The True Dividing Line: Is Christianity Even Good?

Alright, welcome back to the channel. I was going to do a video about James Lindsay's minor hissy fit that he threw on Twitter about Joel Webben and I's video that mentioned him, that talked about him, in comparison to a dispute with an atheist, because he's an atheist, and the dispute with Doug Wilson and, oh man, what's his name,

Pastor Jared Moore, and the differences between the two and all that kind of thing. It was a very good comparison and it was a very good video.

Anyway, he took a clip of that video and he threw a little minor hissy fit about it and I thought it was so hilarious.

The problem with that is I'm a little bit under the weather, I've got sort of just like this chest cold, and in that video

I'm most certainly going to be laughing quite a bit and every time I laugh I just break into a coughing fit, so I can't do that video today.

But also, I'll be honest, my mood is, I've had a great weekend, I actually went to Pittsburgh to visit my brother,

I actually got caught at Bradley International in this snowstorm. It got pretty bad,

I wasn't able to go home in time, that's a side story. Anyway, but I was thinking yesterday about the

Jen Wilkin debate where she says that a Christian school, a Christian public school would not be good, would not serve the common good in a pluralistic country.

And I've seen a lot of conservative, conservatives, but also people that we would consider conservative, that have expressed the sentiment of an explicitly

Christian government or an explicitly influenced

Christian government that seeks to establish justice according to God's law.

You know, the things that are crimes in God's law ought to be crimes and they should be punished in a way that's analogous to what the punishment would have been in God's law.

It doesn't have to be a one -to -one equality of, you know, you don't replace the Constitution with the book of Leviticus, but there needs to be a logic that sort of seeks to implement

God's law. Anyway, people are against that. They think that would be, that would not serve the common good.

Lots of people believe this. And I've got to be honest with you. I've sensed sort of over the last few years, just a real rejection of the goodness of Christianity.

There are many, it is a debate, somehow it is a debate. I can't believe this, but whether or not being a

Christian in a public way, like not just privately in your house, you know, with you and your family at your dinner table, of course we need to be

Christians there. But just being a Christian, you know, in your politics, overtly so, and say,

I am seeking to implement a Christian justice, a Christian moral code.

And even if it's not by the force of law, just like a Christian moral code, that's the standard because God sets the standard.

But even in public life, you know, laws and judgments and things like that,

God's standard of justice there should be followed. Like that's debatable in Christian circles.

Like a lot of people, even if they would say it was good, like, you know, Christian influencing politics is good.

They wouldn't say so in a pluralistic kind of environment. So as long as there's, you know, a few unbelievers there,

Christian things aren't good unless they're private, unless they're sort of in a soft kind of way where it's just sort of a suggestion.

And, you know, Christian morality is sort of a suggestion among many suggestions. And, you know, sure, you can like, you know, try to influence people towards that way.

But the minute you have the authority, the power to actually implement something in that way, then you should not do it, because that would not serve the public good.

Because what are those pagans over there going to think? What are those Muslims going to think? What are those Hindus going to think? What are those

Jews going to think? And actually, this is relevant to the whole thing with James Lindsay. One of the things that he took issue with was sort of me saying, look, we don't want atheists to have an influence in our culture, in our politics, in our government.

We don't want it. That's not the goal of Christianity. In fact, atheists have no morality.

They don't have the source of justice. Therefore, they don't have justice. It's a real thing.

Like somehow in conservative Christian circles, you recognize we live in a pluralistic age, in a pluralistic society, public

Christianity to them is not good. It's not good. That's the debate that we're in.

That's the dividing line. Is public Christianity good or not?

That's how degraded our discourse is. That's how weakened the church is.

Like, like Jen Wilkin does not think that a Christian public school would serve the common good. Being Christian in the public school system and teaching

Christian things and Christian morality and Christian law and Christian science and Christian all of this stuff, that wouldn't serve the public good.

Because, you know, there's what about those Hindus over there? They want to have a Hindu education. It's like we need to decide like is

Christianity good or not? It seems so basic and I'm even struggling to like come up with words for this because this is so depressing.

This is so like, this is the judgment of God. Like we conservative Christians, people that would believe the gospel, they would say they believe the gospel.

They believe the kinds of things I believe about theology for the most part. They're not sure if Christianity is actually even good for the public good.

That's, that's, that's unbelievable. But this is where we're at. There are many heroes of the faith that you know that take all kinds of positions that betray the idea that they don't, they're not quite sure that Christianity is good for people.

I find that unbelievable. I mean obviously you think of David French. Sure, David French doesn't believe that Christianity is good.

But, but the thing is like there are lots of other people that don't, you know, I'm not quite sure if they believe that Christianity is good or not.

Like I, anyway, I just thought I'd, you know, put that out there for you to noodle with.

Let me know who comes to mind when, when I say that, that conservative Christians are not confident that Christianity serves the public good.

Like public Christianity, like actually being a legitimate Christian, seeking Christian things,

Christian governments, Christian laws, because it's, because it's good. Because God's standard isn't an arbitrary standard.

Like, like, like God's, God's words and God's justice and God's, you know, statutes and laws and all of this stuff.

It is actually good whether you consider yourself a Hindu or not. Like whether you're gay or not or whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do, like actually it's still good even for you.

I'm not so sure a lot of people believe that. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow.

We'll talk about James Lindsay. Well, we'll laugh about it because it is funny and I don't want to,