Pastor Joel Webman and A.D. Robles dissect two theological debates: Jared Moore versus Doug Wilson on whether same-sex attraction requires confession, and William Wolfe versus James Lindsay regarding Christian nationalism. They contrast the respectful "iron sharpening iron" of Moore and Wilson with Lindsay's hostile atheism, which Robles calls a necessary "Deborah" indictment against cowardly conservative leaders like Russell Moore and Tim Keller. While acknowledging Lindsay shifted the Overton window against wokeness, the hosts reject his pluralism as polytheism and warn that aligning with an atheist on state lordship compromises biblical orthodoxy, urging listeners to support the ministry amidst current economic struggles. [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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Navigating Evangelical Disagreements00:03:21
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Well, conservative evangelicals appear to be fighting amongst themselves once again.
So, in this episode of Theology Applied, I'm joined by Ady Robles in order to present everything you need to know regarding two particularly interesting feuds.
One of these disagreements is between Jared Moore and Douglas Wilson on the subject of homosexuality.
And the doctrine of concupiscence.
The other is between William Wolfe and James Lindsay over the ever controversial topic of Christian nationalism.
Although James Lindsay is not a Christian, there appears to be a surprising number of conservative evangelicals taking his side of the issue.
Buckle up.
This episode gets a bit spicy.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right.
Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webman with Right Response Ministries.
And today I am privileged to have, for the 947th time, A.D. Robles, a regular on the show and a personal friend of mine.
A.D., thanks for coming on.
Excellent.
Thank you for having me.
I asked ChatGPT here how I should introduce myself on a podcast, and it's just taken too long to think.
So I'm glad to be here.
It's like John Henry beating the steam engine.
You know what I mean?
It's like, It can't keep up with a true OG podcaster.
You know, there's just no substitute for blood and bone and marrow.
So that's why we got you on here.
Otherwise, you know, in the future, as it perfects itself, I'll just interview chat.
What is it called?
Chat GPT.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll just start interviewing a computer, you know, for now.
But for now, we're going to continue to use people.
All right.
So you flesh it out because we were talking, you know, before we hit record, before we went live about what we're, you know, what are we going to discuss?
And you had a really great idea.
So you flesh it out.
Give us the framework for this episode.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I'm glad to do that.
So, my first idea was just talking about how to sort of handle and navigate and argue amongst ourselves as Christians.
When solid Christians, we're believers, we love the Lord, we have differences of opinion on whatever it might be, how to best do that, how to fight well.
And then the other thing that we talked about was about just Christian nationalism.
They go together because there's a lot of fighting going on about that, right?
People are very nervous and concerned about Christian nationalism, and uh, and so yeah, let's do it.
The Christian Nationalist Trap00:06:30
Yep, I yeah, I can completely agree.
Real quick, for the outset, um, I think it's helpful for our listener to know where what do we mean by Christian nationalism.
So I'll speak for myself, and then and then you give any kind of distinctions that you might have, you know, because even our two views I think they're pretty aligned, but just in case they're not, I won't speak for you, I'll just speak for me.
But when I say Christian nationalism, I'm perfectly happy to say, yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist.
Like if somebody asks me.
Hey, what is your theology?
I don't volunteer necessarily, Christian nationalist.
If they say, Are you a Christian nationalist?
I'll say, Yes, let me define the term.
So I will say yes to that.
I prefer to just say, I'm a post mill theonomist, right?
So, but you know, Christian nationalism, it'll do.
So, I would agree with like Doug Wilson, where he says, you know, I wanted to pick that term out of a hat, but if somebody's going to throw it on me, there's plenty of things that they're going to say that are pejorative that I have to defend against.
But then there's some that, you know, it's like, well, I can actually work with that term.
I can actually defend that position.
So, Christian nationalism, the way I see it, Doug describes it very, you know, very similar light, but you really have three options.
And then there's, you know, two sub options underneath each one.
So, six options total.
You've got, you know, localist.
Like tribalism, and then you've got nationalism, and then you've got globalism.
I'm not a globalist.
George Soros is just too cool for me.
I'm not invited to any of the parties.
I don't eat bugs.
I did when I was a kid, actually, because it was a good way to get attention.
Like first grade, you go on your summer camp with the church, and all the other kids are like, oh my gosh, he ate a bug.
But I haven't eaten bugs in a long time.
I swore them off.
When I was a child, I acted as a child, but I'd grown up and put those things behind me.
So I'm not a globalist.
Because first and foremost, I'm being facetious, but biblically, I believe in the goodness of sovereign nations.
That God actually appoints borders.
He's sovereignly.
So it's not just people get together and make those plans.
That's the human agency.
But God actually, in his sovereign decree, actually institutes the lifespans, the days, the time of nations, the Bible says, and its borders.
And we see again and again and again the sovereign rights of nations to police their borders, defend their borders.
The sojourner, you know, or the stranger that we see in the Old Testament, we do eisegesis.
We, being, of course, not you and I, but like gospel coalition types, will eisegeate in their illegal immigrants.
That's not actually the word in the Hebrew.
It's somebody who entered through the walls legally.
This is not a fugitive.
This is somebody who legally came into Israel, the nation, and is going to assimilate in their cultures.
They're going to be expected to adhere to the Sabbath laws, all these things.
Even guys, merchants who want to sell to Israel who aren't even inside on their land, who are outside the gate.
Nehemiah tells them, if you come back on the Sabbath again, I'm going to lay hands on you and beat you guys.
You know what I mean?
So it's just, it's insane.
So, anyways, all that said.
Yeah, that's right.
So the point is, nations are totally biblical.
And then tribalism, there's nothing wrong with a local mindset.
You and I, you know, we live in a particular place.
We think about the nation, but we think about the world in one hand, but we're also thinking about our city, our county, our state, even smaller than that, our neighborhoods, and of course, our households.
So that's fine, but that doesn't function in terms of, you know, this tribe of 40 people, you know, because there's an instability.
There's not a stable, secure, you know, there's constantly, we've seen tribalism at work in distant places.
Past and in other places, still to this day, they're always at war.
It just doesn't work.
So, tribalism or localism versus nationalism versus globalism, the biblical model by far seems to be nationalism.
So, then the question is is it going to be pagan or Christian?
Pagan tribalism or Christian tribalism?
Pagan nationalism or Christian nationalism?
Pagan globalism or Christian globalism?
So, we're saying nationalism seems to get the lion's share of biblical support.
So, we're going with that one.
And then it's a no brainer for the second question is it Christian or is it God hating?
It's Christian.
It has to be Christian.
Pluralism is anti Christian, right?
So, in that sense, I just wanted to define my terms.
When I say I'm a Christian nationalist, what I believe is the goodness, the biblical goodness of sovereign nations and the right to police their borders and adhere to certain customs, but with Christ Jesus being king over all of it, and they must obey his will, which we find in the law, word of God, every jot and tittle, none of it will pass away.
Heaven and earth will pass away before any jot and tittle of the law.
So, we have the full law of God.
Certain points have been fulfilled by Christ, like the ceremonial law.
It's all been fulfilled and abrogated the ceremonial law, but the rest remains intact.
And those things need to continue to this day.
And Caesar is God's deacon, God's servant, serving under Christ as the high king, and he needs to do his bidding.
That's what I think of when I say I'm a Christian nationalist.
That's what I mean.
I think that that's not a theonomic position.
It is, but I think that's just the Christian position.
I think anything less than that is not Christian.
What do you think?
Yeah, I try to keep it very simple.
You know, I think that when you, when you, When you just break it down, you know, our nation and all nations should be self consciously Christian.
That's what they should do.
That's the good thing.
And so everything about the nation should be Christian.
So they should have Christian laws.
They should have Christian traditions.
