Pastor Vodi Bakum and Pastor Joel dissect Christian nationalism, arguing that division separates the faithful from the superficial while affirming God's sovereignty over family, church, and state. They critique secularism as a parasitic force replacing Christendom and challenge the prosperity gospel's lottery mentality against the hard work of biblical obedience. Addressing "Fault Lines," they reveal how crises like CRT exposed deep ethnic Gnosticism rather than creating new ideologies, emphasizing that true unity requires substantive debate over shallow harmony. Ultimately, the discussion suggests American societal blessings correlate with divine order, urging a return to theological clarity amidst an anti-intellectual culture. [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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Spiritual War and Cultural Implications00:04:25
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Two years ago, Right Response Ministries had the privilege of hosting.
And Pastor Vodi Bakum for a conversation about Christian nationalism, about division within the church, and about what having a Christian nation actually looks like.
And in this conversation, they discussed this all important point that, really, in the last two years, I think we all feel is just as timely and, if not more relevant today that division is not necessarily a bad thing.
That division is what God actually uses to separate those who are in the fight versus those who are out of it.
Those who are serious about their faith, those who are serious about Pressing forward the crown rights of King Jesus, and those who really are actually more content to stay on the sidelines.
Funnily enough, sure, there are those that hate Christ and they hate Christianity.
Of course, they don't want a Christian nation.
But often, honestly, it's those that claim to be Christians that say they love Jesus.
And then when it gets to the point of, so do you want Jesus to be enshrined at the highest levels of your government?
Do you want to see the state obey him?
Do you want to see his principles lived out across a nation and families and churches?
All of a sudden, those who profess Christ say they love him, say they want to obey him, it gets to that point and they say, Ooh, no, that's icky.
That's political.
We don't want that.
And division with those kind of people, it's not actually a bad thing.
And so, in this conversation from the vault, Pastor Joel and Pastor Vody are going to sit down.
They're going to discuss it.
And we hope that today, over two years later, that it's just as encouraging, just as timely, and just as prescient for you as we look to increase, we look to grow, we look to wield political power righteously and ultimately.
Hope to have a Christian nation.
I have been blessed from a distance watching your ministry, reading some of the books that you've written.
And, you know, I recently said in one of my podcasts and maybe even one of my sermons, I am post millennial in my eschatology, but that doesn't mean that God exalts nations and he decimates them when they're faithless to him.
And so within my eschatology, you know, it could be 5,000, 50,000 years before Jesus returns.
We don't know.
It could be five years, but there's no promise that America will endure.
So I've been encouraging Christians to fight.
For our nation, but also save up for their grandkids' Zambia fund.
Yeah.
Go ahead and move over there with you in case America becomes unlivable.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's interesting.
I always tell people, you know, I'm millennial in my eschatology, but I tell people, you know, I live post mill wherever I am.
So, you know, I get you.
You know, I call myself optimistic all mill, you know.
Right.
Amen.
Yeah, a lot of my friends are optimistic all mill and they're trying to live faithfully like.
You know, in their daily lives, like a post mill.
And the thing that surprised me is that actually, some of the guys who are like the most ferocious fighters, not saying it's just a cultural war, but it's both.
It is a spiritual war.
But here's what I always tell people it's a spiritual war, but between who, right?
I mean, God, Satan.
But here's the thing God cares about the world, not just the 17th dimension and the ethereal plane.
Like, he cares about the world.
Satan cares about the world.
Democrats care about the world.
It seems as though the only entity I'm aware of that doesn't care about the physical, tangible world is evangelicals.
That said, I think some dispy pre mill kind of guys, even though I would disagree with their eschatology, some of those guys are the most faithful fighters in the culture war, not at the expense of recognizing it is first and foremost a spiritual war, but spiritual wars have cultural implications.
They have tangible implications.
And so to say we're going to try to hit it at the head, go to the root, but it's both and, it's not either or.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
No, I mean, I agree wholeheartedly.
Breaking the Mold for Blessing00:14:35
And, um, you know, living in Zambia for the last, um, seven, almost eight years has really just sort of reinforced that for me.
Um, you know, coming here and living here has helped me to really see and appreciate the fruit that the gospel has borne in the United States.
And it is an incredible blessing, um, to live in and to have been born in and, and raised in, um, and inculcated in A society that has so much residue from its Christian heritage that we really take for granted.
