Tim Keller's Third Way Strikes Again

Tim Keller’s Third Way and Current Political Ideologies

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, taking a break from my busy day to give you a short podcast on a Tim Keller thread that I asked folks on social media whether or not I should talk about, and the consensus was, yes, John, you should.

So you're listening to this much later. I'm recording this on March 4th, but I want to get a bunch of material out there for while I am traveling for a week and a half. Please pray for me. I'll be speaking in a number of places that the gospel would go forward, that people would understand the dangers of social justice and what Christianity has to say.

So I would appreciate that. But I want to record a bunch of short videos just to have material for all you who follow the podcast while I am out there unable to record. And so this is kind of a cold reading.

I know some of you don't like that. Some of you do. So I'm going to go through a thread that I know the gist of in a way. I've skimmed certain tweets in it, but I have not read it in detail and I haven't given it a lot of thought.

But the thing is, we've talked about Tim Keller so much, and we've talked about this third way position that he advocates that it shouldn't be, in my mind, that much of a chore to identify the issues and the assumptions that come with this.

So let's together, let's go through it. And I think one of the reasons this is helpful is because when you get this kind of rhetoric from your pastor in real time, and you want to try to respond to it or ask good questions in real time, then it can be difficult if you're not ready for it and you haven't taken time to mull it over.

So I think since so many pastors are getting their information from these celebrity pastors like Tim Keller and conference speakers, I think it's a great exercise to just kind of think through beforehand, if you can see that influence, maybe what a good question would be, or what kind of assumption to identify that maybe your pastor or a Christian leader, it could be your Bible study or whatever, may be advocating, and then to humbly and graciously and nicely, as much as you can, try to help in this.

Everyone's circumstance is different, and I'm not trying to tell people, go correct your pastors and be mean about it or anything like that, or exercise some pride. All I'm relaying is there's a reality here.

There are pastors out there, and there's a lot of them who do get their talking points and their ways of thinking about some of these things from celebrities like Tim Keller. So you may find it at your church if you haven't already.

And so the cold reading kind of helps us in real time identify, okay, what's the kind of question to ask? What's going on in this language here? So here's the thread. It's about, I think, nine tweets, and he says, thread on how Christianity does not fit neatly into current political ideologies.

Now let's stop there. He's starting off on an interesting foot. I just want you to notice this, because I don't know of anyone who would make the argument that Christianity fits neatly, right? That's the word he uses, neatly, into a current political ideology or an ideology from the past.

It just doesn't, or a political party. Christianity in some ways transcends this world, this temporal world. In other ways, the Christian ethic should be applied in this temporal world. And even different Christians are going to differ exactly on what that might look like, but Christians in general should agree that there is a Christian ethic, and it should be applied, and the political sphere would be no exception.

So the first assumption here, or the first, some might say, straw man, perhaps, or just what he's arguing against seems to be, possibly, that Christianity is not going to fit into current political ideologies, and we shouldn't assume that it would.

The thing is, that shouldn't be controversial to anyone. I don't think anyone says this. We have a political party that gives Christians a seat at the table that, in general, in their party platform, tries to defend a Christian sense of morality.

We have another political party ripping that down. There's no contest, in my mind, if those are your choices, but if you make a standard, you assume that there must be a standard in which you must reach some kind of perfect Christian perfection, no political party will ever reach that.

As soon as you have a sinner, even in a good political party with a good Christian ethic, it wouldn't meet the criteria, because you have someone who's sinful. So don't expect perfection. Don't expect Christianity to neatly fit into a political, and the word ideology is interesting, an ideology.

In my mind, ideology, and perhaps we're operating on two different definitions, would conflict with Christianity anyway, but this is the foot he's getting started on. And so I think there's a sense of reasonableness.

Everyone's going to agree with that statement. It appeals to everyone. They just realize, well, yeah, of course not. There's no perfect Christian party out there. And so that, I think, allows him then to make the argument he's about to make.

