Samuel Sey argues Christians may naturally prioritize family and nation without committing racism, distinguishing natural affection from hatred while defending Christian nationalism as a bastion of Western faith. He asserts global animosity toward America stems from envy rather than historical guilt, noting the U.S. abolished slavery early compared to Ghana's delayed apology. Sey insists believers cannot partner with non-Christians on fundamental issues like abortion or same-sex parenting, explicitly rejecting alliances with figures like Candace Owens and Dave Rubin despite shared cultural battles, urging a movement that remains distinctly Christian until Calvary. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Five Star Review Request00:03:14
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Thanks.
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged to have returning as a guest Samuel Say.
He is at slow to write.
That's his handle.
That's what he goes by when it's, uh, Comes to Twitter, also with his blog.
You can follow the things he's writing.
And he's actually going to be coming out.
I think he talks about this at the end of our episode a little bit, but he's in the near future, him and his wife are going to be launching their own podcast.
He's always been, you know, working through a writing format.
He's a wonderful writer, but we need video and we need audio and we need all the different formats and all the different forms that we can get.
So be on the lookout for that.
Samuel Say and his wife launching a new podcast in the near future.
But if you want to hear Samuel Say right now, well, then just stay tuned because he's our special guest for this episode.
Oh, hi, I didn't see you there.
Thanks for sticking around.
I've got an important announcement to make.
That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
Perhaps you've heard of him.
If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
It's fantastic.
Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
All that is covered.
So you need to get that.
This is how you do it.
Go and register right now at RightResponseConference.com.
Again, that's RightResponseConference.com.
God bless.
To every aspect of life, this is Theology Applied.
All right, I am joined, I believe, for maybe the second or third time, I can't remember, but returning special guest, a friend.
We got to do a conference together a couple months ago, but we are joined by Samuel Say.
Samuel, thanks for coming on the show.
It's an honor, thank you.
Great to see you.
All right, so we've got some questions.
What we're doing is we're trying something new, we're leading our audience, you know, ahead of recording these episodes and saying, Hey, if you were in the room with Samuel Say, are there any questions that you would like to ask him?
And so I'm going to take a few of these different questions that we got in.
Obviously, we're not going to ask all of them, but I got about four or five questions that I thought were good.
And so I'm going to just start with these.
And then there's some things that I know you and I want to talk about.
One of them is Candace Owens and Dave Rubin and that kind of situation going on.
And you wrote an article about that recently that's gotten a lot of attention.
I think you've got some good things to say.
So let's go ahead and start with a couple questions first.
America's Bad Spot00:03:06
Probably going to be the most difficult.
It's something that's serious.
It may even be uncomfortable for you to talk about, but Backstreet or NSYNC?
I am a huge fan, which is why I'm guessing the person's asking me that.
It might seem strange because I have a lot of these, I guess, hot takes on social media, but the biggest hot take I have is that NSYNC should be nowhere near as esteemed as the greatest band of all time, the Bastion Boys.
So, absolutely, I'm a Bastion Boys fan over NSYNC.
All right.
So I thought I was talking to a fellow conservative, but apparently I'm talking to somebody who's gay.
So, uh, I, Mr., why are you gay?
The only reason why I got married was so that I could get rid of those rumors, okay?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you can keep loving the backstreet boys, but uh, let's say, hey, I'm a heterosexual married man.
Um, okay, so here's the next question.
This one's a little bit more serious.
Uh, which place looks like it's headed in an even more depraved direction first, the U.S. or Canada?
Yeah, so the person asking the question has to be American.
Because if this person was a Canadian, there's no way to be asking that question.
Sadly, my nation, Canada, is significantly ahead of America when it comes to the speed with which they are progressing or regressing towards just more totalitarianism and evil.
But absolutely, it's.
It's not even close to be honest with you.
As bad as America is, America right now is where Canada was about 10, 15 years ago.
So, yeah, it's, I mean, both nations are headed in very, very bad and concerning directions, but unfortunately, Canada is worse.
Yes, I would agree.
With that, I think America is in a bad spot, but it's encouraging the sense that I think one of the reasons why America is not as depraved as some other Western nations.
I mean, it is in some regards.
I mean, some of the abortion legislation is, you know, like makes European countries look conservative.
Yeah.
I mean, like most European countries, it's like, you know, 12 to 15 weeks, maybe at most in some cases, like 24 weeks.
But, you know, America is very progressive and, you know, demented in regards to abortion laws.
But even with that, you know, there's this silver lining of hope, and it's not a small silver lining the fact that Roe was overturned.
So I feel like America is.
In a, I want to say headed in a wrong direction.
I would say it's in a bad place.
But actually, I think there's a lot of hope for it actually heading in a better direction.
I actually feel like we, the left kind of overplayed its hand globally, you know, all in nations all around the world.
Celebrating Cultural Virtues00:10:41
But I feel like the US, a lot of people, you know, kind of were like, no, sir, uh uh, no.
And so now I feel like there's like some pretty serious pushback.
And I'm curious to see what happens with the election that we have coming up.
Um, yeah, absolutely.
All right, here's another one for you.
This one might be a little too open ended, but here it goes.
How should Christians view their ancestry, and should this inform how we raise our children?
So, what, uh, in other words, what should be the role of our families, traditions, and culture in our parenting?
Yeah, there's a lot there, but hopefully, I answered the question adequately.
Uh, I'm assuming that question is coming from a tweet that I had earlier today.
Um, where um, I said something about how I love my skin color, I love that I'm black, um, you know, because God made me fearfully and wonderfully black, and that I also love my ancestry.
The same should be true for anybody, anyone should say the same thing, too.
We all feel we're all fearfully and wonderfully made, um, so I can say that I'm I can't say I'm proud that I'm black because I had nothing to do with it, but I love being black, and that um, you know, you as well, so obviously, should love being you know, white or or whatever the actual skin color is, it's not exactly white, nor am I really black, but nevertheless, um.
No one's perfectly white except for maybe like some Swedish dudes, you know, and nobody's perfectly black except for maybe Wesley Snipes.
You know what I mean?
You know, so everybody else is just something that you know, there's a scale between, like, I don't know, Greta Thunberg and Wesley Snipes, and everybody else is somewhere in between.
Yes, yes, no.
Um, I've lost track now with the question.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was good, that was good.
But I think it's, um, how sorry, yeah, can you please?
Well, you were just saying, I'm happy to be black, and so the question was, like, how should Christians view their ancestry, right?
And should this inform our parenting?
Yeah, I think it's by.
Rejoicing in God's grace and providence through which we were created or established in his image.
And that, look, I rejoice that my great great great grandfather obviously would be Adam and then Noah.
And then all the way through my Ghanaian or my tribe in Ghana would be the Akan tribe.
And then also within that tribe, also the Fanti tribe.
And that means a lot to me.
And in Revelations 5, We know that God boasts that in heaven there will be a multitude of people of different tribes.
We see the Apostle Paul rejoicing and boasting over the fact that not he's boasting in the Lord, obviously, but that he is grateful and that he is not ashamed that he's a Jew.
So we should absolutely appreciate God's providence and his blessing through our ancestry, not in a way that would lead to, of course, supremacist thinking, obviously, for either camp, right?
Unfortunately, there are some people out there who are black supremacists who believe that our black DNA or our melanin makes us superior to other so called races, although there's no such thing as different races, there's only one race.
Nevertheless, we can rejoice in God's providence and His creation in terms of how we teach our children or how we raise kids.
That's interesting.
I'm not a parent, but one of the things that I plan to do is since I'm fascinated by my ancestry and my wife's ancestry, my wife is.
Is a white woman.
She has Dutch ancestry.
And I love that, especially because it was actually the Dutch who initially colonized Ghana, my people, before the British.
And I want to talk about that history.
I want to talk about God's providence and how God brought Dutch Christians to come to Ghana to preach the gospel, which eventually led to my ancestors being saved.
And now my wife and I, though we have different histories, We have the same Lord.
I want to teach my children about that.
I want to teach my children that they are not really mixed, right?
That they are one race.
You know, the black, you know, their skin color is not who they are, it's just one of their features.
So I think, in terms of how we raise children, just teach the history.
But yeah, letting them know that, of course, that again, because sadly today, we, you know, we teach children today that, you know, you're white, you're black, you're this, and this shapes who you are, this shapes.
This shapes your standing socially.
All that stuff is, of course, junk.
Teach them the history, but primarily in that it's in the Word of God so that we can boast in the gospel where all of us one day will stand before God in different languages and in different tribes and ethnicities and rejoicing in the gospel.
Amen.
Yeah, there's nothing inherently superior or inferior in regards to skin pigment or ethnicity, but there is something to be said for cultures, and cultures tend to form around certain tribes and ethnicities.
Ethnic people and cultures, all skin pigment, all ethnicity is equal, but not all cultures are equal.
And so, to be able to say, here's our ancestry and here's the culture of our ancestors, and be able to be proud, not in an arrogant way, but, you know, like I'm proud to be an American, be able to be proud about the things in that culture that honor the Lord, the things that align with the scripture, right?
Because we're not standpoint epistemologists.
It's not relativism.
We have a transcendent universal standard God's word, God's law.
And so, to be able to say, this is our ancestry.
And here were the problems.
But here were some of the virtues by God's grace, you know, because of the gospel coming to bear with our culture, or even some of the virtues by God's common grace.
These are because all people are created in the image of God, and instinctively there's the conscience within.
And here's how some of our ancestors got it right before even hearing the gospel in their outward deeds and behaviors and some of these aspects of our culture.
And so we're proud about this, and we want to hold on to this and preserve this.
We don't want it just to fade away because.
Here's the thing like, one of the things that I've been thinking about is like, there, what you're saying with Revelation 5 is, you know, God boasts, you know, of the diversity of heaven, every tribe, tongue, and language, which really doesn't put a lot of emphasis on God's not so much boasting about all the colors of the rainbow being represented in terms of ethnicity, but it's more so language and tribe and ancestry and culture and language,
you know, tongue and these kinds of distinctives.
