The Livestream examines football's cultural shift toward "wokeness" and gambling, contrasting it with traditional masculine virtue and biblical Sabbath observance. Hosts debate the NFL's Sunday games as commercial blasphemy versus local leagues fostering resilience, while addressing Andrew Isker's ties to Christian nationalism and JD Vance. The episode clarifies the Sabbath as a renewed creation ordinance from sundown to sundown, advises against abortion even for medical risks, and outlines ethical career choices prioritizing family stewardship over excessive labor. Ultimately, the discussion frames sports and commerce as distractions from true virtue and divine rest. [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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Why We Ask for Reviews00:14:51
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
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Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
Today, we'll be discussing an important topic, and that is the bears.
And if we're feeling particularly bold, we might even switch gears and talk about the bulls.
We're going to be talking about sports, and we're going to be talking about the role that sports, professional sports, play in our culture and in our country today.
Now, it's worth noting that things have changed quite a bit.
It's a little bit different today than it might have been if you're in your 30s and you have memories that are fond of when you were five and six years old sitting down on the couch.
Watching a professional football game with your dad.
Some of the things that have changed is yes, wokeness, and yes, you know, these social justice lines that are going to be in the infield and the gay rainbow on the men's helmets, all those kinds of things.
But another thing that has changed, there's a lot of things, but another thing is also I think of sports gambling.
And I also think about our culture and just how transient we are.
Very few people live in the same place that they grew up in, even fewer live in the same place that their dad and their grandfather grew up in.
We live in a transient society.
Our country, people move around.
Very few people have a particular city, a particular state that they could call home.
And then when you think about gambling, you think about fantasy football, right?
That you're no longer rooting for a particular team.
You're looking at this player from this team over here and that player from this team over there.
So a lot of the camaraderie and the community and the memories of you and your dad rooting for the same home team again and again and again because you have a community there, you have ties there.
A lot of that is gone.
And then you throw wokeness on top of it.
And yet, at the same time, there's something to be said for at least one remnant in our society today that is a male only space.
You think of professional football, that it's men and that it has not been polluted by this all encompassing inclusivity, that it's men doing something with physical grit, male competition at the highest level.
You think of the Coliseum.
It's that without, you know, or at least with less blood.
So there are some good things, but there are some negative things.
And that's what we're going to be talking about in our episode today.
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Let's tune in now.
Gentlemen, happy Monday.
Yep.
Happy Monday.
I like this topic.
I feel like a lot of times what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to convince people that the world you grew up in is gone.
That there are many structures, there are many frameworks, there are memories that you've had and you've held on to.
And in some ways, you can look at America and you can say, well, America's still America.
We still have this, we still have that, and apple pie and Memorial Day.
The core of America hasn't really changed.
And I would certainly say at some level that's correct.
You can still go to a small town and see, be it a Memorial Day parade, a celebration of America, at least what we were.
We can see our Christian nature infused throughout all of it.
But in other ways, there's things that were hallmarks and memories.
And we're perfectly honest, they've been subverted.
You were talking about it with your dad.
The football that you watched with your dad, it's actually not the same.
And insofar as you go along pretending that it's all the same and it's all good.
And look, this is what America's about.
I think of the idea of grill Americans, right?
Americans, they want to grill, they want to watch sports, and that's kind of it.
They don't kind of realize that something fundamental has shifted underneath.
And it's subtle, but insofar as you think that the same thing's just going on, You're perpetuating a system that now is actively opposed to a lot of the reforms I think that we would want.
And so there's two things that really sparked this discussion.
It's why we're talking about it today.
A big one is people remembering as the NFL gets ready to start its season that the NFL, a couple teams, not all teams, have introduced in the recent years male cheerleaders.
Now, we're not just talking male cheerleaders that serve a distinctly male role, right?
Sometimes at high school cheer, you'd have male cheerleaders that help hoist the female cheerleaders up to do specific acts.
No, we're talking flamboyant gay men doing the same moves as women.
As if they're just another one of the gals.
Now, cheerleading on the whole is, of course, subversive, right?
Scantily clad women, we're gonna dance, we're gonna add this provocative element when the entertainment should be on the field and something wholesome.
So, already cheerleading is already like, come on, like, what are we doing?
Now, you add on top of it men acting like women and it's disgusting.
So, there's that that really over the weekend, a lot of people are saying, like, what in the world is going on here?
Male cheerleaders?
This is just gross to look at.
And there's a greater discussion of is NFL, specifically football, we're gonna be talking a lot about football in this episode.
You can extrapolate to baseball.
You can extrapolate to hockey.
Isn't this a quintessential American thing?
And I want to pull up a series of just exchanges from guys that you're going to recognize having a really good discussion about this.
The first one is from a commentator, 9mm SMG.
And check this out.
All 32 NFL teams this year, they're going to be forced to stencil a social justice message in their end zones, right?
We all kind of thought, ah, the woke's been put away.
It is not.
NFL teams are going to have to, by requirement of the league, Literally stencil in like end racism.
It takes all of us, choose, love, social justice messages on the field for millions of people to see.
I actually appreciate that.
I end racism.
The NFL is way too black.
It's clearly racist against white people.
And let's end it.
Let's, let's, Indians are 20% of this country at this point.
We need Indian representation.
That's right.
Yeah.
We need, yeah.
We need quarterbacks.
We need Indians out on the field with Asian men.
Yeah.
There you go.
Um, and so he said this, and, and I, It's a good critique.
You need to hear it.
He said, It's wild how so many supposedly right wing men, so right wing men, soy jack, that is, fan out over sports.
These teams hate you.
The owners hate you.
The entire league hates you.
You're keeping them in business.
And it's a little bit strongly stated, I would say.
But honestly, if we were to go owner by owner, team for team, yeah, these people are not who you think of as just good old Christian Americans who just want to put on a good show.
For one, the NFL's on Sunday.
That's kind of your hint right off the bat there.
But listen to what Matt Walsh said, and he's got some truth to it too here.
He said football is an American tradition.
You don't have to like it, but hating it is weird and gay.
Sure, the NFL organization is annoyingly woke in some ways, but they're definitely a hell of a lot less woke than basically every entertainment company that the right wing sports ball haters still give their money to.
And football players themselves tend to be very openly religious and generally more conservative than athletes in almost any other sport.
Again, you don't have to enjoy football, but football is one of the most uniquely American things that exists.
It's part of our culture, and culture matters.
And I'll pause right there.
What do we think about that?
Football, it's quintessentially American.
Don't have to love it.
But it's part of our identity, and our identity, what we've done in the past, it matters.
It has a place.
What do we think?
Yeah, I think, I mean, specifically with football, I would say that there are elements of football that are, I think, distinctly admirable and virtuous in the things that they teach, right?
If we go back to the fundamental of sports being primarily to train young men into how to think in an ordered way, how to work with others, so on and so forth, football has a lot of those elements on its face.
And so, I do think, in the way of, you know, just I think about what American virtues and ideals should be, football is a lot more aligned to that than a sport like basketball, for example, which is a lot more of a solo sport or any other pick your one on one sort of sport.
And so I'll just say that at the outset.
But as it relates to the NFL specifically, yes, football, I mean, as a matter of historical fact, is an American sport.
It is a sort of a deviation or some kind of like derivative of soccer.
Which is a far more international sport.
Everyone knows America has historically never been good at soccer.
And so I think about, you know, as football sort of emerged in the beginning of the 20th century and as it sort of continued on through the 20th century, it did really reach a height in the 90s.
You think about the Cowboys, you think about like these quintessential John Elway, Denver Broncos, sort of it reached its height in terms of our shared culture and the national consciousness.
And so I think that's like undebatable.
I do appreciate Wes's point about like the way that.
A lot of the way that nostalgia can be used against you, essentially.
So, like, you know, this idea that it's like I romanticize football and what it means to me, both as a sport and something that I participated in, but also something that, you know, was a shared culture around, and the way that that's dissipated.
I think we all have to recognize that.
But look, I think, like, if I had to pick sides here, I do agree a lot with what Matt Walsh has to say.
I think when you watch this debate, what you're seeing, a lot of the lines are being drawn sort of in a very intuitive way.
Like, guys who didn't really play football growing up, guys who weren't.
You know, we were less athletically inclined and so didn't really develop a passion for the sport, or more likely to say, Look, we could do without this.
And I would be perfectly fine.
And of course, there's men on the other side of the aisle who love football and have grown up watching it and playing it and that sort of thing.
And so I think that's the most obvious interpretation of sort of the debate that's happening on the right right now around football.
That's how I see it.
Yep.
And so CJ Engel, he commented this on Matt Walsh's post, and it's good.
It's kind of a back and forth.
He presents the other side.
He says, Matt Walsh, hey, this is football.
This is American.
This is deeply ingrained in our culture.
And it matters.
CJ says this was true 30 years ago.
Now, the entire point is to produce constant brain rot among middle class adult males who should otherwise and in a prior epoch would be in a state of counter revolutionary political fervor.
What he's essentially saying is that if you were 30 years ago, 50 years ago, and your government was taking this much of your money, it was giving away this many of your jobs, I mean, you had illegal aliens on the streets, uh, killing people because they have no idea how to drive trucks and they have no sense of remorse whatsoever.
If those things were happening and you didn't have The Netflix, you didn't have the Pornhub, you didn't have the terrible food, you didn't have the sports to keep people preoccupied.
I mean, we got to be honest.
Young men would be absolutely burning down the nation for better or for worse.
But they're placated right now.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think that's true.
The only thing that I would push back with CJ on this, and for the record, I appreciate CJ greatly.
And really, I appreciate anybody who doesn't like sports.
I've never been a fan.
I'm sorry.
I've never been a fan.
