Dead Men Walking #138 Chocolate Knox Returns: Fight Laugh Feast & Other Dangerous Ideas

Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between. Broadcasting from an undisclosed location. Dead Men Walking starts now. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

Thanks for coming along on the ride. Thanks for checking out dmwpodcast .com, supporting the show there. We got merch and a little bit about ourselves. We appreciate the comments and the criticism and the feedback and the reviews you've been leaving.

We appreciate that. All glory to God, no matter what that is. And first and foremost, just want to say thank you to Jacob Supply for being a sponsor of Dead Men Walking Podcast. He brings you quality building products at wholesale pricing.

He's a brother in the Lord. He's a fellow reform Presbyterian. This is what he does. He goes and he buys appliances and roofing materials and decking and bricks and metal roofs and all that stuff. 30, 40, 50 off, passes that savings on to you and support him.

Even if you're in the Ohio, Indiana, Michigan area, you got to drive a couple hours up to Monroe County in Southeast Michigan. Check them out, jacobsupply .com. He's going to save you a lot of money. And also Nick at Reform Sage.

We love you, brother. We appreciate what you do. Thanks for sponsoring the show. He's going to be down at Fight Laugh Feast. So go to his booth and say hello. He's got t-shirts and he's got wooden, laser engraved bookmarks.

And he also does reformed roasters. So if you got a little itch for some coffee, make sure you check out his Calvin roast. It is dark and we like Nick as well. So thank you, brother. Cool. Now that we got the business out of the way, I'm excited.

Storytelling, the Serrated Edge, and the Overton Window

We have Chocolate Knockbacks on the show. How are you, sir? I'm doing good, brother. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we haven't talked in a while, but I wanted to get you on here because we've got a, well, I say we, you have got a conference coming up that looks like it's going to be absolutely exciting.

I know Detroit or Dead Man Walking has Detroit. Dead Man Walking has been to the one in Franklin. We went to the one in South Dakota and we're going to be down at the one in Knoxville coming up next month.

Let's just get right into it. Can you tease us a little bit? Like what's going on at this conference? I know you're one of the speakers. I know you can't give away everything. You're going to keep that close to your chest, going to guard it, but maybe tease that out a little bit.

Tell us what we're talking about this year down there. Yeah, you know, lies, propaganda, and the serrated edge. So there's a lot in those topics to be talking about. I just, I don't want to miss this real quick.

Did you say a fellow Presbyterian brother? Yeah. I've been gone that long. You've been gone that long. We went from ambiguous to Presbyterian in that amount of time. It's unbelievable. Well, I just want to extend the right hand of Presbyterian fellowship to you guys.

Welcome to the family. It's great over here. I'll give you the hug at the conference, but. All right. But yeah, so, you know, one of the things that the left has been doing really well is running the play of storytelling, running the play of the serrated edge, even.

You can see how they do that with nationalism, white nationalism, and a few other conversations. And just running the play with, kind of working with our imagination of how the world actually is. There's this new film out called The Woman King.

Okay. And I don't know if you know about it, but it's basically about a African tribe that stomps out white-ism in their tribe, and kind of men. These women become powerful and they lead and she becomes the woman king.

There's a whole lot in the real narrative of that story that they don't really communicate, which is that they were a part of the slave trade, that they were selling slaves, that they themselves were pretty bad, and that the Europeans had to come and stop them from being so gratuitous with human beings.

And so the other nations around them were afraid because they knew that they would come and use them for sport, for hunting, or using themselves as slaves. So the left though has taken this story and they've beautified it and redressed it.

And now they're retelling it to communicate something about the current climate that we're in, that there's this been this strong humanistic spirit inside of women that just rises up to defend themselves and protect themselves against men, and particularly white men.

And sometimes black men get in the way of that, but when they see it, they submit and they make her a king too. And so there's a lot of things that, and everybody looks at the story and they're like, ah, that's not gonna really go anywhere.