And there is a variety.
And this is a good thing that God celebrates.
And so, my point is I think that there is an argument to be made about saying that there's a beauty in the distinctiveness of the one human race.
There's a beauty about the distinctions, the manifold wisdom of God as we see it between multiple tribes.
We have a story in the Bible, namely Genesis chapter 11, where people tried to forego.
The cultural mandate of being fruitful, multiplying, and filling the earth, subduing the earth.
And they said, you know, let us make a name for ourselves and build a great tower.
Let's congregate here so that we are not spread out over the face of the earth.
And there's a sameness there.
And God says that's not good.
And God's punishing, first and foremost, their arrogance that they could ascend to heaven with this tower and be as God.
That's predominant in this narrative.
But I think secondarily, we could say, but there's also a problem.
Problem that God wanted distinct peoples.
And so to say we want to preserve ancestry and history and cultures and these kinds of things, and we want to preserve those things within cultures that vary but are still in line with God's transcendent standard.
Because there are certain things about cultures, and I know that this is controversial, but people say that's where it gets into this hatred of whiteness.
It's like, Well, the scientific method, you know, that's not universally moral or good or right.
That's just a relative thing.
And there are other ways of ascertaining truth.
And it's like, no, that's called objectivity.
That's, you know, or promptness, right?
Like, you know, there are certain cultures where promptness doesn't matter.
And there may be an argument to be made at some level.
But if the lack of promptness stems from ultimately just a disrespect of other people's time, well, then that's not a virtue.
And we don't need to preserve those things.
We need to say, hey, you know what?
Out of respect for others, let's be on time, unless there's a reasonable argument to be made to the contrary.
So, we're celebrating the distinctiveness of cultures, but only insofar as those certain aspects of the culture are indeed virtues rather than vices.
And what determines whether or not something is virtuous is the ultimate transcendent standard of God's word.
What do you think?
Yeah.
You mentioned earlier that what you were saying would be controversial.
Well, in light of that, I guess let me add one more controversial.
All right, go for it.
You know, there's something that I've been thinking a lot about.
I've always believed this, but especially after.
Queen Elizabeth's death and all the hot takes being said about the British monarchy's role in colonialism and everything.
And, you know, in terms of some cultures, while we rejoice that, you know, we have different cultures, we have different people, therefore different cultures, we then, that means then it's a fact that some cultures are better than others.
And I can tell you that, look, as oppressive as the colonials were in some aspects, not completely, but in some aspects, in Ghana, where my people truly did suffer in many ways.
I also rejoice that since they had a better culture, they stopped rampant paganism in Ghana, where child sacrifices are almost completely, not entirely, but almost completely erased from our culture.
Diversity Beyond Skin Color00:11:25
So while I rejoice over my ancestry, I can also acknowledge that because my ancestors are also sinful people like I am.
But since they did not believe the gospel and they were pagans, they had a certain culture that was evil.
And even the Western culture, which is also, of course, tainted by evil, they also had some aspects of it, was a better culture, which is why now Ghana is better off, surprisingly, even with colonialism, because God, of course, will sometimes use some evil to bring about good.
And we know that, of course, throughout biblical history.
But another thing is this.
You know, one of the things that when we talk about Revelations 5, and people always abuse that text in ways that really upset me, and again, not to put my blog here, but I'm planning on writing a blog that I've been really kind of preparing for for several years.
But it's when people try to bring Revelations 5 into a local church.
And what I mean by that is, they say that, yeah, see, Revelations 5, your church is supposed to look like that.
And I, I struggle to contain how much that angers me because God is boasting, saying, See, look at all these people from all the different parts of the world throughout history that I have saved.
They have different languages, they have different ethnicities, and they are in heaven.
Your local church is not heaven.
It's not.
The universal church is.
You know, diverse universal church is diverse, diverse, yes.
But, but, but your local church doesn't have to be if it is, praise God.
If it's not, praise God, right?
I have left when I left Toronto eight months ago to come to the church that I'm in now.
I'm the second black person in my church.
It is very different from the church I was in, where the white people were basically the minority.
It's very different.
But you know what?
It's the same gospel, and we are worshiping in spirit and truth.
And that's all that matters.
So it troubles me when people try to make their church a heaven, basically, in terms of wanting to boast in themselves about how diverse their church is.
Right.
And here's the thing like, the hypocrisy is dense because we wouldn't do that with any other nation, right?
Like, we would never go to Ghana and say, oh, this Christian church in Ghana, it's, you know, it's kind of like nothing but black people, seems a little racist.
You know, like we'd be like, no, you're, it's gone, dude.
Like, what do you like, you know, like if there's a, you know, like Vodi, Vodi Bakum and, you know, Conrad Mbewe, you know, like I imagine, I haven't been, but I imagine that predominantly their church is going to be black because of where it's located in Zambia.
And so that, like, and so when you come now, I understand that, you know, it falls apart a little bit.
It's not a one to one ratio because America is much more ethnically diverse.
But nobody's planting, my church isn't America's church.
You know what I mean?
My church is a local church.
America is a pretty big map.
My church is a Georgetown, Texas church, right?
So the diversity at a national level of America is not going to be reflected in my church because I don't have people commuting from 1,300 miles away.
So the question is what is Georgia or Georgetown, not Georgia, but Georgetown, Texas, what does that look like?
And are we an accurate reflection of where we actually are?
And, but even with that, um, I, you know, I would say that that's a great thing.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I also don't think there's something wrong with the absence of that.
So, even if you are in a place that is, um, let's say it's 30% black and it's, you know, 20% Latino and it's 50% white, um, I don't think you have to have that exact ratio represented in your local church just because that's the ratio of your city.
You, you may, for whatever reason, um, still have a majority of Latinos and a minority of white or majority of white and minority.
Of Latinos.
And part of that just is naturally the way that relationships form, the community that's there.
It's like it's the one gospel, it's the one Christian faith passed down to the saints through the ages.
But there is a sense of just the makeup and the community and the culture of the church and the natural relationships and friendships that people have.
Like if you start, if you plant a church with 20 white people and they're inviting their friends, and if the majority of their friends and family are also white people, then you're going to have.
Majority white church.
And here's the thing it's always one way.
It's so hypocritical because you can be in a place where the city is actually 80% white, but have black churches.
And no one says a word about that.
What are your thoughts on that, Samuel?
And about that, not even just that.
So I was raised in what some would call the black church, not just in Ghana, where obviously, but I mean in Toronto, which is one of the most multi ethnic cities in the entire world.
Where I think over half the population were not born in Canada.
I was raised for 10 years.
I was raised in what someone called a black church, but I'd actually call it a West African church because it was primarily Ghanaian, but you had different kinds of West Africans and even other African nations more towards East or South or Central, and then Caribbean people out there too.
So if someone were to just come into the church, it would say, oh, it's a black church.
But we never called it that.
We just called it, well, it's an African church because you have different kinds of black people in this church.
Well, in the same way, it applies to the so called average white church, too.
Because, as we said earlier, our ethnicity is not shaped by our skin color.
So, you can have white people, you know, whatever that means, who have the same skin color, but they have different ethnicities.
They have different ancestry.
So, in a way, there's no such thing as a black church and no such thing as a white church, right?
Because we are not shaped.
I am not, like, when I'm in heaven, I mean, it may sound strange how I would say it, but when I think of my ethnicity, it's not as a black person.
It's as a Fonti or an Akan from Ghana.
That's my tribal group, right?
The same way a white person's ethnicity is not their skin color, it is their ancestry.
And you have different white people who have different ethnicities.
So the whole thing is absurd.
So, in a sense, every white church is ethnically diverse.
If we believe in what the Bible says in Revisions 5, we know that they're ethnically diverse because, again, our ethnicity is not shaped by skin color.
That's a really good point.
Yeah, I completely agree.
Let me ask you this.
Okay, so I'm thinking of like Romans 9, where Paul, you know, he prefaces his argument by saying, you know, he just talks about his natural affection, I think is probably the theological term that I would use natural affections, which you have to be careful with that, right?
Because we also, you know, for those who aren't in Christ, for an unbeliever, you also have the sin nature.
So not everything that's natural naturally aligns with.
The things of God.
That's why we must be born again and have a new nature and become new creatures in Christ Jesus.
And so, but there is still an argument to be made from nature.
That's Romans chapter one, right?
So, by natural revelation, the creation itself speaks, it says something about God, and it says something true about God.
But it doesn't communicate everything about God, right?
We need special revelation, not just natural revelation, but special revelation to understand and comprehend the things of the gospel.
So, there's natural revelation.
But then there's also natural affections.
And Paul talks about his affections for his fellow Jewish people.
He says, My kinsmen, right?
My kinsmen according to the flesh.
And he says, I would be willing to be cut off, eternally cut off for their sake.
And as far as I know, there's no other place in any of Paul's writings, which make up approximately two thirds of the New Testament, where Paul clearly loves the Gentiles.
He loves the Corinthians.
He loves the Ephesians.
He loves the Philippians.
He loves all these different people.
But he never says, of any other people group, I'd be willing to go to hell for them.
He reserves that language exclusively for his kinsmen, according, and he even spells it out in case anybody was wondering.
He's not making a spiritual argument.
He says, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.
That he has, and it's, he has a, what I'm saying is, he has a particular affection and priority of loves, right?
For his kinsmen, according to the flesh.
And I think, you know, when I think of racism, and maybe you could help me with this, just defining the term.
When I think of racism, I think of, you know, it is favoritism.
So, you know, like we're not called to show favoritism.
James says we shouldn't show it based off of socioeconomic status, right?
Favoring the rich rather than the poor because the rich, the elites, they're usually the ones who are throwing us in prison, you know?
So, you know, and has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith?
And we're also not called to show favoritism in terms of, you know, rich and poor.
But also, I had another example.
Let me just skip it.
But what I was going to say is are there any forms of favoritism that are acceptable?
