David French's Political Polytheism versus The Great Commission - AD on FLF Network

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. All right, all right, well today I want to start off with a Bible verse, but before I do that, let me just say this.

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We are producing a massive amount of content, and I have to say, I'm biased, I realize that, I have to say that the quality of content that Fight, Laugh, Feast Network puts out is unmatched in the Christian community.

There's no question about it. Not only is it entertaining, which is important, let's just be honest, entertainment is important. It's entertaining, but the worldview presented is unashamedly Christian.

No holds barred Christianity, we're trying to apply all of Christ to all of life, everything, including baseball, including economics, including political commentary, all of this stuff, because we think that everything should be brought under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We don't do it like squishes, that's the big part. We don't do it like squishes. You look at so much of Christian commentary, and it's just so squishy, and in fact, we're kind of going to talk a little bit about that today.

But please consider joining the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network club. Use the show code ROBLES to let the guys know that you enjoy this show in particular. Now, I do want to start off with a Bible verse. I'm going to read it from the King James for two reasons.

One, I like the King James, and two, this is a verse that you likely have committed to memory. And if you're like me, I'm not making any accusations, but I'll tell you what I do. When I hear a verse that I've committed to memory, a lot of times I don't really pay attention to what it's actually saying, and I really want you to pay attention.

So, I'm going to use the King James because a lot of you maybe don't memorize it in King James version. So, this is Matthew chapter 28. This is the Great Commission. Listen to this. These are the words of God.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Amen, indeed. Those were the words of God. That's the Great Commission. That's the mission of the church. That's what Jesus told his disciples to do before he ascended into heaven.

This is the plan. This is the plan of attack. This is the goal for Christianity. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And he doesn't leave us in the lurch.

He tells us exactly what to teach, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Man, that's good stuff. That is good stuff. Jesus made it a habit to teach his disciples the Bible, the words of God, the Old Testament.

That's what he's talking about in context. And of course, we know that later on there would be more scripture written, right? So we know about the New Testament too. But Jesus was talking, when he was talking to his disciples, he had also taught them many things from the Old Testament, many things about himself from the Old Testament.

And so in context, all things whatsoever I have commanded you is the law of God, is the teachings of God from the book, from the Old Testament. And that's important to understand because it is full, it's full-bodied.

You know what I mean? At the beginning, I said that the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network Club, the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, rather, is trying to apply all of Christ to all of life. And the thing is, the Old Testament applies to all of life.

It applies to our civil government. It applies to our family structures. It applies to how we engage in business and economics. It applies to how we engage in art and entertainment and stuff like that.

There is so much meat there, so much meat there. This is a great commission. It's great because it's fantastic. It's a positive thing. But it's also great because it's very large. It's great because there's so much to teach.

You could teach the Bible forever and there would still be more to teach. It's an amazing book and it applies to every area of life. What I want to do today is I want to cover this, not completely, I'm not going to completely cover this article because this is a very confusing article.

I urge you to read it. I'll try to include the link to it in the description of this video. It's by David French. The case for religious liberty is more compelling than the case for Christian power. Religious liberty is more compelling than the case for Christian power.

Now, here's the reality. Even in the title, you can kind of see what's going to happen in this article because on the one hand, he's contrasting religious liberty, which is a generic thing, religious liberty, and then he's contrasting that with Christian power.

And the point of this article is he wants to make the case that the case for religious liberty is more compelling than the case for Christian power. And this, to me, is a very odd title. It's a very odd title.

Look at the subtitle. Liberty is a right. Power is not. Okay, I can go with him there. But even the title itself, I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking, well, yeah. Yeah, obviously, because you see, religious liberty is generic.

You know, there's a religion out there in some states that claims to worship the spaghetti god or something like that. What is that that the atheists made up? They made up a religion called the spaghetti monster, the flying spaghetti monster.

