Pastor Joel Webbin, Wesley Todd, and Michael Belch analyze why young Western men are flocking to Eastern Orthodoxy, citing cultural dissatisfaction with modern Protestantism's lack of robust masculinity and traditional stability. They contrast Western linear thinking with Orthodox practices like "emptying the mind," noting that while figures like Andrew Tate symbolize this shift, Orthodoxy remains incompatible with America's Protestant roots due to its specific liturgy. The discussion highlights doctrinal divergences regarding atonement and the visible versus invisible church, ultimately arguing that the immediate threat to society comes from compromised evangelical politics rather than Orthodox Christian nationalism, urging believers to maintain charity while resisting darkness. [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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Despite Protestants' many attempts, little has stemmed the tide of young Western men crossing over to Eastern Orthodoxy.
It would seem that there's a deeper underlying reason for Eastern Orthodoxy's appeal than merely doctrine.
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Today we'll be joined by Pastor J. Chase Davis to discuss what is driving men to the East and why our apologetics against it aren't working.
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So here we go.
Ready for the episode, EO Eastern Orthodoxy.
We're going to talk about Eastern Orthodoxy, which we've done before, but we want to try to do it from a little bit of a different angle.
And let me just say from the outset if you are an EO, bro, and you've got 14 different anonymous accounts on X, and you're clocking in 14 hours and never touching grass, God bless you.
You probably are single handedly responsible for getting Donald Trump elected.
We've got a lot of things in common.
We appreciate you.
We're going to try not to beat you up.
I know you think we're stupid, and we don't think you're stupid.
We just think you're a little mystic and gay, but intellectually, I would never try to insult you.
I just insult you in other ways.
You're not distinctly American.
I have problems with that.
But we're going to go for this episode a different angle, right?
We've done the doctrinal thing, and a lot of Protestants, not just us, but a lot of Protestants have gone from that angle.
And we'll be the first to admit we want to exercise some humility.
I know that sounds kind of ironic because I just said the whole mystic and gay thing, it was tongue in cheek.
A little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit serious.
But we really do want to exercise some humility.
We don't want to just make this about how we think, you know, Eastern Orthodoxy is off on the doctrinal merits, but we want to talk about some of the cultural aspects.
We want to talk about even politically the voting patterns, these kinds of things.
And then, most importantly, we want to talk about masculinity.
That's just a constant theme over the last few years.
Praise God, I think providentially so, that the church and Christians, whether they be Protestant or Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic, In all three of these major spheres of Christianity, there's been a rise, a massive increase of people realizing the need for a biblical, robust masculinity.
The Masculinity Gap in Churches00:05:37
We realize that the church across the board is lacking greatly in masculinity, which gives rise to guys like Andrew Tate, who we'll probably talk about a little bit later this week.
Michael's preparing an episode for that, that we're going to do our best to address Andrew Tate and all those kinds of things on Wednesday.
So I'm going to hand it over to Wes.
To kick us off a little bit and outline this particular episode.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a when the rubber meets the road, it's oftentimes a lot different than you imagine it to be.
So imagine that you're training for apologetics and you go out in the street and you actually engage with people.
And you've read Van Til's Defense of the Faith, you've read Bonson, you've read Rush Dooney, By What Standard, and you have an idea of what apologetics and everything looks like.
And then you go out and you actually interact with people.
And you realize once you get there that it never goes the way you intended it to go, or it never falls along the lines that you thought it would.
Every question, denomination, baptism, this, that, or the other, they have their academic, intellectual questions, problems, debates, where pages, thousands upon pages, and books have been spilled trying to solve them.
But then there's practically just on the ground what actually happens and how people are convinced.
It's very easy to think.
It's the arguments, it's the syllogisms, it's the logic and the reason that if you take someone and you lay it out for them and you really just answer every objection, then they'll be convinced.
And I would say for many years that I thought that.
That's how.
If you have a disagreement with your spouse, or like for, well, maybe not your children when they're young, but when they get older, you reason with them, and even other adults.
You sit down and you hammer it out and you go to the text, you go back and forth.
And when you do that, the best argument will win.
The problem is that's not just the case.
People don't typically arrive at the positions they hold.
Not always, but the average person, even the average man, does not typically arrive at the positions he holds because of that intellectual rigor, but he arrives them because of emotional reasons.
He has friends and family that take a certain view.
He goes to a church that teaches something like this.
He's surrounded by this influence at work.
The reason we come to a lot of our decisions, again, are not that hard, intellectually rigorous work of parsing through all of it, studying all of that.
We do it because, well, you go to a church that's Calvinist.
Like when I first became a Calvinist, why was that?
Well, I had a pastor that taught Calvinism from the pulpit, and I was surrounded by Calvinists.
Now, on the back end, I have a fully orbed defense of Calvinism, and I fully believe that it's true.
But the reason it changed, and it happened to change within a couple of years of starting to attend a Reformed church versus an evangelical kind of Arminian church, Well, what was it?
Did I come into better arguments?
Some, sure.
But I was also just surrounded by those kinds of people.
And so, when it comes to the Eastern church, so many Americans are so sick of modernity.
We don't even realize it.
It's like being homesick without being able to put your finger on it.
We're sick of cheap apartment complexes.
We're sick of shallow friends.
We're sick of consumeristic cultures and lifestyles.
And so, man, especially the Western man, he's longing for something deeper.
It's been said that he's surrounded by all this beauty that the Western world made.
But he lacks the worldview.
He lacks everything that made it there in the first place.
And so he longs for beauty.
He longs for tradition.
He longs to be grounded and rooted, but nothing is like that.
And so you take a man like that, that has feminism that's infected his church, modernity everywhere he goes, and he's trying all of this.
And then one day he walks in, is invited, brought in somehow to an Eastern church.
And he encounters things in a different language.
He encounters masculine men.
He sees icons and images that are Eastern and strange and foreign to him.
And as he's thinking about spirituality, he's thinking about the church and God and religion and eternal matters.
When he steps into an Eastern Orthodox parish, temple, whatever it would be, he steps into something a bit otherworldly.
And again, because it's not just, although a good man will parse through and arrive at his conclusions, it's not just the intellectual arguments.
It's not Nicaea 2 and the iconoclasm debate.
It's not debates about justification that are first and foremost on his mind.
He steps in and there's families and there's children.
And there's men and there's rigor and there's challenge, and it's a community of excited people.
And that has done a lot.
The point is, there are thousands and thousands of people that their experience, what put the seed in their heart of considering it and even going over, was not so deep.
It was not so complex as all of these arguments and all of the reading, so much as they walked in somewhere and it didn't look like a warehouse that you put pallets and stage lights on.
They didn't see a woman on stage and they said, I kind of like this.
Right.
That's so much of it.
Not all of it.
It wasn't Hillsong, you know, like Taylor Swift, you know, with instead of, you know, singing about Travis Kelsey, you know, you just replace his name with Jesus.
Jesus is my boyfriend songs.
And then, you know, a TED talk, you know, and smoke machines and all that kind of, you know, people, you're right, Wes, like people are sick of modernity and they want something that's rooted.
They want something that feels steady, stable.
Everything else is shaking around them.
So they want security, stability, tradition, something that's old, tried, true, tested.
And anything that even has the veneer of that, whether the substance is there or not, and we can make arguments about whether it is or whether it's not, but anything that even has the appearance of tradition, old, tested, tried, true, is going to do exceptionally well in our incredibly fake and gay culture that we live in today.
Why People Seek Tradition Now00:03:17
And so I don't think that this was always a thing.
I tweeted out a couple days ago I said, you know, I think that Eastern Orthodoxy is a fad.
And, you know, the EO bros, God bless them, you know, they immediately got in the chat and were like, a 2,000 year old fad, you know, and like, what do you mean a fad?
You know, it's Eastern Orthodoxy was there, you know, before the foundations of the world were laid, you know, and like, you know, making those kinds of arguments.
And I think they misunderstood my point.
I don't mean that it's a fad everywhere.
I meant here.
Right.
I meant in America.
And that is, that's just undebatable.
That's inarguable.
You can look at the statistics and the graphs and the charts, and Eastern Orthodoxy has certainly had a rise in America, and it's a very recent rise.
Uh, rise mostly post COVID because a decent amount of them didn't shut down exactly.
Yeah, they stayed open.
You have dudes with beards doing you know low register bass Gregorian chants, um, and they're open.
And meanwhile, you know, like, uh, it's like the meme with you know the dog that's like ripped with like an 18 pack, you know, and then like the little quivering chihuahua, you know, and you've got like the quivering Russell Moore, you know, uh, wearing his his hobbit mask, you know, this iconic picture that I can't get out of my head, which is terrible.
You know, it's stuck with me every You know, for the rest of my life, probably, but he's like double masked, you know, and bragging about getting the vax.
You know, this hobbit got his vaccine, you know, and teamed up with David French and, you know, and whatever, Francis Collins, you know, and they're all doing the bidding of Fauci.
And even the churches that they closed down were, you know, feminist, you know, run churches to begin with, with Beth Moore preaching on Sunday for a 20 minute TED talk and, you know, the Jesus is my boyfriend worship and smoke machines, you know, and your ice.
Latte, you know, as you're in the actual sanctuary, you know, and the lights are turned down low.
And so that's church.
And then even that, you know, gets shut down for three months, six months, 18 months in some cases.
And meanwhile, the Ortho Bros are, you know, they're back at it.
Yeah, they're doing church in a masculine way on the Lord's Day.
And then on, you know, Monday morning, they're over at, you know, Father so and so's garage.
Putting up iron, lifting weights.
And so, you know, and then with the claim, whether the claim is true or not, is, you know, for our purposes today, is largely irrelevant, but at least still a claim nonetheless of this being very old.
