What's Cracking Brett McCraken!? - Gospel Coalition Regret?

All right, well, let's jump into it today. We've got a Gospel Coalition article. It's been a minute since I read a Gospel Coalition article, and I have to say the only reason I'm doing it is because there's a friend of the channel who messages me all the time and always has interesting tidbits and stuff like that, and he requested it.

And so, you know, I don't take every request that comes my way, but I do, excuse me, I do take a few, and I figured I'd do this one, because it was my boy Brett McCracken. What's crackin'? Brett McCracken.

Yeah, before I get into that, though, let me just say this, AJ has done a great job selling some books for me. If you don't remember, this is his sign, Books for Sale. AJ is going to get a commission for every sale that references this sign, Books for Sale.

He's gonna make a new sign. He's gonna draw a picture of me, and at first he was like, well, I don't really know how to draw you that well. And I said, well, I'm pretty sure that the audience would like to see what your rendition of me looks like, so that'll be interesting to see.

It's coming very soon. So reference this if you want to pick up a copy of Social Justice Warriors, that's not the name of my book, Social Justice Pharisees, Wilk Church Tactics and How to Engage Them.

Thank you to everyone who's already purchased a copy, and AJ is looking to earn enough money to buy a particular game that he's been interested in. We'll talk more about that some other time. In fact, you might even see some video content about this game.

We'll talk about it. Anyway, before I also jump into the Gospel Coalition article, I did want to address something from yesterday. So yesterday I talked about God's Law, which it's definitely a very good way to sort of get people to call you a heretic if you take God's Law too seriously.

But there was some obstinance in the comment section, but there were some pieces of pushback that I thought were not obstinate, they were actually really good pieces of pushback, and it has to do with the way I used 1 Corinthians 5 when Paul is talking to the man in the church who's committing incest against his father, and he says to him, he says to the church, hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

And I used that analogy, I used an analogy that said, you know, if there was somebody in my church that confided in me that he hurt a little girl or something like that, I would hope that that man would repent from his sins, and I hope that he's forgiven by Christ for hurting that little girl.

But I'm going to hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, and luckily in this culture, that is still a crime. Now, we don't take that kind of thing as seriously as we ought. People who abuse little girls ought to be given the death penalty, no question about it.

But at least it's still a crime. There are many things that aren't treated as a crime in our country that ought to be. This is what got people all riled up. And so, but people pushed back and said, no, no, Adam, what you don't understand is that Paul is speaking spiritually.

He's saying, turn him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, but he means spiritually. And I understand where you're coming from, and I agree in part, but actually, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that, because in those times, what the church would do is that they'd excommunicate someone, and that would be like the death penalty to them, especially in cases where it wasn't a death penalty offense.

Like right, obviously murder is a death penalty offense, we get that, but there are certain things that the government does not treat as a death penalty offense that should be treated by the church as a death penalty offense.

And so excommunicating someone is a death sentence of a type. Now, the church does not have the authority of the sword, and so they can't actually do the physical death penalty, although the state ought to, with crimes that deserve the death penalty, the state should be executing justice in that way.

But the church does have recourse in situations where the state does not have the death penalty for a death penalty offense, and that is exactly what Paul is talking about. This is the analogy to the death penalty for the church, in an exact situation that we're in today, where the state doesn't take God's law very seriously, neither did the Roman state, and this is what this section of Scripture is all about.

I'm going to read this, this is from the Institutes of Biblical Law, which I don't agree with everything in this book, but I thought this part was especially interesting. Here's what Rush Dooney says.

He says, That's a good law, by the way. It's a good law that those who commit incest ought to be given the death penalty. Let's continue. Paul makes it clear that this sin is an offense even to the Gentiles.

Second, although it is clearly incest in terms of Biblical law, St. Paul does not deal with it legally as a case of incest. He makes clear in verse 1 that it is incest, however. Instead, the man is given the general title of fornicator.