Because what I'm getting at is, I think it's one thing to view someone negatively, to think little of someone based off of some kind of outward appearance.
But I don't see the Apostle Paul saying that.
I don't see the Apostle Paul saying that Gentiles, I have an aversion towards Gentiles, or I have a lack of love towards Gentiles.
This is the same Paul who said, as often as you have opportunity in Galatians, as often as you have opportunity, do good to all out of a love for all, but especially the household of faith.
So what he's saying is, there's a priority of loves.
And it doesn't mean that we don't love someone.
It means we love everyone, but we still have to prioritize.
I love my wife more than other women.
I love my kids more than my neighbor's kids.
And I love my country more than I love other countries.
And I think to do anything else is actually, ironically, sin.
And it seems like only in America and only with white people in America do we think it's a virtue to hate ourselves.
And so Paul's prioritizing.
Loving Ghanaian Canadians00:02:04
I think of John Knox, right?
Give me Scotland lest I die because he's a Scotsman.
He doesn't say, Give me Germany lest I die.
Like, so is that racist that he's praying a special prayer for Scotland?
What do you think?
I'm smiling as you're saying all that because I'm enjoying this conversation.
This is good.
And I, you know, it's interesting because I agree with everything you just said.
You know, I might, so what I want to say might sound shocking to people, but don't worry.
My wife knows this.
It's, and it shouldn't be, Controversial, it shouldn't be weird whatsoever.
So, as I said before, my wife is a white woman, she knows generally the kind of woman that I was originally attracted to be a black woman, right?
Like it, you know, it's which might surprise people who think that I'm an Uncle Tom or something, you know, be like, Well, you have a white wife, they sit, but whatever.
Um, and not just even a not just even a black woman, but a Ghanaian woman, because that's my I grew up, I'm a Ghanaian.
I grew up mostly around Ghanaians.
It's only natural, right?
On top of that, my friends, this is to bring my Ghanaian and Canadian nationality together.
Now that I've moved to a small, they call it a small city here, but it's a small town, man.
It's not a city, it's a very small town.
And in Toronto, where there are a lot of Ghanaian Canadians there.
And a Ghanaian Canadian, of course, has a lot of similarities with Ghanaians.
Differences because they are also Canadian.
I miss Ghanaian Canadians a lot.
And that, I will say it, it's not racist, it's not wrong.
My favorite kind of person is a Ghanaian Canadian because I'm a Ghanaian Canadian and I have a special love for Ghanaians and Canadians.
When you combine the two, I have a special love for Ghanaian Canadians.
Natural Affections Explained00:06:49
Right.
So it's there's so, you know, so the question being is it racist?
To have some kind of a favoritism towards a certain kinds of person, you know, in generally, so as you said, obviously, if it's to harm somebody else, right, if you are discriminating against somebody else, if you're showing partiality against someone else, where you're choosing not to love someone because of who they are, that's sin.
But at the same time, you know, so as you said, with Oh man, I'm forgetting his name.
The reformer, John Knox.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's nothing wrong with having a special love for certain kinds of people.
Again, it's one thing.
Racism is hate, right?
It's hate towards another person.
Right.
You can love people more than others, right?
If you love some people, then you hate others.
That's sinful.
That's racism.
And to be a Christian, it seems that you have to love some people more than others.
Like, I am commanded to love my wife more than others.
I'm commanded to love my children more than others.
I'm commanded to honor my mother and father more than I honor other mothers and fathers.
So there has to be a place for that.
Yeah, and we're also called to love Christians more than non Christians.
That's right.
I was going to bring that up.
Is that not favoritism, right?
So do all.
As often as you have opportunity, do good to all, but especially the household of faith.
So the second half of that verse is you could read it as, but prioritize the household of faith.
And why does Paul even feel the necessity to bring an order of affections and priorities into play?
Because, not because of fallenness, the sinfulness of man, but because of finitude.
The creatureliness of men, meaning as often as you have opportunity to do good to all, but implicitly what Paul's saying is, but you're not going to have the opportunity to do good to all.
Why?
Because you're a sinner?
No, because you're a creature.
It's not fallenness, it's finitude.
Christ, who is head of the church, is infinite, but his body, the church here on earth, is finite.
Its resources are finite.
It has a finite number of people, a finite number of dollars, a finite number of hours in the day, and all these kinds of things.
And so we are told to prioritize.
So you could literally say that in Galatians, Paul is saying, Show favoritism towards the people of God.
So it's not just favoritism in any of its forms that the Bible actually demonizes as sin, because there is a good kind of favoritism that's not only permissible, but actually commanded.
But then there's so I feel like what James is saying is not all favoritism is sin.
I think he's saying don't show sinful favoritism.
And favor, prioritizing someone based off of economic status over someone else is a sinful form of favoritism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If I. If I just naturally love Ghanaians or Canadians more than Americans, for example, that's not sinful or wrong.
But if I am unwilling to love an American because they are an American, that's sinful.
But if my heart is just naturally right, not because I think Canadians are better than Americans, not because I think Ghanaians are better than Americans, right?
If I'm just if I just happen to have a special love.
For Ghanaians and Canadians, where I'm saying, you know what, these are the people that I just tend to relate better with.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And it's not because you're saying they're better people.
You're saying they're my people.
They're my people.
Exactly.
The difference is, of course, is that a lot of people can twist that into having supremacist thinking or partiality.
Well, that's a very different thing, right?
Where the Apostle Paul.
Was preaching the gospel to the Gentiles.
So he was not discriminated against the Gentiles whatsoever.
But again, as you said, he had a special love for the Jews, where he says that he would be willing himself to be accursed because of his people.
That's a special love.
I mean, if you're willing to be, you know, to face the wrath of God for a certain group, that's clearly a special love, not just love, but a special love.
That's right.
Where he does not have that kind of love for a Gentile.
Again, he loves the Gentiles, obviously, he's preaching the gospel.
But he has a unique special love for the Jews.
The same way that I have a special love, now I'm not saying that I love my people the way that the Apostle Paul loves his people.
But I do love Ghanaians and Canadians just more because that's who I am.
Right.
And over time, you know, so Ghanaians and Canadians, but you were born and raised at least, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first nine years or 11 years of your life in Ghana, what was it?
10 years.
10?
10 years, yeah, in Ghana, yeah.
So your first 10 years, but I like what you're saying, and I just want to point this out to our audience.
You're not saying my favorite kind of person is Ghanaian, you're saying my favorite kind of person.
Is a Canadian Ghanaian because you spent 10 years in Ghana, but then you also spent how many years in Canada?
25 years.
25 years.
And this is the point that I want to make now, and I'm saying this for our audience, I'm also saying this as a pastoral charge to you, Samuel.
When we talk 10 years from now, I want to hear you say my favorite kind of person is an American Canadian Ghanaian because I think there's something to say.
These are my people because it's where I'm from.
But there's also, I think of Ruth, where she's entering in now to a new people.
And she says, from now on, your people will be my people and your God will be my God.
And so it's like, all right, so you have a special place in your heart for Canadian Ghanaians, but you live in America now.
And so I want to see you eating apple pie.
And I want to see, you know, but and over, but here's the thing like, it's not just like a command to do it.
This goes back to natural affections.
It's something that will happen over 10 years of living, you know, like if you moved to Kansas and lived in some cornfield, you know, for over all of a sudden, you're going to say, you know, who some of my favorite people in all the world are?
Corn fed, you know, Hicks from the sticks, you know, in Kansas, you know, the God's country.
That's where Superman was from.
That's where he was born and raised, you know, like, how can you go wrong with Kansas?
Moral Obligation to Neighbors00:13:19
And I think that's natural and not only permissible, but I think.
There actually is a moral obligation of sorts to a certain extent to say, if I'm going to go to a place, these are going to be my people.
And it's not overnight.
I'm sure Ruth had to work at it a little bit.
She's making a pledge of allegiance, you might say, that probably progressively became more and more true in terms of her affections over time.
But it was something that it was a deliberate decision that she saw as only being.
As merely just logical.
It only made sense that I'm going to go and be among these people.
I'm going to benefit from them, from their economy, from their laws, from their culture.
I'm going to live among them.
You know, like if I'm in trouble, their doctors are going to help me when I'm sick.
Their police officers are going to come and help me if I'm in trouble, if there's an emergency.
These are going to be my people.
And this is, I think, part of the case for Christian nationalism nations have gods and secular humanism.
That is a god, it's a false god.
Um, pluralism is a god, it's many gods, it's public atheism.
And so, every country in America, all the nations for that matter, but but since you and I are both here, um, America's god needs to be the triune god to where people can, where we have immigration, but legal immigration.
And I think it should be mitigated.
Um, I don't think that America has an obligation to take 10 million, even if they're legal, 10 million uh, legal immigrants per year.
I think, I think that it's been way too high.
I think there needs to be some careful mitigation.
There needs to be compassion, these kinds of things, but there needs to be mitigation.
There needs to be ethical laws.
And I think it's even right to say that there are some particular types of people that we're looking for.
We need more doctors, or we need every other nation does that except for America.
Only in America are we self sabotaged.
And I think it's because we've reached such a high tier of decadence.
You can track global empires with British, Roman, they hit a point where they were so successful and so decadent and so powerful that it was actually no one from outside could touch them.
There were no outside threats.
So they all ended up ultimately imploding.
And altruism was one of the downfalls, a misguided altruism that where they lowered.
All this loss of inhibition to where, in the name of compassion and empathy, they actually created their own demise.
And so, my point is, I think there's something to be said for nations should worship the triune God.
And when people come in legally, there should be a certain expectation to assimilate and to say, you will always be the person that you came from.
And that heritage and that history matters.
But Also, there needs to be a sense in which I'm proud to be an American.
These are my people.
And this God, this triune God, is my God.
And I don't see how that is racist or white supremacist or, man, if that's Christian nationalism, and we got some things to work out with the whole thing.
But if that is what Christian nationalism is, I can stand on the word of God and defend it pretty strongly.
Absolutely.
