The Mousy Mood

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. I have been traveling and doing a number of projects over the last week, which is why

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I haven't podcasted. I know some of you might be wondering, is he on vacation? Did he get hurt?

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What's going on? No, I'm actually working harder than I have in a long time on a number of things. One I can't talk about.

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It's top secret for now, but you'll hear about it in the next few weeks or months at least. The other one is the 1607

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Project. If this is the first time you're hearing about it, 1607project .com. You can find out more.

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In fact, I'm doing an interview about it tomorrow. I'm just plugging away every day, doing editing and getting the narrative right.

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I'm excited about that. It'll be a good resource, especially for homeschoolers out there looking for American history stuff.

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You don't want 1619, and maybe you don't want the 1776 Commission stuff. This will be a good alternative for both of those things.

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Well, today there are a few things I want to talk about, really more as a catch up. I wanted to talk about things that have taken place over the past week, especially.

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I want to start off. We're going to go from broad to narrow. We're going to start off with Christendom and then narrow it down to the evangelical church in North America.

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We'll start here with this from one week ago, this story from the

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Western Journal. Pope Francis invites a large group of transgenders to eat lunch with him at the Vatican. The article goes on to talk about how this is a change, that Pope Francis is different than previous popes, and that he gives them the

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VIP treatment, this group of, quote unquote, transgender Catholics who will, I guess, come and eat with him regularly.

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Of course, they say very nice things about him. The thing I wanted to point out more than anything else is that those who are wanting to leave the evangelical church for Roman Catholicism because they think on a cultural level it's superior, you need to examine stories like this.

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You need to think through things. You need to think through this. This is from the Vatican in November.

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This was crafted and put out on the 11th, or the 16th, I should say, of November. It is a statement on an interreligious dialogue at the end of the

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Seventh Buddhist Christian Colloquium. If you go and read this, it says, among other things, that as Buddhists and Christians, we see the

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Buddha and Jesus as great healers. The Buddha pointed to greed and Jesus to sin as the cause of suffering. On many levels,

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Jesus and Buddha proposed love and compassion as medicine to drive out the darkness of the human heart in the world.

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Nourished by their respective spiritual teachings, Buddhists and Christians for thousands of years have adopted compassionate ways of living to address the suffering of life.

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Here's the thing about it. This is extremely ecumenical. Perhaps this started more than any other event,

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Vatican II, but this has gone off the rails. This is not something that previous generations of even

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Catholics would recognize in their church. If you want to be a traditional Catholic, and I know there's, of course, many issues that need to be discussed that I think are of primary importance, such as imputed righteousness versus infused righteousness,

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Mariology, papal infallibility, the canon, purgatory. There's a lot of things. I think, though, that much of the appeal to Roman Catholicism is that they're pro -life and they seem more conservative.

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You walk into the building and it's beautiful. I get some of that, to be honest with you. I understand if you go to a church that's a pop evangelical church that's reinventing itself all the time and it's a

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TED Talk, then walking into a church with stained glass and beautiful music is appealing. Realize that this is a hierarchy.

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It's not like independent Protestant churches where it doesn't matter what Joel Osteen does. My church is separate from that.

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This is the Pope. This is the Vatican. At the very top of the organization is some serious rot.

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That's happening. I know a lot of these stories are going to be sounding kind of dismal. I have some encouragement,

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I hope, at the end for you. Just hang with me as we go through some of this. Here's another international story.

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This is the Church of England. There's different Anglican bodies, denominations.

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This is the official Church of England. They've decided that they're going to bless same -sex unions.

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That doesn't mean they're going to marry people who are in same -sex relationships and want to be married.

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It means that they're going to bless same -sex unions. Isn't that convenient? Now, I wonder what they would do for a heterosexual couple living in sin.

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Would they bless that union without a marriage? You can see how this opens a whole can of worms.

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The Anglican Church going down the heretical hole very quickly.

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They're there. They're past there. It's just sad to see this. These are major institutions that have been taken over by evil men.

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That's really all you can say about it. Throughout this whole process, I have a friend who we'll just say is in a denomination that has some compromise, serious compromise.

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It's not Southern Baptist. It's way more compromised than that. They use the same playbook, honestly.

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You're not being compassionate to LGBT people. They will pull out that you should speak in a

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Christian way, which means very humble and prostrate and you're not going to offend.

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It's effeminate, really. It's very effeminate behavior. How do you have unity with those people?

