The Failing of the West

All right, let's pray we'll get started Lord Jesus again as we open up your word. We ask you to open our hearts and our minds send your spirit so that we might properly understand what you have revealed.

So that we may know what your standard is trust in your mercy because of how far far we've fallen short. But also through faith bearing fruit and keeping with repentance strive to do the good works that you've called us to do.

We ask in Jesus name. Amen. All right, we've been working our way through the book of Exodus and we are almost done with Exodus chapter 22 and Again, a big reminder. This whole section is super heavy law.

We're looking at the civil law portion of the Mosaic Covenant. A lot of these commandments are specifically dealing with civil law issues. And you can see then how the ten commandments Hook in to how the civil government worked in Israel.

Christians, Politics, and the Pastor’s Vocation

So Exodus chapter 22 verse 28. Hope you're sitting down if you're not Brace yourself. Here's the command. You shall not revile God or curse a ruler of your people. Like America's favorite pastime after baseball, you know is tearing down.

Politicians.

Marilyn you go right ahead. I Get I I've been known to post a Bible verse or two. And if you follow me on social media Then you will know that the pirate really is in control of my social media not the pastor so I do have a tendency to Send out messages specifically designed to say the opposite of what popular culture is saying.

But one of the things I have noticed going back to the election cycle 20 you know that the whole last presidential election it was awful and Because I have like 15 ,000 followers on Facebook I get to see people's Facebook posts from like both sides of the spectrum and Was it was it the was it Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet a pox on both your houses?

Yeah, cuz it's really fascinating you read right-wing social media and Wow, it's vitriolic you read left-wing social media and wow it's vitriolic and the funny thing is is that as a pastor I have to pastor.

Anybody regardless of what their voter registration says? So it's like I find myself in some of the most awkward situations. And so, you know, I'll give you an example that you know. So with our Aletheia outreach, you know, we have people that were serving in different parts of the world some of our Aussies are Socialists and They are and they they make no Apologies for it.

They think that that's just the moral thing to do. That's what they are. And when they talked to me when I was in Australia last year, they just assumed I'm right on board with him. And I'm sitting there going don't say anything.

Bite your tongue, you know thinking I need to learn a lesson from my Norwegians. You know, so I ended up asking a lot of questions a lot of questions, you know. And and what and so what's very fascinating is just so when we travel and we meet with Aletheians that are outside of the country I mean over and again they sit there and go why do all of you Americans have guns?

It just seems so ridiculous, you know, and and you know, why do you not pay for everyone's health care? We do that and and you know, it's like I don't want to talk about. You know, but you know, it's very fascinating so, you know, so the idea then is as a pastor I have to I.

It's almost like being a referee in football. You know, I my job is to like blow the whistle when people aren't playing nice so, you know, and it's not that I don't vote it's just that I.

I.

Rarely will you see me express my political views but the thing that cured me of politics was being the treasurer for the Republican Central Committee in California for the 44th and 45th Congressional districts in Southern California.

I was the treasurer for the Republican Central Committee did that for you know, almost four years and Seeing where all the money was going and what they were doing that just cured me right up because I got to the point where I couldn't maintain a conscience as a Christian and Participate in that in any sense.

So and I'll just say that Politics is there's a lot of temptations to corruption. So it just cured me right up. That's all I got to say. So used to be a time I was very politically active and now.

I'm.

Religiously active. I I'm doing Kingdom work technically that I guess that counts as politics on some level. But yeah I didn't realize I didn't have to do that. Okay to show up and vote.

Okay. All right.

So you can vote without registering for a got it, okay. All right, so. You know one of these days I think I'm just gonna say, you know same claim some really weird exotic fringe. Political group is my home, you know and see what it does.

But anyway.

Yeah.

Are we supposed to as a as a church body refrain from Endorsements and or.

Yes.

Yes. Here's the thing a church can do whatever it wants it can engage in political speech it can endorse candidates. But it may not be able to do all of that without losing tax-exempt status. For the privilege of not having to pay taxes on the donations the paltry donations that we get in our congregation.