I. Always, especially now that I'm married to a white woman who's not Ghanaian or Canadian, I think a lot about God's providence in my ancestry or my nationality.
And I think, well, why did God make me a Ghanaian?
Why did God make me a Canadian?
And why has God, is God, you know, about to make me an American now?
See, I think the Apostle Paul's special love for the Jews isn't just because they are his nationality, that's his nationality.
Because if he was an adopted Jew, we know how the Gentiles were supposed to act or assimilate when they were to embrace the Jewish faith, right?
The Old Testament, within the Old Testament covenant.
And so my point is that I have a special love for Ghanaians, not just because I'm Ghanian, but because Ghanaians were my neighbors.
I have a special love for Canadians, not just because I'm Canadian, but because Canadians were my neighbors.
And I'm going to have, or I am having, a special love for Americans.
Because Americans are my neighbors.
My wife is American.
Lord willing, my children will be American.
My neighbors, you know, now, my in laws are American.
So there is a natural, of course, everyone, of course, is our neighbor, right?
But there is a unique, special love and really a commandment from God for us to love the people that He has surrounded us with.
So that there means then that there's nothing wrong with wanting your nation to.
To thrive under God's blessing, there's nothing wrong with wanting your nation to be a Christian nation.
So, now, of course, people, you know, some of the concerns people have with that term is because of the white nationalism aspects that people try to tie into it.
But that's really just, of course, people wanting to use that to scare people away from.
I've mentioned how, yeah, I believe that we should, you know, we should, of course, live under Christian principles in America.
People say, what, you're a Christian nationalist?
If you want to call me that, whatever, I don't care.
I just, you know, I just want to.
Course, my neighbor is to love God as well.
Right.
Amen.
Yeah, I was thinking about again with the Apostle Paul, like my kinsmen according to the flesh.
There was a special love because he goes on and kind of fleshes that out and talks about is there any advantage in being a Jew?
Much in every way.
God chooses unconditionally.
He's choosing Gentiles and all these different things, but there is a certain advantage in being the history and having the patriarchs and the oracles and the prophets and these kinds of things.
Part of his affection for the Jews has to do with the fact that the Jews were God's chosen people under the old covenant.
But he doesn't just say that.
He also says, they're my kinsmen according to the flesh.
I love them because, not just because God chose them, but because I'm a part of them.
I belong to them.
These are my people.
There's a certain connection, a certain belonging, a certain moral obligation.
With that, I'm playing the devil's advocate for a second because I think somebody could try to counter with the Good Samaritan.
Right.
Because, because one of the things about the Good Samaritan is he goes out of his way to help someone who is not his people.
When, when the other guys who, the person who is in need was their people, they actually did have that natural bond.
They ignored him and passed by.
And, you know, so Jesus, like, who was a good neighbor?
Well, it's the guy who you wouldn't naturally expect to even be a neighbor because, because they're from other tribes, you know, that they're not, they don't belong to each other in terms of, Of their kinship.
And so, but these other two guys who did have that tie, they walked by.
And I guess what I would say to someone who's saying, well, see, look, like Jesus overrides, you know, the whole principle that you guys are talking about seems to be irrelevant in the mind of Jesus.
I guess what I would say is that the Samaritan who stops to help this man who had been beaten by thieves and left for dead, he stops because there's an argument for proximity.
So, not just natural relations.
I think there's an argument for natural relations.
We've made that with Paul.
We've made that argument with prioritizing Christians, the spiritual, you know.
So there's spiritual, there's natural, but then there's also proximity.
The reason why there was a moral obligation for all three men, the two that passed by and the Samaritan, is because they were there.
They were right there.
Now, if we were to change the parable and let's say there was only enough resources in time, let's say time was of the essence, there was, you know, two guys, not just one, but two guys were left for debt.
Robbed and beaten and left for dead.
And one was the guy that we already find in the parable, but the other one was a Samaritan.
And the Samaritan, and they only had a few minutes to live, and you only had time and resources to save one.
If the Samaritan picked his fellow Samaritan, I don't think that Jesus would chastise him for it.
Meaning, what I'm saying is, I don't think that the argument that's being made in the parable is that there are no.
Tribal distinctions.
There are no different cultures.
There are no nationalities.
I don't think Jesus is making that argument.
I think Jesus is saying, whoever you are, one thing that morally binds you to another person is the people that you're with.
Even if you're with someone who is not your people, simply by your presence, your proximity, you have a moral obligation to love them.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I actually had.
The Samaritan in mind as I was speaking, because I actually wanted to address that because I had a feeling that, like you did, that that would be a pushback to that.
But as we've been saying all along, we're not saying we shouldn't love other people, right?
We're simply saying there's nothing wrong with a natural love for people who are like us, right?
When I say like us, I mean our people, right?
I'm not saying, again, we should have supremacist thinking whatsoever, but the same way that I am to love my family in a special way more than I would love somebody else who isn't my neighbor or who isn't my family, it applies to the Samaritan as well, where the parable is not saying, you know, well, in that parable, The Samaritan is receiving help and love from someone, and we support that, right?
So, you and I are not saying that.
Well, if somebody, so for example, if someone's a Nigerian, for example, I wouldn't say, Well, forget you, you're not Ghanaian, so I'm not going to help you.
No, I am going to, I'm commanded to help that one, of course, if I can.
Will you help that Nigerian prince who keeps emailing you?
Will you help that one?
You mean princess?
No, but.
Yeah, I, you know, so yeah, so if, you know, if the person, if the Jew in that parable were to refuse to help the Samaritan, that would be sin.
And for the record, flip it.
It's the Samaritan helps the Jew.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah, sorry, of course.
Yeah, yeah, I'm forgetting that.
But yeah, so if the Samaritan failed to help the Jew, then it is sin.
But You know, but that's not, you know, that's that has nothing to do with what we're really saying here.
We're just saying here is that there is a special kind of favoritism that we may have in the same way.
If God forbid, if I'm in this position here, but you know, if there's a if my wife is, uh, if someone you know were to kidnap, I always hate, yeah, just someone in my family and I could only save one, right?
I'm going to choose my family, yes.
Uh, that's not because I hate the other person, right?
But that's love for.
And I like what you said.
Racism is hatred, right?
It's disdain, it's aversion, it's demeaning, it's derogatory, it's looking down on someone, looking down your nose, viewing them as innately inferior.
And that's not what we're talking about.
We're not talking about because you are not my own, because you are not my kin or whatever.
I hate you.
No, it's I love you.
And if I'm walking by you and you're beaten and left for dead, I have a moral obligation simply by proximity because all people are my neighbors.
All people.
The Bible teaches universal creatorhood in regards to God and universal neighborhood in regards to brothers.
Now, the Bible doesn't teach universal fatherhood.
God is only the father of those who are united to his beloved son through faith.
And the Bible also doesn't teach universal brotherhood.
We are only brothers, truly, in the truest sense, spiritually, with fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But everyone is my neighbor.
And if I'm with proximity, Right next to my neighbor, and he's dying, and I can help him without neglecting my other loves, like my family, then I actually am morally bound by God's law to love my neighbor and to help him.
Nations Ending Slavery First00:06:03
And so we're not talking about the scenarios that we're discussing, is not indifference, calculated, deliberate indifference out of hatred towards a certain type of person because they're not like us.
But we are talking about.
That the reality is, again, it goes back to the argument I made earlier.
We're not God.
We're not the infinite creator.
We are finite creatures and we're all a lot more finite, I think, than we sometimes would like to admit.
And so we only have so much time of the day.
We only have so many years in our lives.
We only have so much money in our bank accounts.
We only have so many giftings, so many abilities, so many this, so many that.
It's all limited, it's all finite.
And so we have to choose.
There's 8.2 billion people on the planet, right?
We have to choose.
We have to make a choice.
As individuals, we have to make choices.
Nations have to make choices.
Right.
And that's what America has done for quite a while now is, you know, well, we would rather, like, everyone is a Christian nationalist if we're talking about Ukraine.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, seriously, like, everyone was a Christian nationalist when they were honoring, you know, in England, when they were honoring the Queen.
Right.
I mean, like, look at the language of, you know, when it comes to the ordination of Queen Elizabeth and now Charles.
Like, this is religious language, right?
You're the defender of the faith.
And everyone's like, wow, that's really cool.
You know, and then, but when you talk about America prioritizing America or America being Christian or like, it's just, people just hate America.
And you know what I really think it is?
I think it's envy, man.
I don't think it's slavery.
I don't think it's our history.
I don't think it's those things.
And this is why virtually every nation has had slaves.
You know what I mean?
And a lot of places have had slavery with more barbaric practices.
And I correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you know this more than me.
So fact check me, you know, like Politico, you can fact check me on it.
You know, but I think the United States took.
3% of the African slave trade, but a lot of it went to fellow African nations and European nations and South American nations.
And then when you look at nations that ended slavery and chronological order of who ended it first, which would have been Great Britain, but then following from that, we weren't the last nation by any stretch that we were one of the first nations to abolish slavery.
We took fewer slaves than other nations did.
There were barbaric masters in America, but there were barbaric masters other places.
And you could argue that in some ways it was more tempered.
By Christians, that because their conscience ultimately led towards abolishing slavery outright.
But even while there were slaves, there were many masters, not all, but many masters who were like, yeah, we need to not treat them inhumanely in this regard, at least not to this level.
And there were problems and all those kinds of things.
But my point is people don't hate America because it's the worst nation in terms of slavery.
I think people hate America because of envy.
I think people hate America because of its success.
Not because of its sinful past, but its opulence and prosperity and successful present.
I think that if Ghana, for instance, captured slaves and bought slaves and traded slaves, and if Ghana was for the last 100 years had been one of the richest nations in the world, I think we'd see a lot of news programs and articles about how wicked Ghana is.
I think people don't care about other nations that have been more barbaric because they haven't been successful.
And America's success.
Ultimately, I think it came not because of slavery, but actually, I would say it came by the blessing of God despite the sin of slavery.
