AD Demolishes 'The Atlantic' Liberal Christian (Part 3)

All right, today is Wednesday, which means that my tolerance for Big Eva articles is at its weekly low.

So let's jump right back into this Atlantic article. This is actually the most effective part of the article, in my opinion.

Now, as you know, I think this article is trash. However, I think there's a lot of strategic value in reviewing it.

So I'm going to do that. But this is actually the part where I think the author is the most right.

But still, he uses a tried and true tactic, which we will reveal in just a moment. Before I get into the article, though, let me say this.

I was thinking about, you know, why is it that so many of these churches that are woke are also the ones that are shut down for COVID or doing like partiality?

You know, here's the mask section. You sit there. If you have a mask, you don't. You don't have a mask. So you got to go sit over there.

Like all the churches that are doing that, like, why are they like one in the same? You know what I mean? Like, it's not exactly not every woke church is doing that and vice versa, but it's very, very close.

I mean, you could bet if a church is woke, they're also Nazis about the masks and all that kind of stuff.

So and they're pro vaccine and the whole thing. And I've been thinking about this for a number of months.

Why is that? And I kind of had a eureka moment this morning. Think about it this way, right?

When a church is woke, they're basically saying, well, you got to love your neighbor as yourself.

And what they mean by love your neighbor is essentially what's approved by the culture. In other words, what they see on CNN regarding race, what they see on MSNBC regarding race, that's what they promote as love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, that's the second greatest commandment. If you remember Jesus's interaction with the lawyer, the lawyer challenged him.

I'm sorry. He challenged the lawyer. What's the greatest commandment? And he answered correctly. The first greatest commandment is love the

Lord your God with all your heart and all of that. So think about this. So we've known for a long time that the woke church and these progressive churches, these liberal

Christians have perverted the second greatest commandment. We've known they perverted love your neighbor as yourself to mean whatever

CNN says. But they've also now perverted love the

Lord your God to essentially mean whatever CNN says. So if CNN says it's too dangerous to worship

God on Sunday, well, there you go. It's too dangerous to worship God on Sunday. If CNN says that you shouldn't sing at church, it's too dangerous.

Well, that's now how you love the Lord your God according to the culture. And they've adopted that.

So essentially what these churches have done, these woke churches have done is when they think about how to love your neighbor as yourself and when they think about how to love the

Lord your God with all your heart, they are letting the pagan media determine what those two things look like instead of letting the scripture determine that.

It would be very easy to say, okay, the pagans are telling me it's too dangerous to worship God. Let me look to the scripture and find out what

I should do. It's very easy to find out what to do. You don't forsake the assembly. There's no caveats there. You don't.

It's not like you don't forsake the assembly unless there's an approved pandemic. And then, of course, you can like there's no caveats.

And so if they were actually in the scripture, determine these things, they wouldn't be woke and they wouldn't be vaccine

Nazis, but they are both. And so I think personally that there's a just a complete capitulation here.

They've allowed the culture, the pagans, the world to determine what being a good

Christian is like when the world says, because this happens all the time. You ever argue with an atheist or say, well, you're not loving like Jesus.

And it's like, hey, dude, you don't even believe God exists. I'm not going to take my orders from you. That's what I usually did.

But they've actually let them do that. They've actually felt the weight of that. They think that when the scripture says that that you should be well thought of in the sight of all or what is it's not well thought of, it's you should be on or do what's honorable in the sight of all.

They actually think that that means that the pagans get to decide what is honorable. In fact, I've seen that argument about the vaccines and shutting down church like they've said, well, you're supposed to do what's honorable in the sight of all.

So therefore, like that's actually like unbelief in the most obvious of ways.

Anyway, that was a bit of a eureka moment. But let me know what you think of that in the comments section. Let's jump right into this again.

I think this is the most effective part of this article. Here we go. At the same time,

Keller argues that anti -institutional tendencies makes evangelical communities more prone than others to quote unquote, insider abuse, corruption committed by leaders who have almost no guardrails and outsiderism in which evangelicals simply refuse to let their church form them on their beliefs.

As a result, they are unrooted and therefore susceptible to political idolization, fanatical ideas and conspiracy theories.

So basically, Keller is saying that the church are the biggest dum -dums out there. So therefore, they're they don't have any roots.

You know, they they're you could just you could just convince them of anything. That's that's Keller's opinion of the evangelical church.

I mean, obviously, that would undermine Christianity if that were true. It's not true, obviously.

But that's what Keller's position of the church is, that we're just a bunch of idiots and especially the people in the pews.