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They claim a lot of the things that are true. They believe in the Trinity and they believe that Jesus Christ came to give his life as an atonement for sin.

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They can cite the 39 articles, let's say, to pick the Anglican example, but yet when it comes to fundamental things that people in antiquity didn't even think they had to work out because it was pretty well worked out in most people's minds.

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Even pagans knew men were men, women were women. They have rejected that because of the pressure coming from the world and it's exposed who they really are.

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I think in that case, you're dealing with apostates. You're dealing with, at the very least, if they're confused, you're dealing with people who are promoting false doctrine.

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Whether that's a situation like confronting Peter, like Paul had to do, or whether it's a situation of having to actually call out real heretical error, you can't side with those people.

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You can't be in communion with those people. They're in sin. That's where we're at with the Anglican Church and the

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Roman Catholic Church. I should say, though, because Protestantism is different than Roman Catholicism, there are other denominations, there are other

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Anglican traditions, people that use the Book of Common Prayer and their heritage goes back to the

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Church of England that are not the Church of England, that are not governed by them. Well, moving on, we're going to get more narrow here.

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I want to talk a little bit about this. The next few things I want to show you have just been kind of accumulating on my phone, but I felt the need to show you because it reinforces that the work we do is not done, that I need to keep doing what

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I'm doing, at least at times. Even if it seems repetitive at times, I'm not doing as much of it, but I need to focus on the woke stuff or the social justice stuff at times.

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The reason is, is we're in this phase of institutionalization. This stuff, the DEI stuff, is ingrained now in even churches.

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It's not the fight that it was in 2020. It's just, unfortunately, on an institutional level, we lost. I think when it comes to the common person, we won.

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People know that CRT is bad, but it's also going by different names and subversively making its way into institutions.

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We need to expose it when it happens, even if it's like small doses of it.

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Here's an article from Christianity Today, and I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it talks about McLean Bible Church.

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Mike Kelsey is reimagining the multi -ethnic church. He's become the lead pastor there. He's been there for years on staff, but the article goes on to talk about how hard it's been for him and how he's really taking his cues from a great -great uncle who detailed the clashes around race and integration and trying to bring all this stuff to the forefront as if it has some relevance for Mike Kelsey, who's now the most, what does it say, one of the most, if not the most, prominent top position at a historically white megachurch for a

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Black person. What does that do to the Black people or racial minorities in congregations when they hear this kind of thing?

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I happen to know this particular church is in a metropolitan area.

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It's very international. In the previous pastor, Lon Solomon was Jewish, so I don't think

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Christianity Today did an article about him, this Jewish man who's the head of a white evangelical church, but they'll do it about this particular individual,

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Kelsey, who he's the one that said he wanted to torch white people, white Christians in particular.

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He's the one who recommended the Color of Compromise and books, the 1619

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Project, CRT books. He's a woke guy. With this kind of a narrative that's focused so much on race and that this was just such a hard thing and this barrier's been broken, what does that do?

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I just think that if you're sitting there and you're a white person, you're now on eggshells.

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If you're not, then you're thinking that everything out there is oppression.

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You're conditioned into thinking that people are out to get you because this is actually kind of condescending almost in a way.

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Why is it every time a racial minority or a woman or LGBTQ plus person, or at least they think they are that, they get into a position of authority somewhere and they're a first, quote unquote, in a particular field, everyone's just expected to clap.

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If you don't, it's noticed and it's kind of awkward, is it not? You're somewhat of an anomaly.

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You're somewhat of a curiosity. You are never made to forget kind of like the oppression that resided in where you came from, supposedly, that you carry that with you.

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And so these people just keep burdens. I mean, even with a headline like this, reimagining the multi -ethnic church.

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Yeah, we need a big reimagining. We need a huge, apparently, the thing is, too, this church, this church was a church of like 15 ,000 people that's now cut in half by David Platt, under David Platt.

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And it seems like they probably should go back to the drawing board, not reimagine things. But you have something similar going on with, where did

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I have it pulled up? With Michael Kruger. Michael Kruger, and this is a disappointment because I thought

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Michael Kruger was more conservative. But after his article in 2020 for the Gospel Coalition about submitting to the government,

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I'm not sure about that. But he said, as a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, I'm pleased that Karen Jobes will be the next president.

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She is both an excellent scholar and a wonderful human being. Christianity Today, again, wrote an article about the first female president in the 75 years of the organization's existence of the

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Evangelical Theological Society, which is very important for the scholarship of evangelicals.