What do you think about that?
It's very interesting because, you know, as a Ghanaian, you know, where my people were brutally enslaved by other more powerful tribes.
And, you know, Ghana, actually, the group of the tribe in Ghana, this is the Ashantis who were very dominant and Extremely involved in the slave trade.
They did not, I mean, they still refuse as a tribe, Ashanti tribe, they refuse to acknowledge their role in slavery, where the majority, a strong number of people in the Caribbean were enslaved by, as in a strong number of people in the Caribbean are from, their ancestors were enslaved by the Ashantis.
They still refuse to admit their role.
But the nation of Ghana has, in 1998, formally apologized for their role in slavery.
Now, remember, 1998.
Wow.
A little late to the game.
That's like guys who are just now realizing that maybe we shouldn't have locked down forever for COVID.
900 days late.
Exactly.
And it was around that same time where the other African nations admitted their role.
Again, not the tribes themselves, but the nation said, yeah, we apologize for our role in slavery.
Now, again, that was around the 1980s and 1990s.
It was the 1860s where Americans died.
Fighting for slavery.
No one really wants to talk about that.
It took more than 130 years for a nation like Ghana to say, yeah, we should not have benefited from slavery.
Where in fact, yeah, there is the movie The Woman King or whatever.
Oh my gosh, what a joke.
I haven't watched it, but I've read some.
Oh my goodness, talk about rewriting history.
Go ahead.
I've not.
I wanted to watch the movie, but it would irritate me, I'm sure.
So I'm going to wait for a while before I watch it.
But Like, there was Britain had to go to war with that nation, you know, that tribe from that movie.
I think it's a tribe in Benin, I think.
Unique Christian Privilege00:11:39
They had to go to war with them because they were so angry that the British banned the slave trade.
They went to war with the British.
That's how that's anyway.
I'm kind of going off topic here, but I think that's good.
That's good, man.
I think, you know, I agree with you in many ways that it's not America's history with the slave trade or with any other injustice that people hate.
I actually think it actually ties into Christian nationalism.
You know, when you think about the West, especially, you know, the so called New World, whether it is Canada or America, I think these two nations especially, they really are the bastions of so called Christian nationalism, in a sense.
Now, what I mean by that is this England is not what it used to be in many ways.
You know, it was the Puritans that came to.
That came to America, and many Christians also in Canada, that uniquely, right?
Britain was not always a Christian nation, right?
They became reformed later on.
They became Christian, I suppose, generally later on.
But America and Canada were uniquely built on Christianity in ways that other nations weren't, even Europe.
And I think that history, where Christianity is so entrenched in these nations being built.
In ways that the other European nations who became Christian later on were not, um, you know, did not have the same kind of history, I think that is part of why people hate America and Canada uniquely more than any other nation, including Britain or any other you know nation in Europe, France, Italy, whatever, because of that unique history.
So they try to, um, to destroy that rich history of Christianity by saying, Well, yeah, you can claim Christianity, but look at what they were doing, or they can say, Well, it's actually the Christianity.
That made them support slavery, even though it was that very Christianity that actually made America ban slavery a lot faster than any other nation in the world.
I think that's a really good point.
I think so.
Yeah, I don't think it's because America is uniquely sinful in its past.
We're not saying that America doesn't have sin in its past, but uniquely sinful.
Every nation has sin in its past, just like every individual person has sinned in their past.
So the question was.
Was America uniquely sinful?
Did we have a unique category of sin?
Meaning, were we the only ones who owned slaves?
No.
Okay, well, then if other nations shared in this category of sin, were we uniquely high in terms of our degree of sin in that category?
No.
No.
So it's neither.
So I really think it is envy of success and prosperity.
And I think it's also what you're saying.
I think it's a roundabout attack on Christ.
And I think that's what a lot of this stuff is, whether it's patriarchy.
Well, instead of just coming out right, instead of a straight line and just saying, we hate Jesus, why don't you just hit all the things that are loosely tied to him that represent Christ?
So it's like instead of saying we hate Jesus, you say we hate Western culture that was shaped by Jesus.
We hate men.
We hate whiteness.
We hate heterosexual marriage.
We hate.
We hate the scientific method.
We hate, you know, and what you, but if you were to draw a line from all these things that have been very popular lately to hate, and you tried to find a common denominator, it's not whiteness.
It's Jesus.
It's Jesus.
And that doesn't mean all these things have represented Jesus perfectly without fault or sin, but they all share that despite their imperfections.
They all share Christ as the center.
And I think that's what the attack is really about.
What do you think?
I completely agree.
Man, there's so much I want to say that I.
So, what you're saying made me think about something that I mentioned in my review on white fragility a few years ago.
And in there, I didn't spend too much on it, but I said, like, this is antichrist.
And people, you know, they think, oh, this is just bad, but they don't realize how antichrist critical race theory is.
So, in that book, Robin D'Angelo says that.
One of the most white supremacist or racist things people say today is that racism has to be, racism is always intentional.
Well, what they're saying there is, well, the Bible, God says racism is always intentional because it is partiality.
As James 2, verse 4 says, it is an evil thought, right?
So what they're saying there is, well, if you believe what the Bible says about sin, if you believe what the Bible says about partiality, you are racist, which means, of course, that God is racist.
Yeah, that's a good point.
You know, what it's amazing how now the term they keep using is Christian nationalism.
Whereas I said before, it was white nationalism.
Because when they were really saying white nationalism, what they really meant is Christianity is a problem.
That's right.
And not just that, the term white privilege.
Well, now it's being said more and more often Christian privilege.
There's a book I have here called White Christian Privilege.
She starts off by talking about white Christian privilege, but then by the end of the book, She's really more addressing Christian privilege.
Right.
So all this stuff is really an attack on Christianity.
You're right.
And they're finally now just coming out and just saying it, just, you know, saying the quiet part out loud, right?
It's really, and I love like Christian privilege, it's hilarious because it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Christian privilege.
Yeah, I believe in that.
We got a word for that.
It's called blessing.
Blessing.
That's right.
Yeah, there is a privilege to being a follower of Christ, right?
That when we follow Christ, is there persecution?
Yes.
Is there challenge?
Yes.
Is there difficulty?
Yes.
But there's also immense blessing when we, when we, Follow Christ.
And here's the irony.
I think a lot of the church is not properly equipped to fight this particular fight because the pagans, if I can say it like this, the pagans actually have, now they hate it, they disdain it, right?
So just like they have kind of the theology of demons, right?
Demons have decent Trinitarian doctrine, but they hate it and shudder, right?
You know, even the demons know that God is one, but shudder.
So the pagan has, I think, has.
They have their fingers on the pulse accurately of some biblical doctrine, some sound biblical doctrine, but they, you know, in terms of their hearts and their affection, they despise it.
They hate it.
The Christian doesn't necessarily hate the things of God.
The Christian would actually rejoice and love the things of God, but is just so thoroughly confused doctrinally.
And so, what I'm saying is this the opponents of Christ, opponents of the Christian faith, they actually are drawing a clearer correlation between.
Obedience to God bringing about blessing in this life, where I think many Christians coming off the heels of the prosperity gospel and certain abuses of that principle, certain things that are, in fact, you know, bona fide heresy, Christians, I think, have overcompensated, overreacted to the prosperity gospel to where we have lost many American evangelical Christians in overcompensating against the prosperity gospel.
They've completely erased.
Any correlation between obedience and blessing in this life.
And what I want to argue is that, biblically speaking, I think that it's not guaranteed, but ordinarily we can expect tangible blessings even in this life, always guaranteed eternal blessing, but ordinarily temporal blessings in this life by following Christ.
For instance, if I obey Christ's commands to keep my wedding vows to my wife, will statistics tell me that my children have a better chance not going to prison?
A better chance getting a job.
So, my children will be privileged because of their father's obedience.
You know, that Christian privilege.
So, that author is absolutely right in what they're articulating, wrong to despise it.
Christians are right in the sense that if they were aware of what the Bible actually taught by virtue of being Christians, I think they would like it.
But Christians are just right now, it just was so.
Theologically anemic.
And so, and it's because of, I think, this such a fear of being labeled as a racist, such a fear of, you know, is it like that, like the father, you know, the Christian father who is like, it's like, I bet your kids went to bed tonight with sheets and clean comforters and full bellies, you monster.
It's like, yeah, no, my kids did go to bed in nice beds with nice, PJs on after eating a nice dinner that their mother made.
And I'm not apologizing for that.
Well, I can tell you this too, in that, you know, growing up in poverty, you know, you and I have had this talk before.
Well, that's because my father wasn't a Christian and he left the family.
My mom is a Christian, but my father's not there and we have poverty.
With that being said, Ghana is, you know, I mentioned the influence that the Europeans had in Ghana.
Ghana is one of the few nations.
In West Africa, that was colonized by the British instead of the French and other groups.
And the British, one of the good things they did was they really established the gospel in Ghana.
Ghana is one of the better African nations when it comes to economy and having very, very, very little history with war.
And actually, there was a study, I think, done surprisingly, I think, by Kushani today, and they're woken, you know, left now, but they did a study where they showed that the African nations where the British Colonized, where they were, you know, where the gospel was really being preached there.
They're significantly better off at every level than the other African nations that were not colonized by the Christian, by, you know, so called Christian nations.
So even in that, so, you know, while you have some individuals, right, in some nations who be Christians who will, who might be poor, but that'll be because of different circumstances like.
My, you know, like mine, where my father's not there, or you know, others or other other reasons, but there is a general truth, you know.
As I was, you know, my wife and I have been going through the book of Proverbs as we're studying this book.
Blessing Through Obedience00:10:28
I'm like, if by the grace of God we obey the you know, we obey this wisdom literature, God will bless us.
Yes, blessing always comes from wisdom, right?
By the grace of God, so there is that general truth.
Now, of course, some Christians will have persecution and things like that, but generally.
There is a unique blessing that Christians have when we obey God in all these things, whether it comes to being a good steward.
I mean, for example, the parable of the talents, right?