This is interesting, which covers a variety of offenses. Since the father was apparently still living, since she is spoken of as, quote, his father's wife and not a widow, the offense of the man with his stepmother is adultery as well as incest.

So the term fornicator covers both factors, but is less specific. Third, St. Paul orders them to, quote, Craig is correct in interpreting this as the death penalty. Thus, the death penalty is clearly God's law for incest and adultery.

The church, however, cannot execute a man. This is important. Let me reread that. This is Rush Dooney. The church, however, cannot execute a man. The death penalty does not belong to the church. The church, however, must, in effect, pronounce the death penalty by delivering the man to Satan, i .e. the providential protection of God is withdrawn so that the man might be redeemed.

Fourth, the church, however, has a duty to act. They must purge out the therefore the old leaven. They must not associate with fornicators within the church. With such a one don't even eat, it says. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person, it says.

Since the woman is not included in the judgment, it can be assumed that she was not a Christian and hence not subject to church discipline. The repentance of the offender could, after a season, possibly restore him to church fellowship, but always as someone with a recognized death sentence over him.

By the way, this is me. This is not theoretical for me. This is me. I should have a death sentence. There's just no question about it. I'm in the church only by the grace of God. Here's what it says. It goes on.

Thus, this is important, thus, the church was given a realistic legal aid for coping with the problem of capital offenses in a society which does not recognize them as such because it was realistically recognized that this is a major problem for the church.

A godly law order will restore the death penalty, but the church must live realistically with its absence and protect itself. The proper judgment of the church both recognizes the death penalty and acts in terms of the present reality.

The early church acted in terms of this. Adultery was severely judged, and adulterers received back into the church fellowship only on the severest terms. In some areas, total exclusion prevailed, but this was not general.

So of course, there's repentance available to people who commit death penalty offenses, but the death penalty offense is not to be trifled with. It's not to be a situation where you commit adultery and, you know, they kick you off your board seat of the church, and that's all the punishment that you get.

Oh, you can no longer, you know, be a pew guy. You can no longer be an usher because you committed—no, no, no, no, no. This is a death penalty offense, and we need to treat it as severely as the Bible allows us to.

Okay? And the church can't do the death penalty, obviously, and we live in a society that does not take it seriously, and so we ought to do what we can to essentially humble that person so that they repent, kick them out of the church, have nothing to do with them, no help, nothing.

It's as if you're a dead man. Then you repent, and you're back into the fold and all of that kind of thing. So it's just like, you know, we just have to—look, look, one of the things I was thinking about last night is, like, we really do need to give the benefit of the doubt to God's law.

And if we're not going to do God's law, if we're not even going to advocate for it—in fact, if we think that it's somehow wrong to advocate for it, and maybe you might even be an apostate if you advocate for God's law in the civil realm—you know, I think that's a weird place to be.

That's all we'll say about it for right now, but that's where I was coming from with handing someone over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. We only have so much power in these situations, and if the culture doesn't take the crime seriously, there's really nothing we can do, except hopefully they get the due penalty for their error in themselves, and hopefully the natural course of things bring you to your knees into such a way that you repent.

That's the hope. But anyway, that's all I'll say about that. Let's talk about Brett McCracken, because this is an interesting article. It's titled, In a World of Narratives, Be Radically Committed to Reality.

And I've got to say, I'm very interested in this title. In fact, I have a very positive reaction to this title, because I agree. There's all kinds of fake, phony baloney, false fugazi narratives out there.

The Gospel Coalition is notorious for spreading this kind of stuff. And we need to be committed to reality, and as Christians, we need to have tools to interpret reality according to God's word, because God has the only perfect worldview.

God has the only correct worldview. The way God sees the world is the way the world actually is. Now, we're lucky because God has shown us grace, and he's revealed certain things about his world to us in such a way that we can know them, because otherwise, we wouldn't know.

We'd be slaves to narratives all the time. But God has saw fit to reveal how the world works, so he's given us a window into his worldview through the scripture, and it allows us to understand certain things.