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I've been to one of their meetings and this is he's doing the same thing here. It's just like, you know, you have to clap.

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You have to acknowledge that there's the first woman who's done this.

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And it's a curious thing in this case, even more so because this is a situation where you have an organization that has influence over churches.

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It's not a hierarchy in the sense of like it has control over searches, it just has influence. But it's kind of like at Southeastern when they had women on the board for the school.

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And I think they had a chairman that was a woman when I was there, if I'm not mistaken. And it's like, well, you know, women can't be pastors, but boy, do they know what makes a good pastor?

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And they'll have oversight over the curriculum. It makes no sense. And so this is just another further indication to me that the creation norms are being eroded here.

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But but it's also an indication that there's this DEI stuff has to be applauded. It's got to be acknowledged.

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It needs to be focused on. We we must all turn our heads to see that now we've made progress.

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A woman has become the first. And this isn't progress. This is, if anything, this is a sign of judgment.

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David Platt, by the way, I noticed that the TGC website is he does this kind of kind of awkward invite to the

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TGC Women's Conference. And I went to the conference and website and you see all these speakers.

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And I was a little blown away that there's all these speakers, which means it must be a big group, I would think.

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I mean, I don't know. There must be at least like there's like 50 speakers here. I don't know. Yeah, there's there's there's probably more like 70.

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I mean, there's like a bunch of speakers and the ones I recognize are all woke. I don't recognize all of them.

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But TGC still has some power. They still have some influence. And I think it's easy to get into your own kind of like group online and think like, oh, they don't have influence anymore.

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I think they're losing it, but they still have influence. And so our work, I think, must go on at times, even if it's sometimes a review thing.

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Ken Keithley, I noticed a professor at Southeastern Seminary where I went, a big Southern Baptist school, made a post recently basically saying, asking

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Kristen Dumez and Amy Bird and Michael Bird and Beth Allison Barr, all woke people on this panel.

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He wrote on Twitter asking them that he's willing to learn and any sense of irony about discussing the failures of conservative evangelicals on gender issues in LGBT plus church that belongs to a denomination rupturing over gender issues.

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So I think what he's saying is there's a connection between these things or asking if there is. And this is foolish.

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This is a man who he wants to sit at the feet of these women who are on the left to learn.

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It's a man who trains pastors to learn about the failures of the evangelical church on gender issues and LGBT stuff.

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And it reinforces in my mind, I mean, this stuff is still out there. It's just ingrained. I mean, this kind of goes with a ho and a hum now.

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And it shouldn't like this. You know, I realize where things are at.

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I realize lines have been drawn, but like, you know, this is still happening.

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This is still an issue for people. And some people who are coming into the seminary who they don't have all the background, they don't know what's going on now.

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Meanwhile, to narrow the focus even more, we've gone from kind of like the more the social justice evangelicals.

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Let's talk a little bit about what's happening in the people who supposedly I thought weren't social justice evangelicals.

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Although Kevin Young has said some things that I think are kind of woke, but he would not be considered woke. He would not consider himself woke.

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And yet he writes this article on the culture war, Doug Wilson and the Moscow mood. Now, I have to say this about Doug Wilson.

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People have asked me for, I don't know, over a year to say something about Doug Wilson. In fact, some people desperate pleading with me,

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John, you might be the only one to really warn about Doug Wilson. And most of it related the federal vision stuff, which

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Kevin Young does not write about. Unfortunately, I was kind of wishing he would write about that. I'm hoping for some really clear, good material on that.

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And maybe it exists. I've read the R. Scott Clark stuff. I don't find it very helpful in my opinion. But there is a problem,

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I believe, somewhere in there, more than one. And I'll put it this way.

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I've looked at it for hours, maybe days, and I've concluded I need to look at that issue for weeks if I'm ever going to do a podcast on it, because it is a complicated issue.

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I used to dismiss anyone who would bring it up because they were also bringing up like, yeah, Doug Wilson's he believes that slavery is fine.

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And I was just like, you know what? But what I've realized, though, is that there are some some questions

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I think that at least should be asked and answered and it warrants an examination. There's there's no doubt about that in my mind, that that would be a productive thing to do.

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And I think a charitable way in a very in a in a way that promotes learning and understanding and theological correctness.

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However, that's not what Kevin DeYoung does. And he could have talked about that. He doesn't.