And so, yeah, on the backdrop of modernity, feminism, COVID, BLM, you know, all these kinds of things, Eastern Orthodoxy went to the moon as a fad.
Not in the world as a whole.
That wasn't my point in America.
That was my point.
In the world, so if you, of your three large, I don't know if you call them denominations, but we could say traditions.
Catholicism, clocking in 1.5 billion, might be up to two at this point.
Orthodoxy as a Modern Fad00:11:16
Protestantism is around 800 to about a billion adherents.
Eastern Orthodoxy, the last I'm aware of the statistics, it's about 200 to 250 million.
And that number is declining.
So it's kind of rising in the West.
But as far as general religion numbers rising, it's going to occupy a smaller share by.
2050.
And it's tough because I've met many, well, seen many online who would say, My parish is exploding.
We have so many catechumens.
We have so many new people, so many families, so many young men.
The world is a big place, my friend.
You definitely may be experiencing a growth, as in your parish may have grown by 50%, 100%, doubled in size.
That absolutely could be true in the micro, in the small picture, COVID, and these different bumps.
But the integrity of a movie, of a movement, my exhortation would be, is how long it lasts.
The final part of the story is not written at the beginning or written when the movement is exploding and everybody's going to it.
It's what are the outcomes of it?
What are the fruit of it?
Does it have a meaningful impact that in generations to go, they'll talk about how the Orthodox Church impacted politics and culture and everything in America?
And I can't jump to the future and say the answer to that either.
But just because there's a lot of growth and a lot of excitement and a lot of explosion, those things aren't inherently bad.
Just like the search for tradition and masculinity and family and a spiritual transcendental view, those things aren't bad, but they have to be judged by the fruit, judged by what comes out of the tree.
Right.
It's interesting what marketing research has shown us about why people make decisions.
And to some degree, that's what we're talking about today.
Not so much the apologetic for or against the doctrines of Eastern Orthodoxy, but rather why it seems that so many are moving in that direction.
And marketing research has shown us that most people do much more work after they make a purchase to justify it than they do beforehand.
Most people in their gut, they have something they want to buy and then they buy it.
And then the intellectual work comes in on their part to go through, oh, this was a great purchase because dot, And this is something that I think is a really fascinating thing to think about when it comes to cultural Christianity, because in a sense, we want America to be a Christian nation, but a particular expression of Christianity, even.
And as we're thinking about Protestantism in the West, in America, there is a sense where we want, when people think of Christianity, we want them to think, yeah, that's the sort of lifestyle that I'm not saying I'm aware that no one seeks God, right?
But as far as.
What people think about when they think of Protestantism in America, we want them to think of us as those, those are the fighters, those are the muscular.
That's the kind of rigorous tradition that I want to be part of.
And there is a sense where whoever wins that image debate or war doesn't necessarily win the doctrinal argument, but it does kind of win the cultural Christianity war.
What will be the expression of Christianity in a nation or in a tradition based on what that?
Version of Christianity is doing with itself in the public eye.
Right.
And I think, you know, part of my argument, and I understand it's not a doctrinal argument.
I never really claimed that it was.
But that war for who's going to get the visible, who's going to win the day for being the visible sign of Christianity in this nation, in these United States of America, it will never be Eastern Orthodoxy.
Right.
It won't.
Because it's not America.
Right.
And it never will be.
It simply won't.
We are not Eastern mystics.
America's just, that's just not what we are.
Catholicism could win.
I hope it doesn't.
I think that America, I don't think I know America, its tradition, its history, its roots, its origin is Protestant, overwhelmingly Protestant.
Now, in terms of which Protestant denomination, I don't particularly care.
I think that, you know, you can have a pan, that's what Stephen Wolfe is always talking about, that America is a pan Protestant denomination.
Nation and the Christian nationalism that he espouses would be a pan Protestant project.
And so, in these United States, it would be, you know, distinctly Christian, a little less distinctly Protestant, but still you would have that Protestant feel.
And then that's at the federal level.
And then at the state level, you could, in theory, you could have state churches, but you wouldn't have a federal church because, you know, if at the federal level the national church was whatever, Anglican.
And then Mississippi is Baptist, that would conflict.
So you wouldn't have a national church.
You could theoretically have state churches, but they would be within that pan Protestant movement.
You'd have a lot of Presbyterian states, you know, and Baptist churches or Anglican churches or whatever could still operate within those states, but still overall, for the state of Mississippi, it would be Baptist, you know, and the state of whatever would be Presbyterian, state of whatever would be Anglican.
But this larger pan Protestant, you know, project at the national level, and then even that, the only clear distinction probably on paper, like a preamble to our Constitution, would be something that even, you know, the EO and the, you know, the RC, Roman Catholic guys could still get behind something that's even broader than Protestant, like adopting a preamble to the Constitution that would be like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed or something like that, that's distinctly Christian.
But the point is that that works in an American context.
And this is one of the things that we could get in, maybe get into a little bit later on.
But the Protestant faith, that particular tradition within Christianity, I think it has the necessary ingredients, the working parts that makes it far more conducive to being a universal lowercase c Catholic faith.
Whereas Eastern Orthodoxy has like a geographic and physical locale, even Roman Catholicism, certainly.
I mean, it's Roman, it has a locale, a specific locale.
And there are certain things that don't translate.
Like within Roman Catholicism, you know, the Latin, right?
There's a language that's baked into the equation with it.
Whereas within Protestantism, you don't have to be English speaking.
You don't have to be Latin speaking.
You don't have, like, I mean, there are certain things that would help when you're trying to read, you know, older Protestants and some of their writings, but none of it is a necessary ingredient.
And so you could keep, you know, so Protestants argue about, you know, the substance of worship versus the elements of worship.
So the substance of worship, that would be set and defined by Scripture.
All right, so all over the world, you would have churches that publicly preach the word, pray the word, sing the word in spiritual songs and hymns and psalms, and publicly see, S E E I N G, seeing the word in the only two images prescribed to us by the Lord Jesus himself, being the Lord's Supper and baptism.
So you would have the substance of worship across the board, but the elements of worship would shift in terms of where a church meets, what building, you know, what the building looks like, the architecture, the music, whether or not there are candles.
Or whether or not there's some form of incense, whether or not the music is loud or if it's soft or instruments in addition to singing or singing only, a cappella, all those different elements of worship could be at some level, within theory, an argument from permissibility, they could be interchangeable, but the substance of worship would remain.
Whereas Eastern Orthodoxy, it's not just doctrine, but it asserts as substance of worship.
What we would categorize as elements of worship, so that if it's wholly incompatible with a nation, with its traditions, with its entire worldview, its way of thinking, its traditions, well, tough luck, right?
So you're Western and you care about cognitive substance, right?
Linear thinking.
Linear thinking, right?
So when you think about meditating, when you read David, meditating on thy word day and night, for you, Christian meditation is meditating on God's word that is to fill the mind.
With God's thoughts, with substance, namely the substance of Scripture itself, and beginning to think about the Scripture, what it means, and how it applies.
So, Christian meditation for somebody who's Western is going to be thinking in those terms.
I'm going to meditate on God's word day and night.
That means I'm going to be thinking about thy law, his law word, filling my mind, not emptying the mind, but I'm filling the mind, feasting the mind on the word of God, thinking about its meaning, interpretation, and how it works, its application.
Eastern Orthodoxy, that's something that is, it's, That's again, it has a physical locale, it's limited, it's not going to work across the board.
Because when they think of meditation, even there are forms of prayer within Eastern Orthodoxy, centered prayer, these kinds of things, where it very much is the goal is not to feast the mind on the substance of God's word, but rather to empty the mind.
And you might even take a phrase if you're learning for the first time, like a seven syllable phrase, and you would repeat that phrase again and again and again and again.
And you could argue the counter would be well, we're meditating on that phrase.
No, the point is to say the phrase ad nauseum to where the mind doesn't focus in on the phrase, but the phrase is used as an anchor to help the mind not get focused on anything.
So the mind doesn't get distracted by any substantive thought whatsoever.
The phrase becomes an incantation to blur the mind out, to just veg out.
And from this state of emptiness, in Eastern concept, the goal is to experience.
Oneness with God.
Whereas in a Western frame, it's not experiencing God so much as it is knowing God.
I want to know God.
And so those are things that are culturally centered.
They're bound in place, they're bound in time, they're bound with particular nations, particular cultures.
And it makes it very difficult.
Whereas the Protestant faith, I think, is more translatable.
You can have a Ugandan church that still maintains some Ugandan cultural aspects.
In the elements of worship while still being uniquely Christian and Protestant with the substance of worship.
And you wouldn't expect, you know, Christian Protestant churches in Uganda to look exactly like a church in Kentucky.
And that would be okay and still be biblically faithful.
Cultural Contexts in Worship00:04:21
And so, in terms of winning out, who's going to win the day?
Well, in terms of the world, I don't know.
We'll see what happens.
But in terms of these United States, Protestants built.
This country.
And I think by God's grace, Protestants will keep this country.
And I do think that five years of being on the rise because of COVID and BLM and effeminacy and all these kinds of things, I get it.
I get it.
Makes a lot of sense.
Protestants have been sitting on their hands, Protestants have massively and utterly failed.
And so I get it.
But long run, not just a five year timeline, but looking at a 50 year timeline.
I don't think it's going to happen.
And if it did happen, if Eastern Orthodoxy won the day, then you can't have both.
You would lose America.
So Eastern Orthodoxy can, if Eastern Orthodoxy wins, America loses.
You have no more America.
And it's a different nation.
Yeah.
And that would have to do not only with the culture and the aesthetics and all these things, but I absolutely think it would.
play into immigration.
We've talked about this before.
We won't get into it today.
But you look at voting patterns, evangelicals, despite how fake and gay evangelicals are, I pick on evangelicals more than anybody else because I am one.
