A Thread So Good I'm Jealous of It

All right, I've got here a Topo Chico. It's a twist of lime.

It's a mineral water with a twist of lime bottled in Monterey, Mexico. The only reason

I'm telling you is because I don't want you to think I'm drinking a beer at 8 .30 in the morning, which I have been known to do, just not in a very, very, very long time.

In any case, hope you had a good weekend, good Lord's Day, good everything. Here we go. Let's get started here.

So, Stephen Wolf, over the weekend, or maybe this was yesterday, I can't really remember. Oh, it's right,

March 1st, so it was yesterday. He put together a really good thread that I thought I would share.

And in one of our little comm boxes, I said that it's not very often that I'm jealous of someone else's

Twitter post. But I gotta be honest with you, this one gets me, man. I feel like I should have been able to come up with this before Stephen.

This is right at my wheelhouse. This is exactly the kind of thing I like to do. But in any case, I'm not gonna take credit for it because, hey,

I didn't do it, I failed. So I guess maybe it isn't up my alley. And now this is a genius thread, so I'm just gonna read it to you and we'll provide some commentary as well.

I may also do the Christian nationalism discussion that Gospel Coalition put out.

They decided to wade into the waters and demonstrate how troubled they are. So we'll see, maybe we can do that and see what we can learn from it.

Because I think it's good to learn. It's good to learn from your enemies. Your theological enemies, anyway.

So anyway, let's go to this Stephen Wolf tweet thread. Here is what he says. He says,

Christian nationalism is un -American, is political idolatry. So to say, let me start over.

To say Christian nationalism is un -American is political idolatry. America is not your home.

Seek first the kingdom of God. Don't turn America into an idol. Fear is not a

Christian virtue. The gospel does not depend on you destroying Christian nationalism.

Put not your trust in princes. Epic, epic. Let me read the next one.

Do not concern yourself with the things of the world. America will ultimately burn. In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter that America becomes

Christian nationalist. Instead of using worldly means or hating your Christian nationalist neighbor, show them kindness.

He continues, treat them with compassion, not judgment. Practice the fruit of the spirit.

Show them that you don't obsess over worldly politics, that your hope is found in another world.

We lose down here. Christian nationalists are made in the image of God.

As such, they deserve dignity and respect. Our goal should not be to quote, win down here.

The Christian nationalist hearts will melt when they see our weakness before them. Sure, according to earthly wisdom, they are strong and handsome, but we have a higher way.

And nothing shows it more than their earthly dominance over us. Have you stopped to think that maybe the

Christian nationalists reject our views because of the way that we oppose them? Perhaps we're full on truth, but not full on love.

Maybe they see us as hypocrites, only concerned with our power of them, over them.

Stephen continues, this is, like I said, guys, this is a master thread. This is genius.

We should seek to persuade, not denounce or marginalize. We should seek good faith dialogue, not demonization.

We should invite them to discussion and we should celebrate and emphasize our similarities. The Christian nationalists are our neighbors.

Some of their views are disordered and lead to sin, but we are not, are we not also disordered, broken and full of sin?

Should we judge them when there is so much to judge amongst ourselves? But that, for that grace, but for grace, that might be me.

We must do better. Listen, let's begin by listening humbly to our Christian nationalists neighbors.

Let us acknowledge our errors and our complicity and sins against them. Do the work. Don't constantly ask them, what is the definition of Christian nationalism?

This is exhausting for them. Do the reading. How dare we treat the Christian nationalists as the great other?

We, as heavenly people whose hope is in another world, should be the great other of this world. The cruciform life requires us to take up our cross in oppression, even

Christian nationalists oppression, not to take up our worldly swords. Christ's kingdom is not of this world.

The gospel does not come by earthly means and certainly not through idolizing our rights.

Our rights are nothing compared with the glory of suffering under a Christian nationalist regime.

Anxiety over our rights is faithlessness. In this world,

Christians follow a theology of the cross, not a theology of glory. Taking up arms against Christian nationalism tries to replace the cross with a triumphant glory reserved for us by God's providence, not our own efforts.

You might say, oh, but what about our liberal democracy? But when Satan offered

Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, did Jesus say, yes, and I'll make them all liberal democracies?

No, he chose the road to the cross, suffering, and death. I gotta say, if I was wearing a hat,

Steven, I would take it off. Hats off to you. This is absolutely genius.