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But he also there's a lot of things he could talk about. Doug Wilson talks a lot. I guess I talk a lot, too, in the podcast. But Doug Wilson puts out a lot of stuff.

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And sometimes I get the impression at certain times he might be like doing theology on the spot, which is always unwise, in my opinion.

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And I know because I've gotten into jams on the podcast before where I just know I need to shut up. I need to stop talking because I'm thinking like I'm talking about the

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Trinity right now and I'm getting into an area where I'm not certain my language is clear.

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And this is something I want to be clear. So Doug Wilson has said things like there's authority and submission in the

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Godhead. He's talked about the Jews today and his new book being under the covenant with Ishmael, which is novel covenant with Ishmael.

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That's a novel thing that Adam was misbehaving when he reached for the forbidden food. But he wasn't sinning.

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Like there's plenty of things that he said over time that Kevin DeYoung could probably take issue with that are actually like.

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So substantive, like he could say, here's what Doug Wilson thinks or said, and this is what I think and said, and let's have a helpful debate and exchange.

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That's not what he did. That's not what he did. And so I know maybe some of the Moscow people are a little upset at me.

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I don't know for saying for acknowledging that there's some I don't think you should take that. I think even Doug Wilson would be appreciative of legitimate critiques.

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I know I want to be humble enough to be appreciative of legitimate critiques because we all we all stumble in various ways.

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And but if we're humble about it and we are we want to pursue the truth, then if someone points those things out to us, then we're not going to be so defensive about it.

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What happens, though, is not that what happens. I've honestly just if I didn't have much interest in reading

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Kevin DeYoung, I have less now. He talks about what he calls the Moscow mood. That's right.

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The Moscow mood. Now, let me say one last thing before I get into the article. I thought the

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Moscow mood, I thought if that's what he was critiquing, it was going to be something like this. There were some videos

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I saw not long ago of and I think they were for the church, for Christ Church in Moscow of men singing sea chanties.

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Very masculine kind of things, which is Moscow near the ocean. I didn't I didn't think so. Maybe the

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Coeur d 'Alene or something. But anyway, we're doing sea chanties and women at the same time are baking bread or rolling dough and making pies and doing women things.

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And so men are singing sea chanties. Women are doing women things. And the whole thing is done. And I realized in there was like two videos that these this was a brand.

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This was a lifestyle. This was a this was a certain way of living that it was promoting to you in these videos.

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It wasn't a church so much as it was like it like like a style.

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Right. And OK, so if his critique was against that, like like, hey, maybe you should start a different organization to do that.

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Maybe that shouldn't be a church thing, which I think it was a church thing. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Someone can correct me. Not a big deal, really.

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I'm not making much of a critique. I'm just saying I could see a path for a critique if that's the Moscow mood, right, that you got to be a homeschooler and you got to smoke cigars and you got to like there's this expectation upon you that the women are going to be doing this and the men are going to be doing this.

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And this is what to be part of our church. You need to be this way if that's what's going on. And I'm too distant from the church to really know if that's what's going on.

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But if that's what he was going to say and like, hey, this is unhelpful, this is beyond the regulative principle, whatever,

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I could see even a fair critique in that. So so there you go. I've I've given you two avenues, I think, that could have been fair critiques of or at least helpful critiques potentially of the

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Moscow, you know, what's going on there, despite all the helpful things.

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So hopefully people know I'm not like rabidly out there just on team Moscow or whatever.

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I'm not. He made the best advertisement for Doug Wilson of Moscow.

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I think I've ever read because it was so, I think, ridiculous, although he's

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Kevin DeYoung and he puts things in very, I would say he sounds smart as he says them.

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And and he makes some good points here and there. But like overall, this article is not good.

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It's it actually, I think, reinforces the reason people go there as a good thing. So the

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Moscow mood, what's the Moscow mood? Well, he says that the appeal to the

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Moscow is visceral more than intellectual. That's not meant to be a knock on the smart people there.

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But it is to say, however, that people are not mainly moving to Idaho because they now understand Revelation or so he's saying it's not theology goes through this whole thing.

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It's not theology. They're going there because they have.

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There's a cultural aesthetic and a political posture that Wilson embodies. So it's not for convictions.

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It's because they want a particular aesthetic. And then he goes on to talk about how this aesthetic is basically associated with sin.

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It's his concern is that there's long term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating the Moscow mood. The mood that attracts people to Moscow is often incompatible with Christian virtue and inconsiderate of other

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Christians and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Christian of Wilson's Christendom project.

