Just Say No (like a man) to Win the Culture War - AD on FLF Network

Hello there, this is AD Robles, and you're listening to AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network. Alright, alright, just say no. Just. Say. No. Remember that? That was like a drug, uh, an anti-drug campaign, if I'm not mistaken.

Just say no. You know, honestly, that's good advice, you know, a lot of the time, that's pretty much all you need to do. I mean, it might be difficult sometimes to say no to things, but that's really pretty much all you need to do in order to avoid trouble a lot of the time.

Just say no. If I remember correctly from when I was a kid, a lot of the, uh, just say no campaign, uh, stuff was very corny, so maybe the execution was poor, but the advice is good. Just say no. It reminds me of, uh, of a scene from a movie called American Psycho.

Saying No as a Way to Resist Cultural Pressure

The topic today is, is just a very simple way to, uh, win the culture war, right? And a lot of people get uppity when I talk about the culture war. A lot of people will say, well, we should just talk about the gospel, and, and, you know, no culture war.

We're not supposed to be in a culture war, and, you know, obviously we should talk about the gospel, of course, um, but there is, there is, there is trouble afoot in Western civilization. There is trouble afoot, and demands are being placed upon people, everyday people like you and me, that have a direct relationship to our requirements and our duties before God.

You know, we're supposed to be fearing God and keeping his commandments, and there are things afoot in Western civilization that are trying to make it difficult, if not illegal, to fear God and keep his commandments in certain areas.

Now, things aren't as bad as they could be, let's just face it, you know what I mean? It's not as bad as it could be, but they're quickly approaching that time where we get, we're gonna have to make some decisions here.

And so, even if you think that a Christian shouldn't be purposely engaging in the culture war, the culture war is going to come to you. There's just no question about it. You are going to be placed in a situation at some point in the future where you need to decide who you're gonna follow, who you're gonna fear.

And so, you know, don't get so uppity when I talk about the culture war, because just because you're not, look, you might not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is definitely interested in you.

And so we need to make some decisions here, and just say no is a very simple thing that you can do with you and your family that will help you win the culture war. Let me tell you what I mean. Before we do, I wanna talk about two movies, right?

Well, two scenes from movies I guess you could say. First one's from American Psycho. Now, I do not recommend this film. This is a depraved film. I watched it before I was a Christian. And there's a scene where his secretary is talking about his day's appointments.

And this is just, I like this scene. This is a good scene. So, you know, let's play it here. Spencer wants to meet for drinks at Flutie's. You're 17. When? After six. Negative. Cancel it. And what should I say?

Just say no. Just say no? Just say no. You see, that's all you need. You don't have to come up with some kind of excuse. His secretary was thinking that he needed to have some kind of legitimate sounding excuse in order to cancel drinks with this guy, whoever it was.

And he just said no. Just say no. That's it. You don't need any reasons. You don't need to have nuance. You don't have to have some kind of excuse. Just say no. That's good advice, man. That's good advice.

When, you know, let's just say very far-fetched. I know this is a far-fetched example, but let's just say you live in a state that's insisting that you send your kids to some kind of sexuality training where they're going to learn about the legitimacy of all kinds of depraved sexual acts and things like that.

And they say, you have to do it. You have to send your kids there. This is what you do. You just say no. And that's it. You don't need to explain it. If you'd like to explain it, you certainly can. But fundamentally, foundationally, all you need to do to win that battle is to just say no.

Don't consent. You don't need to change. Listen, we ought to be concerned with making sure that we're electing good legislators, we're electing good judges and appointing good judges and things like that.

That's all good, but that's all very big and complicated. And you might, you win some, you lose some. But one thing they can never take from you is your ability to just not consent. That's something they can't take from you.

It's very simple. It's easy to control. Just say no. Now there's another movie that I absolutely recommend. In my opinion, I'm not a movie buff. I'm not adept at evaluating artistic merits of art. But in my opinion, one of the best movies ever made was A Bronx Tale.

A Bronx Tale. Have you ever seen A Bronx Tale? I believe it came out in 1993. And it's a mob movie, but it's a different kind of mob movie. It's not the kind of mob movie that makes the mobsters the heroes.

Because there's some mob movies like that where you end up siding with the mobsters and it's all about the activities of the mob. This one's sort of different. It's actually about a kid and what happens in the movie, and there's going to be spoilers here, but not totally.

What happens in the movie, it starts off, it's about a little kid, 10-year-old, 11-year-old, something like that. And he witnesses a mob altercation and someone dies. And the cops come to his door because they know that he witnessed it.

The cops know that this kid witnessed what happened. And they start asking him questions about what happened, who killed who, that kind of thing. And the kid keeps his mouth shut. And the reason he keeps his mouth shut is because in these kind of neighborhoods, you understand that, you know, you keep your mouth shut.

You don't talk to the police. That's something that's understood in this neighborhood. Anyway, so the mob boss appreciates that. He appreciates the fact that this kid essentially kept his secret. The guy who ended up, the guy who did the murder is very appreciative of that.