They should have Christian customs, morality, education.
Everything should be Christian.
And we should be self conscious about that, trying to do the best we can to be as Christian as possible in every area.
And what I mean, and that necessarily means that we're not making any accommodations for any other moral perspectives, any other religious perspectives.
So, in other words, You know, you could be a Muslim in a Christian nation, but you're not going to get Ramadan off.
We're working.
And if you don't want to work on Ramadan, that's up to you, but we're working, you know, and we're taking Christmas off.
And if you don't want to take Christmas off, that's up to you, but we're taking it off.
There's no accommodation.
So, in other words, you're the exception.
If you want to live here, that's fine, but you're the exception to the rule.
And we're not going to have Muslim laws.
Right.
So, if you don't like that, tough because that's that we're a Christian, self consciously Christian nation.
We're not going to have pluralistic laws.
We're not going to have laws that, that, That are accommodating LGBT perspectives or things like that.
No, we're having Christian laws because we're a Christian nation.
That's what we should be doing.
That's all I mean.
So, as a Christian, I'm trying to make the nation as Christian as humanly possible.
Right.
Right.
Amen.
Repentance Without Clarity00:14:38
So, with that, you know, in brotherly disagreement, those kinds of things, you know, like we've seen some debates lately, and some of them have been, you know, in good faith and there's been charity, not Not weakness, right?
There's been good courage and faithfulness and somebody really sticking to their guns.
We've seen some of those debates lately, but we've also seen some debates that have not gone very well in the Twitter sphere and other places.
And a lot of the ones that have not gone very well seem to be about this topic of Christian nationalism.
So when you thought of this topic of let's talk about how to disagree as brothers, especially from reformed brothers, how do we disagree with one another?
What did you have in mind?
Where do you want to go from here?
Yeah, definitely.
Well, what I actually was thinking about when I had this idea is the debate that we saw between Jared Moore, Dr. Jared Moore.
He is a doctor, I think.
Whatever, Pastor Jared Moore.
That's a better title, Pastor, anyway.
That's a better one.
So, Pastor Jared Moore and Pastor Doug Wilson, or I guess he's Reverend Doug Wilson.
And basically, the controversy was about same sex orientation, homosexuality, and the orientation of, you know, Being homosexual, you know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
And whether or not that, you know, that orientation was, I don't know, part of original sin or something like that.
It was just a very, very, very specific kind of debate because I don't think anyone would say that Doug is pro gay Christian, right?
Like that's not like what people would say about him, but there is some difference in opinion there.
And so I just, I just, that's why I thought about it because I saw a lot of people arguing about that where it was very good and helpful and I think necessary.
But I did see some like overheated type stuff too, where it's like, oh, he's just soft on this.
He's just a heretic and stuff like that.
I saw a little bit of both.
So that's why I wanted to kind of explore it a little bit and talk about how to do that the right way, because I think it's necessary.
You got to have those fights.
I'm glad Pastor Jared Moore brought this up, because I think that issue needs clarity.
If any issue needs clarity, that one does.
Definitely.
And I think the reason that it got brought up is, you know, so like a mutual friend of you and I, John Harris, you know, had Jared Moore on his show before he hosted the debate, you know, informal, organic, you know, discussionslash debate between, you know, Doug Wilson and Jared Moore.
First, John did an episode where he had Jared Moore.
They're talking about concupiscence, which to define that, it's basically sin at the level of desire, which is clearly a biblical principle we find in the book of James.
You know, that sin ultimately gets its start in our desire, right?
Why do you sin?
Is it not because of your evil desires?
You know, you covet and do not have, so you commit murder.
So these things can be tracked back to the level of desire.
That's where sin begins.
And so sin is not only sin once it Manifests itself outwardly in terms of our actions or our speech, but we can sin at the level of thought and we can sin even at the level of desires and certain urges.
And Doug Wilson had some material on the record from the past that Jared Moore threw out there saying, you know, well, on this concupiscence issue and guys like, you know, Revoice, you know, who are saying it's cool to cuddle, you know, with your boyfriend as long as you don't, you know, commit sodomy, you know, those kind of guys who are just straight up gay.
Those guys are gay, they should not be in the pastorate.
They really shouldn't even be granted membership in a local church unless they repent of that and actually reject that identity.
They're still identifying as a gay Christian, which is like being a jumbo shrimp, you know, or intelligent Joe Biden.
It's an oxymoron that's just not, it's a misnomer.
And so there's problems with all of that.
But for me, it's like Jared Moore threw him out there and cited some of Doug Wilson's older work.
And one of the things that I just want to consider, because when they talked, when Jared Moore and Doug Wilson actually talked together on John's show, Jared Moore was super respectful and he kept pressing Doug in good ways where Doug needed to be pressed.
And he did it respectfully and those kinds of things.
But initially, I was just like, all right, well, wait a second.
This needs clarity, it needs to be brought up.
But I think it should be done so respectfully.
And one of the things that should be considered I'm going to be frank.
You and I are not in this problem.
John Harris is not in this problem.
I don't know about Jared Moore, I don't know how long he's been in ministry or had a public platform.
But one of the reasons we're not in this problem is because we didn't have any notoriety or any platform or really any recorded material from 12 years ago or 10 years ago.
Like, I don't, like, if there were, I had some old sermons.
You can't find them.
They were probably awesome, right?
Nope.
They're deleted, they're gone, you know, down the memory hole.
My doing.
So my point is, like, when you have someone like Doug Wilson who's been ministering for the most part very faithfully for 40, Something years at this point, you're just going to have some things on record where it's like you missed it.
And not just you missed it, sometimes there's like you didn't even completely miss it, but they're like the whole culture and even church culture was thinking in a different direction.
So, like when Doug says, like we have gay Christians, you know, in good standing, in our, you know, Doug even admitted, I would never say it like that again.
But that wasn't, that just wasn't a part of the conversation.
We were not collectively thinking.
About what that meant and all the implications.
And I see now why that is not a helpful phrase.
I would not say it like that again.
But you're going back to 10 years.
So, anyways, what do you think?
Yeah.
Well, I think here's the thing.
You know, I appreciate the willingness to kind of because Doug is really good at this.
Like anyone who's ever had a problem with him, you know, if you want to discuss something with him and go back and forth and kick some ideas around or whatever, he's willing to do it.
You know what I mean?
And I respect that about him.
And I think that sometimes.
So here's the thing my read on the whole situation is a little different.
And maybe it's because I didn't really see.
A lot of the back and forth right away.
But I thought Jared was pretty respectful.
I think that, you know, there were some bombastic things said.
And some of that, in my opinion, is to grab some attention, to get some attention to it, which I think is valid.
But what I'm more concerned with, not so much is how, like, how Jared kind of brought attention to it.
I'm more concerned with, like, as a bystander, as someone who's watching this, what do I then go and do?
What do I think?
Like, do I follow this thread?
Do I pursue this?
Do I think about this?
Do I just get really offended and stuff like that?
Because I actually thought a lot of the debate that I saw was super healthy and super respectful.
And I'm glad to see that the debate that they did on John's show, I haven't actually watched that in its entirety yet.
I'm glad that you thought that was respectful too, because that's really good because it's necessary to do that, right?
One thing that I'm glad also to hear that Doug said he wouldn't say that again, right?
He wouldn't say it that way.
I can understand that because there's just certain terms that, We can see with clarity now that are so slippery that we didn't see at the time, right?
What I fear though, and this is what I worry about sometimes, is where you kind of like, I'm not saying Doug did this, but this happens a lot with evangelical debates where they have something that they said that they regret saying, but they don't actually take it back.
They just want to pretend it never happened.
That's what we can't do.
That doesn't sharpen anything.
