus.
[00:57:48]  And I was actually pleasantly surprised.
[00:57:51]  In the conversation that I had with him, he's a conviction about scripture.
[00:57:56]  So he's a great source.
[00:57:59]  Yeah.
[00:58:00]  I mean, Glenn Beck's a Christian, right?
[00:58:01]  I'm just kidding.
[00:58:03]  Right.
[00:58:04]  He's someone.
[00:58:04]  Yeah.
[00:58:05]  So, I mean, there are some voices and there needs to be more.
[00:58:07]  I mean, if anything, I would hope Christians who are interested in that in politics can get involved in some of these things.
[00:58:14]  Because isn't it weird that some of the top conservative talk show hosts are Catholic, Mormon, right?
[00:58:21]  Jewish.
[00:58:23]  I'm thinking of like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or they're just kind of secular.
[00:58:28]  It's just weird because Christians are the largest voting block for the Republican Party or one of them.
[00:58:34]  And it's just like we don't have a lot of representation in that.
[00:58:38]  And I wonder if that's pietism or there's something I think it is that's holding Christians from going in that direction.
[00:58:43]  But we need more.
[00:58:44]  And that's, if anything, this is if you're frustrated that Jordan Peterson is with Dave Rubin talking about freezers full of breast milk.
[00:58:54]  And if you're frustrated that Tim Keller can't, Figure out a biblical ethic if it was right in front of them, then maybe you're the person that needs to go out there, you know, learn these things and whatever hoops you got to jump through.
[00:59:07]  Maybe you need to go to school, but get the education and then go out there and start making a difference.
[00:59:13]  Right there, you know, you're right.
[00:59:16]  I'm glad you mentioned that because I think there's a huge gaping hole right now for a thoroughly reformed, orthodox Christian who loves the Lord.
[00:59:28]  Who sees scripture as the final authority to speak to politics?
[00:59:33]  Because right now, it's like our options are Steve Day said it like this.
[00:59:37]  He was like, Our options are you can get stabbed in the face by Nancy Pelosi, or you can get stabbed in the back by Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell.
[00:59:45]  You know, stabbed in the back.
[00:59:47]  You know, it's like those are your only options.
[00:59:48]  It'd be nice to have an option of someone who doesn't stab you in the face or the back.
[00:59:52]  You know, like I think there's like three guys maybe in the Senate that I kind of trust.
[00:59:57]  Right.
[00:59:58]  Like maybe Josh Hawley.
[01:00:00]  I was gonna say Josh Hawley would be one for me.
[01:00:02]  Yeah, I'm trying to think who else.
[01:00:03]  Uh, there's there's probably like three, I could probably come up with like three, but Ted Cruz is okay.
[01:00:08]  But I like, yeah, I was gonna Ted Cruz, I'm on the fence on, but yeah, I'm like, I'm like, I kind of like Ted Cruz, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:12]  I mean, he and he's your representative there in Texas, right?
[01:00:15]  Yeah, um, we have nothing in New York, I can't, I mean, I just moved from the frying pan to the fryer here, right?
[01:00:21]  Yeah, um, you know, what about Blake, uh, Blake Masters?
[01:00:24]  Is he running or is he, do you know who I'm talking about, Blake Masters?

=== Dark Ages Narratives (04:46) ===

[01:00:30]  No.
[01:00:30]  Can't remember.
[01:00:30]  Okay, never mind.
[01:00:31]  Let's not go there.
[01:00:32]  So, there's a point in case right there.
[01:00:35]  We need someone who knows the board, but also knows politics.
[01:00:39]  He is running, though.
[01:00:39]  I don't know who he is, but he is running in Colorado, I think.
[01:00:43]  I've heard a few things from him, and I think he's pretty solid.
[01:00:46]  He's a far right political candidate, says Whippy.
[01:00:49]  That's what you've got to look for.
[01:00:50]  Far, far.
[01:00:52]  I can't even see him.
[01:00:53]  Exactly.