But that said, here's the deal you take away football and you still have Netflix slop, Hulu slop, HBO slop.
Pornhub slop, OnlyFans slop, gambling on this.
So, okay, now it's not sports gambling, but it's just more people are playing poker online or they're playing whatever.
I can gamble on the South Park episode and what's going to be said on it.
Slop.
Yep.
And so, my point is that I think there was a time where, if you're looking at Rome, there's a time where that was the premier form of entertainment.
And that was, in part, not just it was premiere, it was like the exclusive, virtually exclusive form.
Of entertainment.
It was feats of strength.
It was competition, men competing against one another in feats of strength.
And that was the intersection.
Yeah, sure, there would be dancers.
Sure, there would be a few other things, but not like it is today.
And so my point is today, you take football away, as much as I'm not interested, you take football away.
And I don't think that you have all of a sudden a bunch of right wing Christian men, Storming DC and getting involved in the game, getting out there.
I think, like, okay, you take football away, and now it's just more guys are watching, you know, some gay race communism slop on Netflix.
You know, at least football, like, you know, had, you know, some virtue, like what Antonio was saying.
At least it, like, it showcased, you know, masculine strength.
Like, I mean, honestly, in some sense, I look at football and I think it's actually phenomenal, is woke and is effeminate as our.
Our country is in 2025.
The fact that we still allow, and maybe not for long, I'm going to be like being frank, I feel like 10 years and you're going to have, you know, flag football.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
If Lion Baptist said that, he's like, the NFL is just moving to flag.
Yeah.
Like, because to me, it's actually shocking.
And in a good way, if I, you know, to steal man football for a moment, the fact that you still have a male only space with that exalts.
Strength, masculine strength, and allows them not just to compete in a careful way, but allows them to compete with like full on contact where people get brain injuries, you know, and people break spines.
I'm not saying that I'm hoping for it.
I don't think that should be the goal, right?
There is a difference than the Coliseum where it's like, we're going to put someone, you know, in the ring with 20 lions, right?
Like the goal there is blood.
Blood is the goal.
There is, I think, a moral difference between blood being a byproduct, injuries being a byproduct.
The goal is to move a ball down a field.
But the fact that you do it through being better than the other two.
Virtue Formation in Sports00:08:41
Through competition, through masculine strength, through.
Strategy.
Sweat and occasionally blood.
Yeah, there's strategy, but there's also.
There's a mental element.
Right, but there's also aggression, even violence, and it's male only.
And people actually turn out to watch it.
Yeah.
Is, I mean, our country is super gay.
I think we like, we don't.
What's not gay?
Greatest reason to love the NFL.
There is not a single gay man on any active NFL team roster.
Only in the past, I think it was 2021, one man who was gay or bisexual or whatever ever took the field.
Think of that.
1,800.
There is still a gay man who's taking the field in a cheerleader's.
That's out of date.
Oh, there is a gay guy.
I just looked it up.
Wow.
Nathan says there's a gay guy.
Wes says there's zero gay guys.
We'll split the difference.
There's half of a gay guy.
And by God's grace, maybe we could make that a reality.
You know, like.
Half of a gay guy on the field.
You just use your imagination of how that could be accomplished.
But the point is, yeah, I think it's shocking.
It's 2025.
We live in an effeminate culture.
And the fact that you still have masculine aggression and people are turning out to watch is a positive.
So, all that back to CJ's comment.
I agree with him in the sense that we're way too placated.
And there are men who obsess about sports and they should be angry about.
The corrupt elites that we have in Washington who are currently shielding pedophiles and taking that Jewish pedophile recently and sending him to Israel, paying for his flight instead of giving justice to the children, paying for his flight and sending him to Israel so that he can be harbored and protected.
And yes, we are a show that notices, in terms of per capita, the most pedophiles living free and protected.
Um, in any nation that protects per capita the most pedophiles is the nation of Israel, and so I, yeah, we should be upset about that.
We should be upset about Epstein, we should be upset that we're not getting mass deportations.
There's a lot of things that we should be upset about.
We are placated, but I just feel like at this point, there was a time where maybe most of the passivity was coming from just brain rot watching football.
At this point, I don't know, like maybe 10%, maybe 15%.
I feel like there's a lot of different culprits for brain rot, and football's probably the most benign.
I was about to say, if anything, even if it is brain rot, it is a one that prioritizes discipline, excellence.
Like it clearly says, hey, not even this team is good.
This player, right?
One player wins NFL most valuable player in the year.
One man, hey, he was better than everyone else.
He won more.
He was more skilled at the sport.
He was a more intelligent quarterback.
So you're kind of saying, like, yeah, it probably is.
But at least compared to, I don't know, Love Island, there's actually something natural and hierarchical baked into it.
Yeah.
And then what I was saying earlier is with respect to like comparing football even to other sports is like, I think it's a lot more in line with what we actually should, in principle, love about sports, which is virtue formation.
So, all of the things we've discussed, discipline, strength, so on and so forth through children, ordered competition.
And so, like all things equal, we prefer children to learn in sort of a walled garden, right?
So, a game provides a set of rules, but it's still competition.
Someone wins, someone loses, there's struggle.
But it's not bloodshed.
And so football provides that for men as well, in a way that I think this is something that the ancients understood, right?
Like sports, athletic competition was always the goal was sort of like preparation for war for young men.
And so even like, you know, Olympic games and those sorts of things, like a lot of those things, the javelin throw comes to mind, are actually just simulations of war.
And so, but here's the thing it becomes placation when there's actually no struggle that men experience.
So they participate in it.
But they don't go on to leverage those things in a real arena, such as church, home, politics, so on and so forth.
That's a good point.
Yeah, that's a good point.
It's like, it's one thing to train your body for a task, you know, to defend home and country and family.
It's another thing when it's like, it's an end in itself.
It becomes, you know, like, okay, these men are training at the highest level to do what?
To throw a ball.
Right.
And it's like, but yeah, it's a ball today, but eventually it'll be, you know, conquering other nations and defending their country and their honor.
Nope.
It's just throwing the ball.
And when they're done with that, they're going to do a Subway commercial.
Sure.
Let's end it with this.
This is Aaron McIntyre.
And I think this is the best take of the back and forth.
And then we'll get to kind of the more historical, like you're talking about what did men used to do sports for and what's their place.
So Aaron said this, by the way, check out Aaron on Tucker.
Great interview from the bit I caught of it.
He was just on today.
But he said this there's a certain level of, I never got over being stuffed in a locker that is often concealed by being too principled to enjoy sports ball.
As in, he's saying, at a certain level, if you're so good that you can never recognize any value for it, you might be a nerd.
Spectator sports have been central to many great civilizations, most notably the Byzantians, who had several political crises centered around allegiance to different chariot racing teams.
We've got to go back.
That isn't always a positive.
The Colosseum and the Hippodrome can be seen as signs of decadence and decay, but it is an entirely normal phenomenon.
The best critique of this is the consumer nature of the enterprise men who in no way engage in the activity but are obsessing over it.
The online right would be better off encouraging active involvement in local sporting leagues, which builds fitness, character, and community.
Than just sniping at sports in general.
I think that's a super level headed, reasonable take.
That is.
By the way, the verdict has come back in, and Wes, you were right.
So, Nathan, he got up from the soundboard and working the cameras to run in here and interrupt this broadcast to bring us fake news.
So, Nathan, we appreciate that.
Yeah, so, Nathan, we just want to publicly say he came into here, interrupted the stream to tell us fake news and say that you were wrong, but you were actually right.
There are currently no gay men in the NFL.
No actively.
Openly homosexual.
In terms of the players.
In terms of the players.
In terms of the coaches, there's a gay coach.
In terms of the cheerleaders, I mean, any male cheerleader is for sure gay.
But even cheerleaders, it's funny.
I don't see any women that are 300 pounds out there as cheerleaders.
Even in the decadent parts of it, they kind of recognize that.
And that's kind of what I'm saying it's like, it seems like the one hangover of 1980s culture where it's like, women are actually, they're not fat.
They're actually in shape.
They're attractive.
And the men are actually masculine.
It's like the.
Homecoming, you know, king and queen, you know, like just kind of living in a time capsule, you know, being preserved.
And in that sense, I think that's part of the appeal.
I think a lot of people, there is a nostalgia attached with, you know, they're remembering a better time, a better America.
They're remembering their dad, you know, they're remembering their family.
There's all those kinds of things.
So I think we're going to kind of have like a pretty, pretty, like, like Orin, a pretty reasoned.
Take on this.
Like, I think there are out of the hundred things that I hate most in America currently, the NFL doesn't make my list of the top 100.
So I think, like, fairly benign, all things considered.
Yet at the same time, yeah, like right now, we should probably be rioting in the streets and not just watching, you know, the next game.
So, all right, let's go to our first commercial break and we will be right back.
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All right, guys.
Patreon exclusive.
Daniel Woodward had a great comment.
Patreon exclusive.
It's a stream where Joel is a commentator for sports ball and just has disdain for the whole thing.
It would be funny if I had disdain the whole time, but also if I was just insufferable and it wasn't just me, but it was me and you guys.
And it was me asking questions the whole time.
Like, what are they doing?
Why is he throwing the ball?
How come he's running backwards?
What does it flag mean?
It's just the entire thing.
It's a pass.
I don't know.
It's a run.
Okay.
He gave another comment.
What did he say, Nate?
The African American gentleman has now caught the ball.
And has been tackled by a Heritage American on the other team.
Well, first, that would never happen.
Secondly, he's Daniel Woodward.
This was another one of his comments.
He was saying, Joel would, you know, he'd be commentating, the African American has got the ball, the Heritage American has tackled him.
No, it would be the other way around.