That just muddies everything, you know, where it's like, yeah, you know, like, It's out there.
You don't, you just pretend like you never said it and you change direction.
That happens all the time.
And that's like what I think needs to be avoided, like the play.
Cause that's, it's not, and some people are like, well, you're not repenting if you're not acknowledging it.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
But I'm more concerned with like the accuracy here.
So if you, if you change your mind, that's okay.
Tell me why.
You know what I mean?
That's, I'm talking about like sharpening the, like, respecting and sharpening the people because we need to understand the clarity here.
I'm glad Doug said he wouldn't say that again.
I don't know if he explained why, but I can easily see why you wouldn't want to say it that way again.
Right.
Yeah, I think, yeah, no, you're right.
Like the accuracy, truth matters.
And actually telling us why, I think that's really helpful.
You and I have talked about that before, but being able to say, all right, this is what I said.
This is what I'm saying now.
You might notice that the two contradict one another.
There's a difference here.
And the reason why I've changed on this position is because, dot, dot, dot.
And the reason why the why matters is because it's not just that issue.
That's ultimately within the light of concern.
I want to see that you're the type of person who can think biblically and actually is able to eat crow from time to time and exercise humility and be thoughtful and these kinds of things.
Because if I see you change on a position and you tell me why, how are you more sanctified today than you were when you made the original remarks?
How are you more mature?
How are you more theologically astute?
How have you grown?
How have you improved?
If you can convince me of that, or even at least give some basic reasoning for why.
We're just acknowledging.
Some people don't even acknowledge that they've changed.
Right.
Which is like, I think of Al Moeller, right?
Like, he's now this bastion for Christian nationalism, apparently.
And he hasn't even acknowledged the fact that he was totally woke yesterday.
Right.
Like, it's like it didn't even happen.
It's just magically goes away.
Like, that's what I want to avoid.
And that's why I kind of wanted to talk about this because I think that even if you disagree with Doug Still, which I think a lot of people do, I don't think anyone can say having that conversation on John Harris's show.
Wasn't healthy.
That was totally healthy.
And that was great.
And I had some great comments on one of my videos recently that said that they think they've pinpointed the actual disagreement because there's a lot of agreement, but then there is actually a substantive disagreement.
And he kind of pinpointed it.
And I think that that's healthy, man, when someone can look at the debate and say, I like these guys, both of them.
And now I think I figured out why they disagree.
That's so helpful.
You know what I mean?
Oh, dude, it was helpful for me because you know, like, I, I like Doug Wilson.
And so, you know, naturally, I have a presupposition.
I like Doug Wilson because I like what he said on other issues and blah, blah, blah.
So I found myself just, you know, from the outset, I'm wanting to agree with Doug.
I want him to be right.
And hearing the dialogue between the two of them was really helpful for me because, you know, and I'm happy to say this publicly.
And part of the reason I'm happy to say this publicly is Doug has enough humility to, like, if I disagree with him on something, he doesn't care, you know, and he'll still, you know, he'll still come on the show.
Exactly.
He'll still come on the show and we still have some measure of relationship, which is great, you know, because he's, Yeah, he's not a snowflake.
So, all that being said, though, like Jared Moore, you know, slowly whittled him down to get to exactly what you're expressing to get to the okay, here's actually the disagreement.
And I was like, dang it, Doug's wrong.
I disagree with Doug.
I agree with you because what it came down to is just the initial urge.
Because Doug kept giving like this example.
It was, he did say exactly like this, but in principle, this is what it was.
So, it was like, well, if I got a guy, you know, who has a moment of temptation, you know, to look at gay porn.
Right.
And, but he, you know, is very quickly, you know, 15 seconds, he shuts that urge down.
He, you know, he was on the laptop, but he doesn't click on anything and he closes his laptop.
And then, you know, praise God.
And he doesn't need to confess that.
And Jared Moore just kept pressing.
He's like, well, and the example kind of changed to where it's like, well, if there's a guy who just has one second, not 15, that was crazy, you know, like, but one second.
And, you know, but then Jared pressed again and said, like, but that's.
That urge is the sin.
That urge is the sin.
And Doug's saying, well, that's the sinful nature.
And I would have a few problems with that.
Number one, yes, we have a sinful nature.
We believe in that.
We're totally depraved from the womb until Christ saves us.
But one, we have a new nature now.
We're new creatures in Christ Jesus.
Sin still resides within the members of our being.
That's Romans 7.
So there's still a sense of what sin, but this is something people need to understand.
Per Romans 7, and the way that I would read Romans 7 as somebody who's Thoroughly reformed on the doctrine of total depravity and these kinds of things.
Romans 7 is essentially saying that the Christian is not totally depraved.
And I think that's something reformed guys need to get out of the.
It's like, well, I'm just totally depraved.
Are you saved?
Because if you're saved, you're not totally depraved.
Now, what you still have is you still have the flesh.
And as long as we're in this life, we still have the flesh and there are sinful desires which reside within the members of my being.
So my flesh still has a propensity towards.
Sin, but that's different than the sin nature.
See, the unbeliever has the flesh and the sin nature.
So, to use like an analogy, if you're thinking like an egg, right, you got the egg white and you got the yolk, you know, and let's say they're both bad.
You know, like the unbeliever has the white, you know, the white, you know, egg white, and that's the flesh and that's bent towards sin.
It has a propensity towards sinful desires.
And then they've got, you know, the yellow egg yolk and that's the sin nature and it's also bad.
Well, the Christian still has the egg white and the fleshly.
Sin still resides within his flesh, but the yoke has been transferred out and in its place is some chocolate goodness center or whatever.
And that's different.
But the problem is that the last thing I'm going to say is just the problem that I think of is sin.
Yes, sin still resides within the members of my being.
I don't need to confess 24 7 for having sin within the members of my flesh.
But there's something to be said for when the urge becomes conscience.
Infighting and Conscience00:05:29
And that's what Jared put his finger on and said, but wait a second.
Because you're not just talking about going through the day as you're, you know, as you're driving in your car to work or as you're kissing your daughters and praying over them as they go to sleep.
You're talking about a conscious, specific moment where you had thoughts, conscious thoughts of desire toward.
That's what you're repenting of.
You're repenting of that moment of desire towards this thing.
And then the last thing you add on top of that, and on top of it all, this is not a desire that's out of bounds in terms of degree.
Like, I'm desiring two wives instead of one.
No, this is an unnatural desire.
That's what Paul says in Romans 1.
Even for the unbeliever, this is debased and unnatural.
Men exchange natural relations with women and become inflamed with lust for one another.
So, we're talking about not just an urge, but a conscious urge that you feel that you're mentally aware of, thoughts are involved, even if it's a second, and an unnatural one at that, which is shameful even among Gentiles.
And we're saying that that doesn't need to be confessed.
And just to be specific, I'm not saying that you need to sit in a confession booth for three hours like Luther used to do before he got saved, but we're talking about confessed at least to the Lord.
To the Lord.
Oh, yeah.
That was Jared's position.
I was like, oh my gosh, I can't disagree with that.
And so here's the thing.
And this is why this is so healthy for us because, you know, I'm just going to be straight up, keep it 100% honest with you here.
So when I saw this controversy, I kind of was like, Oh no, infighting again.
That's kind of my initial reaction, right?
And Jared had already kind of requested to come on my channel, and I was happy to have him because I'd had him on Reform Jellical when that was a thing a long time ago.
And anyway, so I was like, almost like, oh no, and he's going to be on my channel now.
Now I'm going to get in this controversy.
Like I was almost dreading it for like maybe a little more than 15 seconds.
I'll give you that a little more than 15.
But when I thought about it, you know, a second time, I was like, you know, that reaction.
Where I just don't want to cause any trouble.
I have that.