So, I understand the problems.
And yet, still, despite how bad evangelicals have been as of recent, it's not even close in terms of voting against abortion, voting for Republican leaders, voting against immigration, all those things.
Evangelicals are far more conservative, politically conservative, than Eastern Orthodoxy.
Yep.
So, all right, let's go to our first commercial break, and then we're going to bring Chase onto the show.
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All right, welcome, Pastor Chase Davis.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Can you hear me?
I believe.
I believe.
We've got Nathan working on the tech side of things.
There he is.
Pastor Chase Davis, thanks for coming on the show.
Can you hear me?
We have video.
He looks wonderful.
It looks like he can hear us.
We don't hear him.
But we do not hear him.
Not quite.
Can you hear me now?
We can.
There we go.
We've got him.
Perfect.
Great.
Awesome.
Thanks for coming on.
Absolutely.
Glad to be here.
Tell our listeners just real quick where do you, Pastor?
I'm a pastor of the Well Church in Boulder, Colorado, a church we planted back in 2011, and we are still here.
Great.
Great.
All right.
So we're talking about Eastern Orthodoxy.
Chase, give you a little bit of context.
We've talked about this before and we've dealt with it from the doctrinal side of things.
And we're just trying to exercise a little bit of humility in this episode and just admitting up front that a lot of Protestant apologetics are falling flat.
It's just, it's not working.
And so we're trying to deal with some of the other things, some of the cultural aspects.
I had a tweet, you know, part of why we're talking about it is I had a tweet that got.
You know, a decent amount of attention last week, where I said, you know, aside from the scriptural arguments, that would be first for me.
I'm a Christian first.
Manufacturing Spiritual Transcendence00:16:01
But second, and it's a fairly close second, I would not go Eastern Orthodoxy into Eastern Orthodoxy simply on the basis of the fact that I'm an American.
What do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I've made that argument.
I think it's a compelling argument.
The Eastern Orthodox tradition is foreign to the American experience.
It's a foreign religion.
Now, one could argue that Protestant Christianity was also foreign at one point to different contexts.
Same thing with Roman Catholicism, it was foreign.
The church was foreign to different contexts at different times.
But in terms of the American experience, Protestantism is where it's at.
And so the idea that you could go to an Eastern Orthodox church and it's a new thing.
I don't know what God's plan for the future is for America, but.
I don't foresee it being Eastern Orthodoxy.
Foresee it being Protestant Christianity, uh, because it has been, uh, provided you know certain things happen, but yeah, it's even we can go so far as to say the way of doing theology in the Eastern Orthodox tradition,
uh, cultivates a way of doing theology and intellectual discourse in a way that's so incongruent with the Western tradition that it's almost hard to even have theological discussions because when they're talking about.
Growing in Christ's likeness, there's a whole other way that they're approaching spirituality and our knowledge of God.
Now, they may have some insights to offer us there.
We may be able to learn some things and exchange ideas in that way.
But I think if we just view it as like a denominational switch, like it's just another option out there, I think that's a grave mistake.
Yeah.
Chase, you've, well, earlier we rooted it into masculinity.
So young men, they're done with being weak, they're done with being talked down to, they're done with feminism.
And so they look for masculine options for church, for life, for all of these different things.
And that's bringing them, in some cases, to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
You have, I would say, the priestly class in the Eastern Orthodox Church on the whole, on average, beats out the evangelical.
One of the reasons I wanted to have you on, I think you're a pretty masculine guy.
You do a lot of outdoorsy stuff.
You probably could bench more than me if I had to guess.
How do you feel like being in your church there in Boulder, having been there for a while, having interacted with a younger, kind of millennial crowd, how is masculinity?
This man are looking for different things.
Do you see that actually attracting men in?
That men come in and they say, Man, there's families, the worship, the atmosphere, it's reverent, it's somber, it's strong, it's composed.
Do you see that playing an impact, at least where you're ministering specifically?
Yeah, I see a lot of young men who are kind of fed up with the kind of lukewarm spirituality that they've been offered, the kind of feminized spirituality they've been offered, where the expectation is you go into a dark room and cry to Jesus and sing songs to your boyfriend in the sky.
They're fairly disinterested in that.
Men, especially as they reach, You know, middle age, they start having kids and with their wife, that doesn't really do what it used to do for them when they were a young kid, when they were confused.
And so people are naturally attracted to that.
And that's what I've tried to emphasize is what we can learn to this so called.
I mean, so far, I haven't seen numbers associated with this draw to Eastern Orthodoxy, this masculine draw.
So apparently there is a draw, but we don't know how many it is.
But I have seen for my entire Christian life.
Christians drawn away from Protestantism into Roman Catholicism, now Eastern Orthodoxy as well.
And it comes down to an approach to their own faith, the way they carry the Christian faith, such that they're very disinterested in kind of like bending over backwards to please you.
Whereas most kind of non denominational churches, their temperament towards either newcomers or whoever is still rooted in a very much like seeker sensitive evangelistic mindset.
And of course, we want.
More people to know Jesus, and we want to share the gospel with them.
But even the way we welcome people to the church or we try to explain our traditions to other people, we view most evangelicals' view anything that would turn off a lost person as a problem.
Whereas in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, more high church Protestant traditions, they're very unconcerned.
This is just the way it is.
This is how we do things.
You're welcome to come, you're welcome to go.
There's kind of like this, I view it as kind of a more masculine, Presence about it where it's less anxious, it's more settled, and how it presents its tradition.
It really doesn't care if you understand what's being taught or why different things are happening during the liturgy.
There's not like a worship pastor explaining everything to newcomers every week.
It's like, this is just how we do things here.
And we love you.
We're glad you're here.
And you're welcome to stay and learn more.
So I think that's the difference there.
It's so funny with the seeker sensitive.
They think, I'm going to bend over backwards.
I'm going to have greeters and welcome cards and connect cards.
I'm going to have a gift basket.
And they think like that's what people want.
People want, Brian Savage talked about this, a thick culture.
Like it actually belongs to it.
Like it takes effort.
You've been there for six months.
You're still struggling to sing parts in the Psalms.
You know, like you've got a workout group and they invited you at 6 a.m.
You couldn't walk for the next four days after.
People want to belong to something, they don't want to be just catered to.
They don't want something that's surface level that they can get the full experience of in two weeks.
I watched, I think it's Father Josiah.
I want to say he's out in California.
He said, You come to an Orthodox church, you're going to be expected to fast.
Man, men love that.
Men love to be challenged.
That's not like a spiritual church thing.
That's just in general.
Men want to be long.
They want to be challenged.
They want to have something where it's not just, again, two, three weeks in, you've exhausted it.
This is as far as we're going to push you.
The rest, you can take it from there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Men need to be challenged with rigor.
They need to be, you know, loaded up with certain expectations to grow because men want to grow.
All people want to grow, but men especially, they want to see a challenge in front of them.
And unfortunately, many evangelical churches today, they put a big, Emphasis on belonging and inclusivity and all these kind of things.
When in fact, what people need is, yes, the confrontation of their sin and the welcome good news of the gospel, but even more so, the spiritual disciplines that come with our faith, being encouraged to walk in righteousness and put sin to death and practical application of how to do that.
And you see some churches try to do this with marriage classes and that kind of thing.
But in general, the kind of longstanding traditions, whether Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, they have a long They have a pattern of the man they are trying to shape, and they have practices that they will instantiate and expect of you if you join.
And I think most evangelicals, they hear that as either legalism or scary or putting too much on people or all sorts of different words you'll hear.
One of the worst things that you could say in an evangelical church today is that you have to behave, you have certain duties you need to fulfill.
Instead, the big emphasis is on belonging.
And yet, our Lord and Savior says that if we Love him, we will obey him.
Uh, there is behavior involved, and we're so scared of that legalism boogeyman.
And that is out there, the extra biblical uh law is out there, but in general, we're very weak on encouraging people to behave in all of life to follow Jesus Christ, right?
I looked uh while you were talking there, uh, Chase, and there's not a lot of numbers actually about the switch from um Protestantism to Orthodox churches, however.
One of the deciding things, and this isn't that surprising, but most of Eastern Orthodoxy's converts into Eastern Orthodoxy in the US are from Protestants.
So, not necessarily non Christians or Buddhists or something like that.
Like, most of the people who are joining Eastern Orthodox churches, they do have the data on that, is from Protestant churches.
So, that's interesting.
That makes sense to me because I really think that's part of what we're getting at in this episode I think that the primary appeal is not doctrinal.
So, I don't think that it's because if it was doctrinal and it was all the claims of, you know, well, we have the church fathers and we have the true tradition, you know, we have this and we have it, you know, our councils were correct and, you know, we had this council, but they ignored our council, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And if it was really an argument from history and tradition and authority, an argument from authority, and it was a persuasive argument, a powerful argument, a true argument, then I think you would have, there'd be no, There would be no respecters of converts from Protestants or from Roman Catholicism.
You'd have just as many Catholics, I think, in theory, that are like, man, they have the superior argument.
They have an argument from tradition and from authority and from this and from that.
But you don't have a bunch of RC Roman Catholics in America transferring over to Eastern Orthodoxy.
And I think the reason why is, I think it's plain.
The reason why is because.
The chief appeal, the chief attraction, I think, is the intangibles.
It's not the actual doctrinal arguments or arguments from authority or tradition or history.
It's the intangible aesthetics and the feel.
And it's my church is a TED talk with smoke machines, Jesus is my boyfriend, music.
And that's on a good day when they're open.
But they instead transformed our church for 18 months into a vaccine clinic.
You know, and shut down for COVID.
And over here, there's a bunch of dudes with beards lifting weights Monday through Saturday and then singing Gregorian chants, you know, in the lowest register I could possibly imagine.