Right.
Yeah, from the Christian heritage.
I heard you with Tom Askell recently saying that, you know, the Zambians, you know, the Christians in our nation, we envy their preamble, that distinctly Christian preamble, but that they actually envy our heritage and that the heritage, the preamble matters, right?
Why not both?
Let's have both.
If we can, let's work towards both.
But that the heritage has stronger implications in the here and now.
Could you flesh that out a little bit?
What do you see as the heritage of America?
Yeah, it just.
I've often said that if you want to know everything that you need to know about a culture, just experience a four way stop.
And you'll see what's really ingrained in the culture, whether people.
Are stopping, waiting their turn, being courteous, or whether the only law is the law of physics and whether or not I can get my bumper in front of yours.
And, you know, it's interesting, you know, in the United States, you can, you know, be on the road, middle of the night, and, you know, at a red light, you stop.
That's part of our heritage, you know?
And living in parts of the world where, you know, that's just not the thing.
Um, and again, that's just a, that's just a small example.
There are many, many more.
Uh, but that's just one really sort of tangible example.
Another one is, you know, I live in a city.
I live in the capital city here in Lusaka.
And most people walk here in Lusaka.
Uh, but there are almost no sidewalks.
Um, in, in the U.S., very few people are walking where they're going.
Uh, but we have sidewalks everywhere.
And that's part of our heritage, right?
That's part of our heritage in terms of not just infrastructure either, but in terms of value of life, protection of life.
You know, there are little things like that all over the place that just remind me of that long rooted heritage and culture.
Amen.
Yeah, I think part of the problem, this is one of my suspicions, but I think part of the problem is as America drifted, the American church in terms of its doctrine and false.
Gospels like the prosperity gospel, sometimes there's an overreaction.
And I think at some level in our defense and shoring up the true gospel of Jesus Christ against, particularly, the false gospel of prosperity, we almost threw out the baby with the bathwater in regards to a simple biblical principle, in my assessment, which is that obedience brings blessing.
And not just blessing, it guarantees blessing in the life to come.
But ordinarily, and I'll give that qualifier ordinarily, Ordinarily, obedience brings blessing in this life as well.
And that's not the prosperity.
What I always tell people is the prosperity gospel is the equivalent of me teaching my children that when they turn 18, every single Friday, they should stop at the same liquor store and buy a lottery ticket and play the same numbers.
And if they do it faithfully long enough, eventually they'll be rich, right?
The prosperity gospel is the power of positivity, it's manifesting, it's about faith in our faith, it's hopeful, it's wishing.
That's very different than the basic biblical principle of hard work.
Ordinarily is fruitful.
Now, there are some contexts that break the mold.
There's always exceptions.
There's some faithful Christians in North Korea that aren't seeing a lot of fruit.
But that's why I say ordinarily.
But in a country like America, the Christian can expect that obedience would produce a certain measure of blessing, not just in the life to come, but even in this life as well.
And so we look at whether it's the four way stop and we're courteous and waiting our turn with a right of way, or whether it's the sidewalks and the things that you've mentioned.
Seeing these as tangible physical blessings in this world, in this life, but they're directly correlated to obedience to the Word of God, where the Word of God is received and honored and esteemed and obeyed, not just by individuals, but in societies at large.
We should expect there to be tangible blessings.
But I think we've just become so spiritual, everything's spiritual that will reject the prosperity gospel.
And we kind of threw out, in rejecting the prosperity gospel, throwing out the baby with the bathwater with that.
Very biblical principle obedience brings blessing.
God is sovereign over the ends as well as the means, right?
And so, with my children, God is sovereign over the salvation of my children.
But the sovereign God has also given me means.
He's given me very clear instructions about bringing up my children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, you know, about me washing them and my wife with the water of the word, you know, again, the ends and the means.
The other thing is that you say, you know, that obedience should bring blessing.
But the fact of the matter is that obedience has brought blessing.
If you look at a globe and you ask yourself, where are the freest, most prosperous, right?
You know, safest people in the world?
Where are women most protected?
Where are women safest?
Where do they have most protection and most rights in the world?
The answer is follow the Protestant Reformation.
Right?
Where are the lowest corruption rates in the world?
Everybody's got some corruption, right?