Obviously, his own church is accepted from that. They're the cosmopolitan church in Manhattan. But all those backwards, backwoods, they probably married their sister

Christians that they hate. And I do mean hate in the technical sense of the word.

They treat them with disgust, but also they treat them not according to the law of God, which is the primary definition of hate.

All those people, they're just a bunch of idiots, conspiracy theorists, the whole nine yards. I mean, every every progressive buzzword is included there.

But anyway, let's continue. What we're seeing is a massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure.

I don't really know how to pronounce that word. So I'm going to say catechesis. This is by the way, guys, this is the part of the article that I actually find a lot to agree with, but he still uses a weasel tactic.

We're going to see James Ernest, the vice president and editor in chief at Erdmann's, a publisher of religious books, told me

Ernest was one of several figures I spoke with who pointed to catechism, the process of instructing and informing people through teaching as the source of the problem.

The evangelical church in the United States over the last five decades has failed to form its adherence into disciples.

So there is a great hollowness. All that was needed to cause that implosion that we have seen was a sufficiently provocative stimulus, and that stimulus came.

Culture catechesis, Alan Jacobs, a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University, told me.

Culture teaches us what matters and what views we should take about what matters. Our current political culture,

Jacob argued, has multiple technologies and platforms for catechesis, television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, and podcasts among them.

People who want to be connected to their political tribe, the people that they think are like them, and the people they think are on their side, subject themselves to its catechesis all day long, every single day, hour after hour.

On the flip side, many churches aren't interested in catechesis at all. They focus instead on entertainment because entertainment is what keeps people in their seats and coins in the offering plate.

But as Jacob points out, even those pastors who are committed to catechesis get to spend on average less than an hour a week teaching their people, sermons are short, only some churchgoers attend adult education classes, and even fewer attend

Bible study in small groups. Cable news, however, is always on. So if people are getting one kind of catechesis for half an hour per week,

Jacobs asked, and another for dozens of hours per week, which one do you think will win out?

Now this is a very, very interesting argument because, quite frankly, I agree with most of it.

You have to very, very carefully consider who is catechizing your children. In fact, this is the very kind of an argument that I would use to say that it is completely inappropriate for a

Christian to send their children to public school in 2021. Maybe there was a time where it might be a little bit more appropriate, but in 2021, it is unacceptable for a

Christian to send their kids to public school because they're being catechized by the government for six hours a day.

Is it six hours? I don't even remember. Six hours a day, they're there being catechized by the state.

And what do you think kind of catechism the state is going to provide? It's going to provide a state -worshiping catechism, it's going to provide state as the center, it's going to provide state as the lawgiver, it's going to present state as the one who takes care of you and makes sure everything's okay, and you're the little child, and they're the father, the kind father, and all of that.

Like, yes, this is true. Like, you need to pay attention to what you're getting catechized by, right?

But here's the thing, though, so what's being said here is that, well, you know, you find your people that are in your tribe, and then, you know, you're going to just be catechized by them.

What it assumes is that you're choosing to be catechized by evil people, right?

And I don't think that choosing to be catechized by certain people who you think are in your tribe is necessarily all that bad.

Yes, I seek out Christians to follow. And yes, I seek out Reformed Christians to follow. And yes,

I seek out Reformed Christians to follow who have a spine, who aren't caving to the government's catechism, who are raising their children in the fear and admonition of the

Lord, who have fruit, who take the law of God seriously, who have spine and are willing to be men when it's time to be men.

Yes, I seek out those kind of guys, because I feel like that's my tribe, and I want to be encouraged, and I believe that they're right, of course.

So there's nothing wrong with being catechized by people who think like you. The question is, are they correct, right?

Are you in a tribe that's correct, or are you in a pagan tribe? Are you being catechized by someone who's seeking to honor

God, who believes that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, or are you being catechized by someone who thinks that Democrats can do no wrong, or Republicans can do no wrong, or the state can essentially do no wrong?

You see, this is the exact argument I would make for not catechizing your children in the state religion at the state schools.

It's a good argument. You know what I mean? It's a good argument. You shouldn't do that. But he's trying to apply it to sort of other things like podcasts and stuff like that, that he doesn't approve of.

Now, here's where the article gets good, because he just said something that's actually somewhat true, although you can kind of see he's going to say, well, you know, conspiracy theory—conspiracy theory, that's the evil, evil.

Anything that's not approved is going to be cast into that category automatically by the Atlantic. So you can kind of see he's got a slant, but still, it's an effective argument.

It's an argument that I would use in certain situations as well. How much you want to bet he wouldn't use this argument for public school, by the way?

Because this, you know, this is a state religion here. Anyway, but here's where you can see the tactic come into play.