Believe it or not, I have that reaction all the time.
We got to sometimes just swallow, take a deep breath, take a nice, good, hard swallow, and just be like, look, we need to figure this one out.
We need to hash this out into it.
It's not that I hate you.
It's not that we hate each other.
It's not that we're going to all be in a firing squad shooting each other and stuff like that.
This is the definition of iron sharpening iron.
And it's not necessarily a peaceful process.
All the time.
I don't know if you've ever seen somebody make a sword, Joel, but it's violent.
And so, if that's the imagery we have for sharpening each other, you know, how you would like sharpen a sword or make a sword, it's okay to let the sparks fly a little bit, just so long as you're committed at the end of the day to the church and each other.
You know what I mean?
You know, I think that I'll be honest, man, I've got like a very, when I was younger, I had a very, A feminine training on how to deal with conflict and how to deal with this kind of stuff.
But I got to, you have to reject that kind of stuff, especially as men.
You know, I know you probably have female subscribers too, but mostly probably male.
Mostly.
We've got to reject that and recognize that, you know, at the end of the day, like guys and girls communicate differently.
So if you grew up with mostly female teachers or female Sunday school teachers and stuff like that, there's a chance that your view on conflict is a little skewed, right?
We can, we can, guys.
I don't know if I told you about this one, Joel.
Maybe on the last episode, I can't remember, but I saw this post on Gab or something like that where there was this guy who had a before and after pick.
He was really fat before and then he was like, he was fit.
You know, it would have been like a year or he'd exercise.
And he said, I finally decided to get control of my weight after my friend called me a fat, obese idiot every day for a year.
I finally decided to do it.
And the thing is, like, That doesn't compute with women, right?
But that guy knew, that friend knew that, yeah, he was calling him a name, you know, and maybe a little more colorful too than that.
But he knew his friend loved him.
He knew his friend had his back.
He knew his friend didn't hate him.
He knew his friend didn't want bad for him.
And so it, you know, it took a little sparks, but it got him.
It got him.
And now he's, you know, a normal weight and he's got a healthy way of looking at food and everything.
And he's very grateful for his friend who called them names for a year straight.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Guys have to do this a little differently.
And I think that sometimes we, because let's just face it, a lot of us grew up in churches that had, we had a lot of female influence.
A lot.
Right.
And even the males sometimes acted like females.
Like, I think fighting is good.
Freedom Speech vs Theocracy00:10:33
And I think we just need to make sure that we have that commitment.
Like, my brother is never worried when I fight with him that I'm going to say, I never want to see you again.
He's not worried about that because.
He knows I'm his brother and I've got his back.
And that's how it should be.
You know what I mean?
Yep.
So let's talk about another disagreement that did not go that way, that seems to be still going on, at least as we're recording this.
So it may, you know, the scuffle could be worse by the time this episode airs, or it could be just, you know, long forgotten.
But on Twitter, mutual friend of you and I, William Wolf, who I think I could be wrong, but doesn't he work with Al Moeller?
Isn't he an intern with Al Muller?
Yeah, it was.
Wasn't he like the head intern or something?
I think he helped him with, I think he helped him with like research with the briefing or something like that, at least while he was there, because he was going to Southern Seminary, but he's graduated now.
And that's like being the head elf for Santa.
Yeah, like being the head elf for Santa.
Yeah.
So, anyway, so William Wolf is a solid guy.
And I've had him on the show before.
And I know that you've interacted with him also.
And he's very active on Twitter.
I can't keep up with him.
I think he, it seems like he posts like, like a hundred times a day.
It's insane.
Yeah.
I definitely don't keep up with it.
Yeah, so, yeah, it's way too much.
But I have noticed that James Lindsay, so conceptual James, he's the renowned atheist who the Lord in his common grace used.
And I don't know, I guess it started in like 2017 maybe or so that at least he started kind of coming out in the public sphere and really, you know, just decimating critical race theory and wokeness.
And that was a gift to the church.
Praise God.
And he really teamed up with Michael O'Fallon.
Michael O'Fallon's a guy who kind of, you know, was.
Was using him and bringing him to certain things.
And so I've learned a lot from James Lindsay in terms of how to refute critical race theory, how to refute the whole DEI, diversity and equity and inclusion.
Really, really helpful stuff.
James Lindsay is good, I think, at identifying the problem and then just blasting it.
But he doesn't have a solution, in my opinion.
And there's probably a decent reason for that.
One of the reasons would be because James Lindsay hates Jesus.
And I think that's important for us to remember.
Romans chapter 8 says the mind of the sinful man is hostile.
It's not neutral.
Neutrality is a myth.
And that's precisely where James and I would disagree.
But neutrality is a myth in biblical terms.
The mind of the sinful man, if you're not born again, if you haven't been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, or Christ alone, then your mind is in a state of enmity and hostility, not indifference, not neutrality, but enmity and hostility towards the law of God, the things of God.
You cannot submit to his law.
Uh, nor will you, yeah.
He doesn't submit to his law, so it's not something you will do, and it's not something you can do.
And that's ultimately, if we're thinking biblically, that is the heart and mind of James Lindsay right now, as far as we can tell from every outward appearance by his own admission.
Um, unless the Lord in his grace saves him, so all that being said, James has been helpful on the problem, he's not super helpful on the solution.
William is saying, Um, we need Christ, and we need Christ as king, uh, not just you know.
Just an ethereal Jesus, you know, best buddy, you know, who we, you know, I've got my little Jesus in a box and I take him out from time to time, you know, to help with internal problems, ethereal problems, emotional problems when I'm depressed or when I'm anxious, you know, or to pray for a loved one if they're not doing well.
No, we need Christ as political king.
We need him ruling with an iron scepter.
We need Caesar to submit to Christ, per Romans 13.
He is God's deacon.
The state is not a neutral sphere.
The civil sphere is.
Like everything else is either for Christ or against Him.
And so we need the state, the civil sphere, to be in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which, of course, an atheist, shocker, doesn't like that position.
Of course.
Of course he doesn't.
Sure.
You know, but the crazy thing is like how this is unfolding online.
So, you know, you're looking at these posts and it's just like William's saying something here and saying something there.
And he's snippy, he's snarky.
So it's not like William's not like some little church mouse.
Like he's.
He's ferocious and he's going after it.
But then James Lindsay is responding like, you're a little bitch.
And that's the response, like straight up.
And it's like, okay, so that's not how we disagree.
And then there are Christians still backing Lindsay in this.
You know what I mean?
It's weird.
It's very weird.
It's very weird.
It's the opposite of Jared Moore and Doug Wilson, is what I'm saying.
So we're given two examples, right?
So one's a good one, one's a bad one.
And I'm very glad that it is the opposite because, because here's the thing like, obviously, the Bible, the Bible talks about how we should strive to be at peace as long as it, as much as it depends on us to be at peace with people, right?
We don't want to cause problems.
We don't want to cause, you know, fights just for the sake of it.
But the thing is, like, our mission is going to cause problems because the thing is, like, you know, people who hate Christ don't like hearing that he's the king and we have to actually act like it and we have to order our lives according to it and all of this kind of stuff.
And they really don't like hearing that.
And so there is really no peace between us so long as we're on this mission, right?
You know, we can.
We can be friendly with guys like James Lindsay.
Honestly, he always seemed like the kind of guy that I could grab a beer with and hang out and chat with him.
That's what he seems like.
I mean, I don't know if he's like that, but that's what he seems like.
But at the end of the day, we're just coming at this from completely different planets.
You know what I mean?
Very different planets.
And so, any agreement we have on anything is really kind of just agreement on the surface more than anything.
And so, of course, you know, it's not surprising to see responses of like that, like where he's just kind of cursing and, you know, making jokes and stuff like that.