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And so he talks about the sarcasm and what Wilson does with No Quarter November and how he mocks the

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ERLC, which deserves a lot of mocking. And he mocks G3, which frankly,

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G3, unfortunately, some of the people who run that have made some very foolish decisions. And I was glad in the response by Doug Wilson to this article.

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He mentioned, hey, look, G3 is the one that said when CrossPolitik was there, they could not interview me at their booth.

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So it's not like I chose this, which I think is good because I get frustrated, too, behind the scenes.

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I've been disinvited from places and things happen behind the scenes of supposedly anti woke people who will then cancel me because they feel pressure or, you know, and they don't want to be seen as that.

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They don't want me to say I'm sure that that's happened. But it's I just say our side is not as as squeaky clean as some may think.

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It's like the Republican Party in a way, like it's better than the Democrats. But we just because you're not woke doesn't mean there's not corruption issues and so forth.

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And so I'm glad Wilson brought that out because Kevin Young doesn't seem to have a problem with with he doesn't like.

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Let me ask you this. When did Kevin Young ever write against the ERLC? When did

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Kevin Young ever write against the gospel gospel coalition? And Kevin Young's a board member for the gospel coalition. He hasn't.

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The gospel coalition has promoted things far worse than the Moscow mood. The gospel coalition has promoted movies that have sex scenes and lots of profanity.

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And he gets on to Doug Wilson for using filthy language. But at the same time, it's like that you're sitting on the board of an organization that's promoted all these films with filthy language.

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It's very curious to me. And there's all sorts of little things that I'd love to pick apart in this, but we just don't have the time to do that.

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But he thinks the focus is on Wilson himself of this advertisement for No Quarter November, which is one of the

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I don't have time to really explain the whole thing, but it's a series of blogs and they give away free stuff.

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And he had this kind of Clint Eastwood style video they made. And Wilson's taking this posture against the culture.

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And here's what he says. He says the Moscow mood provides a nonstop adversarial stance towards the world and towards other

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Christians who are deemed or caricatured to be too afraid to tell it like it is. Moscow cannot become the American readout for conservative

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Christians if it is too similar to the other places. So he's trying to say that they're trying to separate themselves, which,

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OK, maybe they are. But here's the deal. What's bad with that? Like, doesn't that sound good?

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I mean, I think of generally, you know, ordinary people. I think of even the church I go to.

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We're not money. The people at my church wouldn't know who Doug Wilson is. Yet at the same time, they're going to a church with a pastor who happens to be my father, who he took very hard stands in 2020.

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And a lot of people, they come and they keep coming because of that. They respect him. And he wasn't trying to make a name for himself.

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But I remember he stood up there preaching. He had a cowboy hat on. He was part of a kind of a joke.

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He had a bandana because that was his mask. Remember when you could use those for masks? And so he didn't use that at the pulpit.

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But when he went out to the store, he would use that in certain places. And then what he says, put a cowboy hat on.

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And he would preach like that with his back to the road, which is kind of a threat. It was a spectacle people would see.

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And especially in our area where people were uptight about masks, he was making himself quite known that that's that this was his stand.

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And we're going to keep the church open. And he was only pastor in like a hundred mile radius, probably that even wrote exemptions for the

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VACs. We had police at our church. And I think 2021, because there was someone who was a

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Moms for Liberty rep that wanted to use the building for something. And there was death threats and there was there was all kinds of things that happened.

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But he stood his ground. And so the people who come there, they want it to be normal. They want to surround themselves with other people who also think a man's a man, a woman's a woman.

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And maybe these traditional roles are actually good. And I want to I don't want to be surrounded by junk. I don't need winsomeness everywhere and tiptoeing.

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I just want to say like it is. The truth matters. And I think Kevin Young could have written a similar article about my church, even though we're far from we just don't have the platform.

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But we're not like Doug Wilson. I mean, it's a premillennial church, right? It's a it's a baptistic church.

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There's there's so many things about it that don't match the theology of Moscow, Idaho's Christchurch theology.

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But the Moscow mood that he talks about, I could see I could see it there. I can see what he's talking about.

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And I find it actually a little personally offensive. It's like these are the Christians who are really concerned.

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They're standing up. They have kids. And they if you want to move across the country to provide a safe place for your family in an environment that's better for them, that's a good motivation.

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That shouldn't be downplayed. And one of the things that Kevin Young, this is how out of touch, unfortunately, he is.