And yeah, I'm going to go there.
But for the Roman Catholic guys, yeah, we kind of already got that aesthetically.
Like we've got the Mass, though.
Yeah, we've got the Latin Mass.
We've got the feel of old, tried, true, tradition, rooted, tested.
And some of also that masculine aspect of the, you know, even in the aesthetics of the architecture of the vaulted ceilings that speak to the transcendence of God and the natural light instead of just, you know, the colored, you know, stage lights, you know, as the main lights are turned down low and from the music, you know, it's from tradition, it's old.
And so, yeah, you don't see a whole bunch of Roman Catholics here in America, across the world.
I don't know, but.
I'm thinking about America.
I'm a pastor here in America.
But in America, that's from what I've seen on the ground.
You don't have a bunch of Roman Catholic guys transferring over to Eastern Orthodoxy.
You got a bunch of Protestants.
And I think that's to me, that says something.
That makes a statement about what is the particular appeal.
I don't think it's just the superior arguments from tradition.
I think it's the superior, and I'm fine calling it the superior aesthetics and the superior feel and culture to the vast majority of evangelical Protestants, which is.
Feminine, light in the loafers, a guy who has a plexiglass pulpit, and he's pacing back and forth between two ferns, and he's not going to preach.
He's just going to share.
That's gay.
I think people leave Protestant churches not because the doctrine's bad, but because Protestant churches are gay.
I think that's it.
What do you think, Chase?
Yeah, I think there's a lot there because it's interesting.
We live in such a sentimental age, people are drawn more to beauty and aesthetics.
More than they let on.
Most people like to think they're rational creatures that make decisions because they made a good argument.
And most often, we will do things and then justify our behavior and find rational arguments that justify what we've done.
But in the same way, we're drawn to beauty, we're drawn to these aesthetics.
And so, there's actually a really interesting parallel between why people are drawn to the, if we want to call it the seeker sensitive church, where it's heavy base, dark, and it gets the feelings going.
There's a similar reason people are drawn then to Eastern Orthodoxy.
It's also, there's a feeling there, there's something there.
One thing I would emphasize, like you talked about with the transcendence, is that most evangelical churches, they're very high on eminence, the eminence of God.
God is near to us, God is close to us, God condescended to us in the God man, Jesus Christ.
And so Jesus is your friend.
All these are very heavily emphasized.
And then when people start wanting to grow and they want to know more about God, they often come up short because they keep hearing the same thing well, God's not that different than you.
Whereas when we emphasize the transcendence, we should have both, but when we emphasize the transcendence, Like the more high church tradition, like the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's a sense that God is other, that we're encountering something that's different.
And I think in an age where people are, they're over a life where I come home, I order Grubhub, I turn on a screen, and that's supposed to be a good life.
They're like, that's not a meaningful life.
They're looking for something more.
And if Protestant churches, if that's all they essentially offer, is kind of a buffet of spirituality.
Where there's not a lot of accountability, not a lot of seriousness about our traditions and our faith and our practices, they're going to look elsewhere.
And when they look elsewhere, they see a tradition that's very much where God is other, where sometimes you may not even speak the same language as the songs we're singing, where these icons are going around.
And there's this sense of transcendence there that is oftentimes lacking.
Now, you could try to manufacture that in the mega church world where you've got.
Manufactured transcendence.
Oh, we've got fog machines.
We've, you know, I've heard of this crazy idea where at some one church they had like gold dust falling from the ceiling because they put it, they put it like in the air vents.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
But they're trying to manufacture this transcendence.
Right.
And people are looking in our age for that connection.
They're looking for something more.
They're tired of the materialistic worldview, which offers nothing.
It offers no connection to God.
It offers no connection for a, for a, Future vision is just eat, have sex, die, have pleasure, avoid pain.
People are like, no, there's got to be more to life than this.
And so they look at, they're looking for churches that are going to speak to that, that are going to take themselves seriously, that aren't just going to constantly condescend to whoever's most offended or anything like that, but they're going to stand up straight and have a sense of propriety about themselves on Sunday.
That's one emphasis I've tried to make in our church about dress.
And I'm definitely not.
Legalistic by any means on this matter, but I myself have tried to dress more appropriately, more befitting as a minister should wear, as a Baptist minister could be on a Sunday, to where there is a sense of this isn't just a campus ministry where we're all best buds.
Beyond Simple Future Vision00:15:56
And hear me clearly, this is coming from a guy who, when we planted, I would preach in chacos and wear a v neck and all this kind of stuff.
So this took a long time for me, but I think it's important to emphasize for people that look, when we gather to worship the living God, this is not just another community club.
This is not just another hangout.
This is something unique that is happening that God is doing and God has accomplished for us.
And unless Protestants are willing to go there and really carry that authority that they've been invested with by God, then yeah, we're going to continue to see people explore other traditions which are very foreign to our experience.
Yeah.
One of the things that I love about the Protestant faith is, and I believe, you know, I'm Protestant, so I believe it's the true faith.
But one of the things that I love is simplicity.
And I think it's actually, you know, a profound tragedy and a profound irony as well that, like, The Protestant faith allows for if you have bread, wine, water, and a Bible, you can do church, you know, and two or three people, souls, and you can do church.
That'll do.
And yet we've added all these elements, but we've added all the elements are derived.
Because I don't think that means you only, I don't think, my point is the Protestant faith is there's a divine simplicity there.
And you can do it anywhere.
Okay, to use an analogy, I think there's a reason why soccer or football is like a global sport.
Because all you got to do is put, you know, like two twigs in the ground, you know, and have a ball.
Whereas like water polo, you know, like Uganda is probably not going to, you know, be winning any, you know, competitions in water polo anytime soon, you know, like because it's like, It just mandates means of, you know, like you have to be able to have access to some of these things.
Like the Protestant faith really can thrive everywhere.
It can thrive in the first world.
It can thrive in the third world.
It can thrive in developing worlds.
It can thrive in sub Saharan Africa or in the West or in the East and, you know, in all these different places because of its simplicity.
And it doesn't mean, I'm not saying that I'm a regular principle guy, but I don't take it, I try not to be.
A Nazi about it, right?
You never catch me being a Nazi.
And so, you try not to be a Nazi about the regular principle of worship.
And so, what I'm saying is, I think there are aesthetics that you can add in elements of worship that don't contradict any way or even detract from the substance of worship bread, wine, water, Bible, scripture.
And so, you can have, in other words, you can have a Protestant church that might have, you know, God forbid, put a little bit of thought into the architecture.
You know, a nice building, a steeple is a nice look.
I think it says something in the way that it points up towards God, but it also draws the focus of the town.
The town sees the church in the center of the public square.
And it has a beacon.
And that's where I go for help and in times of trouble and need and all these different things.
So you can do that, but you don't have to do that.
There is a lowest common denominator that makes it universal.
But then there's room for aesthetics and to add in a way that doesn't detract from the substance.
The problem is that we, as Protestants, we have added and we've added in all.
The absolute most modern, feministic, cheap, materialistic, consumeristic.
Like, we've taken the worst, most.
We're talking about, you know, I tweeted that EO is a fad.
Like, so I, you know, to exercise a little humility here, Protestants, in everything that they've added, it has been the most fad like substances you could possibly imagine.
What has been popular for 15 minutes and they've added that?
So, whether it be laser lights or smoke machine or plexiglass pulpits or, you know, or having a woman on stage doing everything she possibly can except for preaching the sermon, unless Beth Moore's in town, you know, and then we'll let her do that too, you know, and all those.
So, like, we've added the aesthetics.
We have.
We just added all the wrong ones.
Any further thoughts?
It doesn't have to be on that.
You don't have to have thoughts about what I said.
But I've actually thought about that too.
There is something I would say about.
Eastern, when a young person would be drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy, there's a different kind of simplicity thereafter.
And the simplicity is that all they have to do is show up and obey the tradition.
Like, there's not a lot of like, I have to come to a knowledge understanding of it myself, or like you could go become Eastern in my mind.
Again, if you're Eastern Orthodox and listening, this is how I perceive it.
If you could join the church and it's literally you're just inheriting the tradition, so you don't have to be creative.
Anything like that.
The Protestants, what you highlighted was good and accurate.
And there's a reason where the West and Protestantism has flourished is because it's so simple in terms of its faith and practice and what we believe in our tradition that there's actually an onus put on the individual to live out the Christian life and to live out their tradition in a different way.
So it's almost like there's this kind of old adage where the accusation against evangelicals is you have to check your brain at the door when you go to an evangelical church, which is just not true.
There's many brilliant evangelicals.
I would say the same could be said of someone who wants to join the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
You really don't have to understand everything.
You just have to submit to tradition.
And in that way, I think it's meeting a certain felt need that people have today where they're having to make decisions left and right.
And they're experiencing what some call decision fatigue, where you move to a new city and you have to pick an evangelical church and you've got non denom this, non denom that.
All this kind of stuff.
And not only that, not only for your spiritual life, but food and everything is so easily accessible.
And I think with the simplicity offered in embracing a tradition in which you really don't have, there's not a lot of decisions to make, there's not a lot of initiative to take.
It's just kind of like, well, this is what we do.
There's something freeing.
And I don't, that's not necessarily good, but there can be something freeing to somebody who's looking for that transcendent experience with God because they're exhausted by modern life.
They're exhausted by kind of this globo homo.
Uh, kind of like a materialistic worldview of commodification of everything, commercialization of everything, and you'll see the same thing happen in Protestant churches where spirituality becomes not this is how we do things here, this is our tradition.
It's we have a buffet of 50 ministry options, depending on whatever your felt need is.
We just want you to belong here.
Which one do you want?
Oh, we don't have one for you.
Well, let's start a mountain biking ministry just for you.