Yeah. And so, of course, I mean, pagans of all stripes would rather have religious liberty than Christian power because pagans hate Christians. Pagans hate God. And so why would they want Christians to be in power?

Why would they want to follow God's authority? Why would they want to follow God's law? They're pagans, right? So, of course, if you're going to make a case to pagans, of course, religious liberty is going to convince them more because there's no way they would want to follow Christians in power.

So it's like, so on the one hand, he's talking about generic religion and how religious liberty is more compelling to people than Christian power. And this just, to me, instantly seems like an obvious, obviously, like what's the why is this the title of this article?

And so it immediately kind of strikes my interest and I want to know what he's actually going to say here. And if you read this article, many people have commented, and this is my first reaction as well.

This is a confusing article. This is like an everything but the kitchen sinks type article. Like he throws so much stuff in here. There's so much buzzword, not buzzwords, really. It's more like just whatever the world is saying, he throws it in here.

It's anti-Trump. It's anti-Protestant. It's anti, you know, like there's just so much stuff here. Everything but the kitchen sink is in this article. So it's just like a grab bag, like I'm not one of those conservatives types of articles, which is a very common position, I think, for David French at this point.

He's the, he's one of these, well, I'm a real conservative, not one of these fake conservatives types. And it's just, and he always takes the strangest, most progressive position that a conservative can take.

Let's read, let's read the first couple sentences and just kind of see where he's going to go with this. I think that'll, that'll help you. He starts off, he says, let me begin with a pop quiz. Dear readers, did Americans enjoy more religious liberty 30 years ago than they do now in 2020?

How about 50 years ago or a hundred years ago? Now let's ask a different series of questions. Did white Protestants enjoy more political power 30 years ago, 50 years ago, or 100 years ago? The answers to the first series of questions are no, heck no.

And hold on, I've got an anti-Catholic state constitutional amendment to pass. The answers to the second set are similar, similarly dramatic. Yes, absolutely. And let's raise a glass to grape juice to toast temperance.

The longer the American culture war persists, the more convinced I am that the distinction between religious power and religious liberty is the key to understanding the incredible angst felt by so many white American Christians.

Do you see what I mean by this is like a kitchen sink type article? Like, like he didn't even capitalize white, so he's going to get canceled, I guess. But what is, what, what, what is, why, why is that?

This is, this is very interesting. So he's making the claim that there's more religious liberty now than there was, you know, a hundred years ago, but there's less Christian power than there was a hundred years ago.

And there's the distinction there that's important if you want to understand why people are voting for Trump, because that's what he's doing when he mentions white American Christians. He's talking about Trump, right?

And I have to say, like, like the way this article presents it, it's like, well, religious liberty is good and white Protestant power is either neutral or, or bad. And I just, I just think that misses it.

So much, like there is, let me say this in as, in as, as clear a way as possible. Religious liberty of the kind that we have right now, where people are running around pretending to like, to, to worship flying spaghetti monsters and Muslims are running around in, in our, in our leadership and all of that, Muslims are leading us according to their Muslim principles and secularists are leading us according to their pagan secularism and stuff like that.

That's actually not a good thing for the country. That kind of religious freedom is actually not a good thing because the reality is that, you know, pagans, this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the famous thing.

Pagans going to peg, right? Pagans going to peg. They actually don't have a good morality. They have a system of morality, but it's not good. And so religious liberty is the reason why we kill many, many babies in our country.

That's not a good thing. Christian leadership would be much better because if we had Christian leadership, presumably we would have a Christian law. Now I don't, I know it doesn't automatically follow, but what I'm talking about is real regenerate Christians, right?

Real regenerate Christians in power, there would be, it would be a better situation, presumably. And if you don't agree with that, then I, I, I, I have to wonder why you call yourself a Christian at all.

Like if Christians don't have better morality than Muslims, Christians don't have better morality than the flying spaghetti monster. If Christians don't have better morality than a typical run-of-the-mill atheist pagan, then what's the point really?