It would be, there's one Heritage American on the field and he has gotten slaughtered.
He's done.
We're so over.
Yeah, it would be funny.
I think we could maybe get a few signups, but I think that would be like a one episode wonder.
And then everyone would say, and it's way too played out.
Everyone would be saying, never again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Never again is now.
James Lindsay would say, never again is now.
Okay.
What else do you guys want to talk about?
Yeah.
So, one thing I think we could talk about.
So, we've already sort of first off talked about the story itself.
And I think we've started to allude to some of the principal values in sports, virtue formation, so on and so forth.
One other thing that I think we should talk about is the way that sports actually becomes, and the arena, if you will, the competitive arena becomes a.
A place for common cultural worship and an expression of cultural customs.
So, historically, if we look at the Olympic Games, the Olympic Games weren't just about competition.
They weren't just about a place where someone can say, Hey, I can throw this thing further, and that means that I would be a better soldier, theoretically.
These also were places where worship was being done.
There were dedications to the gods, there were sacrifices being made, so on and so forth.
And I think.
You could also say that football and sports generally, but football, let's say baseball, maybe, has also been in the American ethos a place where that expression has been had.
So you think about, you know, singing the national anthem.
You think about the F 16s flying overhead, an expression of sort of patriotism.
You think about hymns being sung at the beginning of prayers being made at the beginning of games, which has happened historically pretty regularly.
And it starts to become clear that, okay, there's something more going on.
Than simply an expression of sort of like masculine strength.
Like, clearly, we're all coming to the table and we're using this as a medium, as a forum for us to show that we're all like each other, that we love one another, we love who we are.
So, and that historically has been where the sort of role that competition has served as well.
And I think, you know, to Oren's point about the Byzantine Empire and them having political controversies centered around sports.
Is a great indication that that's true.
That we're coming and saying, no, this team represents this ethos.
That team, that chariot racing team represents that ethos.
And this is some sort of like simulated battle where we're going to see what wins, what wins out.
But now it seems like it's not whether but which.
So that's still happening these sacraments or rituals to the gods.
Except now instead of an American flag or the Star Spangled Banner, it's in the end zone.
Uh, racism needs to be or whatever, right?
Right, so now it's the social justice gods, you know, or BLM or whatever.
But that's a really good point.
It is like the virtue of masculine strength, like, there is some good, um, with professional sports, but uh, but you're right, there always was, it was always that's part of it, and that matters, but there was always something more.
It really was, in some ways, religious, yeah, it wasn't just a pastime.
And I, I would, since you brought that up, I think it's a good segue to at least one more point that Wes, you already alluded to, but it should be said.
Clearly and explicitly, if it's not meant to be religious, then why did you put it on America's religious day?
Like the fact that it's Sunday, it could have been any other day of the week, especially, you know, it's like, well, other days are work days.
Okay, Saturday.
It could have been on Saturday.
And, you know, I understand from those who do watch sports, I've been reliably informed that it was originally all the way back in like 1920, I think, is when they started making the switch to football being on Sunday.
At least the national football.
The National Football League.
And it was to differentiate, you know, so that it wouldn't completely overshadow and eclipse college sports.
And that was part of the reasoning.
But I will say, I, you know, I'm a pragmatist in many ways, but my pragmatism is always going to be ultimately subservient to my principles.
I'm a Christian first and foremost, and I believe in the law of God, and I believe that the fourth commandment, the Sabbath, That it is an immutable and eternal binding commandment.
And I do think that football is a breach of it.
And so the idea that on the Lord's Day, that grown men would be tailgating in a parking lot to watch a football game or sitting on the couch, I don't believe that that is a permissible way to honor the Sabbath.
You look at the Westminster Confession, you look at the 1689 Confession, it's not just ceasing from work.
But it's also ceasing.
They use the word recreation.
And that doesn't mean, you know, like you can go, you know, obviously there are varying degrees of how far you take that.
Like, can my family, you know, we went to church in the morning, we're going to go back to church in the evening, and can we have a picnic in the park?
And what happens if, you know, my three year old son, you know, throws a ball to me and asks me to catch?
You know, I think that's a little bit different.
But when it's like grown men, professional paid athletes, and it's an industry, like it is a business.
And you're patroning that business, and it's not like you're just interacting with your family, you know, and in community and relationship, but you're actually just, in many cases, ignoring your family, sitting on the couch, tuning in.
I, you know, I think, yeah, I don't think that that's Sabbatarian.
And I do think that America was a better place when it honored the Sabbath.
And it's been especially hard.
I've loved NFL football in the past, but rarely, if ever, watched it anymore.
And one of the hardest things to get around.
And Aaron puts the pin on it, is actually the consumer culture.
So it's not just on the Lord's Day watching people break the Sabbath to work, but you're also, by virtue of the commercials and the advertisements that are being shown, you're just consuming and bringing in, instead of thinking on the Lord, upon thinking on the scriptures, upon worship, you're bringing in, and the best word for it is slop, sloppy food, sloppy products, just things that add no value to your life.
It's got music, it's got colors, it's got lewd dancing, it's got all of these things to try to get you to buy it, to try to get you to gamble.
And like you're gonna sit down on the Lord's Day and for three hours, Just let more and more and more of that come in when you're already watching people break the Sabbath.
So, at least personally for me and my conscience, if you can't do it because of, well, they're busy or that, well, they're working on the Sabbath.
Okay.
But can you at least recognize that what you're bringing in, the seventh day, is a Sabbath to the Lord your God?
Like recognizing that what I take in on this day matters.
I've been given six days to work, right?
Six days you shall labor.
Believe it or not, right?
The five day work week, the Bible says six.
Maybe that's five days for your nine to five, that's one more for the side hustle, working around the home.
But you've given six days to labor, six days to watch.
College football on a Saturday, but the Sabbath, the one day is a Sabbath to the Lord.
So, even if you can get over, well, they're working, but I'm not, I'm on the couch.
Can you at least, by virtue of what's coming into your brain, say, I just really do not want that in my brain?
And most especially if your TV's in the center of your room, your living room, I don't want that in my kid's brain on the Sabbath.
No, we just got back from church where we worshiped the Lord.
I'm not now coming in shoving that out of the way and like, here's Taco Bell commercials and here's T Mobile commercials and here's just consumeristic junk.
Fill your brain with that on Sunday.
No, I can't do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's gotten worse too.
I was just thinking about.
For sure.
You know, as I've like watched, you know, game here and there in the past, how much, how they've just found all sorts of creative ways to like throw in advertisements.
So now it's not just commercial breaks.
Every now and then, now they have scheduled commercial breaks.
And it's not just in the commercial breaks that where you'll see commercials, but you'll see commercials in the live, you know, the play as well.
So team goes back to the huddle.
Hey, here's an advertisement for this.
Skycam by Variety.
Exactly.
It's terrible.
So it really is everywhere.
It's just totally saturated.
Yeah.
And so it's just almost impossible to not just be completely inundated.
And honestly, I wouldn't expect it's long before you have on the jerseys and on the helmets and those sorts of things advertisements as well.
Are there, because I'm ignorant to this, but are there NFL games on Saturday?
There are.
They've started to do it a little bit more now.
Especially towards the end of the season.
Thanksgiving will have games, Christmas.
They have Mondays.
Christmas Eve will have games.
Yeah.
Mondays and Thursdays.
Yeah, I knew that.
Like Monday and Thursday.
But what about Saturday?
I'm specifically asking.
Some on Saturdays towards the end of the season, yes.
I think it's especially as college football wraps up because they're competing with college football, which ends in December.
Anything to make an extra dime for the NFL.
Yeah.
Well, I'm wondering, like, you know, like the stated reason is not wanting to overlap with college football.
But I'm also wondering, like, how many owners of, you know, the NFL League, maybe, like, maybe, maybe it's not, you know, it's not whether but which.
So maybe, like, there still is a holy day.
There still is a Sabbath.
But for those who are personally involved, you know, in terms of ownership in the, you know, the National Football League, for them, their holy day isn't Sunday.
Maybe their holy day is Saturday.
They're Seventh day Adventists.
Yeah, yeah, it's the Seventh day Adventist.
That's what it is.
Uh, 10 to 32 NFL team owners are Jewish.
So you think about they're about two to three percent.
That's what I'm that's what I'm about 30 40 percent of the owners of NFL teams.
Yeah, it's one of those things.
It's like you can shoot in the dark, you know.
I but um, there's some targets that are just so large that you can shoot in the dark and hit 10 out of 32 times, you know.
Like it's like, how did he know?
How did he guess?
200 of them, you know, the laws of average are are ever on your side.
Let's transition to for sons.
So, we've talked about the commercial aspect, the big, the league, the national.
Locally, Arn's encouragement, I think it's a good one.
You should do sports, but locally.
I think of Anthony Esselin's book, Defending Boyhood.
It's a great book on boyhood.
And one of the things he points out in sports is that your sons, if you put your son on a sports team where there's reasonable competitions, we're not talking T ball at four or soccer at three.
We're talking like he plays tackle football, he plays hockey, he plays some other sport.
Well, what's going to happen is, and men do this really well.
Men recognize a hierarchy.
So, your son is going to go in there and it's not just going to be his siblings who he's older than or younger than.
It's not going to be his parents, but he's going to go on a team and he's going to realize, hey, there are three kids that are faster than me.
Hey, and this person is more inspiring and this person is better at this.
And he's going to gain the skill.
And it's a very valuable skill for men to recognize, I'm not the fastest and I'm not the best, but I'm going to follow the guy that is.
And maybe he is the fastest and the best.
Then, for him to recognize and say, hey, I actually have a skill and a talent that God has given me and I'm better in this domain than other people.
Now, what service I give to them then.
It is to humbly do my best to lead, to inspire.