But where are the lowest corruption rates?
The answer is follow the Protestant Reformation.
Even in Europe, Northern Europe versus Southern Europe, there's a huge difference.
Protestant Reformation.
Western Europe versus Eastern Europe.
Protestant Reformation.
And so, yeah, there not only should be, but there is blessing.
And I think it's not only ironic, but sad that we refuse to acknowledge that.
And in fact, if you think about it, the people who are complaining the most, for example, where are women protesting the most about not having rights and not having protections?
In those parts of the world where they have it more than anybody else.
I live in a part of the world where not too far from here, female genital mutilation is the norm, right?
And child brides and selling brides.
You know, that's a real thing, not too far from where I am.
So, I, you know, again, I think you're right.
I would just add that caveat.
Not only should it bring blessing, but it has.
Well, that's great.
I love your caveat because I was trying to go real reasonable, play the good cop.
I'll let you do the bad cop.
Because I was trying to be real reasonable, say, you know, it could, obedience might.
Can we at least consider it might bring blessing?
And I love that you said, no, It does bring blessing because I agree.
So, I see in many ways it feels like.
You and I would both agree neutrality is a myth, the myth of neutrality, that all laws are moral.
And I'm not saying you're necessarily comfortable with this word, but I'll just speak for myself.
I would see that for every individual, for every family, for every nation in the civil realm, every government, that it is theocratic, which, for the record, scares people.
A theocracy is very distinct from an ecclesiocracy.
I've never advocated for a church run state, I'm not advocating for a Protestant pope.
But I do think that.
The reality is that theocracy, not ecclesiocracy, separation of church and state, but no separation of Christ and state.
Caesar is under God.
Caesar is a servant.
He's a deacon.
He is not head of himself.
So, every single entity, both the family, the church, and the state, it's not excluded from this principle.
There is a God above them.
And it's not whether but which.
It is a theocracy.
It's either a theocracy that ultimately is underneath in submission to the triune God as God.
Or it's demos, the people, or the state, it's statism, totalitarianism, all these different things, or it's pagan, some pagan god.
And so, with all that being said, it seems like we've switched gods in the West.
And you could argue at the time, you know, 50 years ago, 130 years ago, you could go back to the Enlightenment, you know, or whatever, but we've switched gods.
And it seems like, you know, these ships move slowly because of the principle of sowing and reaping and God's faithfulness.
He will not be mocked.
And so, you sow.
You sow good seed, you're going to reap a harvest for a while after you stop sowing.
And so these ships, Christendom and I think paganism, they have been kind of slowly passing in the night.
And it seems like there was not just a couple of weeks or months or years, but decades in our nation where the two ships were kind of like side by side.
They had lined up for a moment.
And it was seemingly because they moved slow, a long moment that gave the optic that neutrality is viable, that it actually works.
But it doesn't.
And I'm of the persuasion that secularism is not viable, that it's actually a placeholder.
It functions as not a host, but a parasite.
Once it's killed its host, namely Christendom, that secularism will actually only be replaced by some form of paganism.
And it seems as though that's been ramping up.
And a lot of young guys like me are seeing that because we haven't lived the majority of our lives in our adult lives.
My adult life was not in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s.
I was a little kid born in the 80s.
And so, a lot of my adult life, what I've seen is classical liberalism and some of our systems utterly failing.
And so, I don't have a strong dog in the fight of like, we got to get back to that.
So, there's a lot of young guys right now who are like, let's be Christian.
Let's be a Christian nation and let's bring that into the civil realm.
What would you say to young guys like me?
Where are we?
Is there too much zeal?
Are we on track?
What are we doing right?
What are we maybe doing wrong?
Yeah, I think there are a couple of issues at play.
And one of those issues is kind of a theological nearsightedness, a theological ignorance.
And I think for a long time, you think about the church growth movement, all the way from the Jesus movement, right?
In the 60s and 70s, this sort of big revivalist movement and, you know, churches growing and then the church growth movement, you know, I'm 54.
I came to faith, you know, at 18.
And so I saw a lot of that stuff, right?
And there was this sense in which, you know, if you just pull the right levers, the church would grow.
And, you know, and then the religious right, right, comes along.
And again, if we just use our influence, you know, if we just have the right people in the right place, Then we can get the people that we need and the places that we need.