And so what he does is he offers his father, the kid's father, a job. And it's not like, you know, he doesn't want to be a mobster or anything like that. It's just, you know, the kid's father drives a bus.

And so what he wants him to do is take numbers from one place to the other, just, you know, as a kind of a chauffeur. And he doesn't really need it. It's just kind of a show of gratitude, essentially.

And the father, what's interesting about this father is that his father is a standup guy. He's a good guy. He doesn't want to disrespect the mobsters in his neighborhood, right? But he's a good guy. He doesn't want to get involved either.

And so when the guys offer him the job, all he does is he says this, he says, I can't do it. It's not for me. No disrespect. I can't do it. It's not for me. And I looked for the clip on that. I couldn't find it.

But he says, I can't do it. It's not for me. And that's it. That's all he does. And he turns down this guy. Now later on, this mobster kind of takes his takes this father's son under his wing. And he's the son starts getting involved in some of the activities of the bar.

He doesn't become a mobster, but he kind of gets involved with some of what they're up to and stuff like that. And the father is very upset, because he finds the kid's tip jar. So he's the kids, you know, kind of running drinks, you know, at crap games and stuff like that.

And so the father gets really upset. And he, he wants to return the money. And here's what happens after he leaves the bar, he basically tells this mobster, look, no disrespect, but stay away from my son.

It's this movie is great. It's like a real juxtaposition of a real, you know, sort of masculine father, and a guy who's kind of he's, he's got masculine traits, but he's, he's, he's, he's unhinged. He's not grounded in anything that the mobster guy he's, he wants to be feared, and he has no rules, you know, that kind of thing.

He's basically masculinity unrestrained versus the father who's masculinity restrained. It's a really good movie. Anyway, here's what he tells his son after he leaves the bar after, after the mobster essentially, essentially threatens this guy.

But he stands up to him. He stands up to this mobster, because he cares about his son's life.

I said you stay away from him. Did you hear what I said? You stay away from him.

He said he was right. The working man is a, he's a sucker, dad. He's a sucker.

He's wrong. It don't take much strength to pull a trigger, but try and get up every morning, day after day and work for a living. Let's see him try that. Then we'll see who's the real tough guy. The working man is the tough guy.

Your father's the tough guy.

But everybody loves him. Just like everybody loves you on the bus. It's the same thing.

No, it's not the same. People don't love him. They fear him. There's a difference.

When you get older. Sorry. So I want you to see what happens here. He, he's, he's, he, he explained to his son why he can't work for this guy. He can't be associated with this guy. And he's about to pass the bar, right?

And this guy, the father, you know, he, he kind of disrespected the mob boss. And, you know, I don't know if you know anything about mafia movies, but something happens when you disrespect the mob boss.

Look what happens here though. There's the mob boss. Take care of him. His, his, his, his, his right-hand guy says, you want me to take care of him? You know, you know what that means, right? You know what time it is, but the mob boss says, no, no, leave him alone.

Why does he do that? Why does he do that? Because the mob boss, as much as he's masculinity sort of unrestrained, he respects seeing a man who's just willing to say no. He didn't, the father didn't threaten Sonny.

He didn't, Sonny's the mob boss. He didn't threaten him. He didn't, he didn't try to, to change his ways. He didn't try to get him to see the light, the error of his mob ways. None of that, none of the complicated stuff.

All he did was say, no, I don't consent. You can't have my son. It's my son. There's a great scene where in the bar right before this, I couldn't play it because it was cursing. And I don't want to curse on the fight, laugh, feast network.

You know what I mean? Where he says, he says the mob boss says to the father, I treat that boy. Like he's my own son. And the father says, he's not your son. He's my son. And, and, and, and this makes the mob boss very upset.

And he threatens him at that point, but the father doesn't back down. He says, no, this is my son. You can't have him. No, he just says, no, that's it. He just doesn't consent. And this guy respects that where ordinarily he would not accept that kind of disrespect from anybody.

He would have killed him. He would have at least beat him up. But in this case, he respects, he respects just saying, no, see, all you got to do is just say, no, that's how you win the culture war. That's how you don't let them have your kids.

You just don't, you don't consent. And, you know, sometimes it might take a drastic situation. Like, like, like, let's just say they made a law in, oh, I don't know. Let's pick a random state, California.

Let's say they made a law that said, look, your kids are going to be trained in LGBT dogma. And that's all there is to it. And if you don't let them be trained in LGBT dogma, you're going to go to jail.

And they're going to learn it anyway. We're going to take your kids, we're going to take them into the foster program, and they're going to be placed with a family that will allow them to go get trained in LGBT dogma.

Let's just say that, I know that's, I know that's very far-fetched. Let's just say that happened. You have to say, no, just say, no, I can't do it. It's not for me. And, you know, it might come down to some drastic efforts.

You might need to get out of there. It's okay to flee. It's okay to retreat. Go to, go to, go to, go to a state where there's, there's more sanity. Things might happen, man. Things might happen. And we need to be prepared for that.

We need to decide what we're going to do in these situations. And we've been talking about movies here, right? Again, I highly recommend A Bronx Tale. You should definitely check it out. There's a lot more going on that movie than, than I've let on.