[01:00:53]  If a guy's far right, then you can be sure that he's probably a mediocre Christian.
[01:01:01]  Far right.
[01:01:02]  In political terms, if somebody's far right, then I can usually bet that they're about seven or eight clicks left from me.
[01:01:11]  Wow.
[01:01:11]  What would we be?
[01:01:12]  Like, literally, if we ran for office, I'd be like, they don't have words.
[01:01:15]  They don't have words to describe how far right.
[01:01:19]  They probably just, heads just explode when they start hearing the positions.
[01:01:23]  Yeah.
[01:01:24]  They didn't know that those positions, they thought 100 years ago those positions died off.
[01:01:29]  And they're just shocked that they survived.
[01:01:32]  The evolutionary process.
[01:01:33]  But history is a big factor too.
[01:01:35]  And you're good with that, John.
[01:01:38]  But just, I think that's another thing is like, we, you know, the victor gets to write the history books and thinking about people's presuppositions in history.
[01:01:46]  I've been listening lately to, I believe his name is Steve Wilkins, and him just talking about the founding of America.
[01:01:54]  And just, you know, like, so this is something he said that I thought was so profound, but he just said, you know, the dark ages, you know, those times when people believed in trans.
[01:02:03]  Sendent truth and that God created the world, and then the Enlightenment, you know, when people turned to secularism and reason and rebelled against God's like, I mean, think about it, even the labels.
[01:02:15]  And that's not to say there wasn't anything dark about the Dark Ages.
[01:02:18]  And that's not to say that there wasn't anything positive about the Enlightenment.
[01:02:21]  But in general, that's how history gets written submission to God, bad, dark.
[01:02:28]  Rejection of God, happy.
[01:02:30]  Now, the term Dark Ages is a complete pejorative.
[01:02:33]  And I don't even use it.
[01:02:34]  I mean, unless I'm joking.
[01:02:35]  What do you just say, Middle Ages?
[01:02:37]  I say Middle Ages.
[01:02:38]  Yeah.
[01:02:38]  That's what I'm starting to do.
[01:02:40]  Dark Ages, yeah, it's a total knock against what came before the Enlightenment as somehow barbaric and.
[01:02:49]  And you even see it getting into our pop culture.
[01:02:52]  If you like watch Monty Python or something, I mean, it's just guys slinging mud, right?
[01:02:56]  That's the dark ages.
[01:02:57]  So, right.
[01:02:58]  And I mean, and there were things that obviously there have been some advances made that there's certain things about diseases we know now and stuff, but it is a character.
[01:03:08]  And I was talking to someone actually earlier today about the January 6th issue and how I am seeing history rewritten in front of my very eyes, something that.
[01:03:21]  I lived.
[01:03:22]  I wasn't in the Capitol, but I was there that day for the rally.
[01:03:24]  And I am seeing what I saw completely discounted, a different narrative put in its place, motivations attributed to myself and those of us who went.
[01:03:37]  And it's just amazing.
[01:03:38]  And I think if they can do that with something that happened two years ago, why can't they do it with something that happened 100, 300, 500 years ago?
[01:03:46]  And most of the time.
[01:03:47]  The Salem Witch Trials is another example.
[01:03:49]  I've been studying the Salem Witch Trials.
[01:03:51]  Go ahead.
[01:03:51]  Sorry.
[01:03:52]  You're right.
[01:03:53]  That's another good example.
[01:03:54]  Most of the things that we learn about are, let's just say, the aspects or the facts involved that can forward some kind of a case against the current political enemies are those are the things that are emphasized.
[01:04:10]  And the things that are left out tend to be the things that would not be so convenient for that narrative.
[01:04:17]  And I've seen this in so many different things.
[01:04:20]  And I wonder sometimes to what extent are there things that, even as someone who's studied, History of American history, at least, how many things am I believing incorrectly?
[01:04:31]  I'm sure there's things I'm believing that I just haven't looked into enough into the primary source material, which is one of the reasons I tell people if you're going to study history, they say, What book should I read?