That's not surprising.
They're really, it shouldn't look the same as Jared versus Doug Wilson because it's a total, they're just coming at it from a completely different perspective.
We have a different standard.
That's what it comes down to.
We have a different standard for everything that we do, including how we disagree.
Like, there are Christian standards for everything in all of human life, including disagreeing with somebody else.
And James Lindsay doesn't have that standard.
In his position, he wants to defend with every bone in his body to his dying breath no standards.
That's what he wants to give his life for freedom of speech means absolute freedom of speech.
You can say anything always.
When the reality is, it's not, you know, Rush Dooney is so helpful.
Just that whole catchphrase of it's not whether, but which.
There's always going to be a reigning orthodoxy.
There's always going to be a theocracy.
See, that's the crazy thing is that, like, oh, well, we don't want a theocracy.
What do you think the branch Covidians for the last three years have been all about?
You think that's not a deity?
That's not a religion?
Of course, it's a religion.
It's certainly not science, right?
It's the science, TM, right?
Which is a religion.
There's nothing scientific about it.
You know, take the booster, do this, like, without backing anything up.
And if you disagree, what happens to you?
Well, you get freedom of speech.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
You get shadow banned, you get blackmailed, you lose your job, you get kicked off of this, you know, all these different things.
So, the point is, there's never a perfect freedom of speech.
And I think what we have to realize is, again, it's not whether but which.
There's always a reigning orthodoxy.
By way of consequence, whatever the orthodoxy is, things that are outside of that, especially things way outside of that, are going to be labeled as blasphemy.
And there's always going to be some penalty, whether it's a cultural, like society.
Penalizes you, you know, by just, we're not going to interact with you anymore.
You don't get invited to our gatherings anymore.
You're losing friends over it, or whether it's a civil penalty.
So, whether it's a social penalty, more organic, or a formal civil penalty, there's always an orthodoxy.
There's always blasphemy.
There's always a standard.
It's not whether, but which.
And there's always a God.
That standard flows from the God.
There's always a theocracy.
This idea that we don't need theocracy.
Let's just do this classical, you know, liberalism.
Let's just do this.
But no, there's always a God.
There's always a God.
And if there is no God truly, then government is the God.
Government is the theocracy in and of itself.
It becomes the deity.
And so to me, it's inescapable.
But guys still keep pushing back and not so charitably.
This is the thing like James Lindsay, just to stay on him for a second, you had to see this coming, right?
So what you said was perfect.
He's really good at identifying problems, right?
Yes.
He might not know exactly why it's a problem, but at the end of the day, he does have some moral compass.
Because God created him to have one, right?
So he has it because God put it there.
And he's inconsistent with it, and he's not going to be, you know, he's not going to serve God.
He's going to do whatever he wants.
But he does have some stuff.
So he can know the difference between right and wrong.
We all understand that.
So he's good at that.
But we all, I thought, to be honest, Joel, I thought we all kind of knew that like there'd be a limit to being able to, you know, use Joel's, or I'm not, it's not Joel's, James's stuff.
Right, exactly.
But the more time passed, the more I didn't see any limits.
Like, I saw him, you know, talking about what pastors ought to do.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Right.
We're not on the same team.
Pastors shouldn't do anything because you think they should do it.
God's Judgment on Movements00:15:43
Like, what are you even talking about?
And then he starts talking about theology and how, you know, some people are not orthodox.
And I'm just like, there's no breaks on this train, is there?
And it's hilarious.
Maybe we were naive, right?
Like, we shouldn't have even.
Maybe let him in the circles in the first place.
But the point is, you can be friends with him.
You can use his stuff.
You can use his material, but make sure you're just using it and not leaning on it.
Because he's got nothing for you as far as a replacement for this.
He's got no way to beat this.
I saw he kind of laughed at something I said about his little tantrum he's had the last few days.
And it is a tantrum, he's having a little tantrum.
And he said that his only goal is that when guys like me fall off the cliff, he maintains the movement.
And I didn't respond to that, but like, what movement?
I'm not nobody's we shouldn't be in your movement.
I don't know what your movement is.
I don't know how you even have an atheistic movement.
I don't even know what that's supposed to even mean.
But like, I want no part of it, and no Christian should.
Movement, you're holding together the movement.
This is the thing like, Andrew Torber gets a lot of grief, but one he said a lot of right things.
And one of the right things he said is, unfortunately, and I say fortunately, but if you're not a Christian, you cannot be a leader in this.
You just can't.
That's right.
Yep.
That's right.
You're not.
On the same page, we can work together to stop transsexual story hour, right?
But that's about the limit.
You know, we can't really beyond that.
Like, I'm glad you know that transsexual story hour is bad, but like, you know, beyond that, we really don't have much to do with each other, right?
You know what I mean?
That's absolutely right.
Uh, James Lindsay is Deborah, I think is the way that I would say it, right?
So, um, Deborah, right?
Every those are fighting words, every feminist, you know, every feminist, feminist, you know, heretical theologian and egalitarian.
They love Deborah, right?
They love Deborah.
So, Deborah, you know, for the listener, if you're not familiar, she was one of the judges when there wasn't a king, right?
So, things are chaotic during chaotic times.
Sometimes there's, you know, everybody's doing what they see as right in their own eyes.
There's no king in Israel.
Every man does what is right in his own eyes.
Things are chaotic.
And a lot of the men are being cowardly, especially those men who are in positions of authority who are allowing for the chaos to happen, who aren't actually leading, who aren't standing up and defeating the enemies and all this kind of stuff.
And I think it's Barak, I think it's his name, but Barak was the general at the time.
And he, Asked Deborah to go with him into battle.
A woman, right?
He's like, hey, will you?
I mean, you know, it's just even in 2023, I feel like that would be embarrassing, you know, like if there's like some kind of battle and, you know, and I'm going and asking my wife, Hey, would you come with me?
You know, like we need to go and fight this.
There's two guys over there and we need to fight them.
And would you come with me?
Because I could really use your help.
I'm nervous to go by myself, right?
That's just, I mean, that's embarrassing.
It's shameful.
And Deborah says as much.
She says, I'll go, but just know that the glory, you know, the glory will go to a woman.
Right.
And, you know, and what she's saying is like, I'll go with you.
You really shouldn't be asking me to go.
This is not, this is kind of shameful.
And so my point is this James Lindsay is Deborah.
And what I mean is James, it's like, well, how did we get a James Lindsay?
Where did he come from?
I'll tell you where he came from.
He came because all the barracks, Al Moeller, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, right?
The list goes on.
Mark Dever, right?
David Platt, all the barracks, Matt Chandler, Wouldn't do anything.
They just wouldn't do anything.
And so here comes Deborah, right?
And so my point is okay, so Deborah comes in and wins the day and actually defeats, you know, because here's the deal.
Yeah, there's plenty of wokeness going on, but it's changed.
We need to be honest, right?
Because some of us on the conservative side, we need to be honest about this because we're building our platforms and our ministries off of wokeness.
And I don't want to be that guy.
I don't want to be secretly rooting for my.
Enemy to stay in power so that I have something to whine about so that people watch me on YouTube.
I want wokeness to die.
And if that eradicates, like we don't really need Joel anymore.
And what, like, fine.
Praise God.
Praise God.
And I think, if we're going to be honest, I think wokeness is on its last leg.
I think it's on its way out.
And I feel like something has shifted from 2020 with the summer of love and mostly peaceful riots and the whole country was on fire and George Floyd, St. George Floyd.
And now, in the beginning of 2023, it's different.
Plenty of woke guys still out there.
I get it, but it's different.
You can say things now.
The Overton window has shifted.
It has officially shifted.
You can say things now.
I am saying things now, and I don't get near as much flack as I would have just three years ago, two and a half years ago.