What's so good about it is that it takes arguments against Christian nationalism that come from all kinds of different perspective, full -on liberal, progressive arguments against Christian nationalism, and then it also takes some of the more conservative

Christian arguments against it, but from a pietistic perspective. This is a genius thread.

These arguments are arguments that I have heard hundreds of times at this point, hundreds of times, and it certainly seems like every time the argument is put forward, that it comes from someone who has not the slightest bit of self -reflection or has even considered that maybe

I need to be disciplined enough to apply this argument to what I'm saying and see if it sticks, because if it doesn't, there's something wrong here.

There's something that I need to reconsider. If my argument doesn't work, if I say the same exact thing that I'm saying to this

Christian nationalist, then maybe there's a problem there. Maybe there's not, but maybe there is, and it certainly seems like people put forward this kind of stuff all the time and they don't even think about whether or not it makes any sense considering their pre -commitments.

Now, I'll give you a good example of this, because this is something that we covered with the Owen Strawn thread, right?

Do you remember his primary argument? Was that, I don't see anything like Christian nationalism or theonomy in the

Book of Acts, which is the laboratory of the Great Commission. He was very emphatic about that.

I don't see the apostles in Acts doing that. And of course, at the time, it's the same kind of thing that Stephen's doing here.

We did it with Owen. We said, Owen, I don't see the apostles engaging in secular democracy or voting.

That's my big concern with secular democracy, because I don't see the apostles in the laboratory of the

Great Commission being considered with, oh, Owen, you think we should have good, here's another one. Owen thinks we should have good laws.

We should advocate for good laws. Owen, I don't think you should advocate for good laws because I don't see the apostles in the

Book of Acts advocating for good law. It's just totally absent.

That's the same kind of thing that Stephen's doing here. It's exactly right.

These arguments logically don't fit with the pre -commitments that are so often evident in the people that are against Christian nationalism.

This is absolutely, absolutely right. It's crazy.

I mean, this one is really good.

And this is the one that I think applies to so many of our conservative friends that I consider friends, you know what

I mean? They're against Christian nationalism. They think whatever they think. That's okay. I can still be friends with someone like that, right?

I can be friends with someone like that because as long as they don't treat me like enemies, right? But here's the thing, like this is genius.

He says, treat them with compassion, not judgment. Practice the fruit of the spirit.

Show them that you don't obsess over worldly politics, that your hope is found in another world.

We lose down here. We lose down here.

When you hear that we lose down here, so often it is deployed when you're trying to do something good, right?

You're trying to have Christian morality take effect in our civil governing authority.

You're trying to elect, I don't know, Christian politicians. You're trying to advocate for Christian laws.

You're trying to do something, right? And then what you get is, don't put your trust in chariots or princes.

We lose down here. We should expect to lose. And it's just so apparent.

It's just always so apparent to me that the person that says we lose down here, when it comes to the things that they care about, never apply it to themselves.

It's always, we lose down here when there's somebody else doing something that's unapproved. But they don't act like we lose down here when they're having their disagreements, when they're putting forward, when they're dedicating conference time to defeating

Christian nationalism. Why doesn't it apply? We lose down here, who cares?

If Christian nationalists get into power, well, I mean, the earth is not our home. His kingdom is not of this world.

Shouldn't you be expecting that the evil Christian nationalists should be getting in power if we expect to lose down here?

Why fight it? Why fight it? Don't we have a better way? Sorry, I don't know what happened to my voice there.

Don't we have a better way? Don't we? My mouth is dry, hold on, hold on.

My voice is dry. Oh, don't we have a better way? It's just so amazing to me.

It's so amazing to me. And honestly, I've heard very little in terms of anti -Christian nationalist argumentation that is not guilty of exactly this kind of thing.

It's just so amazing. It's just so amazing. And it's interesting that we encountered the same kind of thing with Big Eva, you know what

I mean? In the original Woke Wars, right? In the original Woke Wars, the same exact kind of thing.

It's like, of course, if you wanna learn about the black experience, you must sit at the feet of black teachers, don't argue with them, don't speak, don't act them to define, you just take it in, you just take it in.

And it's like, okay, that's wonderful. Like, what about me? You disagree with me, do you ever just sit at my feet and just take it in and don't say anything, don't argue with me,

I'm Puerto Rican, just sit at me, hear me roar kind of thing? No, of course not. It doesn't apply like that.

It only applies if you agree with them already. And you get arguments like that all the time.

It's just, it's all about, look, I'm right. And because I'm right, you're wrong.