If you're being a good steward of what God has called for us to be responsible for, He will bless us in His own way.
Yes.
Let me look up a Bible verse real quick because it really addresses what we're talking about, about blessing.
Obviously, so what we're saying is that there is a guaranteed blessing for obedience in the life to come.
But ordinarily, as a general rule, there are tangible blessings even in this life for obedience.
There's persecution for obedience often, but there's also blessing.
And to be more specific in terms of, okay, but what's the determining factor between when blessing leads to persecution versus when blessing leads to tangible temporal blessing?
I'm sorry, when obedience results in persecution versus when obedience results in temporal blessing in this life.
I would say one of the determining factors between the two is.
Well, is Christendom.
I think that, you know, so if you're a first century Christian in Rome, a lot of your obedience, I would say, if I was a pastor in that context, I would say ordinarily obedience will result in persecution.
But we're not Christians in first century Rome, you know, because a few centuries later, when you've got Constantine, and think about that, man, you think about just the rate of multiplication.
Within a few centuries, you go from the vast minority being Christians to it's now taking over the world.
You have a Christian empire.
And I know there's a lot of controversy about Constantine and all this, but I believe he was a Christian.
And personally, from what I've read and what I've looked into, he was baptized at the end of his life because it was a common belief at that time that baptism was going to wash your sins away.
And so you kind of want to, you know, kind of like within Catholicism, you know, last.
Last rites, you know, you wanted it to be as close to your deathbed as possible, but it wasn't because he just finally converted right before his death.
Um, that he converted many, many years prior, um, but was saving his baptism.
And yes, that is a superstitious and unbiblical view of baptism.
Um, but you know, it's you know, we have we're not arguing that um, Athanasius wasn't a Christian and he had some, you know, like so.
We've gotten better as time goes on, we're progressing.
And I like, you know, some guys will say, you know, like when you think of David, like he's a man after God's own heart.
And he's wearing a necklace of foreskins, Philistine foreskins around his neck, 200 of them.
You know, like the bar is raising as time goes on, as the mustard seed is growing into a tree, as the leaven works through the whole batch of dough.
And that's happening with individuals, but it's also happening with nations.
And so the point is, like, when Constantine's in power, guess what?
Obedience ordinarily leads to blessing.
When Nero's in power, obedience ordinarily leads to persecution.
And I think in America, Historically, obedience has led to blessing, not only guaranteed in the life to come, but ordinarily in this life as well, because America has been a context of Christendom.
It has had that kind of rewarding virtue and punishing vice.
As things shift, though, politically and culturally, that affects legislation, that affects, as there's a shift in morality evolving from God's standard to man's humanistic standard.
Then things change.
But I think that what we can say is it's not a, I guess what I'm saying is, I would not say it is a timeless principle at all times and in all places that obedience will bring about blessing in this life.
It always brings about blessing in the life to come, but it does not always bring about blessing in this life as a universal and timeless principle.
But I think that for the West, ordinarily it does over the past few centuries, but some of that is starting to erode.
And that's what we've seen in cancel culture and those.
And it's not like, oh, cancel culture is bad because I'm a classic liberal and everybody should be able to do whatever they want.
No, no.
We've always had cancel culture.
I think cancel culture is good.
We just want to cancel evil, we want to cancel sin.
There's always been standards for what curriculum is in schools or what you can say in public.
What we're seeing is simply, it's not that we're seeing an erosion of freedom.
I know it looks like that in some essence, it is that.
But what we're actually seeing is, you know, people say, oh, we used to have the moral majority.
No, we still have the moral majority, but morality has shifted.
Morality has changed to where now the things that used to be rewarded are punished.
And the things that used to be punished are being praised.
And there's this reversal with degradation going on in our culture at large.
And so right now, I think we're living in a time where it's kind of a toss up.
It's, you know, obedience in this life.
It's kind of 50 50.
It might bring the hammer.
It might bring canceling.
It might bring losing your job.
But it also might bring blessing because we still have the remnants, the residue of Christendom in the West and in America.
And in terms of which way we fall, which side of the fence we fall on, and where we ultimately land, I think is the verdict still out.
Go ahead.
I'm not even sure what to.
I completely agree with you.
As you're speaking, maybe the only thing that comes to mind is, and again, we know that general truths.
Are not always going to be, you know, some individuals will sometimes have unique situations, right?
But as you're saying this, you know, in terms of how it's not timeless, where in certain areas, Christians, you know, who are being faithful will not maybe experience that kind of temporal blessings.
I was thinking of my mom actually, where I mentioned before, where we were in Ghana, my mom has always worked extremely hard, but we were extremely poor.
Then we come to Canada, where There is a different culture.
There is differences here where the same thing she was doing in Ghana, she is now, I wouldn't say wealthy, but she's now doing, she's nowhere near poor now.
So, you know, anyway, so what you were saying there may, you know, is very true that I think a lot of people today are not thinking about or teaching because, again, you know, being raised in the prosperity gospel church, I think a lot of people are hesitant to believe these things, but yet the, you know, the Bible does say this a righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children.
Right.
Either that's a general truth, either that's a proverb that we can believe in, or God is a liar.
And we know that God is not a liar, right?
Yep, I completely agree.
This is the verse that I was thinking of.
It's Luke chapter 18, verses 29 and 30.
It says, And he said to them, being Christ, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this life and in the age to come.
Eternal life.
And I feel like there's a lot of.
I don't know how to say this.
I don't.
American Gospel may not know what to do with that verse.
TGC might not know what to do with that verse.
I don't know if Russell Moore would know what to do with that verse.
And I like American Gospel.
The second one.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
The second two, not so much.
But even American Gospel, I think that, you know, like, I don't know if.
I think we're needing more thorough, more rich.
We need deeper doctrine.
I think we've been dealing with some things up here like, well, let's refute Benny Hinn.
Amen.
Benny Hinn's a heretic, and that false gospel leads millions of people to hell.
It matters.
I don't want to make light of that.
But the church in America, we need deeper doctrine than just a rebuttal to Benny Hinn.
We need, we need, there are so many things that we've got to figure out.
We need to figure out a Christian politic.
We need to figure out Christian ethics.
We need to figure out, I feel like, you know, when you think of Christendom and these kinds of church history, for the first thousand years, we're just trying to figure out who Jesus is, right?
The two natures of Christ, the hypostatic union, who is Jesus?
And it took about a thousand years to figure that out.
And the next thousand years, what is the gospel?
What is justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone?
You know, according to the scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
And that took about a thousand years.
And, you know, and by God's grace, we figured that one out.
And we can never drift past the gospel.
We got to keep preaching the gospel.
We have to preach the gospel as a defense and offense against any false gospel.
But I think, if I had to guess, I think the next thousand years, I think that the church, and I'd like to think that America will lead the way, but maybe not.
America may not last another thousand years.
It may not last another 50 years.
But I think that the church of some nation, somewhere, somehow, in the providence of God, is going to have to nail out not just doctrine of God theology proper and not just.
Justification by grace through faith in Christ.
But I think we're going to have to start nailing out a Christian ethic, a Christian politic.
Defining a Christian Ethic00:15:42
And I think there's a group of guys right now who are rising up and dealing with this.
Guys like Stephen Wolfe with his book that just came out recently, The Case for Christian Nationalism.
There's some spicy stuff in here.
I don't know.
But he's onto something.
He's onto something.
Doug Wilson is onto something with his Meet the Press, NBC.
Thing where they try to, you know, blast him.
And, you know, there are people who are working on this right now.
And I think like we've got to be able to combat Benny Hinn, but also say in the same breath, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
And there is a benefit to serving the Lord.
When you look at the Proverbs written to sons and say, it's not just you do these things and you'll get thrown to lions, but you'll get to be with Jesus.
It's very earthly, not worldly, but earthly in the sense of it's down to earth.
It's the knit and the grit.
You live this way and there are consequences, and you live that way and there are blessings, and you do this and you do that.
And some guys did work on this.
Gary North wrote a lot of stuff with economics.
And you've got guys like Bonson, who sadly died just way too early.
And then you've got guys like Rush Dooney, who's spicy, and there's some controversy.
I think some of these guys were onto something.
And in some sense, they were like prophetic.
Now, some of them went weird, like, you know, like they went off the deep end.
Not the guys that I just named, but some other guys.
But my point is, I think that they were onto something.
You look at the Reconstructionist movement, things like that in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s.
And I think in some ways, people just didn't believe it.
Like, in some ways, like for people to listen, sometimes things just have to get bad before they get good.
They have to, like, they have to.
And I think we're finally living in a time where things have gotten so totalitarian, like, so much worse.
And nobody would ever imagine Drag Queen Story Hour.
Nobody would ever imagine being locked down in your house and churches told that they can't meet for months and mandated vaccines where you lose your job.
And we're finally getting to this point where there's enough madness in secular humanism has finally borne its fruit.
And enough bad fruit to where I think you actually have a market for the first time.
I think Rush Dooney just didn't have a market, but now there's a market for Rush Dooney.
There's a bunch of guys, myself included, who are like, all right, I'll read his book because I've tasted the fruit over here and it's putrid.
And so, anyways, I'm just saying that I think we got to be able to do something with verses like that in this life, who will not receive many times more.
In this life and in the age to come.
And that doesn't mean that just by, there's a difference.
The prosperity gospel says believe in Jesus, just have faith and you'll be rich.
This is not saying just have faith and you'll be rich.
This means follow Jesus and the principles of Christ, and there's blessing.
And we got to be able to say that without being called prosperity gospel heretics.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I think the difference between the prosperity gospel and what that text is saying is we will be blessed.
We just don't know how that blessing will be.
Right.
So for some people, the blessing might end up being wealth.
For others, the blessing would.
Would happen in different ways.
But again, I think a lot of people do not address this stuff indeed because of the prosperity gospel.
And I think many others are just not even thinking about that at all whatsoever, even ignoring the prosperity gospel.
So, yes, sir, go ahead.