He's going to start to bait and switch you, and this is an effective tactic if you're not ready for it. So here we go.

It goes on. That's not a problem limited to the faithful on one side of the aisle.

Quote, this is true of both the Christian left and the Christian right, Jacob said.

People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches, but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them.

The churches have barely better than a snowball's chance in hell of shaping most people's lives.

So here's why this is such an effective section of the article, because he's trying to appear as if he's applying the same standard to both sides.

He said, well, it's the same problem on the Christian left as the Christian right. And it's like, you know, it's hard to argue with that.

I mean, yeah, this problem probably exists on both sides, and we could probably point each of us could probably point to examples of people in our lives where this is a problem and stuff like that.

But you can't divorce that reasonable take from the rest of the article, because the article is about the right.

The article is about how evil and nasty the right is. And there are a lot of subtle nods to the left, where it says, oh, yeah, well, the vaccine.

So he tries to take away your main argument by saying, well, this is the left's problem.

Well, he says, well, yeah, yeah, it's the left's problem, too. The whole article, though, is against the right.

Gospel Coalition does the same thing every time. They talk about how, oh, yeah, you know, this is an issue on the progressive side, the liberals, the

Democrats. But all of their attacks and all of their words and the majority of their words are reserved for the right.

They're always punching right. They never, ever, ever punch left, even though to keep their conservative bona fides, they'll say, oh, yeah, you know, it's a problem for the left, too.

But if you go by their actions and their articles, it's never they it betrays their true beliefs.

And it's not a problem on the left. This is a right problem. I think I remember doing like some word searches on Gospel Coalition about abortion and stuff like that and showed just how how race is their race obsessed and like, what do you mean we're race obsessed?

We talk about issues on the left, too. And like if you compare the two, it's like not even a tenth of the time do they talk about abortion, which is way worse than racism, by the way.

But if you think if you if you go according to Gospel Coalition, racism is the worst sin of all time. So you see, this is an effective section, right, because it's kind of true, kind of not, though, but kind of true.

And he he plays the game well, you know, it's left and right. And that's just a game for him. He wants to he wants to hold on to his conservative bona fides while at the same time pushing leftwards every single step of the way.

It's a constant leftward drift. It's a constant leftward march. But at the same time, he wants to maintain his conservative bona fides.

I mean, everyone's doing this. Matt Chandler's doing this, Platt's doing this, Keller is doing this. They're all doing it like we just kind of wish that they would just accept the fact that they're liberal

Christians at this point, that our theologies are wildly different, that they don't take the Bible seriously, like we wish they would admit that, but they probably never will.

But we just have to continue to press on that point, because the reality is, no matter how many times the

Atlantic says that Russell Moore is a conservative, we know that he's not. You can't just call someone a conservative and make them conservative.

Russell Moore is a progressive. Russell Moore is a liberal. Russell Moore is probably not even a believer.

But here's the reality. The Atlantic is going to run cover this way all day long. Let's continue.

He says, but when people's values are shaped by the media they consume rather than by their religious leaders and communities, that has consequences.

What all those media want is engagement. And that is most reliably driven by anger and hatred,

Jacobs argues. They make bank when we hate each other. And so that hatred migrates into the church, which doesn't have the resources to resist it.

The real miracle here is that even so, in the mercy of God, many people do find their way to places of real love of God and neighbor.

How much you want to bet that that's actually not real love of God and neighbor? It's the CNN, MSNBC approved version of real love of God and neighbor, the kind that's divorced from the law of God, which of course is impossible because both of those things are summary statements of the law of God.

How much do you want to bet that he's not talking about advocating for the death penalty for sex offenders? How much you want to bet that he's not talking about advocating the death penalty for man stealers?

Because that would actually be loving God and loving neighbor because that's defined by the scripture. But according to this, that would be probably an example of me being catechized by Fox News, which of course makes no sense since Fox News would never say such things either.

But anyway, the point is that this is an effective section of the article. There's some truth to it, but of course it's all erased by the rest of the article and all of that.

So let's continue. Should we? Yeah, let's continue. Let's continue.

We've only been at this for 15 minutes. We can go a little longer, right? All right. The way our sensibilities are shaped determines who we are, including the order of our loves.

For many, their politics has become more of an identity marker than their faith. I'd like to see some receipts on that, some evidence.

That's something that liberals like to say, but I don't actually see that as the case. In fact, I've given you examples in the previous video of how

I know this is not the case, but whatever. Liberals like to just talk, you know, they might insist that they are interpreting their politics through the prism of scripture with the former subordinate to the latter.

But in fact, scripture and biblical ethics are often distorted to fit their politics. I'd like to see an example of that as well.