Nathan said earlier over lunch, it teaches you how to miss, how to fail, and to get back up.
You took that shot, you missed.
You swung, you missed.
You fumbled the football.
Okay, we can go home and cry about it, or you can learn the very manly art go back out there, son, and try again.
So, as far as at a personal, local level, that is the place, actually, I think, to as much as possible, and as much as your sons have interest, we got to be honest, some kids won't be into it, but as much as possible, and the environment can be conducive and wholesome.
Absolutely.
Go out there, compete, win, and learn to be disciplined, to strive, to achieve, to get back up after you've fallen.
I think we would all agree with that perspective.
Absolutely.
And I think even beyond the individual level, the community level.
So you think about your local sports, your football team, and they're going to play communities around your area and finding civic pride in that and that being sort of a cultural focus point is important as well.
But going back to your point, I think the individual level is really important because I think sports can be illustrative.
Of life lessons, or you could say biblical lessons.
I don't think it's surprising that Paul uses the analogy of running a race, right?
And the physical nature of that in the way that it's analogous to a spiritual race.
And so you think about all the things that make you a successful runner it's discipline, it's endurance.
All of these things are virtues.
And sports provides a medium or a forum where That can be tested and it can be shored up for a child as they grow and learn.
And so, I do think it can reinforce virtue.
It can punish vice.
You think about the hot headed defensive player who's just out there trying to hit anything.
And meanwhile, they're just throwing the ball right over his head and just scoring and scoring and scoring.
What is he learning?
He's learning that behaving in anger is not a good, it's not a mature strategy.
It's not a winning strategy.
So, maybe I should change it, so on and so forth.
And so, children learn that way.
I think it's a good context for them to learn.
Punishing Vice Through Rules00:07:34
And to the extent that they are interested, And I think there's a little bit of obligation for parents to tease out interest as well, especially early on, to say, hey, you're going to try this thing.
Now, you don't need to be interested in it.
You don't need to have a sustained interest, but you're going to try it.
You can expose the children, and eventually they're going to find some kind of physical outlet that I think will be appropriate.
One more thing, real quick, about the Sabbath.
When you look at Exodus chapter 20, it's you or your sons or your daughters or your male servants or your female servants or your.
Oxen, or your donkey, or the sojourner who is within your midst, that all of them are commanded by God according to the Sabbath law to be given rest.
And so I was just thinking, as you were talking earlier about Wes, you know, with, you know, well, I'm not playing, you know, I'm sitting on the couch, I'm resting.
It's also releasing your servants and any patroning of someone who is employed on the Sabbath and required to work on the Sabbath.
By patroning them, you are.
You are, in some sense, you are their master, right?
Like they're working for you.
They would not work.
They would pick another day, they would shut down, you know, if you weren't watching.
It's only because, you know, everybody's coming out, they're buying tickets, they're turning on the television, they're watching the ads.
It's only because they're getting the viewership that they are then required to work on that particular day.
So there is an argument to be made.
And, you know, again, Westminster and 1689, they cite Nehemiah, I believe it's chapter 13.
Where there are people who are not Israelites, but they're coming up to the wall, to the gates of Israel, and wanting to buy and sell.
They're merchants that are traveling.
They keep coming on the Sabbath.
And it said to them, there's six days in the week that you can come and do this.
If you come and do this again, I believe the text says, I will lay hands on you.
Like I'm going to physically beat you.
And so the point is, That it's not just that you're, okay, well, I'm actually on the field playing football, but the purchasing and selling, the transaction, the activity in the market on the Lord's day.
There is a strong biblical example not to do that.
And I know that feels foreign to us.
We're like, oh, that's legalism or that's way too far.
That is what all of our Christian forebears held to.
That may be foreign to us, but that was.
The common interpretation for the Sabbath for a very long time.
I think of Thomas Watson.
He cites, when he's talking about the fourth commandment, the Sabbath, he cites as an example a fire, like a historic fire, forget the name of it, that broke out in London.
And in typical Puritan fashion, like people think, oh man, you know, well, you just said this matter of fact, you know, and like, but you're assuming, you're speculating that that's all the Puritans ever did was speculate.
That's literally all they would ever do.
For better or for worse.
Yeah.
I mean, Charles Spurgeon, you know, he wasn't a Puritan, not in the technical sense.
Some call him the last of the Puritans, but he would take a text, like a sower went out to sow, and then he'd preach like a thousand sermons just on that.
And it's like about 5% exegesis and 95% speculation.
Well, Thomas Watson, he looks at this historic event of this fire that broke out in London, and he said, Because you would not honor heaven, and he relates it.
He doesn't say, Oh, I think.
No, it's a matter of fact.
He says, God sent a fire to London to burn you alive.
And people died.
A lot of people died in this fire.
And it was sent by God, according to Thomas Watson, as a direct punishment, judgment for breaking the Sabbath.
And the wording that he uses is because you guys were visiting the marketplace, because you had stores open and were engaging in the market on the Lord's day, on the Sabbath.
And so he basically says, because you would not honor heaven on the Sabbath, God has brought up hell with the fire.
And no parenthetical statement, no disclaimer, no, you know, he's just like, that's what happened.
You guys broke the Sabbath and God burned you alive.
And I don't know.
I mean, it's a bit strong, but I'm just saying that's how people thought.
That's how our forefathers thought.
And that was the position that has been held for a very long time until relatively recent in the last hundred years.
And really, even less than that, I mean, depending on which local place that you lived in.
Like, I grew up in Texas.
And in Texas, you couldn't buy liquor on Sunday when I was a kid.
I think even still in Georgetown, most of the liquor stores are closed on Sunday.
Yeah.
And there were also a lot of grocery stores and storefronts that would not open until noon on Sunday.
And it's like, why?
Well, it's because you're supposed to be in church.
And that's not just 100 years ago, like in the 1920s, but stretching even into the 2000s.
And so that is our heritage.
Our heritage is Sabbatarian.
You look at America, you look at its history.
America was a Sabbath honoring nation.
We had blue laws, Sabbath laws on the books for a very long time, for the majority of our country's history.
And I do think that the NFL has, I don't know, whether by coincidence or by design, the NFL is one of the most blasphemous, Sabbath breaking nations.
Organizations, institutions that we currently have in America with zero regard for the Sabbath and not just because we're open 24 7.
No, like we, yeah, we do some events here and we do them there, but we save the bulk of what we do knowing that the whole country will tune in and we hand select the Lord's Day to do it on.
September through February, there will be football on.
We can promise you.
I mean, the NFL is actively competing with church.
Right.
Like it used to be the Lord's Day and now it's the pigskin day.
And that's, I think that that's a problem.
Let's go to our last commercial break.
If you can, go ahead and write in for us some questions.
We're going to, we usually spend our third segment of the show dealing with the chat.
Any questions that you may have, if you want to ensure that you have a question that we will get to as a first priority, then send it in as a super chat.
We always prioritize the super chats for those who are generous and giving towards this ministry.
We want to return the favor by prioritizing your questions and getting them to them first.
For everybody else, if you just say question, you know, or somehow delineate that it's not just a comment to somebody else in the chat, but it is a question to us, make that clear.
And if we have time getting through the super chats, then we'll do our best to get to your questions also.
And we'll do all that right after this final commercial break.
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All right, we're back.
Our first super chat comes to us from Smith123.
That's not the full name, but I just, you cannot, I don't care how much money you give me, you are not going to make me read this name in its entirety live on this show.
So it's blank Smith123.
And he asks this he says, I don't want to blow up your spot with Andrew Isker, but how does he justify taking money from the tech crowd, right?
So the tech right, your Peter Thiels and those kinds of guys.
Supporting Vance, having Claremont Institute Straussians all over his homesteading project.
I'll read it one more time.
I don't want to blow up your spot with Andrew Isker, but how does he justify taking money from the tech crowd supporting Vance, having Claremont Institute Straussians all over his homestead project?
All right.
I guess the best way I can answer it is number one, Andrew Isker is amazing.
He's a good friend.
He's done incredible work.
Andrew Isker, lest we forget, He may want some of us to forget, but I will not forget.
And I don't think we should forget because I think it was noble and honorable and good.
But we're talking about the guy who co wrote a book on Christian nationalism with an entire section devoted to Israel and how it cannot be Judeo Christian nationalism.
And he co wrote it with Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gap.
This was in like 2023.
This was not that long ago.
I mean, it came out like six months ago.
This was not six months ago.
The point is, this was like.
Pre case for Christian nationalism.
Yeah, it was.
But I'm, yeah, exactly.
I'm, I'm, that's what I'm saying.
He, he beat, uh, he beat Stephen Wolf to print, um, him and, uh, and Andrew Torba.
It was about six months prior to the case for Christian nationalism by Dr. Stephen Wolf.
Um, but it wasn't, my point is, it wasn't that long ago.
This was, I think, what, 2022?
Sure.
In one sense, it's not that long ago.
In another sense, it was early.
Right.
It was, yeah.
So, so early enough to where, um, he wasn't just, you know, trying to, um, to, to, Ride on the clout of something.
This is his convictions, what he believes.
It's very clear that he was doing it from a place of virtue.
I believe this, I'm saying it before, it's cool.
So early enough to be authentic, but recent enough to where I don't think it's fair to say, well, Andrew Isker, he's not our guy.
I don't think that's fair.
We're talking about 2022.
Like three years ago, he's co-writing a book with Andrew Torba against, and for the record, you know, some things I can say, some things I can't.
But suffice it to say, against many people trying to dissuade him from doing that.
Many people telling him, you need to distance yourself from Andrew Torba.
Don't co-write a book with Andrew Torba.
You could publish it with us if Andrew Torba's name wasn't on it.