We've traded that for Let's just say lessened political speech. When it comes to things like that, I don't. I personally do not think that churches should be endorsing candidates Church, my job as a pastor is to preach the word and to pray for the religious leaders who are an authority over us.

I don't think I've said it quite this way but being a pastor is a really strange job and the reason why it's a strange job is because I literally have no power. It's and I'm not talking about like Church Council.

The here's what my job is to do. Are you ready preach the word? Pray. Give you guys the Lord's Supper baptize. Rinse wash repeat and God the Holy Spirit. It's his job. To convict you of sin and unbelief and it's through the word then.

That your political opinions are going to be formed and you're gonna note the political opinions and political ideas and thoughts. Always will come up, you know at the time. So, I don't know who's running for president of the United States, you know a couple years from now I have no clue, you know, maybe Trump will run again.

I don't know and. But my job is not to sell you vote for that guy or register with this party. Because the one thing I've watched over my lifetime is is that parties drift their platforms change you know, it might literally get to the point where ten years from now I would vote for a person who 20 years ago would have been unthinkable just because of what their party platform is.

But that things change in these in this so the idea then is is that my job is not to tell you who to vote. My job is to tell you what God's Word says what God's law isn't what God's standard is and. Then you look at the candidates and sit there and go this person gets it and if they're elected they would govern according Properly to a right understanding of what their job is as opposed to this person wouldn't and so, you know.

That's kind of how you have to boil it down. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I appreciate what you do.

Well, thank you.

Ultimately, I just have a big mouth, you know.

I didn't say that.

I was putting the best construction on what you were saying.

What does God say about the pastors who do go out and stump the candidates, and do?

Government, Romans 13, and Prayer for Rulers

Yeah, it doesn't prohibit it, but the thing is, is that it just really seems like a wrong vocation, because again, we come back down to what scripture reveals, that God has created two institutions, and they have different charters.

So the government's charter we see in Romans 13, the purpose of the government is to punish the evildoer, and so we are to then pray for all of our political leaders. And my job is not to get on social media and tear down that person from the other party, or anything like that.

And the one thing I've noticed is that every politician out there, they're all screwed up. Even the best of them, they clearly are people where it's a mixed bag. I miss Reagan, because he at least had a visible compass, you can tell how his decisions were being made.

One of the things I loathe about politicians from both parties today is I'm not sure what they believe, which makes it difficult for me. But I think that's the way things are operating right now, where politicians kind of want to hold their values close to their chest, because they might feel like they need to make a decision or a compromise.

And that's the other thing, the United States government operates at its best when people are compromising. Yeah, and it's at its worst when everyone's rigid and no one's talking to each other. So the whole system is kind of funky, if you ask me.

So my job is to pray for, and so it was fascinating. So when I was installed, I prayed for Obama by name. Now I pray for Trump by name. I don't know who I'm gonna be praying for in two years, or four years, or six years, you see?

But the reality is, is regardless who's in power, who's in authority, scripture actually explicitly commands me to pray for them. Let's take a look at some of these texts and you'll kind of get it. So the idea then is we don't curse a ruler or your people, which would then kind of make it so that Christians, we must set a good example regarding civil discourse when it comes to political discussions and debates.

So 1 Timothy 2, verse one. "'First of all, then, I urge that supplications, "'prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings "'be made for all people, for kings, "'and all who are in high positions, "'that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, "'godly and dignified in every way.

"'This is good, and it is pleasing "'in the sight of God our Savior, "'who desires all people to be saved "'and come to the knowledge of the truth.'". Fascinating text. So remember the context that this is written.

1 Timothy and 2 Timothy are prison letters. Paul's writing these from a Roman prison, which is not known for their great hygienic facilities. He's writing this from a prison. He's going to be going to his death for confessing Christ shortly after penning 2 Timothy.

And he is saying to pray. Notice there's not one ounce of acrimony or political snide comments directed at the Caesar or the Emperor or any of these tin penny corrupt magistrates or the corrupt tax system or anything like this.

Instead, doesn't matter how wicked your government is, because I'm pretty sure Rome was about as bad as it gets. Doesn't matter how corrupt they are. You are to pray for them, and this is pleasing in the sight of God.