And we both know that there would be no example of that because it's all made up. Scott Dudley, the senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington, refers to this as our idolatry of politics.

He's heard many of the congregants leaving their churches because it didn't match their politics. He told me, but it has never once heard the church.

He told me, but has never once heard of someone changing their politics because it didn't match their church's teaching.

He often. Okay, let's stop. Let's stop. Let's stop. Let's stop right there. So we're in agreement that political positions are deeply ethical, deeply moral, and therefore deeply religious.

So deciding whether or not to be against abortion or gay marriage or, you know, whatever it is, it should be driven from your belief on scripture, right?

And so if your church is teaching things antithetical to scripture, even if they're political things, okay, is that not a decent reason to consider leaving your church if they're starting to teach unbelief in the area of politics or, in a worst -case scenario, evil in the area of politics?

If your church starts preaching evil politics, then, of course, that would be a good reason to sort of, you know, confront them and try to, you know, win them and try to, you know, have conversations and then eventually leave, right?

If your church starts saying—because this is the thing. What they do is—this is the trick. They make every issue, moral issue in our culture, a political issue.

And the thing is—and then they say, well, see, you're being political. See, you're being political. When the church starts teaching wrongly on these ethical, moral issues, they say you're being political because they've defined everything as a political issue.

I mean, my goodness, for the love of God, killing babies has become a political issue.

But here's the thing. We can sidestep this whole thing because you should not be ashamed to have a religious politics.

You ought not be ashamed that religion drives your politics. When you say

Christ is king, you better mean it. And that better be a political statement. I am devoted to Christ as king.

I am devoted to his teaching, and I'm going to disciple the nations the way he told me to in the

Great Commission. I'm going to disciple the nations. So this scam that they run on you, where everything's a political issue and now you're being the political one, here's how you sidestep it.

You say, I'm a Christian in my politics. Why aren't you? I think that Christ is

Lord over politics. Why don't you? You see, they're hoping that this will strike fear in you, where it's like, well, you're being too political.

Yeah, you're right. I'm being political because Christ is Lord over my politics. How come he's not yours?

That's it. Direct confrontation and get right to the heart of the matter. You don't have to run scared of this.

It's okay to leave churches when they have pagan, anti -Christ, satanic politics.

That's okay. Let's continue. He often, and by the way, we don't have to change your politics if they don't agree with your church's teaching.

It's about the scripture. So if your church is teaching that it should be okay for a woman to get an abortion in certain circumstances because, you know, it's just the life of the mother and her body, you know, like, okay, that's satanic.

That's from Baal. That didn't come from Christ. And so you're not, you're not, you're not deciding what political positions to take based on what your churches say.

That's what they want you to think. No, you're changing your political opinions based on what the

Lord of Lords says. The King of Kings. That's who you answer to. You don't answer to pastor so -and -so who has an

Ivy League degree and gets spots to write his opinion pieces in the Atlantic. He often tells his congregation that if the

Bible doesn't challenge your politics, at least occasionally, you're not really paying attention to the Hebrew scriptures or the

New Testament. The reality is, however, that a lot of people, especially in this era, will leave a church if their political views are ever challenged, even around the edges.

I dare you to prove that. No, no, no, that's not true. Even around the edges. You see, that's how he weasels this.

Well, yeah, it's even like the small things, like whether or not to put a pool in. Which are the small things that you're talking about?

Is it killing babies? Is it, is it, is it the homosexuality stuff? Which is it?

Which one is it? Told you

I had no patience on Wednesday. I think I'm going to leave it, leave it there for a moment because the next section, if I remember correctly, is, is pretty interesting.

So I'll probably, you know what, yeah, let me continue reading this and I'll finish this section and then we'll, we'll go from there.

Many people are much more committed to their politics than what the Bible actually says, Dudley says. We have failed not only to teach people the whole of scripture, but we have also failed to help them to think biblically.

We have failed to teach them that sometimes scripture is most useful when it doesn't say what we want it to say, because then it's correcting us.

I agree actually with this. Again, I agree with this. This is why I believe what I believe about the

Old Testament law. It informs our politics. It informs our politics. But you see, here's the thing though.

Between the two of us, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm willing to let the Bible correct me because here's the thing.

If you ask me, uh, hey AD, well, how do you feel about, about what should the penalty be for someone who kidnapped someone?

But you know, eventually they returned them. So they kidnapped them for a few months and maybe they tried to extort someone, but then they returned them.

If you ask what my opinion is, my opinion is, you know, I'm life in prison, you know, maybe 30, 40 years in prison and stuff like that.