[01:04:42]  I understand there's a place for secondary sources.
[01:04:44]  I've written some books, I think there's a good place for that.
[01:04:47]  I'm really big on sources, though.
[01:04:48]  And I think if you can, try to go back, try to read original speeches.
[01:04:53]  You want to know what happened during the Civil War?
[01:04:54]  Why don't you read Lincoln's first inaugural address?
[01:04:57]  Why don't you read Jefferson Davis' farewell address?
[01:05:00]  Why don't you, you know, there's actual documents you can read rather than going to some leftist historian who's going to tell you a retelling of that particular event or any event.
[01:05:11]  Right.
[01:05:12]  So you're right.
[01:05:15]  It's important, I think.

=== Building Christian Alternatives (04:03) ===

[01:05:16]  And it takes more work.
[01:05:17]  And I understand that.
[01:05:18]  But as Christians, we don't need to be lazy.
[01:05:20]  We don't have to be like the world.
[01:05:23]  I think the world is after entertainment, after, I mean, Carl Truman described in Rise and Fall the Modern Self.
[01:05:29]  I mean, after our pleasures.
[01:05:31]  And I think we can build something that's a positive Christian vision.
[01:05:35]  We need we should have 10 Christian options for talk radio, total political.
[01:05:39]  We should have more than that, really.
[01:05:40]  But, um, but we can have Christian Jordan Petersons out there, right, who are unapologetic about what the Bible teaches.
[01:05:48]  And one day, if God would be so gracious, maybe Jordan Peterson would be a Christian Jordan Peterson.
[01:05:53]  We can have him too.
[01:05:54]  He keeps saying stuff that make me think he's getting there.
[01:05:56]  I know, I know, I do something to ruin.
[01:05:58]  He's not there yet.
[01:05:59]  I do not know.
[01:06:00]  We can't call him a brother yet, but I pray that the Lord does that.
[01:06:04]  Yeah, pray for those guys.
[01:06:05]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:06:06]  But no, you're right.
[01:06:07]  And everything you were just saying, I think, goes back to my point about generalists.
[01:06:10]  Is that in order to have, I think what we have right now is we see that, okay, we had institutions, the institutions got infiltrated, history and all these things got rewritten, bad policy.
[01:06:21]  And so it's now, it's like we really do have to, maybe some of the institutions can be recaptured, some of them will just have to build parallel, you know, Christian economies and these different things.
[01:06:34]  And so we're going to have to do a lot of building.
[01:06:36]  And with that, what I'm realizing more and more is, If we're going to do this and we're going to do it right and we're going to do it faithfully and it's going to last, there's just, we're going to have to work.
[01:06:47]  And in that work, I mean, like the work of study.
[01:06:51]  I've just realized, man, like there's so many things that I haven't personally researched because I gave the benefit of the doubt to the gatekeepers in the church, in government, in academia, in medicine, right?
[01:07:09]  And now my wife and I, we're like, and it helps that my wife is an RN, but it's like, man, we're having to, like, Every single vaccine we're reading about, you know, whereas before we're like, yeah, our kids are going to get vaccines.
[01:07:21]  We don't wear tinfoil hats.
[01:07:22]  We're not crazy.
[01:07:23]  And now it's like, oh, sorry.
[01:07:26]  I apologize.
[01:07:28]  I got to go to all my crunchy friends and apologize to them because, you know, like, you know, it turns out I was maybe the idiot, you know, and now they're like, it's not just the COVID vaccine.
[01:07:37]  Of course, I'm not going to give my two year old a COVID vaccine, but now there are other things we're saying, I don't think we're going to do that.
[01:07:44]  I don't think our kid.
[01:07:45]  And I'm not saying some of these things, there's room to disagree, but my point is, The principle is there's so much we've taken for granted in every field of study.
[01:07:56]  But every Gospel Coalition will shame you into not following the experts, whereas Daily Wire is going to try to give you information that will help your family make a decision.