That's so helpful, because if we didn't have that, we'd be in the same position as everybody else. So, let's read this article, because as I like the title, and I hope that it's good, I have a feeling that this isn't going to be as good as I'm thinking.

It's going to be a bait-and-switch, and they're going to give us more narrative. Let's find out. Let's find out, Brett McCracken. I don't trust you. You might say, I'm not believing all things, and all this stuff.

I don't trust Gospel Coalition anymore. So I think eventually, you fool me enough times, eventually it's my fault if I believe you. So we'll see. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Brett McCracken says this.

I'm convinced that the biggest emerging fissure in Western culture is not necessarily between political left and right, as much as those fiercely committed to reality, even when it goes against the narrative, and those who elevate their narrative, whether left or right, above reality.

Okay, so the biggest problem is not left or right, it's people that are in reality, and people that are not living in reality. Yeah, I can go with that. I can go with that. COVID -19 has offered illustrative examples of this.

There are plenty of people in the political right whose approach to the pandemic is more informed by their political narrative and result in posturing than by good faith commitment to reality. Their narrative, quote, nanny state, big government outreach, corrupt big pharma, encroachments on personal liberty, vaccines as government control, becomes their reality.

No level of scientific consensus or statistics will cause them to rethink, or at least complicate, their narrative. Hmm. You don't want to get the jab? Well, you're obviously not living in reality. Oh man, let's continue.

There are plenty of people on the political left who act similarly, allowing their entrenched narratives and biases, for example, taking off your mask in public signals that you must be a vaccine-hating, genocide-loving conservative, to take precedent over objective reality.

This is interesting. If you notice, there's an imbalance here, right? This is very, very interesting, because on the left, he put the craziest possible position as the problem, like you love genocide if you take off the mask.

I've honestly never heard that before, so there must be just some wackos, like a handful of people who maybe have ever said that. I don't even know if anyone's ever said that. Maybe someone has. I don't know.

But then, on the right-hand side, he's putting pretty normal, reasonable things, like, yeah, if you're thinking about forcing me to get the vaccine, that's government overreach. That's a normal belief, a very common belief, but he's saying that that's letting your narrative take control.

There's some skewing here, bro. I see what you're up to, Brett McCracken. I got you. I can see that. Yeah, that's a scam, man. If you notice, he's putting normal stuff in the right-wing narrative section.

Let's see if he lands this plane, because I've got tools for deciding whether or not something's government overreach, and whether or not something is encroachment on personal liberty. I've got tools for that.

I don't base it on what Sean Hannity says. In fact, I don't even listen to people like that. But in the scripture, there are certain things that the government can do, and certain things they can't do.

I base it on the Bible. We were just talking about this. So let's see if he lands this plane and gives us any tools, because I have a feeling this is going to be a left-wing puff piece, considering how it started here.

He puts normal stuff in the right-wing crazy section, which is not crazy at all, and then he puts really crazy stuff in the left-wing section, which nobody believes. Anyway. In a piece for The Atlantic on the overcautious progressives who, quote, can't quit lockdowns, Emma Green observes, even as scientific knowledge of COVID -19 has increased, some progressives continue to embrace policies and behaviors that aren't supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning.

Yeah, true. By the way, don't listen to any of that stuff. They have no power. If you just don't listen, they can't do anything. I've been not listening since the beginning. Where are the people who live in light of the facts about reality more than their feelings about it?

Where are those whose understanding of the world is shaped more by evidence and logic than by narratives and anger? Where these people exist, they're the true radicals. Brett McCracken is a, he's a true radical, you know, just wear the mask, obviously.

You see, they have to save face somehow, though, because they, they were on the left-wing side of this. They were on the left wing. You know, just do as you're told, wear the mask, vaccine, science consensus.

Everything the left says they say, maybe with the exception of genocide, although they probably say that too. But now they've got to like, get some of that capital back. And so they're saying, well, yeah, that's maybe that's not right, but it was right at the time.