Nobody really believes the history, but they forget that the victory is just in the telling of it. Yeah. The fact that they did, there was Buzz Lightyear as well. So Buzz Lightyear, they came out with Buzz Lightyear and they had removed this kind of gay kiss that was going on the kind of gay relationship and everything like that.

They decided to put it back in. And a lot of people thought it was a victory to get it out or that it wasn't really that big of an impact, but it's just the fact that they were able to get everybody's attention to say, we're gonna do it.

Yeah. And we're gonna stop it. And we don't always think of, as Christians, just doing it, just getting that done is actually enough to move the Overton window. And we are usually kind of like, we want it all or nothing.

And I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like, hey man, when's the last time we've had a good conservative TV show in the last 15 years outside of 24 and Last Man Standing? Right. That's about the only two.

That was the last 15 years. I couldn't think of anything else that was like a conservative or even a Republican type of TV show that pushed the narrative the other way. Everything is gay. Everything is trans.

Everything is this false concept of what black is, right? It's just, everything is moving that way. And you can't turn on a TV show without them kind of controlling the narrative. And so the whole conference is to try and get Christians to understand this play, understand this move, and to fight against it.

What are the foundations of reality? How do we operate in those? And how do we start moving the Overton window in the right direction? And so one of the things that I'm actually gonna, I don't have a talk myself.

I talk to people and I get to talk to four amazing folks. I get to talk to President Ben Merkle of New St. Andrews College, his wife, Becca Merkle, which is the daughter of my pastor, Doug Wilson, who will also be on the panel with me and the First Lady of Christ Church herself, Nancy Wilson.

She's like me calling her the First Lady of Christ Church. Although, you know, I come from a black concept. So when I see the first Hey, that's what we call her over here at our church doing her book study with the Mom to Mom group, so.

Oh, do you guys really? That's awesome. I consider her the First Lady of Christ Church. So we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk why it's important that parents help their kids have good imaginations and how to build their kids up with stories.

You know, Greg, one of the things that I've been really understanding is how much my world has been framed by certain stories or concepts, and I haven't even known it. And so then how I choose to operate, even in my Christian worldview, my Christian worldview is submissive to the stories that are underneath, and how I understand those stories.

So I operate assuming something about the world that might not even be true. Yeah. And it's really, really been helpful. I do a show on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network called Knox Unplugged with Jason Farley.

And man, the more and more we've been talking, I've just understood how much of a broken metaphysic I have and how much the enlightenment has gotten into me and how much I've seen things, if I had the wrong story, communicated.

And so, man, we've been talking and more and more and kind of trying to reattach ourselves to more of a medieval mind versus a kind of modern, more of a modern kind of concept, the way that we think now of enlightened mind.

And so I want to sit down with these four, Pastor Wilson, well, President Ben Merkel, Becca Merkel, and then the First Lady. And I want to talk to them about how do we craft the stories that help our kids escape this false sense of reality and operate in the world the way that it really is?

Because when you operate that way, then when COVID comes, when tyranny comes, when globalism comes, you know that the world isn't built that way and it doesn't function that way. So you don't flip out and you don't fret, you don't trip.

You know how God really made the world. And so you operate in a way that looks odd to kind of secularism, but their downfall is going to be swift because the world is made to act. I think it's in Joel where the wicked, they might gather it, they might build it up, but they won't wear it.

And that's the actual world that our kids need to be taught about. Like these cities, that's the Tower of Babel. That thing's going to fall. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. So what's a real world example you could give us of maybe a story that you, or you've seen an example of a story, someone believes that then allows them to see their biblical worldview through that lens instead of rightly seeing it through a true biblical worldview.

Like what's, could you give us an example of that? Yeah, there's a couple of different examples. I think in the Medieval Mind of C .S. Lewis by Jason Baxter, he talks about this. And one of the things that C .S. Lewis wanted to do, he wrote a lot of theology, but he knew that the theology itself was kind of being hindered by people's watchful dragons.