Um, and, and, and, you know, and we can make things happen because again, we're this big, powerful, uh, behemoth, um, with, with churches that have thousands of people.
And in the midst of that, uh, what we weren't doing was thinking.
What we weren't doing was theology.
We became extremely pragmatic during that time.
And so we've got a couple of generations now of people who have been raised In pragmatic Christianity, who haven't been thinking, who weren't mentored or discipled by people who thought very much other than, you know, pragmatism.
And now, when this generation hits a crisis, all we've got is knee jerk reactions.
We've got nothing that's well thought out.
And so that's why you see sort of shouting matches from people going off half cocked.
Who are using terminologies and promoting ideologies with which they've only become familiar recently.
And I think that's what we're seeing right now.
Right.
Yeah, I think that that's absolutely true.
It's tough with the pragmatism thing.
It's tough for me because I don't want to be pragmatic.
I see the drawbacks with that.
But one of the debates that I've been in.
Lately, with some of my Baptist brothers, is well, it's got to be bottom up.
If there is going to be revival or reformation, if there is going to be a stop, if we're going to put a stop to drag queen story hour, sexual mutilation of children, 65 million plus babies murdered in their mother's wombs, it's got to be bottom up through the preaching of the gospel, regenerate hearts.
Opening the Church Bottom Up00:06:18
We need more Christians.
And yet, I feel like it's never less than that.
So, my argument is never an alternative to that.
I'm a local pastor, first and foremost.
I preach the gospel.
So it's never less than that.
That's the tip of the spear.
But in addition to that, I feel like, now you could make an argument that in the 70s and the 80s and even the 50s and 60s, that our numbers were skewed, that we were bolstering in typical Southern Baptist fashion, you know, a lot more on the roster than there actually are in the pew, that the numbers were skewed, and that we had a lot of people attending church and professing Christ, but they weren't actually regenerate.
And so you can say, Because what I'm about to say is, I think we've had the numbers and it still failed.
That's kind of what you just said.
And then I know some of my brothers would say, but we didn't really have the true numbers because there wasn't solid, faithful gospel preaching that actually converts the soul.
And I see all of that.
This is my one pushback to not even what you said, but to some of my brothers the sodomites took 3%, less than 3% of the population.
And with a 40 to 50 year plan, they have effectively replaced.
The flag of the United States of America with a rainbow.
And my point in saying that is that it's never less than bottom up gospel preaching, regeneration, new hearts.
And yet at the same time, there are Christians now who actually, as individual Christians, not just churches talking about politics, individual Christian men serving as civil magistrates.
And they're wanting to know how can I be a city council member Christianly?
Does the Bible say something to me in my vocation?
Or is it just the sphere of home and church?
And if the Bible does, like, am I supposed to be a Christian in every realm of life?
But when I walk into this sphere, the public sphere, that I take that Christian hat off, that I lay it aside, I adopt neutral terms?
Or can I say, yeah, it's got to be bottom up, preach regeneration, salvation, discipleship.
And at the same time, that we can ethically and even must, commanded by God ethically, to pull some of these state levers in a Christian direction.
What do you think?
I'm always skeptical whenever somebody says to me, it has to be dot, dot, dot.
That's not the God I serve, right?
Sometimes the king finds the word of God and revival breaks out, right?
That's right.
Yeah, I'm never comfortable when someone says it has to be this or it has to be that.
I think the answer is all of the above.
I think the answer is faithfulness wherever we find ourselves, right?
That has to be the answer.
You know, faithfulness wherever we find ourselves.
Amen.
So talk to me about fault lines.
You wrote the book, I read the book, me and everybody in the whole world.
It seems like it was a popular book.
Was it?
Was it a bestseller?
Did it make any bestselling list?
Yeah, it did.
Congratulations.
Well done.
You earned it.
It was a great book.
It was, it just, and before writing the book, you've been doing this, you know, through preaching and teaching and conferences.
The ethnic Gnosticism.
Did you, you coined that, right?
That term?
Yeah.
So, and all the way back, I think, and correct me if I'm not giving you enough credit, but it's as early as 2012, you were kind of sounding some of these alarms?
Yeah, really earlier than that, you know?
Okay.
Yeah, really, really earlier than that.
Well done.