And the thing is, God, God disregards what I say because it doesn't matter what I say. What he says is that's a death penalty offense.

That's a death penalty offense. And the thing is, that has to change your opinion. So if you're not pro death penalty in the case of kidnapping, then you're against the scripture and I can prove it.

See, see, that's the, that's what it's like for the scripture to correct you. How about adulterers? How about this one? This is a good one. How about people who falsely accuse others of crimes?

Whatever should have happened to them should happen to you. So if you falsely accuse someone of raping you, for example, and you found out that it was a false accusation, you lied.

Death penalty for you. Are you going to let the scripture correct you there? Mr. Whatever your name is, or Mr.

Dudley, or are you just going to be a pretend? Oh, that's not loving your neighbor. See, that's the thing.

It's like these people talk a big game, but when it actually comes down to brass tacks and getting them to prove their positions, they're going to say some generic thing about love that actually makes no sense and makes mincemeat out of the old

Testament and makes mincemeat out of Jesus's own teaching. But then when they're held to the fire, well, you're a fundamentalist.

They talk a big game, but they're full of it. Let's continue. Teaching people how to think biblically would help

Dudley at it, as well as teaching people how to disagree with one another. Biblically, there's a lot of disagreement in the new Testament, and it gives us a template for how to listen to each other.

And rather than to argue, I agree. But the thing is, you need all of the new Testament, because what you're going to point to is all the nice stuff in the new

Testament. But what we need to point to is the entire example, because what I'm trying to do, and I hope that you would do this too,

Mr. Dudley, although I have a feeling you probably won't, is that when I, when I do it, I want to follow

Jesus's example. And Jesus's example is he's got a lot of patience, a lot of sympathy for the people that are being led astray.

But for people like you, Mr. Dudley, who are leading people astray, harsh words, harsh rhetoric, very upsetting type stuff, especially if you're stuffy and hot under the collar kind of thing.

So you've got to follow all the new Testament example, not just the ones that you cherry pick when somebody criticizes you a little bit too sharply.

Many Christians, though, are disinclined to heed calls for civility. They feel that everything they value is under assault, and they need to fight to protect it.

I understand that, said Dudley. I feel under assault sometimes too. However, I also know that the early

Christians transformed the Roman Empire, not by demanding, but by loving, not by angrily shouting their rights in the public square, but by serving even the people who persecuted them.

See, by the way, this is, this is what I mean. He's cherry picking New Testament stories because, yes, sometimes they went straight to the jail.

They didn't say anything. And sometimes they asserted their rights. It depended on the situation.

It depended on what was advantageous at the time. And we need all the examples. So you see, within one sentence, he does the very thing

I said he was going to do. He's going to cherry pick examples and pretend like that's the standard. No, Mr.

Dudley, because you're not who I answered to. I answered to Christ. Let's continue and finish this before I say something crazy.

All right. I also know that once Christians gained political power under Constantine, that beautiful, loving, sacrificing, giving, transforming church became angry, persecuting, killing church.

We've forgotten the cross. I guess Christians should never be in charge because once they get in charge, they're the most evilest people of all time.

Starting to see why he was contacted by the Atlantic to write an article, because basically what he wants you to do is always, always, always defer to their

Lord, the state. Dudley, my high school, college, and classmate left me with this haunting question.

How many people look at the churches in America these days and see the face of Jesus? Guess what?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Dudley. Dudley, I don't care what pagans think

Jesus should be like. I don't care what pagans think

Jesus should look like. I also don't care what pagans think

I should act like in order to be acting like Jesus. And your biggest problem,

Dudley, is that you do. You think that they get to define what it's like to be

Christ -like. You think that they get to define what it means to be loving and to be civil and all of these kinds of things.

They simply do not. That's the biggest difference between me and you, Dudley, is that I'm looking to the scripture to define these things.

I'm looking to the actual examples of Christ to define these things. I'm not looking to the pagans.

When the pagan looks at me and they see me standing up for the unborn or for those that are being arrested in Canada and stuff like that, and I'm getting a little bit heated about it, it doesn't matter to me one iota if they look at me and say,

You're not being Christ -like. What matters to me is if God thinks

I'm being Christ -like. Now, I might not hit the mark every time, and that's okay.

That's okay because I've got a Savior who has covered me. But I'm trying. God bless me,

I'm trying. To follow His example. And His example is not caring what the people thought about Him, but rather caring what

His Father thought about Him. I think you should try doing that. Because here's the thing,

I'm not trying to sin. I'm not trying to sin, but I'm trying to do the things that the Lord requires.

And so if I do sin, He will cover me. And I don't care what the pagans think about it in the process.