You need to cut ties and blah, blah, blah.
And we'll give you this deal.
You know, you'll have this opportunity.
Andrew Isker paid a cost.
He did.
He paid a price and lost opportunity.
He lost friendships, a lot of those things.
And not because he did anything wrong, but because he refused to do something that would have been wrong, namely stabbing Andrew Torba in the back and turning on him.
So I appreciate Andrew Isker immensely.
And he has been onto these things long before I realized them.
We've had conversations together.
And so Andrew Isker has done the reading.
Andrew Isker.
Is aware of what's going on.
That said, it is true that some of our guys, and I think there still are guys, but guys that we love and that we think highly of and respect, that they, everybody's, I predicted that, I said this at our conference, and I don't think people understood what I was saying, but it was prescient.
If I do say so myself, I was right.
At the conference, I remember people saying, like, hey, you know, like we've been through a lot of division, you know, there was the Antioch.
Declaration, you know, with Moscow and Apologia, and there's this and there's that, you know, and there was over BLM, you know, like it feels like our ranks, you know, split right down the middle.
We lost half of our team, you know, and we lost people, you know, we lost good men on COVID, and we lost, you know, all these divisions.
It's like every six months, the Lord and His providence from 2020 to 2024 was giving us like another test.
It was like another IQ test, another IQ test, you know, or another virtue test, another, you know, commitment test.
And at each test, you know, it's like, God was like whittling down the team.
You lose some more guys, you lose some more guys.
And I said at our conference, I said it then, and I think it's all the more true.
I think it's exponentially more true now.
I said, now that Trump is in office and we've experienced at a national scale what many of us thought at the time was a victory, I said, I think we will now experience more division, not less.
More division.
Because at some level, you have to realize that division is a luxury of winning.
You have to, like, in terms of intramural division, like home team division.
So you think of, like, well, you know, like, we really need to stick it to, you know, Pado Baptist and the Pado Baptist, you know, if you're Pado Baptist, like, we gotta, you know, we gotta drag the Credo Baptist.
Yeah, maybe when the orcs aren't inside the camp, maybe when we don't have gay furries, you know, like, maybe we wait for that.
Like, maybe get rid of the gay furries.
And transing kids and aborting millions of babies in their mother's wombs, and importing tens of millions of foreigners, and being completely invaded by Muslims and being completely controlled by Jews.
Maybe we get rid of some of those things, and then we can have our debates and hash it out over credo versus pedo baptism.
So when I look at Christendom and you look at all this, I mean, it's just filled with this debate.
After this debate, after this debate, Erasmus and Luther and like all these things.
Like it's, Christendom is filled with fighting, infighting.
But I think part of the reason it's so filled with infighting is because during the days of Christendom, they had the luxury of infighting.
They won.
They won.
We haven't won yet.
We're not even close.
Like, oh, you're going to be sick of winning.
I'm not sick of winning, not even close.
I would love to get one win, one win.
Where are the mass deportations?
Where are the Epstein files?
Where's this?
Where is that?
We're not winning.
We are just losing through a different direction.
We're just losing in a different way.
So, yeah, so I think that if we get to the place where we are experiencing some really serious victory, then we can have some of these squabbles.
In the meantime, I think No Enemies on the Right stands true.
I think it's a good strategy.
I also think that it's not only a good strategy, Pragmatically, but I also think it's good in terms of principle and virtue.
There's something to be said for friendship, and friendship should not be thrown away with a light heart.
We shouldn't treat friendship as though it's trivial.
But all that being said, yes, you have probably noticed the question makes sense.
I don't want to disparage the person who asked the question.
It's a fair question because what I think people are noticing is that right response is taking.
A different path.
We are recognizing, and maybe we turn out to be wrong, and maybe we have egg on our face.
And if it comes to that, then we will do our best to own our mistakes, own where we're wrong.
But we are of the persuasion that there are some serious threats and potential pitfalls.
In our current administration, we don't feel like we're winning.
I feel, I'll speak for myself, I think that we have a different Trump than we had in 2016 through 2020.
I don't think that Trump is operating the way that he once did.
I don't think that he has the rigor that he once did.
JD Vance, I think there's a lot of good things that JD Vance has done and said.
And yet, at the same time, I think we're being naive if we don't recognize that JD Vance has ties to certain individuals, strong ties that are absolutely concerning.
So, yeah, so those are the differences.
There are guys, I think, who are good guys.
They are still on our team, but they are planned trusters.
And whenever another bad thing happens, another bad thing happens, it goes from 4D chess to 5D to 6D to 7D.
And right now, you know, like, yes, we've got some guys who we love who are adamant that what we're really seeing is 47-degree chess.
And we're just not convinced.
I'm not convinced.
I'm thinking, well, it could be 47D chess, or we could have been duped.
And I think to at least consider the possibility that maybe we've been duped is vital.
So, yeah, I think there's some good things that come out of NatCon.
And there are some things that I do not like, some things that are concerning.
And so, yeah, so, yeah, there are differences that I would hold to that other guys would not hold to.
But I think we have to have categories of this is a guy pulling the strings versus this is a good guy who is making his calculus one way and I'm making it a different way.
And if and when, by the grace of God, We come out the other side successful, we're going to hug it out and make amends.
And one of us will say, Yeah, you were right, man.
I was wrong.
I was, you know, I was too hard on Trump, you know, or, you know what?
I earned, you know, a few fell for it again badges, you know, over the last couple of years.
And I think Andrew Isker, CJ Engel, these kinds of guys, you guys know who the guys are.
I think that these are solid men because I know them personally.
And I think they're the kind of men who, if it is as nefarious as I think things might be, they will be our guys.
They will come out and they'll say, ah, that's it.
I'm off the train.
I went for this because I thought that it was a viable strategy.
And it's not now.
And that's become apparent.
And so I'm out.
And I absolutely believe that Andrew Isker is one of those men.
I think that Andrew Isker is a faithful guy and I appreciate him.
And so, no, I'm not going to be ending relationships over I think Trump is great versus I'm worried what's going to happen with Trump or JD Vance.
I'll say this also.
Like, I'm seeing today, you know, like all the memes of like, here's Gavin Newsom with, you know, his all white family, you know, and even the dog in the picture is white.
I saw a meme, you know, like, even the dog is white.
You know, this is.
He's a Chad.
He's the most heritage American, you know, quintessential.
And then here's JD Vance, and he's like in front of like some, you know, Taj Mahal, whatever, you know, and dressed in Indian Hindu garb, you know, with his kids with flowers around their neck, you know, and his, you know, Hindu wife.
And yeah, not great.
Not a great look.
But if it comes down to Gavin Newsom and JD Vance, I want to be abundantly clear there's no scenario on God's green earth where I will ever vote for Gavin Newsom.
Like, we can't so quickly forget.
Like, yes, we want to be aware that there are powers behind the curtain pulling strings.
That is true.
That is true.
At the same time, Gavin Newsom hates America.
Gavin Newsom hates you.
He's told us, he's literally told us, I hate you.
He's dining at the French laundry as he locks you in your home.
Gavin Newsom promoted wokeness.
More than put up billboards in our state promoting abortion.
So here in Texas, from California, putting up billboards, trying to get people to move back to California so that they could kill their babies.
Gavin Newsom, I mean, that's so there's a new scum.
Yeah, new scum.
My point is this I think there's a fine line between being wise as serpents and being innocent as doves.
So I don't think we can just be got what I voted for, got what I voted for.
Like, I know you guys are seeing some of that from some of our guys who we love and honor.
And yeah, it's annoying.
You know, there are times where I'm like, I cringe a little bit.
And it's like, oh, dude, I did not get what I voted for.
What did you vote for?
Like, I thought we were voting for the same thing.
I'm not getting what I voted for.
How are you getting what you voted for?
The Fine Line of Wisdom00:07:13
So, yes, I think we can't be naive.
We need to be aware that JD Vance could be great or he could turn out to be terrible.
He really could.
And we did a whole thing on JD Vance and we posted, we even cut it out and posted it separately.
We did that last week.
So, go if you want to know what I'm talking about.
Go and watch that video.
I think it's only like 10, 15 minutes long.
And so you can see our whole thing on JD Vance and what our concerns are, where we're hopeful and where we're concerned.
But all that being said, yeah, I think we can't afford to be naive.
We need to be aware that the tech right is not America first.
They're America first, as though, you know, like the NFL, like if it's a sports team and all the players can be swapped out with Indians, then sure, they're America first.
But in terms of Americans first, Elon Musk is not for Americans.
Peter Thiel is not for Americans.
Alex Karp is not for Americans.
JD Vance may be for Americans.
He's said some things that is pro American.
And I want to be hopeful.
But at the same time, I also want to not be naive and see okay, but who is he partnered with?
Who is he beholden to?
Where has he taken money?
How did he win that Senate race?
Did he get the biggest contribution towards a Senate race that anybody's ever gotten?
And okay, who made that contribution?
How did he become a successful VC guy who never actually even showed up to the office?
How do these things happen?
I don't want to be stupid.
I don't want to be stupid.
At the same time, though, it's not a Christian virtue to black pill all the time.
So we don't want to be stupid, but we do want to be hopeful.
I mean, read the Bible, the whole Old Testament.
It's just story after story after story where it seems as though all hope is lost and the Lord can win by many or by few.
It happens time and time again where the Israelites are outnumbered 10 to 1, 100 to 1.
And then their enemies just the spirit of God moves, and the enemies start turning on each other in a stupor and start slaughtering each other.
Um, so I want to be hopeful.
Like, Star Wars, um, has gotten to the point where it's it's uh, you can't say it positive.
Star Wars is gay, you know, it's a little gay, but I will give one Star Wars illustration.