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I have to search for it to find it. Let's see here. So here it is. He says, no quarter

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November does not give us a month of posts on the loveliness of Christ, the power of prayer, the finer points of reform, soteriology, wonders of the cross, total trustworthiness of the

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Bible, holiness of God, intricacies of the Trinity. It's largely about speaking into a hot button, cultural issues.

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Now, let me say something about this, and I'll be as clear as I possibly can. This is what Kevin Young says. The house is on fire, it's burning down.

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Cultural issues are the things that are making it burn down. There's theology behind them, but none of the things

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Kevin Young just said. It's it's questioning fundamental creation norms and that kind of thing.

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And you have someone who comes and they have a leaky bucket and they try to put it out and let's say it's just not as effective as it could be.

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And instead of trying to put out the fire yourself, you criticize the person with a leaky bucket. That's how

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I see Kevin Young in a way. He's he thinks that what is happening with the

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Moscow mood is defective, it's not the true prioritization, it's rough around the edges, it's this style that's could be sinful perhaps or attract sinful people.

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And what's the bottom line of all this? You have a fire going on and you have someone, even if they're doing it imperfectly, they're trying to do something about it.

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And I don't see Kevin Young trying to do much about it. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't have biblical stances on marriage, on gender, on a lot of these things, but he's soft towards those in not just the world, in Christianity, who are soft peddling things like same sex attraction.

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Kevin Young himself has even said that the curious thing about Kevin Young is he has been on record saying that same sex attraction is not a sin, basically.

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And then he wrote the forward to Rosario Butterfield's book where she explicitly says it is. So so he doesn't even acknowledge where he's changed his beliefs,

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I guess, at least in that case. But he said even things on racial issues, he said kind of woke stuff.

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He's he's not taking big stands against social justice. I saw his what we did.

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We reviewed it. We reviewed his whole dialogue on at T4G on critical race theory.

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And it was just pathetic. And, you know, this is Kevin Young. He's he's he's mostly unhelpful when it comes to these things.

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It's like he's not even picking up the bucket and the house is on fire. And you have someone who's trying to do something.

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And but he's got energy, unfortunately, somehow, unfortunately, to criticize the people who are trying to do something.

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That's where I don't have patience, honestly. That's where I say, look, get out of their way. If you want to critique, if you want to take shots, if you want to give some substantive discernment about something, at least take the log out of your own eye first.

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You know, take a shot at TGC. You're on the board. But no, and that's that's kind of the issue.

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There's hypocrisy and there's also this kind of like ivory tower, like, well, they're not discussing the finer points of Trinitarian theology.

31:26

All right. Well, where do you see in our world that Trinitarian theology is being attacked so aggressively, at least to the point, you know, the

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Department of Homeland Security isn't paying people to go online with sock puppet accounts to attempt to overturn

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Trinitarian theology. They don't care. They're there to overturn other things, other narratives that Christians believe on social issues.

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So people wanted me to talk about it. I kind of didn't want to, but but but there you go.

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There's my analysis of this article. I don't really want to read any more. Now, this is kind of consistent with this, unfortunately,

32:05

Josh Bice put out something this I won't always talk about this stuff, but he just said,

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I hate to say it, but I told you so. And what's he saying? I told you so about well, he's referencing a panel he did where he said essentially that Christian nationalism, the term is going to be weaponized against Christians like big surprise.

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Right. I've been saying that for three years. Most people have. In fact, Gordon Sanchez did a parody video three years ago that it's funny because it's it could probably describe where G3 is at now in a way like being very freaked out about Christian nationalism.

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Well, Mike Johnson, the person, the

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Speaker of the House who does not even say he's a Christian nationalist. And I would say it's kind of like, I mean, he's not even that rabidly conservative.

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But James Carville said that Christian nationalists like Speaker Mike Johnson are a bigger threat than Al Qaeda. So this is what

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Josh Bice is reacting to. He said, I hate to say it, but I told you so, as if this is a bad thing. And he says, hashtag Christian nationalism.

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Someone said, oh, no, liberals are defaming Christians. Who could have seen this coming? And then he responds, yep, true. It shouldn't have.

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It should have been an obvious trap to avoid with the Christian nationalist label. So so he tried to warn us,

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I guess we wouldn't listen. And I mean, he tried to warn us like this year. I've been saying this for three years. But the issue is, like, who cares about what the pagans believe?