You know, you can feel special here.
Whereas in Eastern Orthodox tradition, you don't get a lot of that, and so it is kind of a different kind of simplicity.
Well, it's very complicated.
Like we've already highlighted, if you go to an Eastern Orthodox worship service, incredibly complicated stuff.
At the same time, it can be freeing for somebody who is looking for that kind of like, man, I'm just tired.
I'm tired of trying to make a bunch of decisions.
Right.
Yeah.
If we go ahead, Wes, you go first, and then I have a couple questions.
Mine is the sum up question of what should Protestant churches practically do to kind of capture back some of that?
So why don't you go ahead and then we'll maybe wrap up with that?
Yeah, let's do that in the third segment.
Chase, do you have time?
We're going to go to a commercial break here in about five minutes and then come back.
And we'd love to keep you for another 20 or so to maybe take some questions from our audience.
Okay.
So, my question is just briefly because we've done this in the past.
This is not the point of this episode, but I'd love to hear from you just for a moment on doctrine.
Are there any doctrinal red flags?
What would be the things that you're like, oh, that's doctrinally, I don't like that one?
Yeah, I kind of looked into it a little bit in seminary.
I took some classes that dealt with Eastern Orthodoxy, but since I spoke about it on my own podcast and we're speaking about it today, I've looked into it a little bit more deeply on the stuff I already knew.
And I think doctrinally, My big thing is like the way it shapes you as a human, the way it shapes you and treats you as a person is very different than Protestantism.
And even the apprehension of God, how we understand who God to be.
For example, in salvation, you know, in the Protestant tradition, we have faith alone.
You put your faith in Jesus Christ, you repent of your sins, you become a new creation, and you become a Christian.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it's going to be in the church.
You know, that's where you find salvation.
We can find this in the Protestant tradition.
But not in the same way.
And that's the danger doctrinally with a lot of this we're using similar words, but we're saying very different things.
So you'll hear John Calvin and others in the Protestant tradition talking about the church being the mother.
There's no salvation outside the church, but they mean it in a different way than the Eastern Orthodox, where truly, like, they don't care about justification by faith.
They don't even like that, that's not even on their radar as far as a doctrinal concern, if that makes sense.
Like, just because of the way their doctrine and theology has developed over time.
So, for a Protestant who's clear on Christ's penal substitutionary death and justification in Christ to then switch to Eastern Orthodoxy, that's like it's a different rule book.
It's a different language, completely theologically.
We have more in common with Roman Catholics, you might have already highlighted this, than Eastern Orthodox in terms of our own Western tradition.
Of course, one of the great theological controversies was about the filioque or filioque.
And you'll see in their own tradition, there is some kind of back and forth on what it meant.
Was it just semantics?
You know, was it a big issue?
But I think one of the things that really strikes me in Eastern Orthodoxy is the iconography, the kind of veneration of, they don't, as far as they say, they don't worship these icons, even though to Protestants we would say that's what it seems like to me.
They venerate these icons.
But even like how they understand hell, for example.
Whereas Protestants have a tradition of thinking of heaven and hell as realms and even places, hell in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and heaven in the Eastern Orthodox tradition isn't necessarily a realm or a place.
Hell is an absence of God's grace and it's a state of being almost.
And that gets into kind of the experiential aspect of Eastern Orthodoxy and kind of the mystical components.
And that cultivates humans that are trained to perceive the world in a way that's just utterly different.
And so there are just really On all sorts of doctrinal matters, such severe differences.
Not that they, I'm not necessarily claiming that those who are Eastern Orthodox are outside the faith, but they're just very different.
And I think it's very, you know, we should be very cautious about assuming too charitably that we're saying the same thing when we're not actually saying the same thing.
You know, they have an experience of God where theosis is a big deal and becoming like God is a big deal.
But even when we say that, we're meaning becoming more Christ like, more human.
In a sense, we should live into our full humanity.
And they mean something very different than that.
And so, those are some of the doctrinal things that I've noticed that there's just a totally different language that they're using.
Right.
Penal substitutionary atonement is also a big one.
So I do think that Protestants, we would do well to add as a supplement, not as a substitute, so not to replace, but to add to penal substitution.
I believe penal substitution, substitutionary atonement, the idea that Christ, our sin, was imputed to him.
He who knew no sin became sin on our account so that we might be reconciled to God.
So he literally died.
And it's not only that, he also lived.
I believe, like John Owen, the Puritan, it's the act of.
Obedience of Christ in addition to the passive obedience of Christ.
So he lived in our place as our substitute, fulfilling all righteousness.
And most importantly, he died in our place, our sin imputed to him so that his righteousness might be imputed to us by faith.
And so that I would go so far as to say that penal substitutionary atonement is the gospel.
It is the gospel.
And justification by faith is.
A linchpin, the heart of the gospel.
That said, though, I think you can hold to that as Protestant, and you would do well.
I think that as Protestants, we can learn this.
So, not as a replacement, not as a substitute, but a supplement in addition.
I think we can look at some other atonement models as well.
So, penal substitutionary atonement, yes and amen a thousand times.
In addition to that, Christus Victor, ransom atonement.
There are other modes of the atonements that I think are all true.
I don't think it's a.
It's you, you can only pick one, and therefore the others are false.
I think, um, there's a triage there of saying, you know, one is perhaps more important than the others, um, or more integral to the gospel and justification than the others, but um, but that doesn't mean that, um, that only one can be true and the others are contradictory.
Christus Victor does not, on its face, it depends on you know what exact you know, espousing of Christus, Christus Victor, you might particularly get into, but on its face, Christus Victor does not contradict with.
Penal substitutionary atonement.
You can hold both of them that in the cross, in the life, death, and burial and resurrection, particularly of Jesus Christ, that he actually emerged victorious, that he conquered spiritual powers, that we're living in a whole new world, that he held spirits to public shame, that something changed in this victorious Christ.
You can hold to those elements and still hold to penal substitutionary atonement because it's addressing two different doctrinal issues.
But in my reading from Eastern Orthodoxy, their perspective, penal substitutionary atonement is kind of like what you were saying with justification by faith, Chase.
But penal substitutionary atonement is just not talked about, it's just silent.
It's only Christus Victor.
And so the idea, even of Jesus died on the cross for sin, and how he did that, particularly, he took my sin and on the cross took the wrath of God.
That was merited by my sin that I deserved, and he took it for me.
And so, that the wrath of God, this cup, the white hot wrath of God, was poured out on Christ to the point of every drop to where it was empty.
So, there is no wrath that remains towards God's elect because Jesus drank that cup in full.
That doctrine, not just just justification by faith, but penal substitutionary atonement, that model of the atonement seems to be virtually absent from Eastern Orthodoxy.
Doctrine vs. Business Questions00:02:51
Yeah.
So, yeah.
All right.
We should stop with doctrine.
We can come back.
Let's take some questions from the chat.
You guys, do me a favor.
If you're listening live, go ahead and type in questions now.
You guys got lots of, you're interacting with each other.
That's awesome.
But if you write something in and add a question mark, put it in question form so we know it's for us, then we will come back and we'll address it right after this break.
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All right, we are back.
Okay, do we still have Pastor Chase with us?
We got it.
He's here.
Okay, let's get some questions from the chat.
What do we got?
Let's start with a super chat first.
I saw that.
The other Paul is a good dude.
We know him.
Super chat $20.
What a baller.
Here we go.
Here in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, a reform movement over the past 40 years has gutted our tradition to be gospel centered and bridge with the culture.
The 2024 Synod revealed that attendance is at record lows.
It's not a question.
He just wants it to get out there.
There you go.
We did a whole episode on different churches, be it in the Anglican tradition or others, as they compromised on women pastors, for instance.
Addressing Catholic Influence Concerns00:14:41
They almost always mark the start of the decline.
The second you embrace them, you could count on it.
You're going to see your attendance drop.
You're going to see buildings lost.
That is the pattern.
Right.
Okay.
Another question.
There's a question.
Chase, we talked a little bit about America.
We are a Protestant nation.
By God's grace, we will always be so.
But Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, you say we achieve Christian nationalism.
And in our conception of ourselves, we are pan Protestant.
Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox.
What happens to those churches?
They wouldn't enjoy, they wouldn't be state churches, they wouldn't certainly be federal churches.
But they would still be what we would call Christian churches here in the United States underneath a Protestant milieu.
What do you make of that?
Yeah.
So if we have, you know, Emperor Baron come to power and call a council, and, you know, we have many different Protestants come to this council and we argue for what are we going to do with different things like this, I think there's a way to have carve outs for whether Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholicism.
There's no doubt.
That Roman Catholicism in the country is a very powerful movement, has been, especially politically, for a long time.
And I think living in kind of a utopic, lacking prudence vision of, you know, making nations Christian and understanding how they're going to become Christian and not really appreciating, like, hey, like there's prudence involved with what people are able to bear and what people are currently citizens and have been citizens for a long time.
There's certain prudential measures that should be put in place.
And so there can be opportunities for carve outs, there can be opportunities for that, there can be opportunities for how we involve them.
I think, you know, like, for example, At the inauguration coming up, it was released that like an imam is going to be speaking at the inauguration, which is very disappointing to see.
We don't want that.
And yet, that is reflective of kind of the general kind of conservative movement today that such a thing would happen.
And so, there would be ways that there would be exclusion from like public celebration of certain, you know, faith, all that kind of stuff.
But there could be opportunities for.
For partnership, have conciliatory relationships, all that kind of thing.
So we need not think of it too rigidly, but we can think of it creatively and with a bunch of prudence as well.
Yeah, that's good.
This is a super chat from Bruce Wilkie.
Is that K?
Yep.
Close to Bruce Willis, not quite.
Bruce said Is EO gay because of Greece?
Greece, the country.
Keep it up, dudes.