[01:08:04]  That's what it comes down to.
[01:08:05]  Daily Wire questions the experts, and Gospel Coalition shames you for not listening to Francis Collins and David French.
[01:08:12]  And that's what it comes down to is I've got, on one hand, I've got the Christians telling me we really should submit to these people, respect these people, and trust these people.
[01:08:23]  And any pushback, any questioning, even, is really just that's rebellious.
[01:08:29]  And then I've got these guys over here saying, no, question everything.
[01:08:35]  And these guys keep getting proved in the providence of God right again and again and again.
[01:08:41]  So now I'm like, okay, I'm not saying these guys are right about Jesus.
[01:08:44]  They're wrong about Jesus.
[01:08:47]  But they are right about questioning all of our major institutions, including the evangelical church.
[01:08:54]  So.
[01:08:55]  I'm going to question these things, but I can't just criticize.
[01:08:58]  I've got to build an alternative.
[01:08:59]  I got to build something.
[01:09:00]  That's what conservatives always do.
[01:09:01]  We boycott, we bemoan, we complain, but we need to build something.
[01:09:04]  But then I get to the work of building and I realize, I don't know how to do it.
[01:09:08]  It's like you with your house right now.
[01:09:09]  It's like, all right, so this is what I envision.
[01:09:11]  We need a house.
[01:09:12]  And then I'm sure, like, on a weekly basis, you come and it's like, oh, so there's this other thing that has to be done for the house that I don't know how to do.

=== Questioning Institutions (10:48) ===

[01:09:19]  And so I have to learn this now.
[01:09:21]  I have, oh, plumbing.
[01:09:22]  I forgot about that.
[01:09:23]  That's a thing.
[01:09:24]  We got to, you know, and so it's, And that's what I'm realizing is like, okay, we can't trust institutions.
[01:09:30]  This narrative is false.
[01:09:31]  There's another narrative that's true.
[01:09:33]  But for me to get this right, to build an alternative that's actually true, so that I'm not inadvertently guilty of the very same thing I'm criticizing these other guys of, I cannot be lazy and I can't just take somebody else's word for it.
[01:09:47]  I've got to do what you're saying in the realm of history.
[01:09:49]  I've got to go to original sources and I've got to find out what George Washington really was a deist, right?
[01:09:55]  Because I can now see for the first time in my life, oh, Would there perhaps be an angle or a motivation for people today to want to teach my kids that George Washington was a deist and not?
[01:10:06]  Yeah.
[01:10:08]  And I think there's a debate to be had there.
[01:10:11]  But how am I going to find out?
[01:10:12]  Well, I'm going to listen to Steve Wilkins, but I'm probably also going to have to read George Washington.
[01:10:18]  So it would benefit you.
[01:10:19]  So, in all these things, my point is that if we're going to do things well, we're going to have to build alternatives.
[01:10:27]  And we can't build alternatives if we don't know how to do electric work and plumbing and framing.
[01:10:32]  And we're going to have to learn.
[01:10:34]  So, what you're getting at, and I think it's very similar to.
[01:10:40]  So it struck a thought in me that if you go to ancient philosophy, right?
[01:10:46]  If you go to like Plato and Aristotle, some of the Greco Roman philosophers, if you go to also the ancient Hebrew sources, like biblical sources, if you go to Solomon, you're going to find there's a commonality in this sense.
[01:11:00]  There's so much different between them, ethically and just their concepts of God and everything.
[01:11:05]  But the thing that I see that's similar, that's so much different than modernity.
[01:11:10]  Is they both believed in a divine order.
[01:11:12]  Both sets of philosophers believe, well, there is something higher than us that's created this place, or there's a place that we fit into it somehow.
[01:11:24]  And so, one of the things, there's a book called Ideas Have Consequences.
[01:11:30]  I don't know if you've read that by Richard Weaver.
[01:11:32]  I haven't read it, but I've heard it.