What? You want me to what?

Yeah.

There are some years this is easier than others. There are some presidents this is way easier for than others. But it doesn't matter who's in office. This is what Christ would have us do. And this is also for the sake of the gospel, because by God answering these prayers, leading a peaceful, quiet life, you're going to note the implication is that it gives a free reign to the preaching of the gospel.

And God desires it all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. There's one God. There's one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, and who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I'm telling the truth. I'm not lying. A teacher of the Gentiles and the faith and of the truth. Isn't it fascinating how Paul somehow can hook everything back to the gospel?

You know the reason why we pray for rulers and leaders? Because Jesus died for us. That's like, okay, all right. So rather than taking to the inner webs and tearing down our leaders, we pray for them.

And then our discourse should be civil when it comes to ideas. And so I find that that's kind of the thing that's missing today in today's political discourse. Everything is about trying to uncover dirt in somebody's life.

It's like, look, I found dirt. I'm gonna throw this out onto the airwaves. And that means that guy's an evil, terrible, whatever. Or that woman is a, you get the idea, right? They're breaking the eighth commandment, left and right.

That seems to be the entire thing of political discourse right now. When was the last time we as a nation had a really good, honest debate about tax policy? How our money is being spent? How the budget should be chopped up properly?

1776.

It's been a while, it's been a while, 1776, yeah. So as the Brits say, so you guys, didn't like taxation without representation. How do you like it now that you have it? Well, we have representation. Oh, and a lot of taxation too.

So, I mean, when was the last time we actually had a legitimate, the nation was looking at a particular piece of legislation and it can go one way or another and there's thought and discourse and discussion around the implications of this decision or that decision.

We didn't even have that when the House and Senate voted on Obamacare. I remember the Senator from, or not Senator, but what was that Congresswoman's name? She basically said, well, we have to approve it so we can find out what's inside the bill.

Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi. It's like, that's not how this is done, you know?

The Republicans just did the same thing.

Yeah, exactly, the Republicans do it too. So it's almost as if all of this nonsense that we're fighting about, which is nothing, it's causing us to miss the important dialogue. As Christians, where should our tax dollars be going?

For a society that recognizes that the job of the government is actually to punish evildoers, how then should our budgets, we don't have these conversations anymore. The question is, Russia, did they do this or not do that?

And the FBI this and the FBI, all this is, I had a boss of mine that I didn't particularly like, but he had a pretty interesting saying. He says, you're sitting there stepping on ants while elephants are walking by.

I don't know where that came from, but it's like, oh, makes a lot of sense. You're kind of focused in on this nonsense over here and those ginormous elephants just walking by you. But that's, it's like almost as if everything is designed to keep us distracted so that we don't actually put any thought into what's going on.

But as Christians, we should be engaged in the actual things that matter regarding our own republic. And it doesn't matter to me whether or not Trump paid this person that or all this other nonsense, because all this stuff is just, all these charges end up coming up bogus anyway.

And everybody spends all of this time, all of this emotional energy and all of this,.

On nothing.

Nobody goes to jail. I think a legitimate conversation that this country needs to have right now is what is causing so many young men to want to go into these schools and gun down their classmates. I can tell you this, guns don't motivate people to do that.

There's something else going wrong in this society. Something way wrong going on in this society. One of the things I thought fascinating is, is that the Texas shooting and then the one in Florida not too long ago, both those kids were bullied terribly.

What are we doing to our youth? Why are we not protecting our youth and making it so that their education is something that helps them rather than destroys them? What is going on in our society that these kids are snapping and becoming mass murderers?

What is going on with kids who are doing the bullying and they are the problem in a way.

Yeah.

They are the reason.

But see, the thing is, the bullying that we see going on in the schools, that's going on in spades in social media. Because I'm a public figure on the internet, I receive the same vomitous garbage directed at me.

Now, I'm almost 50, so I don't care. Some 18-year-old wants to vomit on me and bully me. It's like, that's nice, that's so cute. It's like your kid brother, you just hold him by his head while they're swinging.