But it's like me, I was right, basically, from the beginning, not, not quite, basically. But I was the conspiracy. I was the evil one. Right now. Okay, I gotcha. I gotcha. Gospel Coalition is trying to get some of that, that cachet back in an underhanded way because they're also still being liberal here.

All right, let's continue. Too many of us are too committed to partisan narratives and not committed enough to reality. It's tragic that this is true, even within the church, where Christians' politics often shape how they interpret and apply the Bible.

In a world of competing, objective, subjective narratives, ultimately subjective narratives, we need more people radically committed to reality, and Christians are well positioned to be such people. But we first must be aware of why narratives are so magnetic in today's information landscape.

He's right. Christians are in a great position to live in reality because again, as I started off, God gives us a window into his perfect worldview so we can understand what the world is and what the world is like and what people are like and what God is like because God has shown us in his word what they're like.

And so we are in a great position because the pagans don't have this. They've got to try to figure things out for themselves and they often do very poorly, which is why I don't listen to the pagan government when they say, oh yeah, just, just take the shot because you have to, to love your neighbor.

Like I, I didn't go along with that Brett McCracken. You might be having a bit of a guilty conscience because you listened to the pagans when they said it was too dangerous to go to church and like you listened to them.

I don't even know if you're still listening to them. Hopefully not. God willing, you're not still listening to them, but you like bought what the pagans were selling. I didn't. Uh, well let me give him, let me give some, let me give myself fairness.

I did at first and I quickly changed my mind, but, but Brett McCracken and John Lehman and all these guys, they listened for a long time. And so it's like, we should be in a good position to interpret this.

We should have from the beginning said, yeah, God says we should meet on Sunday though. So we're going to go ahead and do that. Um, we should have those tools, but for some reason you and your buddies don't have them.

Let's see if he talks about these tools. I hope so. Uh, here's what he says. Why are we drawn to narratives? He says humans have always been tempted to prefer convenient narratives over inconvenient reality.

It started with Eve's choice to believe the serpent narrative after all, but there are specific dynamics in our modern technological age making the problem worse. Here are three. How would you want to bet this is going to be an anti-social media article?

It's it's social media's problem. Don't listen to that YouTuber, that crazy YouTuber with no hair. Like that. That's, that's the reason he's pushing narratives. I am pushing narratives, but I believe that they're the real narratives.

I don't, I don't deny it. I do push narratives. Um, anyway, number one, we're too overwhelmed and narratives are easier in a world utterly glutted with information, far too many articles, studies, statistics, opinions, and expert recommendations to ever sort through getting to the heart of reality is hard.

Sometimes it seems impossible when a relentless barrage of information hits our brains. It's easier to file things away in tidy narrative boxes. This is proof of this. This is proof of that. Then to lay them out on the table and see what reality emerges from the evidence.

Quickly plugging data into established narratives is a coping mechanism in a world of information overload. It's understandable, but it's also kind of lazy and even quite dangerous. Reality is often more complex than our narratives demand.

The pursuit of reality is a necessity, necessarily laborious endeavor, and it requires patience. This is interesting because if you remember, like, like, uh, at the beginning of the pandemic, I said it was a bad idea to close the economy.

In fact, I said that people would suffer if you close the economy. And Russell Moore said, well, if you say that we shouldn't close the economy, you're just want your 401k to grow now. You're just greedy.

And like, that's moronic, like Dr. Russell Moore was acting like an idiot there because that's just too simplistic. I was, that's exactly what I was saying, but the thing is when I say it, I say the Bible shows us that everyone has to make their own decisions here.

It's not lawful for the government to shut down the freaking economy. That's not lawful for you to say, I can't work. I don't have the right to sell my labor. I don't have the right to do this or that.

Like that's not lawful. According to scripture, that's how I know it's a bad idea. And then you can apply what scripture says to reality and say, yeah, you know, like maybe it's not, not smart to do this because people are going to starve, you know, poor people especially.