[01:11:33]  Sproul used to reference it all the time.
[01:11:35]  Oh, it's a really, you should probably read it sometime.
[01:11:38]  It's really an interesting book.
[01:11:41]  But the argument in the book is that.
[01:11:43]  As basically as Plato's, the slackening hand of Plato, and then this world of forms, that there's a divine order, that there's these forms to shoot for, to strive for, these principles that tie together the particulars.
[01:12:01]  As that kind of faded and a philosophy called nominalism kind of gained sway, it gave rise to a number of things, one of them being specialization.
[01:12:12]  And the Industrial Revolution, of course, made this also possible.
[01:12:17]  But we went from the ideal man kind of being the philosopher king to the gentleman to now the specialist.
[01:12:23]  The person whose field of research is so narrow, they can't tell you anything about.
[01:12:29]  I mean, they know everything there is to know about, you know, some really, I mean, listen to dissertation topics when you go to a graduation.
[01:12:35]  Some of these things are so ridiculous.
[01:12:37]  You're like, you studied what?
[01:12:38]  You studied the habits of millennials from, you know, this year to that year and how they gave to First Baptist Church and, you know, like, what in the world?
[01:12:46]  But, you know, they know everything there is to know about that.
[01:12:50]  But they just don't know the principles that govern everything.
[01:12:54]  And that used to be the thing that was biblically, I mean, that's what Proverbs is about finding these universal principles.
[01:13:01]  There are universals, God has laid them down.
[01:13:04]  They apply to every field, whether it's history or science or art, or there's certain things that are just true.
[01:13:12]  And I think as Christians, that's what you're saying.
[01:13:16]  I think you're saying that that's what Christians need is to be generalists, where We understand how the universe works because we know the creator of the universe and the law he's laid down.
[01:13:27]  And so it doesn't matter what field we're talking about.
[01:13:29]  Fauci comes up with something.
[01:13:31]  I don't know much about medicine, but I do know Jesus and I do know the way he laid or governs the universe.
[01:13:37]  And I can think for myself.
[01:13:39]  I can go and I can research this knowing the principles I know and figure it out, even though I'm not an expert.
[01:13:46]  Independent thought.
[01:13:48]  And Peterson and those guys, they might be the Greco philosophers of today, but they have a.
[01:13:55]  Whether they believe in the same God we believe in, they do believe there's a divine order of sorts.
[01:14:00]  And that's important, that's significant.
[01:14:03]  And I don't see that coming from these other Christian elite sources.
[01:14:07]  They don't seem to claim divine order and they claim him by name, but they live as though there is no divine order.
[01:14:14]  It doesn't really matter.
[01:14:15]  Yeah.
[01:14:16]  It's just a blank canvas for you.
[01:14:18]  Politics.
[01:14:18]  Exactly.
[01:14:19]  And you can do whatever you want.
[01:14:21]  But you actually can't.
[01:14:24]  You have to vote for a Democrat.
[01:14:25]  That's what you have to do.
[01:14:27]  So, no, you're absolutely right.
[01:14:29]  And I think, by God's grace, I think that the veil is lifting.
[01:14:32]  And I think guys like you, guys like me, I think that our generation, especially, I think more so than boomers.
[01:14:41]  There's some faithful boomers, praise God for them.
[01:14:43]  But I think that our generation, your young Gen X, you know, old millennials, I think are really starting to see okay, we're starting to see the problem and we're starting to see the solution.
[01:14:53]  But I also feel like grieved in a sense, but also excited.
[01:14:56]  I feel grieved in the sense that I feel like it's too late for me, even though I'm young.
[01:14:59]  Like, I'm going to do this work.
[01:15:01]  I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to phone it in.
[01:15:02]  I'm not going to be lazy.
[01:15:03]  I'm not using this as an excuse.
[01:15:05]  But I'm 36 years old.
[01:15:07]  And I think I'm like, I, yeah, I was educated in public school.