You know, nothing ever lands. But for other people, you know, younger and less mature, that's the kind of stuff that cuts and tears down. But we're not having that conversation. We're not having that conversation.

What are we talking about? So, yeah.

I think they, in my view, the problem we're having with these kids that are going in and shooting is recognition. They're not being recognized in school. They're kind of an outsider. They want recognition.

They can go in and they can perform this and it hits the news and their name goes all over the place.

Yeah.

You know, what's fascinating is that our government made a conscious decision to remove God from the schools. It looks to me like the devil came into the vacuum.

Early 90s, they made schools gun-free zones and since 1950, 98 of school gun mass shootings have taken place inside of gun-free zones.

And they know nobody's gonna be there to stop them.

Yeah. Exactly.

So, there's some real problems in our republic that we need to address. But I think we are as distracted as they come. It's like tabloid politics has taken over. And I don't see how you can get the work of this nation accomplished with tabloid politics.

I just don't see it. You were gonna say something, Mike?

I was just gonna say, it's because the majority of people.

That do the thinking for them.

Instead of doing it themselves.

Yeah.

And that's the other thing. We had better start thinking for ourselves and stop letting the networks think for us. And I don't care if the network that you're watching claims to be as conservative as they get.

Ultimately, you have to own these arguments. You have to own your understanding of these things. You think of it this way. We understand this within Christianity, all right? Is anybody born a Christian?

Nobody.

There are no grandkids in the kingdom of God. There are only kids. And if somebody doesn't own their faith, are they a Christian? No, we get this. So Marilyn, you don't get to believe for Mark. You can't.

I know you want to, but you can't. And Mark, you can't believe for your wife. And Marilyn, you can't believe for Christina. You just can't do it. And I can't believe for you. Each and every one of us is an individual citizen within the kingdom of God, and collectively, we are a congregation.

But the reality of the situation is just that my big critique of what's going on in this nation, there are kids who are given the privilege to vote who have no clue what it means to actually be an American, and they went to school in America.

They weren't taught the same way I was taught the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and taught about the Revolutionary War and what sparked it and what are the primary value systems in political theory that make us different than all of the other nations on the planet.

When I was growing up, there was a real sense in which our republic was a shining light. I loved the way Reagan would twist the scriptures where he would make the United States, the city shining on the hill, right?

He was a little slippery that way. But the idea was, if you think of it, if you've seen the movie Gladiator, you know, you got Maximus, he would talk about, he talked about the Roman Empire as, you know, as Rome is the light.

I've seen the other nations of the world in their darkness. And you think of it, as screwed up as this country is, do some traveling. Leave this area and travel to a third world nation. We wear our wealth on our properties.

Those people wear their poverty on their property. Where we have well manicured, wonderful buildings with new roofs and paved roads and all this kind, you might complain about the potholes in the spring, but travel to a third world nation, they would die to trade places with you because you have running water, you have paved roads, and they don't have any of that.

They have to walk four miles to the closest freshwater spring where the water isn't polluted. And they have to carry their water back to where they live. So as messed up as our system is, it's still one of the best systems that humans have put together.

And the whole concept behind what makes this country great is a complete distrust of the government, which is kind of fascinating if you think about it. You read de Tocqueville. Have you read it, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America?

The brilliance of the American system is it's taken all the power and so widely diffused it, it's impossible for one human being to change anything on their own. They have to build consensus. And they got to get a whole bunch of buy-in from the president to the Congress, all the way down to governors and even postal workers.

So in order to actually steer this ship of ours, it would take somebody coming up and say, I have a great idea. As a nation, let's do this. And if we come together and we do this thing, then these will be the benefits.

And people want to get behind that. But right now, we're not talking about any grand vision or ideas or solutions. We're talking about how evil and wicked that guy is or that woman is or how stupid that person is.

And it's over and over and over again, no real political discourse. And you want to get blocked by somebody on social media, just say something that makes sense.

The danger we face, however, is that in the post-modernism of our society, where there is no truth, is also leading us into a post-constitutional era.

Yes.

The Constitution represents some foundational guidelines. And if you don't have truth, you're going to ignore those foundational guidelines.