But Russell Moore's like, no, no, you gotta love your neighbor. Basically anyone who says love your neighbor, but doesn't actually explain what they mean by that is attempting to do the narrative thing.

And it's really a shame, but, but this is actually true. I think that's, I think that's true where we, you know, we, we get scared, right? Russell Moore was terrified out of his little mind. He was so scared.

And so anyone who denied that the government had the right to shut down the economy, and you want to hate grandma, like, like, like Russell Moore was doing this, he was overwhelmed and probably very scared.

And so he just spun the narrative. Well, besides, I mean, his, his masters told him to say something. So he said it, you know, that's as simple as that. Anyway, let's go to number two. Brett McCracken says we're too impatient and narratives are faster.

Facts take time to gather, but narratives offer quick answers. Uncovering reality in all its complex glory is a slow burn. Who has patience for this in a world of instant gratification? Hot takes that neatly turn reality into narratives are more satisfying and they sell.

If anyone knows how much they sell, it's probably gospel coalition, right? By the way, I'm sure Brett McCracken has a new book to tell you how to do all this. There's nothing wrong with selling, by the way, I'm selling a book.

That's not a, that's not a negative. When a breaking news event happens, the narrative machine kicks in, jumping at the opportunity to shoehorn new evidence into the given narrative. When the Pulse nightclub massacre happened in 2016, it was immediately framed within a narrative of homophobic hate, and it remains framed in that way in most of our memories.

But over the years, as evidence emerged, the homophobic, homophobic hate narrative was debunked. In a too fast news cycle, we rarely revisit old news to correct false narratives. If a narrative is adopted in mass, it becomes reality for posterity, regardless of the facts.

Is he ripping people about the George Floyd thing in a low key way? I mean, Brett McCracken doesn't strike me as a particularly courageous man, so maybe he's talking about George Floyd here. I don't know.

It's hard to say. But, um, but I don't really agree with this one that much, though, because it's sometimes it's possible to have a quick take. That's exactly right. That's based in reality. I'll give you example.

I, I always call out my brother's church for this because my brother had it right before I did when it came to the pandemic. My brother's pastor, man, God bless you. I don't know if you watch my content, but if you do, God bless you, brother.

Solid, solid brother. Never closed down his church. Not one day did he close down his church. And he knew as soon as the government said, we're going to close down your church. He said, absolutely not.

We're not closing down our church instantly. He knew because he had thought about it a long time before he had prepared. He knew his reason for existence is to have the assembly and to lay hands on the second to do all this stuff.

And he said, no, we are not closing down our church. And he knew like that. So speed is not a problem. It's about, it's about, you know, why you're doing it faster. Do you know what you're talking about?

Are you just jumping to conclusions? Are you just saying, oh yeah, that white kid, he must be a racist because he's white and he smiled. You see that as a racist smile, racist. That's all Brett McCracken's gospel coalition friends with the Covington kids.

You know, you know, like they didn't know what the heck they were talking about. They couldn't possibly. And at the time I said, yeah, maybe this white kid's the most racist kid of all time, but I don't know.

I have no idea. I don't know him. Right. But, but, but my brother's pastor, he knew. And this is not a, a rule breaker. This is not a conspiracy theorist. This is not the kind of guy that would go against the government.

In fact, he's a very, probably one of the most submissive pastors that I personally know about when it comes to the government. And he knew he had done his homework. He knew what the word of God said.

And so the minute he heard close down your church, it's too dangerous. He said, good luck with that. I'm going to meet for church on Sunday. It's just that simple. So really speed doesn't have anything to do with it.

You can be just like that. I keep snapping. Why am I doing that? And be totally fine and be totally correct. I disagree with this one. However, I think sometimes when, especially if you don't know what you're talking about and you know it and you're jumping to a conclusion, that's a sign that you're in a narrative.

Owen Benjamin calls it a spell. You're in a spell. They've got you in a spell. And that's a big sign when you know, you don't know what you're talking about, but you know the right answer. That's a spell.