Which Greece, just an Orthodox country by and large, like in its composition on paper.
And they approved homosexual marriage, at least the representatives of the people did, by a good margin about a year and a half ago at this point.
So it's gay and it's coming from Greece.
I regret to inform you.
Yeah.
It's sad, but not shocking.
All right.
The man in charge asks How do you help someone thinking of going Eastern Orthodox?
So maybe he has been watching the YouTube videos, maybe he has attended an Eastern Orthodox service, really inclined in that direction.
How do you help someone who's thinking of going in that direction?
What would you say, Chase?
Yeah, I would want to meet with them, especially if they're a member of my church, particularly, but just generally, if they were a Protestant Christian, evangelical Christian, was thinking of doing that, I would want to have a lot of discussions around why, you know, what is the draw.
You know, a question I always ask when I'm pastoring is, what do you want?
What are you after?
Jesus asks this question frequently to people.
And you can hear them out, you know, and then you can talk about, right, so how do you perceive Eastern Orthodoxy to be meeting that?
For you?
And why have you prioritized getting that need met as the most important thing for you and your current, either current family or future family?
Why do you view that as the most important thing?
And then, of course, eventually I would want to get into the doctrinal distinctions and divisions and help that person go, hey, these are clear differences.
And so for me, when I approach situations like this, I want to meet with them, hopefully in person.
And then just talk through the issues.
It's not complicated.
But I would be emphasizing look, part of the reason I am Protestant is because of my parents and my grandparents that came before me who were also Protestant.
And so, in keeping the Protestant tradition going, it's not just because I believe it's true, which I do.
The more I study it, the more I love it, the more I love God.
It's also because it's a way of honoring my forefathers who came before me.
And so, what would that be saying to others?
And so, one of the things you encounter in Eastern Orthodoxy.
At least from what I understand, the tradition, and the tradition is big in Eastern Orthodoxy, the tradition says that people outside of Eastern Orthodoxy are not Christian.
And so, what would you be saying by switching to Eastern Orthodoxy of other brothers, of me?
What would you be saying of other people?
These are things you would want to take into account, especially as someone might be drawn into that tradition.
Good point.
Do we have that quote from Calvin?
Michael has it.
I can answer this quick one.
It's just on Gavin Orland while he pulls it up.
Someone asked the question What are your thoughts about Gavin Orland consistently pushing against the EO trend by exposing their doctrine?
And credit where credit is due.
Gavin Orland does a really good job.
He's read a lot of the early church fathers and his apologies.
Yeah, I think that's the best thing that Gavin does.
That's the thing, he needs to stay out of climate change and do EO apologize.
Or young earth or global floods or anything else.
Don't touch any of that.
His stuff on the EO is good.
Yeah.
Yeah, you'll probably hear some of his influences, visible and visible churches, we talk about them because he's talked a lot about it.
There's one more.
Knock loose.
Here, I'll do this one.
Michael, pull up the Calvin quote because what Chase said is important.
We need to get back to that.
And Wes actually has a graph.
His chart game is getting stronger and stronger by the day.
And so we got a chart that Wes made.
And so we'll get to that here in just a moment.
But one more knocked loose he says, Can we say that those in, because it's on the same topic, those in RC, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy are, or at least often, true Christians since their churches are in line with the ancient creeds, even if their gospels are whacked?
I'm going to say yes.
That is my answer.
I've said this for years, even back after watching American Gospel and those kinds of things.
That's really what popularized it.
Kind of like what just became across the board that the answer is, you know, Roman Catholicism is, you know, you're going to hell, basically.
I think American, you know, obviously that had been thought before American gospel, but that's where it got into like the layman's vocabulary, in my assessment, at least within the Reformed camp.
But I, you know, even back then, I was fond of saying, I think that bad Catholics make for good Christians.
And by God's grace, most Catholics are bad Catholics.
Like the vast majority, like 90%.
I think most Catholics are not like, yeah, I just got done reading Trent, the Council of Trent, anathematizing the free gospel of grace.
And I love it.
I love that.
That's what keeps me Roman Catholic, I love anathematizing the gospel of free grace.
That's just, you know, or Vatican, you know, Vatican II, you know, that's that for me, that was what won me over to Catholicism.
That's just not the case.
Most Roman Catholics, at least here in America, Are, yeah, I think that most of them are Christian.
And I would be willing to bet the farm that well over half of them are regenerate.
Catholicism, I think, you know, if we're talking about, well, with a lot of things, it's kind of like America, like if we talk at a political level, a national level.
I think a lot of America's civil leaders are traitors and should hang with a fair trial first, of course, but then should hang.
The American people, I think there's a lot of wonderful American people.
Same with Roman Catholicism.
If we're talking about Catholics and we're talking about the Pope and Cardinals and Bishops and priests, I'm a little bit, I'm going to be bearish on Roman Catholicism.
The priest, I'd be a little bit more sympathetic.
I bet you there's some good priest.
But the higher up you get, the more in the leadership class, I think there's more corruption.
Guys who they actually have done the reading, they know Trent and they like it.
But with the parishioners, You know, like the sweet old lady who's been Catholic and going to Catholic Mass her whole life, you know, and loves Jesus.
And she loves some Mary too, maybe a little bit more than I'm comfortable with, you know.
But she knows at the end of the day, if you said, Grandma, how are we saying, Jesus died for my sin?
Amen.
And how do you, you know, did Jesus die for everyone?
Is everybody going to go to heaven?
No, you have to trust him.
You have to believe it.
Like, that's, I've talked to Catholics.
That's what the average Catholic says.
So bad Catholics make for good Christians.
And by God's grace, most Catholics are bad Catholics.
Amen.
Love it.
And I'm so all that being said, I have the same kind of perspective for Eastern Orthodoxy.
I think most of the EO bros, especially the more recent, you know, converts, they're like, it's not because they love, you know, the centered prayer and emptying the mind and because they hate penal substitutionary atonement or this or that.
No, it's because they wanted, because Protestants and evangelicals followed Russell Moore, got super gay, and the EO, you know, priest down the road had a beard.
And worked out.
And there were some masculine and old, tried and true traditional aesthetics.
And that was it.
And so they went, you know, and exactly what Chase said, and Michael, I think you said it before Chase came on, is you make a purchase and then it's afterwards, not before, but afterwards, then you do the homework to try to justify the purchase you've already made.
But the original decision is most of the time is a gut instinct.
I want something.
I want something.
I'm feeling something is lacking.
I perceive some kind of lack, some kind of need, some kind of desire.
And so, boom, I'm pulling the trigger.
And then afterwards, when I'm asked about it again and again and again, why'd you do that?
Why'd you make that decision?
Why do you, you know, then I'm scrambling to do the reading and to have some kind of justifiable explanation for what I did.
But it really wasn't on the front.
The front end was my church closed because of COVID.
And even when it was open, my pastor, every time I shook his hand, I felt like his arm might be ripped off.
I mean, he was the limpest.
My terrorist band I have ever shaken in my life.
And this dude kept his church open and he can bench 300 pounds.
That's why.
That is the reason.
They're not going to tell you that, but that was the initial reason.
And then the last six months after making the decision for that reason, they tried to come up with other reasons that sound a little bit more fleshed out.
But here's the funny thing I actually think that first reason is the best one.
I don't think you need to justify it any more than that.
That is a great reason.
And so, likewise, I'm going to give you my gut instinct reason that I think eventually, this is my prediction.
Will bring Americans back to Protestantism.
And here's my reason because this is America, gosh darn it.
We are not Eastern mystics.
We are not monks.
We don't do centered prayer and Eastern meditation.
We are Americans.
We are Western.
We think, and Jesus paid for sin.
That's it.
That'll bring them all back.
Mark it out.
Mark my words.
Give it 20 years, tops.
Eastern Orthodoxy hath no power in these United States.
So, Chase, any thoughts?
Yeah, that was great.
I would add to kind of what you said.
I've been curious because I do have Catholic friends, a good relationship with them, and I'm kind of split, like you're kind of handing out, with the actual papal bulls and all this kind of stuff, the magisterium, and yet the average Catholic.
There is in our American tradition, and I'm just curious about it, a deep seated suspicion of Catholics.
I'm not, I don't necessarily want to cultivate that.
I don't know if that would be healthy for our body politic or even us relationally.
At the same time, I think there's legitimate reasons people were a little bit more, you know, I don't know that they were always wrong to be concerned about Catholic influence in America.
I think there's something to that.
We've seen the Catholics have incredible, wield incredible influence politically, especially in conservatism.
And so I do think that we need to be charitable, like I think you're rightly highlighting in terms of how we understand how people are saved.
At the same time, I think we also need to be cautious about how we understand the universal authority of the Pope and how that works out.
And I mean, the proof isn't Joe Biden being a Catholic.
And so there needs to be, like you highlighted, a bit of both interpersonally and working together on issues like Indian abortion, all that kind of stuff, as much as we can.
At the same time, there needs to be a lack of willingness to go some places because we are so different.
We are, like you highlighted, we're a Protestant nation historically, and by God's grace, we will be again.
And so that's an important thing that I think I would add to that.
On this question, Calvin in the Institutes in book four, chapter two, really interesting, actually, if you read chapters one and two of book four, he is just really going back and forth to try and resolve this question of what do we do about the fact that we have split off from the Catholic Church?
They have labeled us the schismatics and the heretics and the people who have driven the wedge.
Visible Church and Oral Traditions00:15:38
And then he's wondering, well, is there anything to the Roman church, the papists, as he called them?
And he, I don't know, his writing is conflicted.
But one of the things he lands on is the fact that in the Old Testament, when Israel was apostatizing over and over again, I mean, you open a chapter of the Bible and Israel's apostatizing.
He says, well, nevertheless, at that time, they remained truly Israel, right?