But definitely one of the main themes is the difference between this Sonny guy, the masculinity that he has, and the masculinity of the father. One should be emulated, the other should not. But this is a biblical principle.

Biblical Commands to Refuse Evil and Obey God

This is from Exodus chapter 23, verse two. These are the words of God. It says, thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to rest judgment.

What that means is, don't go along with the crowd. That's all it means. If the crowd is doing evil, don't go along with them just because there's a lot of them. You know what I mean? That's the temptation, right?

If everyone's doing evil, the temptation is, well, I guess it can't be that evil, right? So we need to decide beforehand, before we are faced with this decision. Because when we're in the moment and the mob is forming, that's the worst time to decide what to do.

Because that's when you have all the pressure. That's when you're not going to be thinking straight at that time. The time to decide is now. Who are you going to fear? The crowd or God? The legislature or God?

You see, this is the thing. Essentially, this verse is telling you, just say no. Just don't consent. Just don't join them. Don't follow the crowd in doing evil. It's a very simple concept, very easy to understand, difficult because of our desires to sort of please people.

Many of us are people pleasers, right? I mean, I don't think that most of us would deny that. We want people to like us. We don't want to be the awkward, the weird one, that kind of thing. We want to have buddies and brothers and things like that.

It's tempting. This is why the Bible has this verse. It's tempting to go along with the crowd when they're doing evil. This says, don't do it. This says, don't do it. Just because the whole entire state of California has lost its mind, it's no excuse for you to lose your mind.

Here's another Bible verse. This is from the book of Acts. This is the New Testament, of course. This is the apostles. They face the council, right? They face the council and the council says to them, we gave you orders not to teach in the name of Jesus, and yet here you have done so.

You've disobeyed us. This is the people with all the power, the legislature, so to speak. Not really, but sort of. They said, we told you not to teach in this name. You've taught in this name and you're trying to make us responsible for this man's blood.

And what does Peter say? What do the apostles say? It's very simple. It says, Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men. We must obey God rather than men. We must.

It's necessary. It's required. What is he saying? He's saying, we don't fear you. We fear God. Now, does that mean that they didn't, they weren't worried about that? You mean like they didn't, they didn't fear, feel fear.

So then they, you know, they were able to, no, no, no. They probably felt fear at that moment. They're facing powerful people. Very powerful people that have the authority to throw them in jail. People that have the authority to, I mean, look, they sent Jesus to the cross.

Why couldn't they do the same with Peter? So they probably felt the emotion of fear, but ultimately what they're saying is we don't, we don't fear you so much that we're going to listen to you over God.

We fear God, not you. This is a teaching they got probably directly from Jesus, right? Because Jesus taught this exact thing. He says, fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him, which is able to destroy both soul and body.

This is saying, look, look, the council, the Jewish council, they can kill you. No question about it. They can kill you, but that's nothing compared to the, the one who can destroy your body, but also your soul eternally.

That's God. And so here's the decision we all have to make. What is the right thing to do before God? And, and what, who are we going to fear? Are we going to fear the United States government? Are we going to fear the Twitter mob?

They're going to slander you. They're going to lie about you. They're going to, they're going to call you all kinds of mean names. Oh, your class. Someone called me classless the other day. You're going to hurt my feelings, man.

Classless. They're going to call you names. They're going to try to ruin your life. They're going to try to destroy your body. They're going to try to destroy your reputation. They're going to try to destroy you economically.

I've been, I, I've had, I don't think I've had anyone try to destroy my life. At least as I've been a Christian when I was in college, man, I got in a couple fights, you know what I mean? But, um, but people have tried to destroy my, my, my whole world.

You know, my reputation, my economic standing, my, you know, people have done that to me. And I'm not trying to pull myself up as an example because I fail in this area all the time, but here is my foundational sort of belief, right?

I must obey God rather than men. I don't fear you. That can destroy my reputation. I don't fear you. That can destroy my economic prospects. I don't fear you who can destroy my career. That's not to say I don't have anxiety about that, but I really shouldn't because God has always provided for me and he will in the future.

But rather all of those things, you can take all that stuff from me. And I'm striving to fear only the one who can destroy both my soul and body. And so if you want to know how to win the culture war, just say no.

Me and my family aren't going to participate in your insanity. And that's that. And that's that. I'm telling you right now, if all of us members of God's covenant family, right? If all of us members of Christ's body just made this decision and say, we're just not going to go along with it.

As for me and my house, we will follow the Lord. We do not consent. And we just said, no, the culture war could be won very quickly. By the way, this is how it's going to be. This is not an if for me, this is a plan of attack.

Just say no. Don't teach your kids moral insanity. Don't teach your kids perversion. Don't let your kids participate in various things. You don't participate them in yourself. We're talking about banning pornography, which I think is a very good conversation to have, right?

But in the meantime, since you can get porn on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all these places anywhere, and you can get porn anywhere, any kid can download as much porn as they want for free.

And it's very easy to access and all that kind of stuff. But while we're talking about banning that, just you don't consent. You don't participate. Just say no. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless.

Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.