Okay.

This is not Bible study at this point. This is political philosophy. Let's talk about this for a second.

Okay.

Post-modernity, I know. All right. It's something I've studied. Post-modernity is anti-institutional at its core. Go back to the 20th century, Germany between World War I and World War II. The philosophy that overran Germany and Italy in that era was the philosophical precursor to post-modernity.

It's not exactly post-modernity. It was a little bit less mature than post-modernity is now. But the basic theory behind it is that there is no such thing as an actual objective truth. And they get the idea from Hegel.

Have you ever heard of the Hegelian dialectic? There will be a quiz on this next week, so you have to take notes. So the way the Hegelian dialectic works, Hegel was a philosopher in Germany, and he worked with this idea.

He was part of this irrational philosophy that comes out of Rousseau and Kant. And his basic idea had to do with truth theory, at least at this portion of his work, and that he saw that where there was dualities, that that somehow was a bad thing.

And so when he would see in political discourse or in a society where there were dualities of good and evil, this party versus that party, and things like that, his theory was, is that truth really never ever went beyond the boundaries of a group.

So we as a nation, as the United States, we have a truth that we collectively buy into, and our truth is our truth. Whatever's going on in Germany, who cares? I mean, we're Americans, right? And so whatever is truth for us, it's actually synthetic.

It's not objective. And the reason we are here at this point where the current duality is between Republicans and Democrats the way they are, is because of a bunch of other dualities that eventually synthesized.

So the way it works is that you have a thesis, and whenever there is a thesis put forward, organically an antithesis will arise, and they will stay in constant struggle until at one point they synthesize.

They come together, the duality ceases to exist, and at which point a new thesis arises, and then immediately a new antithesis comes. And so the Hegelian dialectic then would, in their way of thinking, this is behind Marxist thought, by the way.

All of the Marxists and socialists of the 20th century, this is their primary view on truth. So there's no objective truth. This morphs then when you get into Nietzsche's nihilistic concepts, and then meld it with Heidegger's concepts.

This morphs into this powerful cocktail where basically there's nothing meaningful in the world. There is no such thing as an objective truth. So then the question is, is where do I as an individual find meaning for my existence in this life if there's no such thing as an objective truth?

What I'm experiencing is just where our society has come to. The natural then outcropping of that is is that I can only find my meaning within a group. This is where fascism comes from. But as part of this then, because they do not believe in anything that anything actually truly being an objective truth, institutions are built off the idea as a primary assumption that there is objective truth.

The church is built off of that, and even the government. Because the government says killing somebody is murder, and we execute murderers. Somebody who buys into this worldview would see a government that behaves in that way, and somehow towing the line to an invisible objective truth is actually a threat to the group.

And so they attack institutions. The government as an institution has to be torn down in post-modernity. The church as an institution has to be torn down in post-modernity. Anybody who believes in an objective truth is an actual threat.

Because where there is no objective truth, then we are all just to be free to be whatever we are within our group.

You see it?

This is why transgenderism is like all the rage right now. And all these 52 new genders that we've all discovered. Yeah, because people are just living out their truth.

What you just said, Pastor, really confused me and probably half the other people, okay? In terms, is that cut to the, cut to the chase on it, there it is that we have, and that conscience is guided by the input that's been put into us from the previous learning, okay?

And then we have, so from maybe on up, we have learned what right is wrong. I mean, what is the difference between right and wrong, okay? But it has gotten to the point, Pastor, that what is, we think is right, other people are saying is wrong, and vice versa, okay?

And there's a Bible passage, and it's been floated around Facebook here a little bit. It's highlighted, and I think Peter said something about it or whatever in there, and I can't find it because I've just buried myself.

I was still listening to you, but I was trying to find it here, but I couldn't. That it is prophesied that we're gonna get to the point where what is right is gonna be deemed wrong as what is wrong is gonna be deemed right.

Indeed.

And maybe it's the beginning of the end or whatever, but that's another story. But saying that groups of people follow other groups of people, that's the sheep scenario. That's why we are considered, the Bible had it right.