Like when the prophets of all were sacrificing, that was still actually Israel.
Though very corrupted and engaged in heinous false worship.
And so he says, in the same way, it is possible for the people of God now to have been terribly corrupted.
And I mean, they wrote of the Pope as the Antichrist.
To them, the Pope was the most evil human that you could imagine.
These are the reformers.
Yeah.
Nevertheless, he had this line where he said, even the Antichrist is not strong enough to wrestle the church out of Christ's.
Grasp.
And then he said, he kind of concludes section 12 by saying this.
He says, Hence, then, it is obvious that we do not all deny that churches, that those churches remain under his tyranny.
Churches, however, which by sacrilegious impiety he has profaned, by cruel domination he has oppressed, by evil and deadly doctrines like poisoned potions has corrupted and has almost slain.
Churches where Christ lies half buried, the gospel is suppressed, piety is put to flight, and the worship of God almost abolished.
Where, in short, All things are in such disorder as to present the appearance of Babylon rather than the holy city of God.
In one word, I call them churches, inasmuch as the Lord there wondrously preserves some remains of his people, though miserably torn and scattered, and inasmuch as some symbols of the church still remain, symbols especially whose efficacy neither the craft of the devil nor human depravity can destroy.
But, on the other hand, those marks to which we ought especially to have respect.
For this distinction are effaced.
In other words, where the marks of a true church are gone, I say that the whole body, as well as every single assembly, want or lack the form of a legitimate church.
And he really actually draws a fascinating distinction that maybe shows that he was congregational.
Because he says it's possible that the overarching system and the papacy and the Antichrist is utterly like there is no church there.
And yet, still, there are individual churches which, as he says, are torn, are polluted, are infected by the false doctrines, remain yet still true churches.
And that to me is remarkable.
Coming from Calvin.
Coming from Calvin.
Yeah, it's really surprising, actually.
Yeah, it is.
We've got one super chat.
Chase, if you've got time for it, this is a good question.
It sounds like from someone who's considering Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.
Andrew 27 27 says this Did Christ pass down a tradition not written in scripture?
Did Christ pass down a tradition not written in Scripture?
If so, it would seem to be important to hold to Christ's oral traditions, even if not explicitly stated.
That's one reason that I'm considering going EO or Roman Catholic.
Chase, thoughts?
That's an interesting way to phrase the question.
Did Christ pass down traditions that are not recorded in Scripture?
I think this is the argument that Eastern Orthodox use a lot of times in terms of their liturgy and their worship.
And even their aesthetics, their building construction, all this kind of stuff.
That's what's so fascinating about Eastern Orthodoxy.
When you go into an Eastern Orthodox church, it does look so foreign because it's so ancient in terms of even the way they do art.
And so they're trying to preserve something that they believe to be the true kind of liturgical pattern of the early church.
The question does get into even in Protestant forms of worship, because like Joel has highlighted, a lot of Protestant churches.
Not only is there no, well, there's liturgy, but it's not a stated liturgy and it's a made up liturgy in terms of their weekly rhythm of worship.
Whether it's they kick off the service with a secular worship or not worship, but a secular song that they play during worship in order to make people feel more comfortable.
They have different things they do during the service.
I remember growing up in churches where they would have skits.
I don't know if you guys ever experienced this skits during the service.
So a lot of evangelical churches are very, Creative, we might say, and how they do their liturgy.
But what he's getting at is the pattern of worship, even drawing from the Old Testament.
And what Protestants have traditionally been good at, which many are not today, are drawing the pattern of worship from the Old Testament, whether it's in terms of covenant renewal or other things, and how we conduct our worship together.
And so I think speculating on if Christ taught certain things that are not recorded in Scripture, that are traditions that were given to the apostles, that then they were supposed to practice.
I don't view that as authoritative naturally because I'm a Protestant.
Whereas in Eastern Orthodox, maybe that would carry some weight.
But we just, we have, we actually have in the Protestant tradition a way to handle tradition.
And I think that's the accusation EO's come up with is, y'all have no traditions.
Sola scriptura means there's no traditions.
Like, no, like this has been a question we've been wrestling with.
We've actually provided answers to for hundreds of years.
Like, we are not anti traditionalist.
We have traditions we know how to think of.
The Anglican.
Uh, communion has a way of handling tradition, the Methodists have a way of handling tradition, Baptists haven't been as well educated on how they handle their own tradition.
But we all have a way of handling how we do tradition and where it fits in relationship to scriptures.
Protestants, of course, scripture is primary, they submit to scripture.
If something doesn't accord with scripture, we're not going to practice it.
But I think framing it in terms of what Jesus might have commanded outside of recorded scripture, I think that is very speculative and I wouldn't put a lot of stock in that.
Yep.
Yep.
Well said.
All right.
Let's do the graph and then we'll call it a day.
All right.
Throw it up.
This is the last big point, Chase.
I think you'll agree with.
I'll let Wes flesh it out, but this is one major distinction we'd be remiss if we didn't cover between both Roman.
Catholicism as well as Eastern Orthodoxy versus Protestants.
Yep.
So the claim of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church is they are the visible instantiations of the church that Christ established on earth.
You think of Peter and his confession, and Christ responds to Peter.
He says, You are Peter on this rock, I'm going to build my church.
And you'll listen to Matt Frad, for example, Pints with Aquinas, and he'll have Protestants that came over to Roman Catholicism and they would go to the Vatican and they would see it and they would say, Oh, Jesus instituted a visible church, a church that was.
Measurable, a church with real living people.
And so the claim is that for both of them, and they make really competing claims that can't really be reconciled, that they are that visible church, that the succession of bishops and the adherence to councils mean that they have the true church and there's a continuity all the way back to Christ.
Now, one of the difficulties with this is what do you do with the unbaptized, the catechumens, and the apostate?
So you have these individuals, and I'm talking about like apostates or reprobates that are in the church, but it's not known, it's not understood.
Francis Sturton, I was reading him on this, and he He pushes back on Roman Catholic scholar Bellarmine because what they have to assert for the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox is that the church is visible.
But if the church is primarily a visible institution, then that means that everyone in the church would be saved.
So we would say there's no salvation outside of the church.
When we mean that, we mean the body of believers across all time that are invisible that Jesus has joined together.
The Roman Catholic says that there is no salvation outside of the church, and he means the visible church.
But then if there's no salvation outside of it, then you have to be joined to the visible church.
But then, how do you distinguish within the visible church those that are wicked and reprobate and those that are not?
Because if you're a Roman Catholic and you say there's no salvation outside of submission to the Roman pontiff, then you are in communion, fellowship, sharing the visible church with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi every Sunday.
Yep.
And same thing for Eastern Orthodox people.
Brother and sister in Christ.
Amen.
If you're a Roman Catholic, not for us Protestants.
Right.
And they would have good conservative Catholics, they would have pushback and say, well, no, for these reasons or that.
Here's where the Protestant has the advantage, though.
You can show this graph of the visible, invisible church.
The Protestant asserts that the church is primarily a universal, invisible church.
So, all believers, I think of a Hebrew as the great cloud of witnesses, all believers past, that would be the church triumphant, those who have attained their crown, they've run the race.
Those present, the church militant, and all those future are being perfected here in this life, have been translated by death into heaven, and will be the bride that Jesus perfects.
Now, the visible church on earth, Is not a perfect overlap with the invisible church.
But the invisible church here on earth, those that are living, they're regenerate, they live in, they inhabit the invisible universal church because they've been joined to Christ by faith, and the visible church.
But there's one additional category in this visible church.
They're in the visible church, but they're reprobate and not part of the invisible church.
And so in this way, every given local church, a visible real church, will contain within it the regenerate believers that belong to.
The invisible universal church.
And then they will have some that are reprobates.
Hebrews talked about those who are not joined by faith.
And we can say, yes, absolutely.
They are part of the visible church.
They have made, Stephen Wolfe said, the visible Catholic church is recognized by profession, not an institution.
Well, anyone can profess, can't they?
Yeah, absolutely.
But they cannot profess and be part of the invisible universal church, which is on the basis of faith in Jesus.
But they can for a time join the visible church.
And at the end of the age, Christ will root out all those who through their profession of faith claim to be, I'm part of the invisible universal church.
No, you were wicked.
You had an attachment for a time by profession to a visible local institution.
But you never were of the substance of the invisible church.
And I think for Protestants, getting this helps you see.
You talked about Catholics.
That means that a Catholic in a visible local parish, there will be bad Catholics, good Catholics, those that are regenerate and belong to it.
And there will be some that are, they merely attend Mass twice a year.
They're in the visible church, a visible true church, but not belonging to the substance of it.
Amen.
Yeah, I think this graph is super helpful.
Anybody who's just listening to the audio, this one would be worth going to.
The website, rightresponseministries.com, and pulling up the video and then skipping forward to the end of it or going on YouTube or whatever.
But just to be able to visually look at that, you did a good job.
It made a lot of, for me, it helped.
Like I, you know, I already had that paradigm of visible and invisible church, but it really helped to see it, to be able to visualize it.
And yeah, as far as I understand, both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism don't have that scheme, that framework that Protestants do.
And I think at some level, what it allows for, A certain luxury or privilege that allows for Protestants that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox guys don't have is more of an ecumenical spirit in a good way, in the good sense, and not the negative.
That I'm able to look like my desire for Rome is, you know, and this is something that I had to come to over time.
I didn't always think this, but for the last few years, like my desire for Rome is I want to see Rome repent.
And that's just my desire.
If I could be just even a little bit more bold, my prediction.
For Roman Catholicism, I don't think I'm post millennial in my eschatology.
I don't think, if I had to guess, if I had to bet, I don't think that Roman Catholicism will be completely uprooted and destroyed and removed.