What's the point? He goes on, he says, white Christians feel this angst, even in spite of a string of court victories that have secured religious liberty from state interference to a degree that's unprecedented in American constitutional history.

And the difference between power and liberty explains why many other American religious communities do not feel similar anxiety and thus make dramatically different political choices from their white evangelical friends.

And again, this is really, it's about Trump at the end of the day. That's, I mean, everything David French does these days is about Trump really. But this is, this is another one of those confusing statements.

It's like, it's very obvious if, if, if, if religious, if other religions are gaining authority and power in our country, right? Like why wouldn't white Americans feel some level of angst? I mean, and that's why I started with the Great Commission because part of our mission for existence as the church of God, as the people of God, as the kingdom of God, members of the kingdom, part of our reason for existence is to teach all nations, baptizing them.

So it's about converting the nations and then teaching them to observe all things whatsoever that Christ has commanded you. And so why would we not feel angst if the nations aren't being baptized? At least our nation, right?

Our nation is, pagans are growing in our nation that we've seen the statistics, right? We've seen the statistics. I mean, it seems very obvious to me why that angst would be there. Our mission isn't going very well in the United States of America.

It's not going very well. We're actually losing ground here more so than we ever had before. And I would point to the winds of religious liberty, whatever that's supposed to mean, and he's going to talk about different court cases, and that's where the article gets very boring.

So I'm not going to read that. But that's actually not a good thing. Like this is not even a neutral thing. Like if religious liberty is growing, but Christian influence is waning, Christian power, that's a bad thing.

That means the mission isn't going well. So, you know, I don't really feel a lot of angst about this. That's part of my whole no despair thing because my family is thriving right now. I've got three sons.

I'm teaching my sons to grow and to learn in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Like it's going well for my context. But if I think about what's going on out there, yeah, there's a little bit of angst.

And I'm just confused as to why that would be an issue. Why is that being presented as either a neutral or a bad thing here? It doesn't really make much sense because our mission isn't going very well.

And so you would think we'd be looking for ways to kind of turn the tide and make this mission go better. So I just don't really understand, like, why would we be celebrating religious liberty and loss of white Christian power?

You know what I mean? Like, like, I don't understand that. Is that like just a good thing because it's white? Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's because it's white power that is being lost, according to David French.

Maybe that's why we should be happy about it. But it doesn't matter if it's white Christian power or Latino Christian power or whatever. Like we should be discipling the nations to be Christians, culturally Christians.

That would be a good thing. If Christian power were increasing in our country, that would be a sign that, you know, things would be going pretty well with our mission. But as it stands, he's making the case that it's not.

It's decreasing. And but somehow that becomes a positive thing. I really don't understand that if you believe in the Great Commission, which I do as a Christian. So as I said, I'm not going to go through this whole article.

He talks about the different wins for religious freedom, the court cases and stuff like that. And again, I just I fail to see how that would be evidence of a good thing. Like if you look at the scripture, right?

And Christ says, teaching them to observe everything that I've commanded. And you look at the Old Testament about religious freedom and stuff like that. I don't think you're going to find the kind of religious freedom that we have today in those scriptures.

And so something has gone wrong with the mission. If you're replacing, you know, Christian religious freedom, which basically means, you know, like, look, like you either worship God or you don't. But you can't try to convince other people not to worship God with you.

You can't entice people away. You can't try to institute another law in our borders. Like in our borders, if we're going to be Christians in our nation, which is what our goal is, right? We're supposed to be discipling and teaching the nations.

That's the goal. So the closer we come to accomplishing that goal, the more the law should reflect that. The more the law should reflect Christ's teachings, which, again, is the Old Testament code, right?

That's how we know the things are going well. But the less that happens, that's how you know things are going poorly. So anyway, let's talk about the last thing I wanted to mention in this article. This is a few paragraphs down here where he talks about how Christian cultural power hasn't waned everywhere.