So, I mean, you saw these things long before I did, you know, and I'd like to give myself a little bit of an excuse and say that you were seeing things when I was still in high school.
Yeah.
So maybe, you know, maybe I, you know, providentially I was born a little bit too late.
But, yeah, you've done an excellent job.
Fault Lines was so helpful putting words to certain things because everybody, I mean, there's so many Christians in the pews.
They're just like, what is going on?
Why are two men that I respect and I've respected for years all of a sudden at each other's throats and drifting apart?
And now I think people have made sense of it, right?
2017, 18, 19.
So in 2018, just for context, so I was an Acts 29 pastor.
We left.
I pulled the church out in 2018, right after Eric Mason wrote Woke Church.
And so, when that happened, I pulled our church out of Acts 29.
I spent all of 2019 with my elders and leaders in the church saying, I'm tired of doing theology a la carte.
I don't want to just be a Calvinistic Baptist.
Praise God.
Bless them.
But I'd like to be a confessionally reformed Baptist.
So, we spent a year, every single week, hours working through the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.
We were able to adopt that at the end.
I was pastoring in Southern California.
2020 hit.
So, this is right before March 2020.
Things go crazy.
We have some disagreements on how to respond to COVID.
I'm saying, let's open the church.
There's some other guys saying, open the church.
There's some other guys saying, let's not.
The Lord works through that.
Eventually, things are good.
We opened, let the record state, we opened a good six weeks before MacArthur made it cool.
And so now, granted, it's easier to open a 150 person church than a 10,000 person church.
But we did open before MacArthur.
And then at the end, I'm from Texas.
My wife's parents moved to Texas.
Her sisters and husbands and kids moved to Texas.
My parents are in Texas.
And 2020 really made me miss Texas.
And so we ended up leaving.
Me too.
Yeah, exactly.
So we handed the church over to faithful guys, and the church is doing well.
But we left and planted, you know, doing a new work here in Georgetown, Texas, just north of Austin, Texas, and far enough for the police not to be defunded and close enough for people to commute to work.
And so, you know, we're doing a work here.
Defining Terms Before Unity00:16:05
But my point in saying all that is that.
Fault lines was, you know, I was seeing some of these things in 2017, 18, really solemn in 2020.
Your book makes sense of it, you know, gave some extra clarity and hindsight.
And for a lot of other evangelicals and realizing, you know, Russell Moore, God bless him, he's not on my team.
He's not on our team.
David French is not on our team.
Francis Collins is not on our team.
And so, boom, I feel like we kind of, with wokeness, with positions on the state and tyranny and the branch Covidians and all the, you know, whatever you want to call it.
We lost about half the team, it feels like.
It does feel like now.
But now it's like, are we about to lose?
Are we about to, is the team going to split again?
Because it's like the first set of fault lines was over who sees the problem.
And it seems as though there may be some new fault lines shaping up over who sees the solution.
Unite us, voting.
Help us not divide.
What do you think?
Yeah, division is necessary.
Division is absolutely necessary.
Division brings clarity.
And ultimately, it brings real unity.
You know, the fact of the matter is the people who divided over all of these things weren't with us wholeheartedly one day and then turned into different people the next.
These crises revealed underlying ideologies and commitments.
That had always been there on both sides.
Every man has an allegiance.
Yeah, absolutely.
But here was the issue there were always disagreements, right?
Even in sort of these broader reformed circles, whether you call it Young Restless Reformed, New Calvinist, whatever you want to call it, these circles that were really sort of growing and percolating.
You know, during that time that brought about the sort of Acts 29s and the T4Gs and the gospel coalitions and all of these sorts of things, everybody knew that there were divisions, that there was a lack of agreement, right?
We had our Presbyterians and our Baptists and, you know, our dispensationalists and, and, and Reformed and, you know, we had all of that and everybody acknowledged that we had those differences, yet there was something greater that was, that was holding us together, right?
And so I don't think that, you know, with the Black Lives Matter movement and with COVID and all this, that somehow, you know, people changed.
I think the stakes changed.
I think that these movements actually, you know, drew a line in the sand, right?
They drew fault lines and they were non-negotiables.
They were more non negotiable than pedo baptism, credo baptism.
That's right.
So it's not that we didn't have disagreements before.
It's that these things came about and these things became non negotiables.
And the culture made them non negotiables, right?