And so he wanted to write stories that told the truth about the world, cosmology, right? It gave them a different cosmology to land on. And so he called it getting past their watchful dragons. There is kind of the last concept I was talking about with the Tower of Babel.

There is a real fear of globalism. There is a real fear that our whole nation and other nations are kind of coming together with the World Economic Forum. And there is a lot of fear from Christians about how to fight this.

A lot of fear from Christians about fighting this, about that it's coming. But when you understand the way the world is made, what you don't do is run into a fearful attitude. You run into a garden attitude.

You know that where the people of God are and where God is with his people, that there will be blessing there. So you don't fear globalism. You get local. You get close to your church. You get close to the people next to you and you start operating in a way where they can't penetrate that.

They can't invade that, yeah. Right, yeah, I was thinking about the walls there. Exactly, they can't, that wall is protected. It has a sword and a trowel. While you're building, you're fighting, right?

And so, but we tend to think the way that we need to fight is more in a political, we just need to get power kind of set up. That's Machiavellian. And so we function in the same Machiavellian way that they do, thinking if we can get enough power, right, to be able to change a vote or move something, then we can change the way the world operates.

But that's not true. What we need to remember is that we stay faithful, love our wives, we raise our kids, we honor God, we go to church, we sing, we take joy in the Lord, we rest on the Sabbath day, right?

And we teach our kids to do these same things. And that type of culture, that type of reality, that's where the power is. And then because the world is made to function that way, it destroys the enemies, right?

Yeah, could you imagine entire nation like what you just described? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it would be unbelievable starting from the very small, the family unit, out to the community, out to the local and then national.

And I think you're so right because I see so many believers in fear of those things. Oh, the World Economic Forum, the globalism, the mark of the beast they're talking about, and times and rapture. And these are some of my dipsy friends that I just go, we're not gonna agree on those things, but they're living in a place of reactive fear.

And they're neglecting the family, because look, if you're fearful of a global takeover and you don't think you have any power against it, well, then yeah, you are gonna be fearful and you start neglecting the things that do matter, loving your wife and leading your family and resting in the word of God and all those things, attending church and singing psalms and all those things.

But it seems to be, what's really getting me is it seems to be more and more, we're making end ways into it, but it seems to be more and more in the Christian evangelical church that that type of thinking is the predominant type of thinking when I talk to people.

And it's kind of scary. It's kind of scary to where we're not resting in the sovereignty of God, but we're like, how can we get more power? Who can we elect? Who can we get behind to upend votes and put people on the Supreme Court?

And I'm not saying anything against those things. Those are good things if we can do it, right? I'm a locally elected official. I get it. I'm part of the government. But at the same time, that is subservient to the culture of Christ and to the gospel.

So what do we do? And this is what I love about Fight, Laugh, Feast conferences and look at, I love my G3s and I love my things where you're getting theology and scripture and all that, but you guys give practical application to real world issues.

We don't go there and we don't learn a new definition of a theological term. You're going, oh no, this is how you're living in the world right now. This is the culture battle that you're in. Here are some practical things that we can do.

So what are some of those practical things that we can do when we see other believers not rightly doing those things that we just mentioned, loving their wives and serving their family and their community, and kind of just looking at this global scale and going, oh, we need to get people in power or vote certain people in.

What is the practical application there? Well, that's part of it. We've got to go back and tell the story again. The part of the failure that we've had since the beginning was the fact that Adam didn't protect his wife or the garden.

Come on now. And so one of the things that we want to do, go ahead, what were you going to say? I was going to say, where are you, Adam? He didn't say, where are you, Eve, right? Right, yeah. And so something that I think has really hit home with me is the responsibility of men and the responsibility of men is to take responsibility for the whole thing.

My house, everything that happens here is my responsibility. My community, everything that goes on here, I'm responsible for, right? And just start working our way out. Whatever that we find that we are touching in some way, taking forward, that's a hard concept, man.

That is a very hard concept because we want to say, hey, hey, that's not my fault. No, it might not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. God has placed you, you know, we have, so much I want to say here.