No, no, I'm sorry.
I was just, my nose is stuffed up.
But I agree with you entirely.
We don't get to dictate what form the blessing comes in.
And you're right.
The blessing could come in peace and joy and these kinds of fruits of the spirit.
A wonderful marriage and a wonderful this and wonderful that, and you live in a shanty and financially you're poor.
That's true from that verse.
Yeah.
So I won't hang my hat entirely exclusively on that verse.
But to go back to the verses that you mentioned, namely the entire book of Proverbs, we have verses that don't leave it an open ended question as to what form the blessing might come.
Maybe it'll come as an emotional blessing or spiritual.
Now we have multiple verses that talk about, like, if you cast your bread seven times upon the waters, which to me looks like.
A principle of economic investing through diversity.
And if you do that, you'll have the joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart.
No, you'll have cash.
Yeah.
And even with that, too, I think I don't want people to misunderstand what that means in that some people, I'm trying to think.
So, for example, now, so moving from Toronto, where the idea of wealth, And the kind of jobs people have is very different from where people in this area that I am in Ohio, the kind of jobs they have, right?
Where a lot of people are just farmers or just doing similar kind of jobs where they have wealth, but that wealth looks different than what that wealth will look like for somebody who's working in business and everything else.
So it's kind of like, again, I mentioned the parable of the talents.
The person with the five talents doubled it and had.
10.
The other person with the two talents doubled it and had four.
They both created wealth, but some were richer than others.
So, in the same way, there will be Christians out there who may not have anywhere near as much money as other Christians, but with what God gave them, the career, the job that God gave them, they were able to steward that in such a way that they may not be living gloriously, they may not be.
They might be struggling to pay their bills, but they are being good stewards of their money.
God has blessed them in such a way that they can still leave an inheritance or, yeah, leave an inheritance to their children, no matter how small that is.
So wealth looks very different to some people based on different scenarios in terms of what kind of jobs they have, where they live, or even the nation they live in.
No, you're right.
The degree of wealth varies based off of the starting point.
And because God is not a Marxist, Because God is not egalitarian, we don't all have the same starting point.
Not only does God not determine equity and equal outcomes, God doesn't even do equal opportunity.
He gets to decide.
Like he creates, right?
I mean, I think of what God says to Moses in the burning bush, where he's telling Moses, Moses keeps making excuses, you know, like, I can't do it, you know, and like, I'm slow of speech.
And then God responds by saying, Who makes man mute or dumb or blind?
Is it not I, the Lord?
He doesn't say, like, he doesn't say, you know, sin entered the world and some people are born, you know, with disabilities.
Or that is true.
But it's also simultaneously true that God makes him.
And he doesn't even just say, I allow this to happen.
No, like God made the deaf, the mute, and the blind.
And then God made somebody else with sight and speech.
And so is that not disparity?
And behold, is it not the Lord who has done it?
And so you're absolutely right.
The master reserves the right to give to one talent, another two, another five.
And then based off of what the Lord has given, the starting point, There will be different degrees of potential for multiplication.
But the point is, and I think you agree with this, that if we're faithful, if we don't bury the talent in the sand, then we can, by obeying the law of God and following his principles ordinarily in a place that is not terribly hostile towards the things of God, we should expect that through obedience, two will turn to four.
And five will turn to 10.
Now, there are some contexts, and that's why the context matters because I think if you apply the principles of Christ in North Korea, it just may not work.
So I am, again, talking predominantly to people in the West, in Canada, in America, and that sadly the tide is turning.
Now I think there's a lot of hope that we can push back.
But right now, it's switching of rewarding vice and punishing virtue.
Rather than, you know, but again, in the West, because of the remnants of Christendom, because the gospel came to bear on these places and influenced these laws and these policies, there is a reward, not just eternally, but a temporal, earthly reward for righteousness.
Righteousness ordinarily gets rewarded.
And somebody could be just as faithful as someone else and still not, in terms of total amount, still not even have half of what the other person has because they started with less.
If we're faithful, we're not saying if we're faithful, you will be equally rich to everyone else.
That's not the argument we're making.
We're saying if you're faithful in some of these contexts that God over 2,000 years of Christendom has in church history has created by his providence, if you're faithful there, I think you should ordinarily expect not only the well done, good and faithful servant in the life to come, which is of infinitely more value, but also some tangible measure of reward here as we seek to multiply our talents and what the Lord.
Gave us to begin with.
Amen.
Yeah, I agree.
So, yeah.
And so I just feel like we got to get to work and we got to talk about Christian economics and we got to talk about Christian ethics and Christian politics and Christian legislation and Christian.
Because at the end of the day, Jesus says, if you're not for me, you're against me.
There is no neutral ground.
It's Christian everything, or there's no neutral.
So it's either Christian this, Christian that, or it's.
Or it's secular, satanic this, satanic that.
I don't want to live in a satanic nation.
So, yeah, I think Christian Nation is kind of my only option.
Yeah.
No, I, you know, you mentioned a lot of the people who have been so influential in addressing these things.
And, you know, I just talk about just, you know, Christian ethics when it comes to wealth.
You know, it's funny, I've been talking about the parable of talents a lot of times when, you know, to destroy, well, to destroy, maybe that sounds arrogant, but to really attack the, you know, the Marxist thinking within the church when it comes to, you know, Suggesting that disparities is always an evidence of discrimination, saying, no, no, that's not true.
But honestly, until a few years ago, I had not thought about it in terms of what it means for me towards godliness.
Until a friend of mine really just said, just who's into financing and things like that, he just talked with me in terms of how he is trying to prepare himself.
He was not married at the time, just preparing himself to be able to lead a wife and lead his family and lead his children.
And talked about investing.
And honestly, I had no idea.
I knew nothing about this stuff.
And part of that, honestly, was a cultural thing.
Ghanians, Africans are not known for investments the way that the West is.
So, you know, I started doing that more and just realizing that, yeah, God has called me to be a steward.
And again, I don't know what that will mean.
I'm not in control in the sense of what that will mean, but I'm called to be faithful.
I'm called to be wise and prudent.
I'm called to work hard and invest and think about the future so that.
I can take care of my family.
And when it's, you know, and then when I do pass away, I can, I can leave an inheritance for my children, whatever that would be.
But also, really, in terms of people who've been influential, I'm grateful for, you know, you know, I'm not a, you know, well, again, I keep saying some would say I'm a theonomist, but I wouldn't call myself that, but I understand why they would.
But I am grateful for a lot of the theonomists who've been addressing this issue.
I'm also grateful for Vadi Bochum and John MacArthur and other people out there who are really addressing the issue of ethics.
In so many different ways.
And I'm grateful for these men and even, not even, but people like yourself who are addressing this issue.
I'm saying even, not because you're lesser.
I'm saying that.
I didn't think you were going to say me.
I thought when you said the word even, I thought he's going to say Doug Wilson.
Even, I'm even grateful for Doug Wilson.
That's what I thought.
I literally thought he was going to say Doug Wilson.
Even, I'm so grateful.
I'm even grateful for him.
No, I, I, I, you know, we've had this talk before.
I appreciate a lot of what he's done.
I've learned a lot, really, you know, from him as well.
It's impossible right now to be a Christian, especially a young Christian, and not to be influenced by Doug Wilson in some capacity.
Yeah.
Although, you know, my dude, my two dudes are Vadi Boakum and John McArthur.
They've had a massive impact on me.
Yeah.
Although I am not a Dispy pre male, but, you know, I'm a male.
Although you posted me.
Well, then you're right there with Vodi, then.
If you're all male, I know you're Baptist, so you're Baptist, you're covenantal, a Baptist covenant theology.
Are you Sabbatarian?
No.
Hop on board with the Sabbath and then just affirm the 1689.
I bet you the Sabbath is probably the only thing in the 1689 that you're not currently able to affirm.
So hop on board with that and then you'll be Vodi's twin.
Yeah.
I thought about that a lot because I actually grew up, not grew up, I spent some time in a Dutch Reformed church.
They are Sabbatarians.
So, so I thought about that deeply.
But yeah, I got to do some more thinking on that.
But as of right now, I'm not.
Yeah, that's all right.
All you have to do, if you just live, you know, like if you live into your 80s or your 90s, you'll be a Sabbatarian because the Christian nationalists, we're going to take over the nation and we will put you in the stocks if you don't observe the Sabbath.
We're going to bring back blasphemy laws, Sabbath laws.
And I'm saying it like I'm joking, but I'm a little bit serious.
We'll have to deal with, you know, what the consequences are.
But I think there's something there.
So, Stephen Wolf, I bet you Stephen Wolf talks about it.
I haven't, this is a brick, man.
I was hoping, I was really, really hoping for an 80 page book.
Because I, because you know, as you and I, you know, we talked beforehand, I'm going to try to review, get the book and review it.
Partnering Across Differences00:09:39
Oh, yeah.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And, and yeah, I guess I'm going to have to spend like a week and a half probably because I take a long time to read a book.
And then, especially when I'm making notes to review, I, yeah.
So I'm going to try and get my hands on it very soon so I can review it.
Slow to write, slow to read.
There you go.
It's fascinating, you know, to me with the, you know, the theonomy issue.
Um, you know, the theonomy debate, whatever happening, because again, I'm not a theonomist, but I like a lot of theonomists.
You know, I like you, a lot of our mutual friends are theonomists.
You know, uh, we may mention Joe Boot, uh, you know, yeah, I love Joe Boot, so it's really weird.
Um, you know, I am in the theonomist space, the Christian libertarian space, and you know, the grace to you camp as well.
So I'm kind of everywhere, really.
Um, I'm not trying to be ecumenical in a sense, but I guess I kind of am, you know.
And even with the abortion issue, I have friends who are Catholics that I am also working with when it comes to the abortion issue as well.
So I'm kind of everywhere.
Well, I think we've got to partner wherever we can partner.
Some guys are like, well, we can't part with Catholics.
No, what we can't do is what Billy Graham was doing.