He says this. He says, the power has not waned everywhere, of course. I live in a red county, in a red state, and Christians still retain immense cultural and political power. Christians can live here, raise a family here, enjoy the choice of a large, faithful and supportive church community, and never experience an ounce of government persecution and even a hint of a threat of religious freedom.

But make no mistake, this is not an unalloyed good. He goes on. Cultural Christianity, a kind of Christian-influenced lifestyle, pervades the South. Churches are everywhere. Attendance is sometimes merely a sign of habit and a source of social connection, then it is a marker of devotion.

I'm reminded of the ominous warning in Revelation 3. Quote, I know your works. You're neither hot nor cold. Would that you were either hot or cold. So therefore, because you are lukewarm and neither hot or cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Even worse, because Christianity has such cultural power, politicians clothe themselves in faith even when they're venal, incompetent, or corrupt. It's still a heartbreaking reality that the American region, most steeped in Protestant Christianity, was also the heart of slavery and Jim Crow.

Christian power does not always lead to the common good. And so here's the idea that cultural Christianity is actually not a good thing because people can just get by being fake Christians is what he's saying.

And okay, granted, like it's not good that you have a lot of fake Christians running around. I'm not saying that that's a good thing. But what's better? Like, let's do a thought experiment. Is it good to have Christians who at least act culturally Christian and maybe their hearts aren't regenerate?

Is that better? Or is it better to have pagans running around doing whatever pagans do all day long, all every day, and all that? Because I would argue that the influence of religious liberty and having pagans run our country, basically, is the cause for people being able to get by with cultural Christianity.

Because here's the reality. He says, well, see, cultural Christianity is bad because politicians are corrupt and they call themselves Christians. And I'm like, yeah, but if we actually were accomplishing our mission, that great commission, we would be putting a stop to that corruption.

We would be putting a stop to that corruption. We would be punishing crimes the way they ought to be punished. We'd be establishing the law of God so that they couldn't get away with it. So that's all the more reason why we need to actually have Christian power, Christian authority, the expanse of Christian power, not the retraction of it, the expanse of it.

And probably a lot less religious liberty the way the constitution, or at least the constitutional lawyers describe it. And more religious liberty according to how the scriptures define it. That's the point.

And so it's like he's trying to make this case that like Christian power, it's either all bad or neutral and kind of bad. And it's just not the case at all. It's a very weird thing to think considering that mission that we've got, the great commission.

Go ye therefore and disciple, teach the nations, teach the nations to observe everything that I've commanded you. That certainly sounds like a case, a biblical case for Christian power, for Christian authority, for Christian nations that accomplish Christian goals and establish Christian laws, not pluralistic laws.

You see, because the kind of religious liberty we have essentially leads to political polytheism. Our system in the United States is political polytheistic. That's not a, that's, I didn't coin that term.

This is political polytheism. That's what we have in the halls of Congress, polytheism. And David French, for some reason, thinks that that's a good thing. That's not a good thing. Polytheism is not a good thing.

And it's not enough to have, well, I worship God privately. Okay, fine. But we need to disciple the nations. That's a good thing. If you worship God privately, that's a good thing. I'm not going to take that away from you.

You're, you're, you're, you're, you're in your sphere of influence. You're doing what's required of you, right? But the reality is that we've got a commission and that commission doesn't allow us as a church to keep it private.

Because here's what it says. Let me remind you. Go ye therefore. Therefore, what was, what's the therefore therefore? Well, it's because he said all power. Listen to this. Listen to this kind of thing.

David French is busy making a case that Christian power is a negative thing. And Christ says, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, he says this to his people, because Christ has all authority.

Christ has all the power. Because of that, go to the nations and tell them that I've got that authority and tell them that I've got that power and teach them. The way you do it is you baptize them, you convert them.