[01:15:12]  There's a certain level of dumbness that comes with that education that I'm just never going to be able to shake.
[01:15:16]  I went to public school.
[01:15:17]  I'm dumb.
[01:15:18]  There's nothing you can do about that, you know, but, but by God's grace, I'm just smart enough.
[01:15:24]  I'm in the dumb category, but I'm the smartest of the dumbs that I won't put my kids in public school.
[01:15:31]  And a lot of what you're describing is like a classical Christian education.
[01:15:36]  Learning these, you know what I mean?
[01:15:37]  So, So, when I think about it, I get excited, you know, and some of this may be my post millennial eschatology, but I get excited thinking about like the next generation.
[01:15:45]  I think our kids, if God would be so gracious to keep them and sustain them and save them, and if we would be faithful as parents, I think our kids are going to do incredible things in the next 20, 30 years as they, you know, because I feel like we're coming into this in adulthood, but we could set them up from day one where it's just like, All this is just normal.
[01:16:10]  They're like, Yeah, dad, like, you didn't know that about George Washington.
[01:16:13]  And then they'd like say something to me in Latin.
[01:16:15]  And then I tell them, Stop shaming your father.
[01:16:18]  You're grounded.
[01:16:20]  No, but you know, like, and I think that that's, I really think that, you know, people are leaving public schools, homeschooling's on the rise.
[01:16:27]  Classic.
[01:16:28]  I think there's a shift right now.
[01:16:29]  And I think we're going to do a lot of good work by God's grace.
[01:16:32]  But I think our kids, I think they're going to inherit the land.
[01:16:36]  I think they're going to take over, John.
[01:16:37]  Yeah, I see what you're saying.
[01:16:39]  And I was actually at a political conference a few weeks ago and I was talking to a guy who's a Catholic.
[01:16:43]  Professor.
[01:16:45]  And he made an observation.
[01:16:46]  Now, this is Catholics.
[01:16:47]  This isn't evangelical Christians.
[01:16:49]  He made an observation that I thought was fascinating.
[01:16:51]  And I'm assuming it's across the board in Christendom.
[01:16:55]  He said he's noticed the last few years the crop of students coming in.
[01:17:00]  He said it used to be that, you know, their parents are making them go to school.
[01:17:04]  They're not very serious about their faith.
[01:17:06]  So the last few years, he goes, Yeah, I mean, the numbers have gone down a little bit as far as like how many students are coming to a Catholic institute, a traditional Catholic school.
[01:17:17]  He goes, But the ones who are coming, because they're different.
[01:17:20]  They believe it.
[01:17:22]  And obviously, I don't believe in Catholicism.
[01:17:26]  But I think there's something in the water broadly about in Christendom and in just traditional beliefs where the people who are believing them today have to hold on to them tighter.
[01:17:42]  And because it's a choice now, it's not something that'll just come to you kind of out of habit.
[01:17:48]  You have to make a very conscious effort.
[01:17:51]  And I'm seeing that.
[01:17:53]  I think in the evangelical world as well, there's just a new crop of people that are willing to be hated.
[01:18:01]  And it doesn't take many.
[01:18:02]  Jesus had 12 disciples, 500, if you want to take the largest number, 500 people.
[01:18:10]  He turned the world upside down in a generation.
[01:18:13]  It doesn't take huge, huge numbers.
[01:18:16]  It just takes really committed.
[01:18:17]  And I think the purity of what's happening right now is.
[01:18:23]  I think what you're saying is absolutely true.
[01:18:25]  And we may go through some persecution for a while.
[01:18:27]  That's possible, but it's going to be a refinement.
[01:18:30]  Right.
[01:18:31]  And that process is already starting.
[01:18:33]  Well, persecution helps because, you know, I think it was Increase Mathers who, you know, the faithfulness beget, you know, prosperity and the daughter ate the mother.
[01:18:44]  Is that?
[01:18:44]  Oh, yeah.
[01:18:45]  I've heard the quote.