All right. Number three, we're too self oriented and narratives serve us. We're tempted to prize narratives over reality for one another. By the way, let me just stop here. I don't like how he's, I don't like how he's, he's contrasting narratives with reality.

That's not really a good contrast because there are narratives that are reality. In fact, the scripture is, is written as a story, right? It's telling a narrative yet it's explaining reality. There's a narrative in Genesis one where he talks about making the land and the ocean and the ferment and the water above the waters and the, the, the, the lesser light to rule the night, the greater light.

There's a narrative that's unfair, but that's reality also. So I don't like how he's doing this. Like there are some narratives that are actually true and they're part of reality. They're woven into the fabric.

I don't like that. I don't like that. This is not a good contrast. And in fact, it's such a, it's such a poor contrast that I wonder if there's some, I wonder if there's a spell going on right here. He's trying to trick us into some kind of third way politics or something.

I don't know. I haven't read the article, so we'll see. He says, we're tempted to prize narratives over reality for another more basic reason. We're self-centered, sinful creatures. We like narratives because we can control them.

Reality resists our attempts at control. We prefer narratives because it feels good to quote, be right, even if reality would indicate we're wrong. And because we like how narratives make us feel, confirming our biases, patting us on the back for supposed rightness of our views, narrative driven news sells.

Algorithms that feed us more of what we want to believe make us more addicted to social media. There it is. There it is. Anti-social media said on a blog. I love that stuff. He probably tweeted this out right before.

More lucrative to advertise. It's a vicious cycle, but it feels good. Only an intentionally self-denying, I might be wrong posture is our way out of this quagmire. Only a humble deference to truth outside of the self can free us from our prideful prison of narrative skewed bubbles and self-serving distortion.

I mean, I agree with a lot of that, but again, I just don't like how he's comparing, he's contrasting narrative and reality. That's not appropriate. And also I don't think it's good to always say, Oh, I might be wrong.

There are certain things I'm not wrong about. Like I, like, like I'm not wrong about everything that I believe. And I know certain things for sure, because God has spoken and he doesn't lie and he can be understood.

And he's spoken in a way that he can be understood. Like I know God is there. I know God created the world. I know God created all of us. I know he created men and women in his image, right? I know these things.

There's things that I, so I don't like this. I might be wrong. You have to, you have to admit you might be wrong in order to be in order to be right and good and humble. No, I don't like that. I don't like that.

But overall, not terrible. How much, how long is this article? All right, here we go. Truth over tribe. I love how former New York Times columnist Barry Weiss describes the goal of her substack newsletter.

This newsletter is for people who want to understand the world as it is not the world as some wish it to be. It's for people who seek the truth rather than the comfort of a team or tribe. People who seek the truth rather than a comfort of a team or tribe.

If that characterizes anyone in the world, it should be Christians, but it will only happen if we give up our comfortable attachments to narrative, cultural, political, and personal. I'm not going to comment on that.

The church is well positioned to be one of the clearest defenders of a reality in a world of narratives. We have the foundation of the truth of scripture and the truth that liberates Jesus. This is the one entirely true narrative, the narrative that doesn't just spin reality, but establishes criteria for evaluating it and a lens for illuminating it.

Right. That's exactly what I was saying. There, there are, there is a good narrative. There's a true narrative and we can know it. That's the thing. Like you, like Brett McCracken is almost introducing a little bit of doubt here.

He's almost like, like, like, like it's hard. It's too hard to know. Like, no, no, we can know it, man. And that's why when the governor says, shut down your church, you can quickly and definitively and positively and with, with, with, with, with all the, the, the confidence in the world say, no, that's an overreach.

That's not a right wing narratives conspiracy. It's like, no, no, that is definitively an overreach. You have no jurisdiction over the church. None. Like, like that's, we know that for sure. He says, for these reasons, Christians of all people should be contending for Trent for a transcendent truth rather than clawing for partisan power or in-group status.

As I argued last year and exit the echo chamber, it's time to persuade and quote, we need prophets, not partisans. Sadly, many Christians on all sides are now stressing narratives over reality or letting narratives determine their perception of reality.