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Right. The people who use the term aren't concerned with what James Carville, a Democratic strategist, and that's who he is.

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It's not even the media is a Democratic strategist say they if we're so concerned with using the media as the measuring rod for what we should and shouldn't say, then there's a whole lot of things that, oh, we shouldn't say.

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I mean, James Carville, to pick an example, he thought Trumpism Trump voting for Trump meant that you believe the

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United States was a nation of people, a place, not an idea, which means you're basically a racist.

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So should we just don't vote for Trump, I guess, because James Carville will call you a racist. I mean, that's where this logic would eventually lead you.

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And if you make the media your measuring rod, if whatever they vilify is off limits, then, you know, and so Tom Buck reinforced this,

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Josh by specifically warned about this, which, you know, a lot of people were I even

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I was mocking this a bit on Twitter. I was just posting like stuff for myself and Gordon Sanchez from like two or three years ago and being like, we made the same point.

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We made the same point. But but the interesting thing, this is what someone specifically asked me to comment on or address was him and Josh got into it.

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And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but let me just give you the bottom line here. Josh says, despite you using

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James Carville's absurd slurs against us, I remain happy to chat about this any time. I don't think you're acting in bad faith, but I do think you are misguided in your tactics on this issue.

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Josh Bice, did I use it against you, Josh? He did. I simply predicted it would happen. I will not.

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It will not be the last time either. My point is continually made when I interact with you, you intentionally misrepresent my tweet.

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It was not aimed at brothers. And, you know, if Josh Bice is hearing this, Josh, it's good.

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I mean, I'm beyond tired of it. It's just it's almost boring to me at this point. But I would love to have peace.

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I know I'm not alone in that. I mean, Josh Abbott, we would love to have peace with you, with the guys at G3.

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The thing is, there's a pattern here of when we try to interact and we try to reach out and we try to find common ground, that the any disagreement seems like it's interpreted by you as misrepresentation, slander, lying.

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You've called me a liar, Josh. I know as if Josh's watch, he's probably not. But Josh Bice has called me a liar.

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And he can't you won't specify, even though I've asked where my lie is, what exactly have

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I lied about? And it seems like disagreement is interpreted as like it's it's lying.

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It's slander. It's beyond the pale. And then you won't talk to people. You won't talk to brothers and you won't find common ground.

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And there's a fire, Josh. That's the thing. There is a fire right now. You want me to show you part of the fire?

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Here's part of the fire. This is a document that was just released by the

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House of Representatives, the CTIL files. And the CTIL files is basically a program,

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Department of Homeland Security, the bunch of agencies were involved in this.

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But let me just like cut through the chase and give you the relevant part. The government in our country was essentially organizing people to use sock puppet accounts, anonymous accounts to discredit people on social media who were forwarding narratives the government did not like.

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In other words, that guy arguing with you in the comments about something could potentially be working with the government to try to discredit you.

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They were working with social media companies. They were trying to influence the narrative. And they've been doing this since at least twenty nineteen.

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And so this is a major revelation. This is huge. I mean, this is this is an anti disinformation campaign in their minds.

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But it's really a disinformation campaign. And it's frightening. House is on fire,

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Josh. This is who's against us. They're using the tools of the government. They they don't like you or your family.

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And if they'll call the speaker of the House a Christian nationalist when he's any he's anything but Steve, he's not

37:28

Stephen Wolfe. OK, he's more like Josh Bice. They'll call

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Josh Bice a Christian nationalist, too. That's the thing. So maybe there's some people that are using terms you don't like.

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Maybe they have holes in the buckets they're using, but at least they're trying to put out the fire. And what I would encourage is as Christians, can we not work together?

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And if we can't, there's a real problem. If we won't even speak to each other because we have disagreements over the way we go about approaching a problem like this, that will destroy us all in a way like it will destroy our way of life.

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It will you know what I'm I'm not saying it will take away our salvation, but it will severely hamper our ability to to do what we have been doing, whether that's evangelism or meeting freely in the church or sharing our faith on the job.

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That's the kind of enemy that we face. And it's just it's a reinforcement in my mind that this is where the evangelical world is, even on the quote unquote non -woke side.

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They are they would I think rather than fighting giants, it seems like they really have a lot of energy for calling other brothers heretics when they're not.

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I mean, there's there is such a thing as heresy and false teaching. But when you label a whole swath of people kinest when they're not and call that a heresy or a false teaching, whatever it was called, question their salvation, essentially when you constantly vilify and have so much energy to produce materials on this looming threat.