We are the sheep. We'll follow somebody that we think is right off a cliff. However, and then you can go back to following Fox News or CNN or whoever else is preaching this stuff to you. You know, we gotta be individuals, otherwise we will be led off that cliff, okay?

We can't be following the school playground groups all the time because just to keep us from being bullied. You know, some of these people that are being bullied probably ask for it because they're kind of going off in their own way, all right?

And they're trying to be individuals, no fault of their own. And then you get back to persecution of Christians. What's that? That's being bullied by people who don't believe in Christianity, okay? I'm confused.

Now, if you can unravel everything you said and put it in the sentence, so I can understand it, but that might take another hour, you know? And I respect that.

Postmodernism, Objective Truth, and the Attack on Institutions

Yeah, so the basic idea then is that this is a worldview that believes there's no such thing as an absolute truth, although that's a self-defeating proposition. And you who believe in absolute truth, you're an actual threat to society in their eyes.

And institutions therefore must be torn down. So if you think of it this way, is that for the last, what, 20 years, there has been an outright overt movement within the homosexual community, and where have they focused their attention?

Two places, church and the state. And there are a whole group of churches that have totally capitulated, totally. And there's a whole group of politicians that have totally capitulated. Now, I want you to think about this.

So that's a bandwagon that they jumped on.

Yeah, but that's actually just part of the agenda. They keep winning, by the way, because now we're to the point where you, their goal is to make it so that there's no law in place, but if you deny that there are 56 genders, you're gonna lose your job.

And I feel bullied.

They feel like they can't because they'll be.

Right, now, I want you to think about this for a second. Do any of you just, your first gut reaction when you hear somebody say there's 56 genders, and that we can't use pronouns like he and she, we have to start using za and me and bleh and bleh, you know, whatever, right?

How many of you just think your initial reaction, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Good, get it out of your system because that's the dumbest thing you've ever heard in your life.

But I want you to think about this for a second. That dumb wants to run this government. And as soon as they get power, what are they going to do to you?

Take your guns and kill us.

Okay, because we're talking about insane people at this point. And it's totally irrational. It's wickedly emotive, extremely aggressive. And what you think right now is just stupid. You're not gonna think it's stupid when they've rounded you up and put you in a concentration camp.

Because it's this kind of stupid that Germany was engaging in before Hitler took power. It matters that God made us male and female. And as Christians and people who actually have a sound mind, we have to literally say, no, we will not bend the knee to your stupid 56 gender theory.

You people are out of your minds and we will not let you take power. Because when they take power, this place becomes a totalitarian state. That's what's at stake. You see, all of these little things along the way, they keep winning all of these little things.

Bundle them all together and tell me if this country makes more sense today than it did 20 years ago.

It's a constant erosion.

Uh-huh.

It's the same things that were 20 years ago. You know, the affect is not there no longer on any of this.

Yeah.

And the genders, there are only two. The races, there is only one. And whoever tells me otherwise, I'll get in front of you and I'll tell you my opinion of that.

I'll tell you this.

Look at the church of entertainment within America. You look at your movies and television shows. You know, these are the things that people are being raised up on. I grew up in the 90s. And the 90s was really bad.

When it came to the type of movies that were coming out in regards to the messages.

Who were you told to follow?

Are you told to follow your heart? Well, excuse me, my heart is a sinful pile of junk. And basically, following that thing will only send you down the path to hell itself. That's what a lot of these people that are growing up, that we deem the social justice warriors, who are the up-and-coming people who are around my age, who have decided to completely buy that ideology whole hog and decided to tear down every institution.

Or any sort of form of institution.

That would say otherwise.

Well, that's why you get the, you know, find your truth. What is your heart telling you individually is true for you, which might not be true for somebody else.

Now, coming back to one of the points she made, or the questions we were discussing, and I'll frame it this way then. The question is, as a pastor, should I endorse a candidate? No, but the day is coming when we risk losing our tax-exempt status when the pastor of Kongsvinger says, there are only two genders.

That's not political speech. That's what Scripture says. But the way we're heading to say that publicly, what Scripture says will be deemed political speech because they're politicizing it already now.