And it's ripping evangelicalism apart. That's not what's ripping evangelicalism apart, by the way, because this is what happens. Like I, listen, I've talked to people like this and I've got this one brother, man, that I just, like I talked to him and I just, yeah, I don't, I don't cry, but it makes me want to weep on the inside because I can hear the pain in this man's voice and he's in the process of leaving his church because his church has said that they're not going to take any hard stance on any issue that is deemed political.

So they, they're not, if you're for abortion in their church, they're, they're totally fine with it. They, you know, they're not going to, because you know why? Because they're saying, well, that's just a political narrative.

That's a partisan narrative. So what happens is we've got biblical narrative, like the truth, the truth of the word of God, the truth of the gospel, and it's being, it's being treated as if it's partisan politics.

No, just because there's one party that believes it and the other party doesn't, doesn't mean it's partisan. It comes straight from the scripture. We have no quarter for people who are against the scripture and in our churches, we just don't none.

And so that it's, that's not what's ripping evangelicalism apart. What's ripping evangelicalism apart is that there's an entire wing of it that has gone with the liberal narrative and everything that they say against the church.

They're believing, oh, the church is racist. Oh sure. Totally. The church is sexist. Yeah, totally sexist. Of course. I mean, the church is the worst offender in this way. Oh, the church is a bunch of fundamentalists and they just, they just, they hate people.

They hate LGBT. Oh sure. Of course. You know, and you and your buddies, Brett McCracken will write an article for the Washington Post about how terrible the church is. What's tearing evangelicalism apart is that there's a segment of evangelicalism that hates itself and wants to flog itself and will take every opportunity to join the pagans in ripping the church and saying the church is the worst at all of these things.

And if that's what's tearing the church apart, it's not partisanship. It's not partisanship unless you're talking about left-wing partisanship. It's, it's a, it's a real shame. It's a real shame because, because like, look, look, look, the reality is this, the Bible speaks boldly on issues that are deemed political and we need to recognize that.

We need to recognize that. I'm not saying you have to vote and I'm not saying you have to be engaged in the political process, but you have to understand that the Bible takes sides on these issues. And so it's not the, the problem is not that you're taking sides on these issues.

It's what side you're taking. That's the reality. That's the reality. All right. This is why in my book, the wisdom pyramid, ah, there it is. He's selling a book. I thought the only thing that's sold was partisanship.

My book, the wisdom pyramid, I, you know, I should read that one. That should be, I should review that one, the wisdom pyramid. That's gotta be gold. I call Christians that spend less time being fed by narrative pushing sources, the internet, social media.

There it is. The social media is the problem. The internet, that's the problem. Well, how do you like this, Brett? I wrote a book now. I wrote a book. So now I'm not part of the problem anymore. I wrote a book.

I'm good to go. The book, a book will never sell you a false narrative. Never. It's not possible. It's the internet. The internet is the first time false narratives were spun. And more time being nourished by sources that ground us in reality, scripture, church, nature, unless it's a pandemic, then don't go to church, and nature.

I don't even know what to say about that. Nature's good, but I don't know. I just don't know about that one. The transcendent, the time-tested, the tangible. There are ample resources in Christian scripture and tradition that can help us be people of reality in a world of narratives.

Let's avail ourselves of these wisdom-shaping resources. Let scripture drive your understanding of reality more than QAnon conspiracy theories. They can't let it go, man. They can't let it go. Be shaped by less fleeting viral narratives and more by the church's 2 ,000-year tradition.

Be constrained by the beautiful biology of God's design and creation more than ethereal abstractions and expressions of self. God-made, God-glorifying reality is so much more satisfying than self-made, self-serving narratives.

Christians should be fighting for the former instead of falling for the latter. Yeah, so the Wisdom Pyramid. Has anybody read that? Let me know in the comments if you've read the Wisdom Pyramid. And maybe I'll read the Wisdom Pyramid.