We can't do the evangelical and Catholics united, ecumenical, like on the gospel.
We can't unite with, right?
So we can't be ecumenical and unite with a Catholic on the gospel for the same reason.
I can't unite with a purple haired feminist on abortion.
Why?
Because they want to kill babies and the Catholic doesn't know the gospel.
So you can't partner with someone on the very issue you disagree with.
But that doesn't mean that you have to agree on every single issue there is under the sun in order to partner at all.
You can partner in God's common grace on the issues where you do agree without compromise.
And you can say, man, like, so one of the things that guys are arguing, whether it's Andrew Torva, and I know that that's controversial, but I read his book, I like it.
I like Andrew Torba, whether it's Stephen Wolf, whether it's Doug Wilson, a lot of what these guys are saying, I think of Brian Sauvay and the King's Hall, you know those guys, Eric Kahn.
A lot of the Christian nationalist conversation right now that I'm privileged to get to be a part of because it's exciting and it's exciting.
And a lot of the conversation, though, is we need a big tent.
This is not going to work unless there's a big tent.
And not everybody's going to agree on every little thing.
So not everybody's going to be theonomic.
Adi Robles was talking about that just today.
He had a video where he was saying, Yeah, I want you to be a Christian nationalist.
And I know a lot of you guys aren't going to be theonomists, but you can still be under this tent.
And so I think that it's going to have to be Presbyterian and Baptist and Anglican and this and that.
And it's going to have to be, but it has to be.
Here's the thing it has to be nationalist and it has to be Christian.
It has to be Christian, distinctly Christian.
So it's not what it won't be, which I said, oh my goodness, I'm just now remembering, but we never got into it.
What it won't be is partnering with Dave Rubin.
That's a great way to bring it back.
Yeah.
You want to just give me the two minute version on Candace Owens coming out and defending Dave Rubin?
That's good.
Yeah.
I completely forgot about it.
Me too, until just right now.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think it was around March, Dave Rubin announced with his partner, you know, Dave Rubin being a so called gay conservative, he announced that he and his partner are going to have two children through surrogate mothers.
And then some conservatives, including the Blaze and, you know, especially Candace Owen, you know, supported him.
And especially as we listen to Candace Owen, some of her fans said, hey, you know, what are you doing?
And back in March, I read an article saying that conservatives are part of the problem.
And then just last month, Candace Owens finally responded to her, you know, critics, her conservative critics on why she was supporting Dave Rubin.
And she basically just said, you know, she doesn't see anything with it.
She was even attacking, she didn't really defend herself.
She was really attacking people like us who would say that this is wrong.
And she used really leftist reasoning, saying that, well, how could you shame the children?
We're not shaming the children at all.
We're just saying that.
This is not conservative.
But anyway, I wrote an article last month saying that conservatives are still part of the problem.
And, you know, my point was just to really reiterate the fact that, look, we can say that conservatives, as you said, we can partner with anyone on certain issues to, you know, to get the truth across, to get justice across.
But really, they are not our allies, right?
You know, we have to, you know, remember that these people are still against Christ.
You said before, you know, You know, you're either with him or you're against him.
Conservatives, I call them the Christless conservatives, are against him.
They're simply, you know, on some levels, they've not revealed their complete hatred.
Look, I'll say frankly, Candace Owens is not a Christian.
She hates Christ.
She does, right?
You know, she says certain things that makes it very clear that she's not a Christian, though she claims she is.
So if you hate Christ, well, I'm glad that you're publicly not sharing how much you hate Christ.
But with some, you know, with support for, you know, you know, with support for Dave Rubin really harming his children by not giving them a mother, harming his children.
I said in the article that I was raised by a single mother.
That is not how God, that's not how it's supposed to be, of course, right?
That was hard.
But I am thankful that I was raised at least by a good mother instead of being raised by two parents of the same sex.
That's, that's, that is, I think my wording was, it's not ideal to be raised by a single mother, but it's an abomination.
To be raised by same sex parents.
And for any so-called conservative to support that is also an abomination.
So they are not our allies.
And we have to remember that.
So we need to really partner with other believers who may not think like us in every single way, but realizing that we only have each other.
We don't have even the conservatives.
And it's only a matter of time because they care more about politics than the truth out of these conservatives.
It's only a matter of time where they say, hey, guys, you are part of the problem here.
You're helping us lose votes.
Therefore, right to cancel you guys too.
No, no, you're absolutely right.
Because when it really comes down to it, it's like, what are you fighting for?
Like, are you fighting for, you're not fighting for Christian nationalism.
I'll tell you that.
Like, what you're fighting for is, you're fighting for us to go all the way back to 2011 Obama.
Like, I'd like to go a little bit further back than that.
Like, I want to go all the way back to like 8030, you know, Christ, Calvary, the cross.
Like, that's where, you know, that's where I want to be.
And it's like, no, I'm not interested in turning back the time machine, you know, 11 years.
That's not, you know, like Obama said that marriage is between a man and a woman, you know, before a second term.
Like, so, so yeah, like, oh yeah, we need to fight against trans and kids and we need to fight against medical tyranny and we need to fight against BLM and we need to fight against all.
And I'm super grateful for that because some of these guys are fighting better than Christians, to be fair.
I want to say that like Matt Walsh has put up more of a fight on these issues than most Christians have.
He's displayed more courage, he's displayed more creativity and strategy.
Um, I, Like, what is a woman?
Yeah, like, I agree with Jason Whitlock.
I would have liked to see some more Jesus in that.
But he did more damage with that than just about any Protestant Christian that I know.
And I like to think that Matt Walsh is a Christian because here's the deal if you're a good Catholic, you're a bad Christian.
That's what makes me sad for Michael Knowles because I like Michael Knowles, but he's a really good Catholic.
You know, he knows his Catholic doctrine.
But if you're a bad Catholic, you don't even really know what Catholics believe.
You've got potential.
To be a good Christian Protestant.
And I think that's Matt Walsh.
So, anyways, all that being said, my point, though, is like these guys are, I think they're fighting these battles better.
And we could learn, not only can we partner, we can honor and learn from them.
But the problem is, they're going to, we can partner with them all the way back to 2011.
And then we're on our own from there because they're not really interested in going any further back than that.
And so you're absolutely right.
But as we continue going all the way back to Christ, we can still keep being ecumenical.
With each other as brothers.
And I do think that this Christian nationalist movement, I think it's going to be a thing.
And I think it does need to be a big tent.
It needs to include every different tribe within the big tent of Christ that, yeah, we're on the same team.
We're fighting for the same stuff.
It needs to be ecumenical.
Guys need to not quibble and be unnecessarily quarrelsome and fighting about.
You know, minor things.
I think we need to be able to link arms and across the aisle on those kinds of things.
Building an Ecumenical Tent00:03:58
But that's, but we need to know where that stops.
It's like where being ecumenical, where that ends.
And it ends with people who hate Jesus.
Yeah.
And I think that's what you're saying is like, yeah, it ends when somebody is saying, hey, it's great that two dudes are adopting two little girls.
Like, okay, we're not on this same team.
Yeah.
I completely agree.
All right, man.
Any final words, Samuel?
I really appreciate you coming on.
Oh, no, I've enjoyed it.
Final words, man.
We've had, we've addressed so many things.
I'm not even sure what to say.
I'm just, I'm just, you know, I said to you in person when we got together in Buffalo two months ago, I appreciate what you're doing, man.
You know, I have some friends who listen to you and they're like, hey, Sam, you know, Joel.
So, no, I'm just grateful that you'd have me on.
I really am and just have a good conversation.
So, yeah, that's really it.
And I guess if people want to, Follow me as well.
They can follow me on social media at slow to write and also, especially, my blog slow to write.com.
Especially, you know, since I might get canceled on social media at some point, anyways, they can always find me on my blog at slow to write.com.
Cool.
And what you've told me offline is that you're planning you and your wife, or just you with the podcast?
Yeah, me and your wife.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we're working on a podcast.
You know, a lot of times it will just be me, but for certain topics, I'll bring her on and we'll, you know, we'll talk about.
what I think hopefully will be interesting topics.
Great.
Well, you know, the fact that you've got grace to you coming after you, but then you also got, you know, guys who are theonomists like me and they're, you know, or you got canon, you know, saying, hey, we'd publish one of your books or this or that.
Like, I think part of that speaks to guys being ecumenical, but I think part of that speaks to the fact that you're just, you're kind of, you're a kind person and people like you.
We extend, you got guys on other sides of the aisle extending opportunities to you because you're kind.
And we don't offer those same opportunities to each other because we're jerks.
Sometimes you know what I mean, like we just we and and so I feel like you're picking the right fight.
It's, I don't want to say you're nice because niceness really shouldn't be the virtue that it is.
You're kind, kindness is a fruit of the spirit because what you just said about Candace Owens was not nice, you know what I mean?
But you're but you're kind, so like you've got the spine, you're willing to fight, but I think you're picking your battles carefully.
And I think sometimes we just guys bite off, they pick too many fights too soon, and they and they start fighting with everybody, and then they just It just pitters out.
And so you're an inspiration to me in that regard because I want to learn from you and I want to learn what you know.
I want to learn your history.
I want to learn some of your theology, but I also want to continue to learn some of your character.
I think you got good character, Samuel.
Wow.
That's an incredible.
Yeah, that's, I don't know what to say to that.
You're very kind.
Cool.
Thank you for that.
I'm very grateful.
Yeah.
Cool.
All right, man.
Well, God bless.
And for everybody listening, I hope this was helpful.
And I'm sorry we didn't get to more questions.
That question about ancestors.
That's where it went off the rails.
I think we went on this whole expedition about race and we kind of like kinism.
We were kind of beating around the bush with that, all this kind of.
But man, I feel like it was good.
I'm biased.
No, I enjoyed it.
I really did.
And I don't remember the other questions, but I'm sure you probably touched on that in some degree, anyways, to show that conversation.
So it was good.
Cool.
All right.
God bless, man.
Thanks.
You too.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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