And I don't even have to think about it, essentially. You get this stuff all the time. It's like, I just saw

Steven interacting with someone who claims to be a philosopher, interacting with someone, and they basically said,

I'm against Christian nationalism because I am for a Christian nation.

And a Christian nation is, of course, a secular democracy with freedom and LGBT rights and all that kind of stuff.

And it's like, it's always like that. It's always like that. It's like, there's just an assumption.

I don't have to actually think so much about what I believe. It's just a point of doctrine.

Secular democracy is Christian. Why? Well, it's just, that's what I learned in Sunday school.

Voting, it's just totally Christian. Universal suffrage, totally Christian. Why? Well, because that's what

I learned from Ms. Hoover in Sunday school. And people just say these things.

And if you get some wackadoodle out there that says, oh yeah, women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I mean, I don't believe in women's suffrage. You'll get a litany of people that call him a heretic, that call him an unbeliever, that say that proves that he does not have

Christ. And if you ask them why, what in the Bible would lead you to think that that would be not only an element of faith, but a test of true faith?

If you don't believe in women's suffrage, you must be an unbeliever. Where does that come from? And it doesn't come from anywhere.

It's just a point of doctrine. It's dogma that you must believe. Where did we get this dogma? I would submit to you that we got this dogma in elementary school, where we were indoctrinated to believe certain things were good and they needed no defense and they just were there.

And this is how you get Owen being so uber concerned that he can't really understand the connection of Christian nationalism and Christianity in the

Bible, but he believes in women's suffrage. He believes in it. He believes in secular democracy.

He believes in it. It's like, right, but don't you see, like, where's the connection there?

It's just accepted. It's a point of doctrine. It's a point of doctrine. And so this is the thing.

It's like the people that think, oh, you know, we should expect to lose down here.

You should just suffer in silence. You know, things like that. They don't act like it.

They don't apply that to their own beliefs. They don't. They don't. They defend their dogma aggressively.

And I'm not saying they shouldn't. They shouldn't defend their dogma, right? But they should be ready to defend it the right way.

They should be ready to be able to actually think that through in a consistent way, right?

In a consistent way. And it's just so interesting to me. The last video I did, lots of people really liked that video where I responded to that progressive

Christian who had some concerns about whether or not he'd be stoned to death in a Christian nationalist empire.

And it's just so interesting to me that so many of these arguments that Stephen puts forward here betrays a very similar attitude to what that guy betrayed in his video, where it's like Christian nationalism, all the things that you find so objectionable about Christian nationalism, they're really not that dissimilar to what we've got today, with the exception of we have a fake religion, a false religion today, and Christianity would be a true religion.

But for some reason, it's only scary. It's only something that you need to really vociferously, emphatically, stressfully oppose if it's a

Christian version of it. So our situation now really should not be opposed. In fact, we should expect to lose down here.

We should suffer in silence. That's the true high calling of a Christian, to suffer when it's a secular government, doing secular evil things for Satan.

But if it's a Christian government, that's how you really know you need to fight against it.

The suffering no longer applies. You fight it with all your might, and now you're really scared of, you're like, that's interesting to me.

That's interesting to me. A government that seeks to honor Christ is the most scary thing imaginable to some of these people.

And a government that serves Satan is really no big deal. They can submit to that.

They can see how they could disagree with the system, but still submit to that government.

That is something that maybe they don't like it, but they don't really protest it all that much.

But you can bet if a government said, we're gonna seek to honor Christ in everything, you would get people out of bed so fast, so aggressive.

It's just, the fear for these people is palpable. It's palpable. I think a lot of you guys really need to wrestle with that.

I asked that one guy in the video yesterday, I said, you need to answer this for yourself. Why are some of these things so scary if the government was seeking to honor

Christ, and yet when the government seeks to honor Baal, or Satan, or some other demon, then you're not that concerned with it.

That's a question that you really need to consider and answer for yourself, because in my opinion, and from my view, that is not a good sign.

And I'm being generous there. That is not a good sign. If a

Christian government to you automatically jumps to the most worst kind of authoritarianism you can imagine,

I'm telling you that is not a good sign for the state of your soul.

It isn't. And so that's something that we need to consider.

But in any case, let me go for now. Yeah, I recommend that you follow

Stephen Wolf. He's been doing a really interesting tweet series, and he's interacting with people, and he's very good at pointing things out like this that are just, yeah, anyway.