Please forgive me, I know it's a bit cringe.
Um, but it's like I think of JD Vance as like Anakin, it's like you know, Anakin, you're the chosen one to balance the force.
Well, it could be balancing the force by creating a dark empire.
It could be balancing the force in another direction.
It's like, well, he was the chosen one, turns out, but not the way we thought.
But then, even in that scenario, the natural affections of being a father and these kinds of things, they finally come back through at the very end.
He ends up being the guy who throws the emperor off the ship and wins the day.
And I could see, I just.
I think that we don't want to be naive, but we also don't want to pretend omniscience.
So, yeah, so I'm a little bit.
There are some guys who are further to the right.
They're like to the point where they would vote for Gavin Newsom over JD Vance.
I think that's retarded.
I'm not in that position.
And then there are other guys who are like, not tired of winning, got what I voted for.
And I think that's, I won't call it retarded, but it's a little bit, and it's at least certainly naive.
I'm somewhere in between.
I feel like JD Vance, when it's all said and done, he could come back and throw Peter Thiel over the rail into the reactor, core reactor down at the bottom when it's all said and done.
And his true natural affections from birth and being born in Appalachia and being a true American could shine through and win the day.
Or he could betray us all.
And I could see it going.
Either way, you know, it could be that he just gives more control to Palantir to develop facial recognition so that we get what we voted for.
And what we voted for turns out to be being thrown in jail for anti Semitism.
Like, that's a real possibility.
And so I think guys on our team that we love who aren't talking about that at all because they're trusting the plan.
Yeah, I wish that they would talk about it.
But I still love those guys, I think they're good guys.
And I am trusting that when push comes to shove, if things really do get that dark, those guys will come back in the bottom of the ninth and they'll stand with us shoulder to shoulder and they won't just betray us.
And so, yeah, I'm not going to turn my back on friends when things are still very, very.
I think we all just have to have some humility and admit that things are muddy.
Thing like none of us are operating with 2020 vision right now, all of us are seeing dimly, and we can see some of the pieces that could end up meaning this, and some pieces over here that could end up meaning that.
And for any of us to pretend omniscience, I think, is arrogant.
So, yeah, I think Andrew Risker is our guy, and we will see what happens with Vance, we'll see what happens with Palantir, we'll see what happens with the Trump administration if we ever get the mass deportations, if we get this, if we get that.
And I think as the pieces come back in and they're empirical and it becomes clear, then I believe that our guys, when things become clear, if we end up being right in our reservations, our guys will come back around and be like, all right, I'm standing with you.
And yeah, and so I believe that.
All right, next one.
Good answer.
Inevitable, oh boy, inevitable kerfuffle.
Yep.
Inevitable kerfuffle, $10 super chat.
Thanks so much.
Is that a VeggieTales avatar?
It is.
It's an Angry Larry.
All right.
He said this I want to learn more about church history.
Any Protestant apologist you guys would recommend?
I found Cleave to Antiquity and learned a lot from his content on EO slash RCC, Roman Catholic Church, from a Protestant perspective.
The guy I can think of that's active.
I hate to say it.
I thought it.
Don't say it.
Just don't even say it.
I don't really have to.
Gavin Ortland.
Gavin Newsom.
Gavin Ortland.
Gavin Ortland.
On Eastern Orthodox is good.
Yeah.
He's done the reading.
Protestantism over and against the other traditions.
He's done the reading.
He knows what he's talking about when it comes to culture, when it comes to other things.
He's absolutely terrible.
See the last name.
And slightly more based, The Other Paul.
He's Anglican, but he does a lot of history stuff.
He was on our channel.
I think it was almost like two hours.
He did a really good deep dive in relation to the state, to the church.
So The Other Paul, Gavin Ortland.
Antonio, I think you mentioned some lectures.
Preserving Mother and Child00:10:02
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I would just generally point people to Ligonier.
I think Ligonier is a good resource for this sort of thing, podcasts and whatnot.
I think, particularly if you're interested in an interpretation of church history, you think of the early church fathers and this sort of thing through a Protestant positive sort of framework.
Nick Needham, I think it is, he's got a relationship with Ligonier.
He might have published this work through Ligonier, but it's called 2000 Years of Christ's Power.
It's essentially just a multi volume history of the Christian church.
So he walks through the early Christian church all the way through the many popes, so on and so forth, through the great.
Schism, all the way up into the Reformation and beyond, actually.
So that's a work that comes highly recommended.
So worth checking out.
Cool.
If you want a more sort of academic deep dive in that sort of thing.
Nice.
All right.
All right.
Captain Reba, $20 super chat.
This is actually two parts.
We sent two $20 super chats.
Really appreciate it.
And he says this My wife is pregnant with our fourth, two Earthside kids, and one in heaven after an early 2025 miscarriage.
This pregnancy now may threaten her life, and our original doctor urged abortion.
We found a pro life OB, OBGYN, to help us, move the cursor, Nate, but a close Christian relative insists we listen to the doctor and terminate for her sake.
How do we deal with the betrayal we feel from someone that should love this child arguing to essentially murder it?
Yeah, that's hard.
Well, the first thing that I would say is this in the case of a threat to the life of the mother, there is no scenario where a baby has to be killed to save the life of a mother.
The baby has to be born.
And that's an important ethical distinction.
If the mother's life is being threatened by the pregnancy, it's because she needs to deliver the baby.
Not because she needs to kill the baby.
So that's right there already a massive ethical distinction.
And so I'm not a doctor.
I can't give you medical advice, but as a Christian, as a pastor, I can give moral counsel.
And I would say that if at all possible, you know, trying to carry the baby as close to full term as possible and then looking at delivering the baby prematurely.
Through a C section or whatever needs to be done.
But carrying the baby as long as your wife can without her life being jeopardized, because I don't know the particular situation in your case, but I think it's probably a fairly safe assumption that the threat to the mother's life will probably be most threatening as you get later in pregnancy and not right away.
And so, if that's the case, and it probably is, then I would be looking at just taking it a day at a time and going as long as she possibly can, trying to get as close to full term as she can.
And then, ifslash when it reaches the point where you have a consensus from multiple sources, not friends, but doctors saying, if she goes longer, you know, it's like this is like it's, you know, the child is going to kill her.
Then at that point, delivering the baby, not killing the baby, but emergency C section, delivering the baby, the baby being in the ICU, NICU, for it may be that the baby has to be there for two months.
The baby's born early, but there are stories after story after story of advances in medical care.
There are testimonies of babies being born at like 23 weeks now, 22 weeks.
Basically, just barely over half of a full term, and the baby surviving and living.
And so that's, yeah, that's the way that I would be thinking about it you're doing everything that you can to protect and preserve the life of the mother, but also giving your child the highest chances that they can possibly have at survival.
And then looking at it in the providence of God, of like, Okay, we've got every single doctor is now telling us we have to deliver the baby now.
Okay, so we're going to deliver the baby, but we are not killing this baby.
We're delivering the baby.
And if the baby doesn't make it and dies, then we're going to mourn the life of our child.
That's very different than we're going to have an abortion, we're going to kill the baby.
And it was like, no, we delivered the baby when we absolutely had to, we went as long as we could.
And so, what you're doing in that scenario is you're trying to preserve both lives the life of the mother and the child.
And you are killing no one.
Someone may die, but it's not killing anyone.
There's a difference in someone dying versus murder, a massive difference.
And so I would do, you know, as it relates to your family member, trying your best to explain that to them and saying, this is our biblical ethics.
We want to, absolutely, I want to protect the life of my wife, the mother of our child.
And I'm going to do everything to protect her life that I can without being overly fearful and killing the life of.
Our child.
And so we're trying to preserve both lives and telling them your plan, explaining to them the ethics, and then letting them know because it's probably the advice you're getting is probably from, I would imagine, maybe it's your mother in law, maybe it's the mom of the wife or somebody who's close to her and probably concerned about her and her health and vitality.
And so doing your best to reassure them that you are not going to be foolish and that you're not going to.
Yeah, that you're going to be wise, you're going to be careful, you're going to do your best to preserve the life of your wife.
But that you want the baby's going to be born prematurely and all those kinds of things to preserve the mother's life, but you're going to hold on as long as you can without overly jeopardizing the wife's life so that the baby might also live.
I feel like that's the best you can do.
I think, too, Lord willing, the baby will be born five, six, seven months and then to health and.
There could be a moment then, is what you should say.
The baby comes home by God's grace, and we'll be praying that happens.
Where you sit down and you say, Listen to me, there's this beautiful child here, and we need to be honest.
We don't have to talk about this again.
They never need to hear it.
But you were advocating that I kill this child.
And look what this has done.
And you need to repent of that.
You are a Christian.
You wanted to murder this life and to stay in contact with our family.
Like you claim to be a Christian.
I need you to repent of that.
We're never going to mention it again.
We're not going to hold it over your head.
But that advice was not just foolish or wrong, it was wicked.
But in the meantime, Just don't have the conversation, let it play itself out, deliver by God's grace, have the baby.
And then when the time comes, say, Hey, this turned out totally wrong compared to what you thought would happen.
And the advice you gave was not just wrong off base, it was wicked.
Yeah, that's a good addition because there are so many testimonies like that where people said, You've got to do this, you've got to abort the child, you're being a monster, you're not caring about the mother, and blah, blah, blah.
And there's so many stories where people said, no, we're not going to do that.
And the child lives and the mother lives again and again.
And we just, we do have to recognize, like, it'd be one thing if it was the 1800s, you know, with today's technology, but like, but those virtues and morals from the 1800s.
And, you know, everybody's telling you, you know, and they're telling you with tears in their eyes, you know, like, oh, we don't want this baby to die, but we, you know, like, this is the only thing.