[01:18:46]  Yeah.
[01:18:48]  So, like with America, it's just like there is like this rich history of faithfulness and then birth, you know, faithfulness does tend to like God ordinary.
[01:18:56]  Ordinarily blesses faithfulness and not just eternal blessing in the life to come, but ordinarily obedience brings about blessing.
[01:19:03]  And but then that blessing for the next generation that just assumes that blessing, right?
[01:19:09]  That that thinks they hit a triple, you know, but they were born on third base like that, you know, there can be some problems.
[01:19:15]  And so, it I think what's unique is like we're getting a real taste of of um hostility from from a culture that hates Christ and um insanity.
[01:19:27]  From a culture that rejects Christ and chaos, you know, like we're seeing, oh, that's why this matters.
[01:19:35]  Oh, that's whereas I don't think our parents saw that.
[01:19:38]  I think our parents were just like, they were kind of like, that's where the 11th commandment of thou shalt be nice.
[01:19:44]  I mean, that's a boomer thing, you know, and I think it's because they felt like we should be nice because they didn't see anybody, nobody was being mean in their perception.
[01:19:56]  And now, even boomers are coming around, they're like, oh my gosh.
[01:20:00]  Like, what is going on?
[01:20:02]  There's sort of a gentleman's code that made sense for the world that we've left.
[01:20:07]  A civility.

=== Civility in War (04:35) ===

[01:20:08]  You've talked about that.
[01:20:08]  Civility.
[01:20:09]  Yeah.
[01:20:10]  There was, I mean, I have, I think, George Washington's book on it here somewhere.
[01:20:13]  But yeah, it's right here.
[01:20:14]  George Washington's rules for civility.
[01:20:16]  But there was this genuine respect and kind of thinking, just thinking well of one another, extending charity, not attributing false motives.
[01:20:28]  There's still some guys.
[01:20:30]  And I think you're right.
[01:20:31]  It's boomers more.
[01:20:32]  It's even boomers on our side who are in the SBC.
[01:20:36]  They still have this code they're operating by where if they're attacked, they won't hit back.
[01:20:43]  They don't want to say names.
[01:20:45]  They don't want to call someone a false teacher.
[01:20:46]  Some of that, I think, is from that bygone era.
[01:20:51]  But that's going away as people get the rude awakenings and red pills.
[01:20:56]  And if I could draw an analogy, maybe this might be a good place to land the plane.
[01:21:00]  I don't know.
[01:21:00]  Yeah, go ahead.
[01:21:01]  I think with Jordan Peterson and Tim Keller, since those are the two biggest names we keep bringing up, with a Tim Keller, as we're thinking about coming persecution, Tim Keller's going to be wearing the same uniform that we wear on the battlefield.
[01:21:14]  And he's actually going to have some stripes on his uniform.
[01:21:18]  Like he's a general, he's someone important we should listen to and obey.
[01:21:22]  And when he calls charge, we should charge.
[01:21:24]  Of course, he never uses that command.
[01:21:27]  But he's someone who claims to have the experience, been there, done that.
[01:21:33]  He's wearing our uniform.
[01:21:36]  Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, is not wearing our uniform.
[01:21:39]  He's wearing a different uniform.
[01:21:41]  It's from another country or something, but he's there in the trenches with us.
[01:21:46]  The difference between the two is the direction they shoot in.
[01:21:49]  Tim Keller's gun is not facing the enemy.
[01:21:55]  Tim Keller's gun is facing you and me.
[01:21:57]  That's right.
[01:21:57]  Gordon Peterson may not have our uniform, but his gun is facing the same person.
[01:22:01]  That's a good analogy.
[01:22:02]  Great job.
[01:22:03]  And I think that is why there's a trust built because we're in survival mode now.
[01:22:09]  Right.
[01:22:10]  We know that the church is actually under real attack and no one can convince us.
[01:22:14]  No amount of massaging this will convince us it's not happening.
[01:22:18]  We know it's happening.