There are offices that God has placed us in. You are first a husband, right? You're a man, you're a husband, you're a father. And those offices, you're responsible for everything that happens underneath.

And so you want to first look at the local place that you're at and say, man, my kids don't know enough Bible. What kind of people am I making for society where they're ignorant about the things of God as they go out to operate?

I want to turn the perspective politically from how we look on the outside, looking in and say, oh man, if these people did that, if these people, no, no, no, no, no. Are you washing your wife in the water of the word?

Are you reading the Bible to her? Are you praying with her? What kind of children are you making for society? There's a lot of strong institutions. The church and the state, I'm great for those. The home is probably the most essential one because from there we qualify elders.

What kind of man is he in his house? He goes out from his house into every other institution. Kids go out from the house. Kids are taught to love their father and mother, the fifth commandment, because it is the grounds by which they learn to respect all authority.

We don't get the society and culture that we want if the home itself is not anchored in the biblical realities and truth. The home itself needs to be theonomic before everything else becomes that way.

And so I think one of the things that we always are trying to push at the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference is man, you should be the one dying every day, loving your family, washing them in the word, training your kids, taking full responsibility for everything that goes there, so that you come in and say, Lord, if there's anybody that needs to die, if there's anybody that needs to be checked, it's me.

I'll take responsibility for this. And own that responsibility first. And then when we go from there, we can look at our city councils, we can look at our neighborhoods, we can look at our states and start saying, we know what responsibility looks like in our home.

Now we can deal with those things outside of there. Until then, you're not ready to deal with those things and you're only gonna collapse the society. Society starts first in the house, and then it sends out everything else from there.

Oh, I love it. I love it so much. So let's shift gears here as we put bookends on this. Now I've been seeing you everywhere. I know you're a Blaze contributor. Obviously you're one third of CrossPolitik podcast.

We didn't announce it at the top of the show. I'm assuming most people listening probably know who you are, but for those who don't, I saw you on Whitlock a few times. I mean, just all over the place.

I absolutely love it because we need brothers in the Lord like you that are standing firm on the word of God and speaking truth. So I appreciate you. Has that changed at all? You know, just having that busy schedule.

I know, like I said, I see it. It seems like you're contributing everywhere and like you got the couple of podcasts and all this. How do you balance that? Like, cause that's gonna be our first question on our Fresh 10 segment, something along those lines.

Are you balancing that okay? Is everything going good personally? Uh-uh. No, it's insane. It's insane. I love it. I love the opportunities. I wish I could say, I feel like I was everywhere. I don't feel like that, but I love the opportunities.

I'm grateful for the opportunities. And if they decide to put a mic in my face to talk about Jesus and how the world should be, I'm gonna take that opportunity. So if it doesn't, I'm gonna do it. All right, so for our listeners, we're gonna do a little segment as we wrap this up.

Fresh 10 with Chocolate Knox

It's called Fresh 10. We do 10 fresh questions for our guests. They're kind of off the wall. They're a little bit different, maybe a little personal. Chocolate Knox does not know what the questions are, but he's good on his feet.

So you wanna stick around and play with us? Let's do it. Here we go. Can we shake that one more time? Let's go. Let's get these questions going here. Let's do it. All right, Fresh 10 with Chocolate Knox.

Here we go. Question number one, what's the hardest part of hosting a podcast for you? Got a lot of podcast listeners out here and creators. So what is it? Being entertaining and getting content information out in an entertaining way.

That's the hardest part, producing the show. Absolutely. Number two, what property do you always go for when you're playing Monopoly? All of them. We go, you go boardwalk, do you go with the dark purples, the slums?

What do you go for? In between somewhere? If I can own it, I wanna make money off of it. Oh, there's never been an answer out here, but I like it. It's probably my favorite answer. All right, question number three.

Would you rather go back in time and see your great-great-grandfather or go to the future and see your great-great-grandkids? You're in the DeLorean, the flux capacitor is fluxing. Where are you going?