But we just have to keep, you have to keep in perspective the context, the broader context that we live in.
The context that we live in today is a context that, honestly, like we just, modern people don't care about abortion.
They just don't.
So it's like, you're saying that we have to do this.
But is that because we really have to do it?
Or is it because abortion is just not a big deal for you?
And the reality is, abortion is not a big deal for most people, including many Christians.
And so, yeah, like a Christian, you know, Christian relative insisting that, you know, that you murder the baby.
Like, and if it is the mother in law, which I have a feeling it is, usually is, that, like what Wes said, is profound.
Like, that will be a profound moment for her and her sanctification, for her to get to hold her grandchild and know, I wanted to kill you.
I'm holding my grandchild.
I'm looking at my grandchild.
I wanted you sucked up with a vacuum cleaner, dismembered and bloodied and dead.
And hopefully, God would use that to change her life, that she would be sanctified.
And yeah, that could be a powerful moment in her sanctification.
Character Built on Loss00:05:01
Do you have anything you want to add?
No, I would just say I mean, the other side of the coin is like you have to leverage discernment here because we have to recognize that some people are just weaker.
Weaker, less mature Christians.
And so, and there's just been a lot of propaganda, right?
There's just, it's especially with situations like this, it's just so easy to say, you know, for a doctor to just drown out in medical terminology and language the reality of what's happening.
And so, just discern, I think, you know, with whoever this relative is, what exactly is going on there, because you could also use it to instruct them.
As well.
But no, I don't disagree.
I think the strong rebuke is necessary.
Yeah, that was a good thing to add.
All right, Antonio, you want to do the next one?
Yeah.
This is Colin Erb, 3802, says, What's the role of sports in Christian school?
And how much should we focus on winning versus building character?
What do you think?
Yeah, my thoughts are I think if the sport, if it's a good sport, those two things are more or less aligned.
It's the very same things that you want to instill, inculcate in a young person are the things that actually are winning strategies sacrifice, discipline, effort, teamwork, all of these things.
And so I think you start from the basis of let's focus on those things and doing them right.
And then winning is typically the natural consequence of, although you have to leave for a category of talent and inherent sort of ability and those sorts of things.
But no, certainly building character, virtue formation is the basis, the bedrock of competition.
And so that should always be an emphasis.
But at the same time, winning is the goal.
And you can't separate those two things.
If you're in competition, you have to have the end.
You have to be striving for something.
And you can't lose sight of that in sort of the faux piety sort of way of, you know, we're focusing on building character.
We don't care if we win or lose.
Like, Well said.
Yeah, that's what I thought with the question you take winning out of it.
And the irony is that it's not like, do you build character or do you focus on winning?
Those things are not at odds.
You take winning out of the equation and you actually won't, you'll build less character.
Yeah.
Because the character is built in the discipline and the rigor and the vigilance and the teamwork and all these kinds of natural hierarchies being formed within the team.
This guy's better than me, so I'm going to pass him the ball instead of keeping it for myself.
Like all these kinds of, like, The character is formed, in my assessment, it forms two ways, but in both ways, it necessitates winning being the ambition.
Otherwise, the character, the opportunity for character is lost.
So, one is you win, that requires the character of discipline.
And then the other scenario is you lose, but you wanted to win.
Like you actually cared.
You really did care.
Winning was the goal, and you have now failed to achieve your goal.
And so now you have the opportunity of forming character over a real sense of loss.
But if winning is not the objective, then you actually miss out on character, but you miss out on building character through vigilance and diligence and what it takes to win.
You also miss out on building character.
Of what it feels like wrestling with loss and wrestling with failure.
If it's just, you know, we just get out there and have fun, right?
It's just about having fun.
I think that's your answer.
Like, if it's not about winning, that's usually what you hear.
It's not about winning, it's about having fun.
Correct.
And if it's just about having fun, then it's not really about building character.
Building character is not really fun.
Most of the time, building character comes through blood, sweat, and tears.
It comes through a lot of things that are not pleasurable, a lot of things that are not fun.
Winning hurts because of what it takes to get there.
It's like I have to hurt and eventually win.
And the character was built not through the win, but the hurt building up to that win.
It was the pain and the sacrifice all the way there.
And then if you lose, it's the pain and the sacrifice and then also the sense of loss.
And now you, as a man, as a young man, you now have to wrestle with okay, like how do I handle loss?
And, you know, so, but if you take winning as an objective, The desire to win out of the scenario without winning, there's no competition.
And without competition, then there's, you know, it's not a game anymore.
There's like, there's no sport to it.
And now it's just, we're just throwing a ball around.
It's very feminized to take away winning from it.
That's women's inclination, is because they want equality.
The Principle of the Sabbath00:14:07
I want the kids to all get the same stuff.
I want nobody to feel left out.
So the feminine instinct is to say, well, we're just having fun.
But it's the masculine instinct that says, no, at some level, we're competing for something.
Even if it's friendly, we're getting together to actually do something that.
Has some purpose to it, yeah.
Uh, you want to do the next one, Antonio?
Yep, GM Raptor sent a grn.
We had a big debate about this a while.
Oh, that's right, grn.
Nice catch there.
Uh, sent a couple questions.
So, one is the Sabbath a principle or an actual day?
Two, how much activity is too much, or what kind aside from business is incorrect to do on the Sabbath in your estimation?
Yeah, I think you sort of already got to some of this, but yeah, it's an actual day, yeah.
So, it is a principle, um, a timeless principle, but it is also an actual day.
People hate this because our culture.
It's just not Sabbatarian.
So people have no category for this.
It feels entirely foreign.
So anytime I talk about the Sabbath, because I'm old school in this regard, I am, you know, people follow us for, you know, the base politics.
You know, people follow, you know, sometimes people follow me for the base politics.
Sometimes it's for the just unhinged, you know, Bigfoot, Nephilim, you know, stuff like that.
And then they hear me, you know, they forget sometimes that, like, I actually am a confessionally reformed minister and I do hold to the confessions.
And I think it's silly when people are like, well, you know, like I hold to this confession, but I take exception and clause this, this, this is like, so you don't hold to the confession.
You're not confessional.
What do you call someone who holds to a confession but takes exceptions?
You call them non confessional.
That's what you call them.
So I actually am confessional.
I hold to the Second London Baptist 1689 Confession of Faith.
And I actually hold to all of it without taking exception.
And so that being said, as it pertains to the Sabbath, the Sabbath is a day.
It's the first day of the week.
So that's the other thing people, okay, well, which day is it?
Because, you know, the Exodus chapter 20 says, you know, the seventh day, right?
Yes.
First, the Sabbath is a creation ordinance.
So before sin even entered the world, God instituted the Sabbath, not man.
And, you know, Jesus says this as Lord of the Sabbath that, you know, man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.
So God instituted it.
He instituted it on the seventh day as a creation ordinance.
And it was the seventh day.
Six days he worked.
And then on the seventh, he rested, as it were.
God doesn't need to rest, he's infinite.
So, he's resting to set a pattern for us as an example for us to follow.
He doesn't need rest, but he knew that we would.
And so, he chose to rest, not because he needed it, but because we needed rest.
And he did that on a particular day.
And that particular day was enshrined in the Mosaic Law.
It's the seventh day.
We find it in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.
And then, all of Christian history for 2,000 years has held that it's the first day of the week.
And they believe that Jesus, because he is Lord of the Sabbath, and he says that, he uses that in the gospel narratives.
He's Lord of the Sabbath.
He, as Lord of the Sabbath, has the authority and the right.
Not to remove the Sabbath because it's a creation ordinance, right?
So that's key right there.
It's not just that it's in the Decalogue, it's pre lapsarian.
It's before sin even entered the world.
God institutes the Sabbath.
So it's not just, oh, well, Jesus came and he fulfilled the law, and so it doesn't exist anymore.
Think about that.
All 10 commandments, right?
Well, now that Jesus died for our sins, and now that I'm a Christian, I'm no longer under law, I'm under grace.
Okay, so you can murder now?
The sixth commandment?
No, the sixth commandment, that still applies.
You can steal.
No, the eighth commandment still applies.
You can commit adultery.
No, seventh one still, you can bear false witness.
No, ninth commandment still applies.
You can covet now.
No, that still applies.
What about the first table?
The first, you can be an idolater now.
You can have other gods before the Lord your God.
No, that's still, you know, we still should love God first.
You can create graven images.
You can worship idols.
No, no, that still matters.
You can take the Lord's name in vain, right?
You can, so, hey, because we're under law, we're under grace and not under law, because Jesus, you know, his earthly work, it's finished.
He said it's finished.
I can go around saying, you know, JC, And cursing and taking God's name in vain in front of my kids and in public.
No, of course not.
So think about that.
You have 10 commandments.
By what mechanism, what hermeneutic are you going to use to say all 10 of these commandments still exist for New Testament Christians after the finished work of Christ, except for one?
And not one at the end, not the 10th commandment or the first, but smack dab in the middle.
Read Exodus chapter 20.
It's right there in the middle.
So I just want to know what is the functioning hermeneutic?
Theologically speaking, that gets you to be able to say all 10 of these commandments pre Christ are still applicable for Christians today, even under the covenant of grace, except for the one right there in the middle.
And here's the furthermore, the one in the middle doesn't just come to us through Moses, but was also a pre lapsarian, before its sin entered the world, creation ordinance that God rested on it.
So you're saying this one that is pre fall.
And after fall, and right there next to murder and honoring parents and not taking the Lord's name in vain.
But that one is gone away.
It's a pretty hard argument to make.
And so I do think that the Sabbath command exists.
I think it's a principle, but it's also a day.
So then the question is simply just what day is it?