And so, my point is praise God for Deborah.
Praise God for James Lindsay.
He's a big part of that.
And the Bible says give honor to where honor is due.
And that's not just for Christians.
If an unbeliever does something that's honorable, praise God.
So, I want to give him honor for that.
And I want to honor Michael O'Fallon for bringing him to the table.
Michael O'Fallon, I'm sure even if Michael O'Fallon was on this podcast, he would say, Yeah, he wasn't the first guy I was looking for, but I'm looking at all my SBC guys that I trusted over the years, and none of them are anywhere to be found.
So, yeah, so then I have to get.
So, James Lindsay is God's indictment of Big Eva.
That's what he is.
James Lindsay is God's indictment of Big Eva.
But here's the problem, though God's judgments are.
Well, you just, when God sends a judgment, it squelches evil, but it also shames the cowardly righteous who were standing on the sidelines.
And now we're into the shame, right?
So God uses the hammer of James Lindsay, the Deborah, the indictment against Big Even, their cowardice, and all these kind of things.
And he crushed up wokeness.
But now we as Christians, we have to deal with James Lindsay because he's been let in the door and given prominent spotlight because all these other guys who, the barracks who should have been fighting, weren't fighting.
And now we're trying to say, well, okay, but here's the deal.
Our goal was not to get back to the 1990s.
Like, our goal is a little bit bigger than that, right?
And we're not even trying to get back to 1776.
We're not trying to get to a principled pluralism.
We're not trying to, because pluralism, just for the record, our listeners need to know this pluralism is just a euphemism for polytheism.
We're not polytheists.
We're not polytheists.
We are Christians.
We believe in one God, one God over heaven and earth.
His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And James Lindsay is not going to take us there.
And the only reason James Lindsay was helpful at all is because we got so far off.
The rails, and I'm talking about the church judgment.
When God sends judgment, it starts with the church.
The church got so far off the rails that an atheist who spent his early life trying to take out Christianity, the new atheist movement, I mean, hating Christ, an atheist was an improvement from, say it like that, a guy from the new atheist movement trying to take out the church as his life's mission.
We got in such a bad position as the evangelical church.
That guy was an improvement on the Southern Baptist convention.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's, you know, if I can put it that way.
But now, by God's grace, as the Overton window is shifting, as guys are starting to have courage, as we're starting to make some headway, James Lindsay is saying, oh, well, this is, I'm sorry, guys, we're done.
This is as far as we're going.
And we're saying, wait a second, we're going further than that, right?
Fighting with James Lindsay is completely different than fighting with Doug Wilson, completely different than fighting with Jared Moore.
Because, you know, the Bible talks about, you know, sharpening each other and all that kind of stuff.
And, You know, as brothers, you know, we need to, you know, we need to, you know, if somebody's in sin, if somebody's doing something in error, we need to confront them.
You know, maybe you'll win your brother, that kind of thing.
We've got so many verses we could draw from about how to deal with each other, right?
We're supposed to love one another, especially the church within the church, loving one another, right?
That's how people know we're the church.
But fighting with James Lindsay is totally different because, because one of the things that James is very, like, you know, upset about, and I understand from his perspective is that, you know, Stephen Wolfe in his book said that, You know, atheism will be stomped out in a Christian nation.
Crushed.
Yep.
And that is not controversial in the slightest.
Atheism will be crushed.
Yes, of course.
Any group or organization, that doesn't mean we're going to hunt down atheists and just kill them for no reason.
Like, that's not what we're talking about.
But they will have no influence, none.
That's right.
In a Christian nation, our traditions, our laws, our customs, and all that kind of stuff, right?
Our education.
No, they will have no influence.
That's the goal.
And the thing is, so when you're fighting, so he doesn't like that.
He's very upset about that.
But the problem is, he's a fool.
And so the Bible tells us how to deal with him.
You don't answer him lest you be just like him.
So you don't act like he acts.
When he calls you a little, you know, whatever, you can bleep that out.
Sorry.
You don't respond in kind.
You know what I mean?
You don't make fun of him in that way.
You don't, you know, rip him in that way.
You could zing him, obviously.
I'm not saying you can't zing him, but, you know, but you don't answer a fool, you know, according to his folly, lest you be just like him.
But you do answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
He needs to be put in his place, is the bottom line.
He's not as smart as he thinks he is.
He's not as clever as he thinks he is.
In fact, he is a fool.
I cannot think of a less respectable position to hold than atheism.
It is the least respectable position you can have.
It makes much more sense to be a Muslim.
It makes much more sense to be even a, what is the one from Utah? Mormon.
Oh, Mormon.
Yeah.
Mormon.
It makes more sense to be a Mormon.
It makes no sense to be a Mormon.
It makes no sense to be a Muslim.
But it makes more than atheism, it is the bottom rung.
If you have a creator who's made himself known in everything he's created, everything, and you decide, you know, I'm going to reject that, that's as foolish as you could possibly be.
Right.
And just real quick, for the record, for the listeners, AD is using the word fool in the proper biblical sense again and again and again.
Sure.
The Bible says the fool says in his heart, there is no God.
Sure.
The fool says in his heart.
So the guy who says there is no God, in biblical terms, fool is the exact word that has to be used.
R.C. Sproul used to say, you know, we celebrate fools once a year on April 1st.
Right, and you know, and and right, April Fool's Day, and so he, you know, he said April 1st, it should be called National Atheist Day, right?
And so, April 1st, we can, you know, we can get James Lindsay, you know, a birthday card and send it to him in the mail or whatever, like because that is the fool, according to scripture.
The fool says in his heart, There is no God, and we don't need fools leading the way.
And if fools led us and helped us to destroy a bigger fool, right, that's what it was.
It was a smaller fool destroying a bigger fool.
All that means is like, Well, thank you, we can be thankful for that.
But we don't then go and make him king, right?
So if Deborah goes with Barak, it's to the shame.
It's not to glorify Deborah.
It's an indictment to the shame of Barak.
And when they come back and win the battle, what you don't do is you don't then make Deborah queen.
You don't crown her and say, and now we're going to have a gynocracy.
Now we're going to be led by having this woman win one battle worked so well that now we're going to be underneath female leadership.
A female dictatorship for now on, for the rest of Israel's future.
No, that's not what you do.
What you do is you say, Thank you, Deborah, and you say, Shame on you, Barak, and may this never have to be needed again.
That's what you do.
And the thing is, like, and we don't have to pretend like, you know, listen, do I want James Lindsay to be, you know, at Tom Askell's church one day and hear the gospel and for God to change his heart and for him to accept the gospel?
Absolutely, right?
I absolutely do.
And if James was just going to go quietly into the night and, you know, I just take my hat off to him and I would never speak his name again.
I don't know him like that, right?
But I'm sure people around him do.
And they're ministering to him and they're preaching the gospel to him and all that kind of stuff.
I'm sure they're doing the right stuff.
I'm sure Michael Fallon is doing the right stuff that he ought to be doing as a Christian.
But the reality is he's not going quietly into the night.
The reality is that he's decided to take up arms, he's decided to fight.
And when the fight comes to you as a Christian, I mean, you meet him.
You meet him there.
That's your mission.
You know what I mean?
And so he needs to be put in his place.
He needs to be defeated.
His arguments, I read through some of them and it's just like, I remember this because I used to argue with atheists in public and online.
I used to go to colleges and argue with punk atheist kids.
They thought they were the smartest things ever.
I remember this.
This is the old village atheist stuff.
I get it.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, it was always there.
It was just kind of put off to the side when he was focused on this woke stuff.
But the reality is, he's a village atheist and needs to be dealt with.
And I, you know, listen, I know he's got people, solid Christian people around him.