The culture is the one that said, you know, if you're wrong on this issue, racial justice, as defined by the culture, you're outside the camp.
And there is no, you know, going along to get along.
There is no neutrality on this issue, right?
Baptism, you know, we can disagree on it, go our own ways.
But this issue of, you know, so called racial justice, that's something where you disqualify yourself.
So that's what we saw.
That's what happened.
And then all of a sudden, now we're seeing, you know, the other shoe that dropped.
And I remember, right?
I'm in the middle of, you know, being entrenched, you know, fault lines and, All the attacks that are coming because of fault lines and, you know, people, you know, using means, legitimate and illegitimate, you know, to try to discredit fault lines.
And all of a sudden, you know, I felt like there was real traction.
I felt like there were a lot of people who were saying, yes, amen, and thank you, right?
And then there was more boldness in the side of the argument that had been forced into silence.
Right?
There was more boldness in that side of the argument.
And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you almost get whiplashed because people start going, Yeah, well, you're worried about CRT, but what about this white Christian nationalism?
Like, what?
Wait a minute, what?
You know?
And they start, you know, citing books by people who are barely in the camp, if at all.
You know, and I think a lot of us at that point were going, okay, first of all, define your terms.
You know, like, what do you mean?
What are you talking about?
Define your terms.
You're saying, like, don't just talk past each other on Twitter.
Maybe take the time to write like a statement on your terms of Christian nationalism, defining what you mean.
Like, if someone did that, for instance, just hypothetically.
Just hypothetically.
Just hypothetically.
You know, but the great thing about statements is.
You know, because again, in 2000 and, you know, man, COVID just messed up the calendar.
I think it was.
Is that a social justice statement?
Yeah, 18.
Was that?
Was it 18 or 19?
I think it was 18 or 19, yeah.
You know, when we came out.
I signed it proudly.
Yeah, when we came out with that statement, you know, on social justice and the gospel, you know, the great thing about that was that it was a way for people to be identified.
Right?
It was a way for people to say yay or nay.
And that's what statements and confessions and things like that do.
They get rid of the squishiness.
And sometimes people will say yes, but, and they have a legitimate grief.
And they'll say this technical issue right here, blah, blah, blah, blah, the way you worded that, or the way, whatever.
And, and, and that's fine.
That's great because that helps the people who write the statement to sort of massage it, you know, if necessary.
Um, but what we experienced was people just going, um, no.
And we're going, okay, why?
Where?
Uh, just no.
It's not wrong.
Um, it's, it's just pastorally unwise and insensitive.
Right.
It's not, it's not what the statement says.
Yeah.
It's what it does.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Tim Keller.
Tim Keller, yeah.
It's not what it says, it's what it does.
Yeah, that was a classic right there.
But my point is that at first, the people who were using the term Christian nationalism, and it was white Christian nationalism.
Because again, for the neo Marxist and for the intersectional people, you use all three of those terms because the demonic, hegemonic, Uh, oppressive power in the United States, um, is, you know, white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, native born, you know, able-bodied, um, you know, on down to, and then you get to, you know, Christian, right?
Christianity is, is, is at the root of the hegemonic power.
So when you say white Christian nationalism, you get an intersectional boogeyman, right?
And so the, the, the lack of clarity was coming from the people who were using that terminology.
So when I say define your terms, You know, I was like, what, what, what are you talking about?
What do you mean?
I, I might be, I might be right there with you.
You know, I, I might agree that it's, you know, CRT is a problem and this thing, whatever you're, you know, defining is a problem.
And then I go and read, you know, some of the books.
Um, you know, is it Cobes de Mez, for example.
Um, and, you know, Jesus and John Wayne, which is one that everybody was touting and, and pointing to.
And I'm going, this is not even in the camp, you know, This is out of bounds, not even in the camp, you know?
And this is what we're using and what we're touting for, you know?
So, I think now we're seeing a response on the other end where people are saying, okay, fine, if you want to throw that terminology around and not define it or define it poorly.
You know, the other one, the really popular one was Taking America Back for God.
I forget the authors of that one, but that one had a lot of traction.
I can't remember.
Yeah, but that one had a lot of traction as well.
And at least, you know, made more of an effort to really define Christian nationalism.
But the way they defined it included Jews and, you know, black people were included as white Christian nationalists and, you know, all this other sort of stuff.