And church history has held for 2,000 years that it's the first day of the week because Jesus, who is Lord of the Sabbath, has the authority not to remove the Sabbath, but to renew.
Not to remove, but to renew the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first.
And he does so by virtue of his resurrection.
He was raised from the dead on the first day of the week.
He then appeared, revealed himself to his apostles on Sunday, the first day of the week.
And then a week later, because Thomas wasn't among them, revealed himself, appeared to the apostles a second time again on Sunday, the first day of the week.
We also see the apostle Paul, he says, When you gather together on the first day of the week, that you should bring something to take up a collection.
Now, we know that early church Christians were breaking bread and meeting with one another for prayer and to devote themselves to the apostles' teaching.
Daily is what acts as.
So, daily they're gathering together.
And I would say this is just discipleship.
This is organic Christian discipleship that happens daily.
It happened for the early church daily, and it should happen for us.
Every day we should be breaking bread.
That's not a reference to the Lord's Supper in that text in Acts.
It's a reference to a potluck, it's a reference to a meal, just not communion, but communion with one another.
And I would say Christians also today, not just the first century, but even in 2025.
Yeah, in our organic discipleship, in our Christian lives, we should daily be on a somewhat daily basis, spending time with other believers where we share a meal, break bread together.
And in that context, there's prayer.
And in that context, our discussion and our conversation is about the scripture and about theology, the apostles' teaching.
And so that is a daily practice.
But Paul says on the first day of the week when you gather, you should take up a collection.
And that seems to insinuate, to imply, That there was a particular gathering, not just the organic gathering of a few families, but that the church, the whole ecclesia was gathering in a special way on the first day of the week, and the collection should be taken in that context because that was the larger context and a particular context.
So early on in the apostolic tradition, there was a recognition by Christ's resurrection on the first day of the week, by Christ appearing to the apostles on the first day of the week, appearing to them again on the first day of the week, and by St. Paul talking about taking a collection when the church gathers in a unique sense on the first day of the week, and then through church tradition, very early on, Christians have held that the Sabbath is an immutable,
lasting ordinance, and that it continued even in this New Testament dispensation, for lack of a better word, time period.
And that the only thing that has changed is not that the Sabbath has been removed, but rather it has been renewed, and that Jesus, who is Lord of the Sabbath, he has the authority to do that, and he did.
That is the traditional Christian position.
Catholics hold to that.
Eastern Orthodox hold to that.
The Reformers hold to that.
The only people who don't hold to that are, you know, Pastor Bob at your megachurch.
You just have to know, if you're like, well, the Sabbath is legalism, you just have to know that you have adopted a very novel position that puts you outside of the witness of church history for centuries and centuries and centuries.
And if you're comfortable with that, if you're comfortable looking back at all the church fathers and saying you're all wrong, then fine.
But I'm not comfortable with that position.
He had a second part to this question How much activity is too much?
And I actually have a short video from a Jewish rabbi that I think will be helpful here.
We're talking about the Sabbath.
So let's go ahead and play it.
And you want to know if you can squeeze some fresh lemon into a cool pitcher of water for your guests.
One of the malaches of Shabbos is the malach of Dush.
Which means it's separating, detaching the useful part from the non useful part of something that grows from the ground.
Squeezing a fruit for its juice is included in the Melach Adash, and therefore one would not be allowed to squeeze a fruit for its juice on Shabbos.
There is a very Jewish way of what you can do and what you cannot do.
When I mean that, I don't mean it as a slur.
I literally mean it's getting down to am I allowed to squeeze fresh lemon and I'm going to torture these texts and, like, well, it's straining and it's separating.
That is not the way to go about activity to do on the Sabbath.
You don't work.
He already said business.
You don't make others work.
You don't go out to eat.
But aside from that, there are gradations.
I think the key is not, well, I get down granularly and I have this complete list of everything I can do, everything I can't do.
What you do, do in faith.
So if you go out in the backyard with your kids and play some hit baseball around, do it in faith.
Hey, it's Sunday.
I want to honor Lord's Day.
We've been to church.
We've done worship.
I haven't gone out and I'm going to go do this and I think God honors it.
Or I'm not going to do it in faith.
No, son, we're going to wait till tomorrow.
So, as far as what you can do, can't do, God gives the conscience for a reason.
And what He gives that conscience for is not to be autistic or Jewish about it and rank every single thing that you can or can't, but to say, eh, I'm going to do this and I think God will honor it.
I'm not violating the commandments because it lists, it gives a number of things.
You shall not do any work, nor this, nor that.
So, I'm not breaking this.
I think God honors it, or I don't think He will.
I want to be safe.
I'm not going to do it.
That's, I think, a better way than listing out activities one by one by one.
Yeah.
Start at the front end and not the back end.
So, the first question, if you're adopting Sabbatarian convictions, The first question to ask should not be, well, how many workers does it require at the cell phone tower on Sunday in order for me to use my cell phone?
And so, you know, do I need to turn my phone off on Sundays and receive no text messages or phone calls or, you know, like those are the start at the front, not the back.
So, like, the first questions I think that you should be trying to answer are the easiest questions, the simplest questions, which is not just, what can I not do?
On the Lord's Day, but what do I get to do?
What are the positive things that I should be doing rather than the negative things that I stop doing?
So, the first thing is go to church.
Second thing would be if you can, go to church again.
If your church has two services, like an evening service, then go to church twice.
If you go to church twice and you're like me and you have young children, you go to church, you go home, you eat a meal, you put the kids down for nap time, you get up.
And you're going to church again, like then, boom, you are perfectly Sabbatarian because your entire day is filled just by the virtue of having young children and going to church twice.
So, congratulations, you did it.
You won't have time to watch football.
And then another question would be, like, when is the Sabbath?
Is it sun up to sundown or is it sundown on Saturday to sundown?
There's a debate to be had there.
I think it's a full day, going back to creation ordinance.
Seven 24 hour days.
So the seventh day, I don't think was a 12 hour day.
I think it was a 24 hour day.
So I think that the Sabbath should be observed from sundown to sundown.
But what that means is that as soon as the sun goes down on Sunday, the Sabbath is over.
And so, you know, like now, granted, right now we're in the middle of August.
So the sun goes down, you know, at like 12 30 a.m., you know, but like, but you know, during more reasonable parts of the year when the sun is just not being ridiculous, you know, and goes down at a reasonable time.
There's plenty of months out of the year where it's like it's 5 30 and the sun's down.
So at 5 30, it's like, all right, like there's still, you know, plenty of time in the day, but the day is over.
And so it's like, hey, we're, you know, the Sabbath is over and we're going to celebrate.
We're going to go out to eat, you know, or something like that.
Or, you know, it's 6 30 and the sun's down and we just finished having dinner with the kids and we want, you know, we want to make the day fun.
And so, like on Sunday evenings after the sun goes down, our family with the kids, we, you know, we watch a movie together or something, you know, so.
Lawful Professions Before God00:03:24
There's things that you can do, but start with the positive things that you should do and not the tedious, tiny little things.
That is kind of the essence of Jewishness.
It really is.
Whether it's the Pharisees or whether it's a modern rabbi today, the essence of Jewishness in many ways is straining gnats but swallowing camels.
That's what Jesus said of the Jewish leaders of his day.
He's saying, in other words, he's saying, you're starting at the wrong end.
You're starting with gnats but ignoring camels.
What in the world are you doing?
That's crazy.
You have any thoughts on this?
No, I think that's, I agree.
All right, you want to do the last one?
Yep.
Ben Q asks, says, Consumer slop is talked about, but what about jobs?
What jobs are genuinely not loving to God or loving to our neighbors and are only hardly so?
And how should Christians choose a profession?
What do you think?
Yeah, so I think you can start from like maybe think of it like a funnel.
Start from the top and say, Is this lawful before God?
So is this a sinful profession?
Does it, Is it exploitative?
Is it something like prostitution, for example?
That's just like completely outright sinful.
You can so say, is this lawful biblically?
Is this lawful to man?
Is probably the next one.
So is this illegal according to the place that I live, according to my nation?
And the reason that I think that's important is because laws are sort of guardwells of competition.
And so if you're like jumping over the guardwell, you're sort of seeing against your neighbor by virtue of like not playing by the same rules that they have to pay, you know, they play by, right?
So So then you could do that.
And then maybe the next one would be like vocation.
It would be like, what are my gifts and talents?
Like, what is my calling?
What is something that I could be good at?
And that should sort of inform downstream from it being lawful.
And then I would probably, the last one would probably be, can this provide for my family?
Can this provide not only now in a current state, maybe I'm single, but can it provide for myself once I'm married, myself once I have two kids, myself once I have five kids?
And so, stewardship is another important principle, I think, as you think about a profession.
And then, of course, which is the other side of the coin can it provide?
But also, is this a profession where I'm likely going to neglect my responsibilities to my family, my responsibilities to my wife?
And so, obviously, there are some professions that just, you know, you do the analysis and you say, does it make sense for me to go do something where I work 70, 80 hours a week for 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, and have to be forced to neglect stewarding my family and that realm that God has given me?
So early on, my dad got a really good job and he just would come home at 8 p.m. and I was crying to see him.
Said, no, I'll make less money, but I will see my kids more.
And I always remembered that as like, hey, this matters.
I got to make money.
And he always did.
But he said, there comes a certain point where the hours and the money are not worth it.
And I always remember that as like, that's a great way to put family first.
Yeah.
And if you do that funnel, like lawful before God, lawful before man, my vocation, so I'm called to do something like this with what my God given abilities are.
And then you do the money and time, you're going to be left with like three things probably realistically that you could do.
Yeah, it goes down.
Yeah.
Well said.
All right.
Thanks for tuning in.
We hope this episode has been helpful for you.
Transitioning to Listener Support00:01:04
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