And I pray that they're reaching out to him because what he's doing now is just embarrassing, is really what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think part of the problem, though, is that I want to be careful with how I say this, but part of the problem is that.
If every Christian went to James Lindsay and said, Friend, because you're not a brother, but friend, you're under the just condemnation of God.
You need to repent of your sins.
And what you're saying now, you've helped us this far, but you're not helping us anymore.
What you want to bring us back to, culturally, politically, philosophically, is exactly what got us here in the first place.
That leads to this.
And we're not interested in just winding back.
We're not just.
We're not just interested in somebody who can take us from stage four cancer back to stage two.
We want someone who can cure cancer.
But the problem is, not every Christian is saying that.
Like Christians, we're divided because we don't want the same thing.
You and I, AD, see, you and I, we want Christ as king over not just our nation, but every nation in the world.
We want the nations to be his heritage.
We want the nations to flock to him.
We want.
We want the whole earth to be covered with the glory of God, with the knowledge of God as the seas, as the water cover the seas.
We want his rule, we want his reign, and we want to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven.
But it's not just that we have a disagreement on that point with James, we have a disagreement on that point with the majority of evangelical Christians.
Yeah, the truth is that there's a lot of Christians that are public atheists.
Street Epistemology in Debate00:12:00
In other words, They in their public life, there's literally no difference between them and the classically liberal atheist and the classically liberal Muslim and the classically liberal whatever Mormon.
Um, there's literally no difference in their public life, and that's a big problem.
That's a huge problem, and um, one of the many reasons why this thing has to be hashed out, you know, aggressively.
Yep, yep, absolutely.
All right, well, so Doug Wilson, Jared Moore, good, good way to disagree.
That said.
I found myself on Jared Moore's side, which was a bummer because I love Doug.
I mean, Doug Wilson has been so faithful and done so many great things.
And this is the thing, Joel.
But I did disagree with him.
I find myself in a great spot because I've disagreed with Doug, I think, twice.
And this is one of them.
And the other one was something to do with COVID lockdowns.
And I got to say, I've come out on top both times.
So, I mean, look at you.
So, see, that's the beauty is if If you want to be when I pick all the battles, exactly, I win 100% of the time.
Exactly.
If you want to be Doug Wilson's superior, what you do is like, right, because there's a trillion theological positions and implications.
So, what you do is you haven't thought of half of those, you just read what he thought about it and say, Yeah, that's pretty good.
That's my position.
Thanks for doing all the legwork.
And then, on the two positions, and then on the two positions that he actually is wrong on, is probably only two on those, you say, Look at me.
So, I'm just as good as Doug Wilson, plus two, you know, plus two.
Yeah.
So, maybe it's three.
I don't even remember.
But yeah, that's how you do it.
That's how you do it.
That's how you're right about everything.
That's exactly.
You just ride his coattails on every issue for the last 40 years, except for two.
That's where you take the opportunity to distinguish yourself.
There's Doug Wilson's of the world.
We're grateful for those guys, but then there's me.
Anyway, so that was a good way to disagree.
Doug was wrong.
And we're not seen as a good way to disagree because in the end of that disagreement, they came to the same conclusion.
That's not what we're saying.
The whole point of this episode is to say it's not that Jared Moore and Doug Wilson disagreed well because they eventually came to the same conclusion.
No, the episode left off with, you know, when they got on there with John, they still disagreed.
But it was good because number one, we got to substantive arguments to where someone like you or I, right, the third party watching, could actually learn something.
It was actually helpful and useful and helped me figure out what I thought about that particular issue.
And it was charitable.
It was loving.
Nobody was saying that Doug's a heretic, right?
A ton of people say that, but they weren't the guys in that conversation.
Exactly.
So, you know, and Doug wasn't calling them heretics.
That was good.
And then the James Lindsay and William Wolf and the other guys who've jumped in the ring, right?
Everybody's, you know, Seems to get in a tiff every now and then with James Lindsay.
And, you know, I, you know, me and I had Stephen Wolf on my show, not William Wolf, but Stephen Wolf, who wrote, you know, the case for Christian nationalism.
And I remember James Lindsay, as soon as he got out of Twitter jail, you know, he had, he had had like a, well, he just posted it, you know, he like shared the link of me and Stephen Wolf interviewing him on his book, you know, about Christian nationalism.
And he said, these are the Fed ops, you know, who, who, you know, whatever, like, this is a, this is a psyop or whatever, I don't know what he, but he was literally like saying, this can't be real.
It's unreal.
It's like, I'm telling you, it's just so amazing.
I don't know, Joel, if you spent any time arguing with atheists.
Like I said, I went to college campuses.
I even went to that atheist rally in DC they held, the Reason Rally.
I went there.
And I just remember listening to some of the speeches and talking to people.
And it's just like, these people think they're so smart and they're idiots.
They're really actually pretty dumb, a lot of them.
And then you see, like James, he's obviously intelligent, he's a good communicator.
And this thing has turned him into a psyop.
Everything just, he's gone.
He sounds crazy.
Yeah.
Like, and the thing is, like, I'm sure there's agents involved in various things.
I still believe that that whole situation with, what's his face?
It's not even worth mentioning, but that whole controversy with Stephen Wolf's friend and all that.
I think there was something going on there.
I can't prove it, so I can't really give you why I think that, but I'm sure there are some, like, Ops going on.
I mean, why wouldn't there be?
These guys are sick.
But like, he just sounds crazy now.
Now he sounds like a village atheist.
This is the old school stuff that I remember back in the day, them talking about.
Do you ever read Joel, the Handbook for Creating Atheists?
One of his friends wrote that.
That Professor Peter Bogosian.
Yeah, I know who that is.
Yeah, but I know that.
So that's one of them.
Him and James are pretty close, I think.
He wrote this book called A Manual for Creating Atheists.
It's basically.
He envisioned, I kid you not, this is where these guys are at.
He envisioned creating, you know, how like we have a lot of street preachers, Joel, and you go out, you preach the gospel, you do, you know, apologetics a lot of times, and those conversations come up.
He was going to create what he called street epistemologists to go out and convert people into atheism.
You know, and he was, they weren't street preachers, they were street epistemologists.
He wrote a whole book about it.
And it's like, You're crazy, dude.
You're actually a nut.
That's what you are.
Yeah.
Boy, he just, well, it's exactly what Jesus says.
You're either for me or against me.
There is no neutrality.
And I think that's what's important to remember is that at the end of the day, the person who is not with Christ is somebody who they don't want just a neutral playing field where everybody can, you know, go along to get along.
No, they want to convert people to atheism.
They want to spread the joy of hatred of God, right?
That, you know, that's, And they promise you freedom.
You'll be a free thinker, you know, and things like that.
It's pretty evil.
You know, I'm joking about it because it just sounds so stupid, you know, street epistemologist.
But it's pretty evil.
And I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not saying Lindsay was associated with that.
I don't know that he was or not.
I'm just saying, like, this is the level, like, these are like the big thinkers in atheism.
This is what we're dealing with.
Right.
So it's like, yeah, you're going to create an army of street epistemologists.
I'm sure that's going to get off the ground.
Do you remember when they tried to do the church thing?
They were going to do the Sunday meeting.
Do you remember that, Joel?
No.
They had a whole movement called the Sunday meeting, and it was going to be just like church, but not church.
They were going to have a motivational speech with an intellectual person.
They were going to sing songs, atheist songs, unto the atheist God.
I don't know.
Maybe like rock song.
I don't know what they were going to do, but they envisioned this whole thing where we're going to have Sunday meetings for atheists.
You want to know how long that lasts?
Probably two weeks because it's stupid and everybody knows it's stupid.
I don't know.
Maybe it's still going on.