And then once they're converted, baptized in the name of the father, the son, and the spirit, then you teach them to observe all things that I've commanded. Why? Because I've got the power. I don't. Christ does.

That's why we go to the nations. That's why we establish Christian nations. That's why we establish Christian rule, Christian power, because it's not our power. It's Christ. It's the God of the universe.

He's got all the power and all the authority. And we're supposed to go out into the nations and teach them about that authority and teach them about that command. And I'm pretty sure that Christ, when he said I've got all the authority, he didn't mean set up a country that is essentially polytheistic when it comes to civil government.

That's a weird take, David French. It's a very weird take for you to kind of hold up political polytheism as the standard, as the good thing in our country. Well, that's great. And then saying Christian power, on the other hand, that's bad.

Look, Christian power is not going to be perfect, but we need to reform Christianity if it's not going to be perfect so that we're striving for the goal for having a society that runs as close to perfect as possible because we're trying to follow Christ here.

We're trying to obey his commands because he's got all the authority. And so we know we're imperfect and we're never going to be able to establish perfect justice, but we ought to try. We don't just give it up to the pagans.

We don't just say because we can't be perfect because there have been a few corrupt politicians that have claimed the name of Christ because of that, then political polytheism, religious freedom. Yeah.

Omar Ilhan, whatever her name is. Yeah. Let her be involved in making laws in our country. Sure. It doesn't make sense, man. It doesn't make sense because all you have to do to see the problems with this article is know the great commission, a passage of scripture that pretty much every Christian has committed to memory.

And so David French here is lamenting the very thing that the commission of God, the commission that he gave us, the great commission tells us to, that's our goal. That's our goal. And David French is over here saying, yeah, but you know, and it's just, it's just very bizarre.

This article is super confusing, super confusing. And I thought about this for a long time. I'm not really entirely sure what to make of it. He ends the article like this. He says, instead, too many Christians experience growing anxiety about the future.

And in clinging to alleged lesser evils, the core of the evangelical case for Trump, it's always about Trump in self-defense or maintain access to power. All too many white evangelicals have convinced their fellow citizens that they're not worthy of the influence they so desperately seek.

A community that is supposed to be infused with transcendent moral purpose has gotten its hands very dirty indeed. And it should surprise no one when the world condemns our filth. You see the standard he set up here, political polytheism, the world, the pagans get to sit in the seat of judgment.

And the Christians are filthy. Why are the Christians filthy? Because they're trying to accomplish that great commission, and maybe they're doing it in an incompetent way. OK, granted, I'm not going to argue that with you, David French, because I just don't care to make that case with you.

But do you see how he set this up? If you have anxiety about the future and you're trying to establish Christian power, he's telling you that that's a bad thing. And after all, the pagans aren't going to like you if you keep doing that.

And I'm over here sitting like, why wouldn't we have anxiety about the future? And I don't mean anxiety in the sinful sense. I mean, why wouldn't we be concerned with what's going to happen next? Because we've got a commission to accomplish here.

All authority has been given to Christ, and he's commanded us to go to the nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and teach them everything. Everything. We teach the pagans.

They don't teach us. We will judge the world. That's another passage from Scripture. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And here, David French is saying, oh, it's just so terrible because the world's going to condemn us.

Christ says, if they hated me, they will hate you also. This should surprise no one when the world condemns us. But it's not because of our filth. They condemn us because they hate the light. They hate good.

They hate Christ. Of course, they're going to hate us. The only way I can describe this article from David French is that it's upside down. This article, there is nothing Christian about this article.

This is upside down. There's some confusion in this article. I don't understand it completely, but the parts I do understand are completely topsy turvy there. They're bizarro. This is the opposite of Christianity.

This is unbelief in the civil realm. That's it. That's the last word that I have on it. It's unbelief. Political polytheism is unbelief. The case for religious liberty, that's unbelief. The case for Christian power is the exercise of the Great Commission.

This is what faith looks like. This is what faith looks like. Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.