I think it'll be restored.
I think that Roman Catholicism is an offshoot, right?
That's a pretty profound irony, much to their chagrin, despite all the claims.
They're the offshoot that's gone off the rails.
And I think that they will be, by God's grace, brought back into the fold.
And as they're currently off the rails as an offshoot, I still think my previous statement still stands.
I think that many congregants, parishioners within Roman Catholicism, are a part of the invisible church, that they really are regenerate, that they really do love the Lord Jesus Christ and have faith in him for salvation.
But as an institution, that sector of the visible church, as an institution, the Roman Catholic institutional church, I think it's off the rails.
But I think the plan of God is not to utterly remove it, but to restore it.
I think that Rome eventually will repent.
I really do.
I think that they will go back and say, Yeah, we should have held a council.
We should have heard you out.
We should have recanted here.
We should have done that.
We should have done this.
And yeah, I'm very hopeful that that'll happen.
I don't know if it happens in our lifetime, but I think that it will eventually happen.
And in the meantime, because if you're not careful, like some of the reformed bros, like I love them, God bless them, but.
They talk about Roman Catholics like this, like more harshly than they talk about Muslims.
And I'm like, what in the world are you?
Like, they believe in the triune God.
They believe in Jesus Christ, that he died and was buried and rose again.
Like, you know, these are completely separate categories.
Like, you know.
Yeah, but we've had historically, we've had a war with the Catholics more recently than with the Muslims.
True.
True.
But we have had centuries and centuries of wars with Muslims.
I agree.
You know, and so, yeah.
So, anyway, so I would like to see Protestants be a little bit more charitable towards Catholics, but while still understanding the distinctives, the irreplaceable distinctives of Protestant doctrine, and knowing that, yes, it absolutely matters, and we're not going to compromise on that.
But recognizing that those particulars, doctrinal particulars, I think most of them exist, are more etched in stone at the higher echelons of leadership within Catholicism and not necessarily parishioners.
And then God's larger plan, I really do think redemption and restoration, repentance is far more likely if I had to bet than utter removal.
And then I think, you know, I'd have a similar position towards Eastern Orthodoxy.
And yet at the same time, this would be something that would probably get clipped out of context.
I'm not going either direction.
But if I had two options and only two options afforded to me, I would become a Roman Catholic every day of the week and twice on Sunday before becoming Eastern Orthodox.
The Imminent Political Threat00:08:34
Same.
I don't know how any Western Protestant could argue otherwise.
To me, that is just so abundantly clear.
Just simply the culture and the practices.
There would be no more Joel left in the equation.
I would have to lose, utterly lose every component about me.
I don't even know how to do that.
It feels so foreign to me.
I'm going to just empty my mind and I'm going to, you know, I just, I'm not, I'm an American, gosh darn it.
So, anyways, and Roman Catholicism, particularly here in America, is even, you know, even closer because it has been, you know, Protestant.
And same for EO.
They've had a Protestant influence.
You go to Ukraine or Romania, it would look a lot different.
A lot different.
Ooh.
Right.
Chase, so what do you think about that?
Like, in terms of Roman Catholicism, Invisible, visible church being a uniquely Protestant scheme that Rome doesn't have, that Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't have.
And then, what do you think as a pastor, a Protestant pastor, do you think Rome will eventually come back into the fold or do you think it's just we're just waiting for it to all be burnt up?
What do you think?
Yeah, I think the graphic is really helpful.
Actually, I wish I could have that graphic.
I teach that at our church, that distinction that we have as Protestants.
And I think it's an important distinction to make, you know, like you said.
And I think a lot of even Christians, Protestant Christians, are confused on this.
In terms of how we talk about belonging to a local church and what it means to be saved by Jesus, I'm less positive on the Roman Catholics coming back.
I did want to, it's an interesting thing, Joel, that I thought I'd ask since we're on the air.
You know, I sympathize with treating Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, and I think it's part of our tradition and also part of my temperament and yours to be somewhat charitable.
I might say, with these people, like you highlighted, this Roman Catholic grandmother who loves Jesus, and there's still hope for them.
Part of the tension I feel in my mind, maybe you don't feel this tension, but part of the tension I feel in my mind is we look at evangelicals that have compromised with women pastors, with all this kind of stuff, just giving themselves over to celebrating gay marriage, whatever it might be.
And we do judge them very harshly, right?
We do almost, I wouldn't say anathematize, but to use a word, there's a sense of like they're outside the fold.
And yet there does seem to be a proclivity, at least in my mind, to give deference a little bit more so.
The Catholics.
And that's why I'm less like when I hear guys not dumping on, but, you know, like attacking the Roman Catholic Church and all that kind of stuff.
That is more part of our heritage to do that, like was highlighted, where it's like we had wars with Catholics.
And there's a reason all the reformers spoke of the Pope being the Antichrist.
And so there is a legitimacy to that critique.
Whereas these people that are evangelical ministers in America, Protestant ministers who are deeply compromised.
Should we not extend a similar charity in their direction that we are also extending to kind of Roman Catholics and the hope there?
Does that question make sense?
That's the tension I'm feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I think the reason why I don't is the charity that I'm extending to the Roman Catholic guys is I'm thinking, I said it in a macro big picture sense, but more particularly, I'm thinking of guys like, what's his name?
Charles Taylor, I think is his name.
My point is I'm thinking of the guys who are culturally and politically conservative.
I think part of the reason that I wouldn't extend the same type of charity, because all the arguments that I made doctrinally, certainly, you know, you can make that about Russell Moore, you can make that about David French, you know, or, you know, anybody of that particular stripe.
You can say, well, these guys also believe in the triune God, and they believe, you know, in this case, they even believe in justification by faith and these kinds of things.
But the reason why the guys that you and I, you know, have big problems with within the Protestant world, It's less doctrinal and it's more political and cultural.
And I think part of the reason we have the problem with them is because what they're tampering with isn't so much the doctrine, although they are tampering with some things that are doctrinal, but they're tampering with the physical future and life and viability of my kids.
So the conservative Catholic, I think he's wrong on a host of things, but I think a lot of them are ignorantly wrong.
Again, speaking of the parishioners.
And in that case, many of them, if you really kind of dig beneath the surface and you ask the questions and you have the conversations, they actually believe a lot of things that you do.
And they're not really aware of Vatican I and Vatican II and Trent and these kinds of things.
But then culturally, that's doctrinally, but then culturally and politically, they're like, yeah, we got to stop murdering babies.
We got to stop transing kids.
We got to stop importing, you know, in mass the third world and rape gains and, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Whereas, Like, if Russell Moore wins, my kids die, and I mean that in a literal physical sense.
Russell Moore wants to kill my children, so I just have less charity for guys who want to kill my kids.
Yeah, so we're distinguishing that's helpful.
So, we're distinguishing between what's a more imminent threat, and I think that what you're saying is that the most imminent threat right now are guys that are within our own what we would say Protestant tradition who are deeply compromised politically, and so we have to give the most force against that.
The threat of maybe Catholicism overtaking America doesn't feel like a great, as great a threat as the compromised churches left and right that have kind of been over backwards to government regulation and are not standing firm on God's word today.
And I think that's a helpful distinguishing to make there.
So thanks for going with that.
Yeah.
No, thanks for asking the question.
Yeah.
And the way that you just articulated, I think, is super helpful.
It's a sense of urgency, it's a sense of what's most imminent.
Like, I think, you know, if we were predicting, you know, the next 10 years, I think political leftism overtaking America seems to be far more imminent than all of a sudden that we have a Catholic Christian nationalism.
That's drowning Baptists.
That's drowning Baptists.
Yeah, exactly.
So, like Catholics drowning my Baptist children.
I think they'd burn us at the state.
Or burning, yeah, or burning my, you know, so my, yeah, exactly.
But seriously, like, and I think it helps.
It's like, oh, you're being hyperbolic.
But really, it does help.
Like, I live in a border state, state of Texas.
What seems more likely to me as a husband and a father in the next 10 years that Texas becomes so overwhelmed at the southern border by illegal immigrants, many of them criminals, murderers, and rapists, that my four daughters and wife's physical lives are endangered?
Does that seem more likely?
Or Catholics enacting Catholic, like taking over the United States, enacting Catholic laws.
To where Protestants are hung or burned.
You know what I mean?
And when you pose it like that, then we can all laugh at the absurdity because it really is absurd.
One of those threats is right on the doorstep.
The fact that Donald Trump won this election is sheerly the grace of God.
If he hadn't won this election, then I would say, yeah, eight more years.
If we had eight years of Kamala, we're done.
We're done.
Whereas I think it would take 100 years of Catholics on their A game.
You know, and maybe, maybe they might be able to arrest some Protestants.
And I think still highly unlikely.
So, Chase, any final thoughts for you before we end this episode?
Kingdom Goals Amidst Absurdity00:01:08
No, I'm good, man.
Thanks for having me today.
Yeah, thanks for coming on.
We really appreciate it.
All right.
Well, we're going to go ahead and land the plane, Wes.
Any final thought?
The final thought is say you're Eastern Orthodox, you hate watching, you're like, I was an hour and 45 minutes a straw man, didn't like it.
And you go to that church and you never leave because there's going to be you.
Here's the exhortation.
We love you.
We want to see you on the final day, name written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
In the meantime, wherever you go be it Roman Catholicism, be it Eastern Orthodox.
We think there's great reasons you shouldn't.
But if you go there, love Jesus, love your family, touch some grass, and be a force for God's kingdom.
That's culturally, that's politically.
Push back against wickedness, push back against darkness, love the people around you, exercise the fruit of the Spirit, charity, patience, kindness, goodness to those you disagree with.
And I guess we'll see you on the other side.
Yep.
Lord willing.
Sounds good.
Lord willing.
All right.
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