Great-great-grandkids or great-great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather, because if I know if I get that right, my great-great-grandkids are gonna be awesome. Oh, come on, I like that. Question number four.

What three albums are you taking with you on the deserted island? Lauryn Hill's Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Dang, what else am I taking with me? That's kind of all I need, really. That's all I need, really.

So Lauryn Hill. Lauryn Hill album is definitely bomb. I think if I could find all 150 songs, I would want that, because I think Okay, that's probably out there. So what else? I need a hip hop album.

I don't know. I kind of feel like I'm good with those two. Okay, that's okay. We can go with those two. Question number five. One book everyone should read or at least take a look at outside of the Bible.

What's one book that you think they should pick up and peruse through? Uh-oh, he's reaching, he's looking. One book, oh, that's tough. I'm reading this book right now, Paradise Restored by David Shelton.

Right now, this is one of my favorite books because it teaches you how to read visually. And what he starts doing is making the connections between the garden and dominion, showing that everywhere God's people were, there's a garden.

That's where I picked that from. It was David Shelton. This book is out of print. I think American Vision just now has it back in print. It will reconnect for you. It'll give you a good, solid biblical exegesis from the garden to the garden and everything in between.

Phenomenal book. There you go, love it. All right, question number six. What theologian or scholar has had the greatest effect on your life? Rush Dooney, Gary Dorth. I think those guys have been massively impactful for me.

Okay, someone who's involved in podcasting and video and audio and all that. In your own definition, question number seven, what does the phrase Christian content mean to you? I don't like it. I don't like it either, but I was just wondering what you thought.

I don't know. I think what people mean by Christian content is that they have some sort, it's some sort of Christian biblical theology applied to the conversation. I don't like that. I don't like, I think it's too narrow.

I think that the cattle on a thousand hill belongs to God. Every time I'm talking, every concept that I think is Christian. So I don't think I'm playing video games or whatever. I'm thinking about that to the glory of God.

The concept for me is just limiting what people can talk about. And I don't, I just don't like it. Okay, awesome. Question number eight, rolling right along. What is something most people assume about you that isn't true?

That my name is Chocolate Knox. That's your actual name? No, the people think, well, no, no. My beard is actually Chocolate Knox. Okay, is that what it is? Yeah, so when I was going to seminary, I got the name Chocolate Knox because my beard reminded them of an old reformer.

And so it needed to have a name. And so we started calling it Chocolate Knox. And so the beard is actually Chocolate Knox, not me. Learned something new. See, I didn't know that. Awesome, that's why we do this.

Number nine, rolling right along. Name one thing you're good at and one thing that you're not so good at. I'm good at editing. And telling stories. Okay. I'm horrible at writing. Interesting. Yeah. All right, number 10, last one.

What was the last thing you Googled? Let's find out. Oh, you're going to find, he's going to the phone. He's going to the source. Let's go, let's see. The last thing I Googled was Queen Elizabeth's second funeral service.

All right, that's it. That's for sure for Chocolate Knox. I love it. One more time, let's go. Cool, Chocolate Knox, thank you so much for being here. And now I'm addressing your beard directly. Thank you for being your beard.

No, but really, why don't you throw it out where people can find you and maybe a little bit about, we'll link everything up, but a little bit about the conference, if tickets are still available, where they can find that.

And take us out. October 6th through 8th is the conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. You can get tickets at flfnetwork .com. And you can find out more about CrossPolitik at crosspolitik .com. We're also on the FLF network as well.

So look forward to seeing everybody there on 6th through the 8th in October, especially you guys, since beers are on you. Yeah, well, Darren Doan's kicking in too. He couldn't make it, but we wanted to make sure he kept that tradition alive.

So thank you so much for being here. Thanks for taking time, talking about this. It's going to be exciting. I'm excited to see you in person. Looking forward to it, bro. All right, guys, as always, we appreciate everything you do for the show.

Thanks for listening, telling a friend, and as always, God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at deadmenwalkingpodcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.

None of your biscuits.