Um, so it's now people on the other side going, okay, fine.
Here's where, here's where we stand.
Here's what we, you know, understand in all of this.
Um, but again, it's, it's part of, it's part of this same battle.
It's just the next front in this, in this same battle.
And we have to clarify it.
I think theology sharpens over time, and it sharpens with sharp disputes and disagreements.
In fact, in the providence of God, he often raises up heretics just so that the church will go back to the drawing board and shore up their theology on the hypostatic union.
And we forget that.
It's like, yes, there is a strength, undoubtedly.
I'm confessing there's a strength to church history, but we forget that it took about 400 years to figure out who God is.
And to figure out the dual nature of Christ as the second member of the Trinity.
And the way I see it, big picture, and part of this is my post millennialism talking, but the first thousand years, it's like theology proper, doctrine of God.
The next thousand years, soteriology, right?
That's a big one.
Let's dial that in with the Reformation and figure out how people are saved.
I have a sneaking suspicion right here on the beginning of this third millennium, since Christ and his earthly ministry, I think Christian ethics is going to be a big one.
I don't know if it'll be the one, but I think, you know, who is God?
Who is man and how is he saved?
So, tyriology.
But then Christian ethics.
And I think the civil magistrate is going to be a big part of that and our understanding of how do these things play out?
How does this apply?
How does, you know, go ahead.
It seems like you were going to say something.
Yeah.
And I'm saying in all of those things, it was never new, right?
There were always people who were right on all of those things.
Um, but, but, but the time, you know, it took time to sort of separate the wheat and the chaff.
And it's the same here.
There are people who've been writing and thinking, um, rightly on these issues for a long, long time.
And interestingly enough, what people are having to do is to go back to some of those people who were writing and thinking rightly on these issues, you know, in, in order to sort of, um, you know, backfill And, and, and move forward.
Um, and it's, like you said, it's a good thing because it sharpens.
It's absolutely necessary.
But here's the problem.
The problem is, like I said before, what the culture has done is it has emasculated us.
Okay.
When we talk about sharp disagreement and, you know, sharp disagreement being used to sharpen us, right?
That's very masculine.
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
That's very masculine.
And our effeminate culture hates masculinity.
And because of that, it hates sharp disagreement.
Bad.
And so sharp disagreement is no longer allowed.
It's just disqualification, it's cancel culture, right?
You're not saying the right thing on this.
Therefore, you are disqualified.
You are wicked.
You are excommunicated.
Right.
What I hear you saying is no, we don't need a false, trite, shallow sense of unity.
We need the true unity that comes providentially by God's grace.
Through division, iron sharpening iron.
But the problem is, we can't even get, not only can we not get to the true unity, we can't get to the true unity because we can't even get to the true division.
Right now, we still see squabbling over tone, method.
We need to, I'd like to see some real division over arguments, over substance.
And that goes for both sides, by the way.
But we really need to engage.
Make me an argument from the Bible, give me the Bible for why Christian culture.
Is a net negative.
I understand Christian culture in a societal at large way can produce or at least influence nominal Christianity, nominal seminaries, nominal doctrine, nominal preaching to the point where the gospel is assumed, eventually neglected, eventually utterly lost to produce less conversion.
Now, but wait a second, you're making me that argument.
Do you catechize your kids?
Did you take them out of public school and put them in a Christian school or homeschool?
So, in the sphere of your individual family, you're treating Christian culture not as though it's salvific, because no one's saying that, but you are treating it as though it is good.
That the law of God has an evangelistic sense.
No man will be saved by works as done unto the law, but it is a tutor.
And the law, insofar as it accurately reflects God's holiness, it therefore reveals man's sinfulness and drives us to Christ as the only one who can fill that infinite chasm.
You're doing that in your home.
Can we do that in a country?
Can we do that in a country?
But think about what I said before with the Jesus movement and the church growth movement and all these other things.
There was an anti intellectualism and an anti confessionalism.
And because of that, talking about the law, talking about the threefold division of the law, talking about the three uses of the law, this is foreign to an entire generation, right?
Godly Principles Over Profit00:03:30
And so, you know, you're already talking about something that's two, three steps ahead of where people are ready to, yeah, of where people are ready to engage.
So again, there's a lot of backfilling that needs to be done.
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