[01:22:20]  And we're looking for someone who's going to, are you going to help us fight or are you going to shoot at us?
[01:22:25]  Are you with the enemy?
[01:22:26]  Right.
[01:22:27]  Right.
[01:22:27]  We'll team up with the French if we have to.
[01:22:30]  Not David French.
[01:22:32]  Yeah, the French, not David.
[01:22:34]  No, you're right, John.
[01:22:35]  That's a fantastic analogy.
[01:22:36]  And I think as we do that, as we are in survival mode and as we're getting out of this mess, as we're at war, let's partner where we can partner.
[01:22:45]  But as we do, let's just not make alliances.
[01:22:51]  That are so deep, that are too deep, I should say, that we can't back out of them later.
[01:22:57]  Meaning that, like, yeah, let's affirm Peterson when he says what is true.
[01:23:02]  Let's not start calling Peterson a Christian.
[01:23:05]  And I think I've seen some Christians go too far.
[01:23:08]  They're too eager to say, he's on our team.
[01:23:11]  And when they say he's on our team, they mean, like, he's going to be in heaven with me.
[01:23:16]  Like, he's a brother.
[01:23:18]  And we don't need to go that.
[01:23:20]  And I think some Christians, some of them genuinely regenerate.
[01:23:24]  But just immature and desperate, more desperate than they should have been, did that with Trump.
[01:23:31]  And it didn't work out well for our team, for our uniform, saying, oh, Trump is, it's great to have a good, godly Christian man in the White House.
[01:23:41]  It's like, what?
[01:23:44]  Will I vote for Trump over Joe Biden?
[01:23:45]  My goodness, yes, a trillion times yes.
[01:23:49]  But I can say, thank you, Trump, for those three Supreme Court justices.
[01:23:54]  God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.
[01:23:57]  And Trump did do that.
[01:23:59]  And he kept his promise, which is more than I can say for most Republicans.
[01:24:03]  And I want to honor him and I appreciate him.
[01:24:06]  And I hope God saves him because, as of now, as far as I can tell, he's going to hell.
[01:24:11]  And I'm not looking up to him for spiritual counsel or any, you know what I mean?
[01:24:14]  I can keep both of those things can be simultaneously true.
[01:24:17]  And I think, as Christians who are actually engaging in the culture war that does exist and that the Bible does tell us we should engage in, I think if we can just have that mind about us with your Jordan Petersons or your Donald Trump or your Ben Shippert, then I.
[01:24:32]  I think we'll be okay.
[01:24:33]  You know, I think there's a middle.
[01:24:34]  I don't think it's just anybody who's not 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is not on my side.
[01:24:41]  You know what I mean?
[01:24:42]  That's what we're deciding right now.

=== Two Kingdom Degrees (01:17) ===

[01:24:43]  Where are the lines?
[01:24:45]  You know, like how tight does it have to be for me to partner?
[01:24:51]  And I think that there are degrees.
[01:24:53]  And if we know those degrees and we hold to those degrees and we don't make partnerships, and I think that's what I would say to guys like The Daily Y, I would say, I understand you like Dave Rubin and he's your buddy.
[01:25:07]  But you doing a documentary on what is a woman and mocking the gender dysphoria, insanity in our nation, which is worthy of mockery and is good.
[01:25:19]  But then, you know, congratulating Dave Rubin on his adoption that's what we don't want to do.
[01:25:29]  Right.
[01:25:30]  Yeah.
[01:25:31]  So you sound like a great Augustinian two kingdom person right now.
[01:25:37]  Yeah.
[01:25:38]  I city of two cities.
[01:25:39]  I'm down for two cities.
[01:25:40]  Yeah.
[01:25:41]  All right, John.
[01:25:42]  Well, thank you so much for your time.
[01:25:44]  Thanks so much for listening.
[01:25:45]  But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor.
[01:25:48]  Take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
[01:25:52]  This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.
[01:26:00]  Thanks so much.