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And yet the threat isn't so much those people, those people, the Christian nationalists, quote unquote, are trying to approach the real threat.

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And I've said before, I don't even use the label of myself. I see downsides to the label, but I don't go to my friends who think that it's a helpful label to use and say, you know, you're the problem.

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I predicted this. You're no, no, I just I don't even understand that way of thinking if it doesn't come from a place of we'll just say motives that are less than pure.

39:45

And so so anyway, that this is not really new for people who have followed that G3 controversy over the last year.

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But it's sad to me because I know myself and many others have tried to make peace. We want that.

39:59

And it's. Yeah, it's where we're at. So I want to say this at the end, in closing, for people who read the

40:08

Bible, I don't think anything I just shared with you is surprising. You look at the seven churches in Revelation. How many of them were faithful?

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How many of them were commended? I should say two, two out of seven. You look at even the Old Testament.

40:20

Right. You can see the prophets. You can see in judges. You could see even in the Exodus account that there's constantly problems in among people who shouldn't have those problems.

40:33

Right. It's normal to expect in the pagan areas you're going to have problems. But when you have unbelief, idol worship, adultery, all the things that characterize pagan nations within the people of God who have been so blessed, who've been given revelation, who know

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God's good, know he expects obedience, know that he made a way to be forgiven. They know all this stuff.

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They've seen firsthand miracles. They have everything they need. And yet they still decide to sin.

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That's where I think it's hard for us. That's where it's hard for us. Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, is a

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Christian. Well, Christ will say, I never knew you to some. There's others who just have extreme ignorance and immaturity and they're growing.

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But it's there's a lot of pride in the way. And and so, you know, whether it's correcting

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Peter, like Paul did, or whether it is actually going after a false teacher because he's a wolf, there needs to be a stand made.

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There needs to be a line in the sand. That's what this podcast has really been about, is discerning, making those lines where they need to be, biblically driven lines when it comes to theology.

41:44

This podcast is for the last few years really been about helping you, equipping you with the knowledge you need to combat some of this stuff.

41:53

And unfortunately, I thought initially people would take over right away that I wouldn't need to do this for long because within a few weeks there would be people, prominent people in evangelicalism who would kick this thing out of the park, this woke stuff.

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And it's still there. It's still there. And sadly, the energy that should come from people who have the capability of kicking it out of the park is being spent, it seems, on people like myself.

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People who are are tired of this anemic, effeminate, weak kind of society that tells men they need to be girls and tells girls they need to try to be like men.

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And doesn't allow any standards or morals to be imposed because that would be bigotry.

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That's the kind of thing that I've said, no, I've made my choice. I'm with Christ and I know that there's a lot of hardship with that and I won't be perfect, but you're not going to find me.

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And I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else because of this. I'm saying, though, that because of that goal, this is the practical outworking of that,

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I'm not going to take shots at people who are trying to fight the same fire that I'm trying to fight because I think we have to have our priorities straight.

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Is there a fire or isn't there? And I believe there is. So that's the podcast for today.

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I appreciate everyone who watched and listened to it. There'll be more coming later in the week. TruthScript Tuesday is tomorrow or today.

43:34

I guess it's today, isn't it? It's later today and there will be a TruthScript Tuesday episode coming out.

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But I have to say this, it's no longer going to be coming through the Conversations That Matter podcast. So if you subscribe to Conversations That Matter, you're going to need to find

43:48

TruthScript on iTunes. If you listen through iTunes, you're going to need to go on YouTube and subscribe to TruthScript.

43:55

And that's where you're going to find the TruthScript stuff. OK, whether I'm doing it or someone else. That's by design.

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We initially wanted it to be promoted through this podcast because this audience has been so instrumental in building up TruthScript.

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But going forward, it's going to be its own thing in many ways. And I will be very involved.

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But this is bigger than me. And this is one of the things those of you who have supported me and what

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I've been doing, it wouldn't happen without you. So I appreciate all your support, your prayer, financial or otherwise.

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I know times are hard. And not everyone can do that. And for those who do, it means a lot. And let me tell you something.

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This last week, I was able, because of your support over the years, I was able to do things that will be very important going forward in evangelicalism.

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And I can't wait to share more with you about it. But it's not just me. It's a group effort. I consider all of you who listen and pray and support this podcast to be part of it.

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So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless. And we'll talk more later in the week.