I don't know if it really lasts two weeks, but it's dumb.
It's funny.
You said the epistemologist, street epistemologist, yeah, versus street evangelist, how you said how it's evil.
And just to clarify, if somebody's saying, well, you're saying that's evil, but the atheist thing, That you do in evangelism is evil.
This is why objectively they're not equivalent.
They're not equivalent because, from the atheist, giving, you know, and I'm not going to straw man it, I want to steel man the opposing position.
The best that they could think is that religion is oppressive, right?
That religion is like a shackle.
So people who believe in the triune God, you know, these are oppressed people, these are shackled people, and they're not as happy as they could be if they were liberated from religion.
But by James Lindsay's own position, by his own admission, Christians are fairly happy people in America.
And the history of America being predominantly Christian and Christian people, and you know, in the 1950s, these are people who are reasonably happy.
So, you're really what you're talking about is with your street epistemologist taking people who are reasonably happy, but maybe making them a little bit happier because now maybe their conscience isn't beating them up quite as much.
For the Christian evangelist, that's the street epistemologist, the atheist, for the street evangelist, you're talking about saving people from going to hell for eternity.
Right.
So, so we're going to have this team of epistemologists to save people from being kind of happy so that they could be really happy for the next 50 years.
And then they're dust.
Right.
And that's it.
And then the other position is no, our motivation is we're doing this first and foremost in obedience to God.
And then secondarily, out of love for neighbor, because we're talking about the eternal state of somebody not being reasonably happy for 50 years versus really happy for the next 50 years, but somebody for eons and eons and eons and eons into eternity.
Under the just wrath of God, miserable, wishing that they could die but not able to, versus eternal bliss in the presence of the triune God forever.
Like that's the difference.
So the point is, yeah, the atheist could say of the Christian evangelist and say, I disagree with what you're doing, but you can't call it evil.
You could call us insane, you could call us confused, you could call us wrong, but you can't call it evil.
Not morally evil, ill willed towards.
But for the epistemologist, what you have to say for the street epistemologist on the atheist side, trying to convert an atheist evangelist, Um, that really is uh evil in the sense that you are uh going out and yelling at people and and and arguing with people and and confusing people and all these things, uh, for a difference that is nothing and at best to steel man the opponent, uh, it's negligible so and temporary.
I regret to I regret to inform you that the Sunday assemblies thing is still going on, there's not very many of them, but they they still happen.
There's well, let's let's get back to me in 2000 years, let's see if they can hit our record.
That's right, that's right.
Oh, man.
The closest one to you is in Nashville.
I'm surprised there's not one in Austin, honestly.
I'm surprised.
Yeah, there's so few of them.
But yeah, so it looks really dumb.
At least it's still dumb.
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
All right.
Well, anyway, so that's, you know, how do we disagree with people?
We need to do it charitably, but charitably doesn't mean that we can't, you know, like we're using words like dumb, we're using words like foolish, because these are biblical words.
The Bible talks about being dumb, it talks about being foolish, it talks about stupid.
The word stupid is used in the Bible, not just fool, right?
I've used stupid before, and people say, like, well, I wish you would have said.
Foolish, you know, because stupid is harsh and that's not a biblical word.
Foolish is.
Nope, stupid is a biblical word too.
That's in the Bible multiple times, again and again and again.
So we want to be charitable, we want to be respectful, but we also want to be biblical and we want to be courageous and we want it to hurt.
We want it to hurt a little bit so that the fool becomes aware of their folly.
But all of this ultimately is done in a way that is seeking the highest and ultimate good of the person that we're disagreeing with.
It's done in love.
It may be sparks flying, iron sharpening iron, but it's done in love.
And it's done with clarity, with substance, with argument, so that people actually, the bystanders watching are better having watched.
They're actually learning something.
And I think Jared Moore and Douglas Wilson did that.
I think that the skirmishes with James Lindsay and William Wolfe and guys like that have not done that.
And it shouldn't be a surprise because in one debate, you have two Christians, in another, you have Christians versus someone who, in their inmost being, hates the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we should remember that.
Yeah, ultimately, you know, obviously, we're not trying to destroy.
You know, Doug Wilson or Jared Moore, obviously, we know that they're our brothers.
The Prodigal Son Paradox00:03:29
We're trying to help them.
And it's honestly, it's the same with James.
You know, we don't want to destroy him and we don't want to destroy his arguments, but we don't want to destroy him.
But James does need to be uncomfortable with his foolishness.
He needs to be made to feel uncomfortable with his denial of Christ.
And whatever that takes, we don't want to hurt him, but sometimes it does take your.
Your pride to be hurt a little bit, um, to recognize your need, you know, people need to sometimes be brought to the precipice before the solution, the antidote, the way is apparent to them, you know.
I mean, I know that worked for me.
I mean, I needed to be brought to like the lowest I've ever been, you know, in order for me to really recognize how depraved I was and how much need I had, you know what I mean.
The prodigal son needed that, the prodigal son came to the end of himself and then he remembered.
Oh, wait, you know, like, you know, my dad is actually good and I can, you know what I mean?
Like, I can actually live there, you know, like, and some people need that.
And the thing is, like, you know, again, you don't want to like curse him out or mistreat him or lie about him or do anything like that.
But, but there is a certain amount of roughness that someone like that needs.
I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's there and he needs to be brought down a peg or two.
His cleverness isn't going to save him, you know, his, his, his fake morality isn't going to save him.
Like, his, This mission, this movement, whatever he thinks he's leading, it's not going to help him at the end of the day.
He needs to deal with his sin.
And, you know, I hope the people around him are loving him enough to potentially even walk away from him if they need to.
Right.
Yep.
I hope so too.
And the reason why it matters is because in James Lindsay's world, the two gay dudes who adopted two boys and sodomized them and trafficked them with other gay guys to sodomize, that can happen.
And we don't like that.
We think that those two guys should get the death penalty, that it should be a swift capital punishment, that they should be executed.
Right.
And I say that just to put it into perspective.
I know that that's kind of dropping a bomb at the end of the episode, but I say that to say what standard do you use to say that gay marriage isn't a thing?
And what standard do you use to say that two gay married guys can't adopt children?
Right.
We have an answer for that.
Gay dudes don't get married in Christ.
Yeah.
No accommodation.
No accommodation for that.
And so they don't get married and they sure as heck.
They won't even get married, but they sure as heck don't get to adopt children.
They, you know, because it's a pretty straight line.
And it's not, you know, pun intended, but it's a pretty straight line from, you know, gay marriage to molesting children.
You like that, the pun, huh?
So, but like, it's a straight line.
So you can't be shocked, right?
You can't be shocked because it is a perverse lifestyle.
So it's like, Oh, well, you know, just because people are gay, like there are heterosexual marriages that, yeah, and those are misnomers, right?
Yeah, there are heterosexual marriages that have, that one of the spouses has abused children.
No Accommodation for Sin00:02:37
That is true.
Absolutely true.
But the gay couple shouldn't come as a surprise.
That makes sense.
That's not a misnomer.
That's not a fluke.
That's actually just the consistent continuance down that path, right?
We're this perverted.
Why not be a little bit more?
And so, my point is just to say that James Lindsay's world would punish guys for sodomizing children, but it wouldn't stop two guys from getting married and it wouldn't stop those two guys from adopting children, which puts them in the very situation for something like that to happen in the first place.
By what standard?
By what standard?
That's right.
So, anyway.
Good stuff, Joel.
All right, cool, AD.
Thanks for coming on the show.
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
AD, how can people follow you?
YouTube, AD.
Robles, R O B L E S. Gab is my favorite, A D Robles.
Again, I'm also on Twitter.
Cool.
All right.
Thanks for coming.
Appreciate it.
God bless.
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