The Early Church, the Poor, and Galatians 2:10; 3:28

He says, the early church was marked by a deep concern for the poor and racial equality. Now, let's stop there for a minute. He cites Galatians 2 .10 and Galatians 3 .28. So let's go there. I have my Bible with me right here.

Galatians 2, and then chapter 10, says this, says, only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. And he's talking about the Jerusalem council. So Christians engage in charity, right?

And then Galatians 3 .28 is the verse, and it says this, and if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. So the oneness that we have in Christ, the shared identity, because we are adopted into this spiritual family, but that doesn't get rid of the temporal world and the identities that are contained in this temporal world.

So that's not exactly, I'll just say, the racial equality being called for now through efforts to redistribute privilege and platforming and resources. Not the same thing, or to take down certain historical monuments, to defund the police.

It's just not quite the same. I'm not seeing that in Paul, right? So we have to be careful. When you say racial equality today, that's how it's used, and that is not even in the same, it's sloppy in my mind to try to make that fit, right?

So his first sentence here, Christianity does not fit neatly into current political ideologies. That's true. But neither do political ideologies fit into Christianity, right? So you gotta be careful with terms that come from ideological thinking and then just saying, well, yeah, Paul, Paul believed that.

Well, yeah, of course he was concerned for the poor. That's not socialism, it's charity. So he says at the very same time, it taught that sex was only for, within a mutually self-giving lifelong covenant of marriage.

And I don't think we need to look up 1 Thessalonians or 1 Corinthians because we know this, yeah, of course. To our modern ears, this sounds like a contradictory mishmash of liberalism and conservatism.

Well, let's stop there. The only reason it sounds like that to our ears is because of the way Tim Keller framed it. It's not because the apostle Paul is saying things that sound contradictory or they're from two different political parties or ideologies.

It's because Tim Keller is boxing Paul in and putting, he has a category that he associates with the left and then he's putting Bible verses there. He's jamming Paul into this category and saying, well, Paul agrees with this.

You know, deep concern for the poor and racial equality. That's of the left. Yeah, but it's not socialism and it's not anti-racism in the sense of we would think of that today in a critical race theory driven kind of thing.

So I say, no, that's not what Paul's saying. It's not what he's advocating. And I'm not just gonna grant that this sounds weird to our ears. If you read what Paul teaches, it shouldn't sound weird to our ears at all.

Paul's not endorsing those things. So today the church is being fragmented, he says, by progressives and conservatives who want it to only serve one of these commitments and discard the other. Now he's right that there's a political divide going on in the church and he's right that it is splitting churches up.

In fact, I've spoken at churches that are the result of splits or that gained a lot of people because of splits that happened in the community or something like that. And politics generally played a role in the last two years.

But I've argued that this isn't really a surface level political thing as much as it is a political movement that has underlying religious assumptions that's coming into the church and seeking to change the church in some fundamental way.

So it's actually much deeper. The assumptions, or politics, you're applying ethics. So those ethics are coming from somewhere. And at the root, this is gonna come downstream from a religious point of view of some kind.

So it's not simply progressives and conservatives in the political sense. We need to remember that. It's actually a fundamentally different visions for what ethics ought to be based upon. And if you'd miss that, and if you just think it's a little more surface level, it's just progressives and conservatives, then you're gonna get a wrong diagnosis about this issue.

You're gonna try to downplay it as if it's not that important. And we need unity together. We need unity. We just need to come together despite these differences we have that are diametrically in opposition to one another.

You can't have unity under those circumstances. If one person thinks socialism is very acceptable, so stealing's okay if it's done on a mass scale. I was at a conference last night. Some of you might know, it's an old country music artist, Marty Stewart.

Probably 10 of you knew who I just mentioned, but really skilled, okay? And there was a song that they were doing. I never go to concerts. I think it's been, I don't even know how many years, but I saw Marty Stewart was gonna be in the area.

And since I'm in upstate New York, I mean, country music, especially older country musicians, they're not gonna come to this area, but Marty Stewart came. So I thought, well, I'm not gonna have that opportunity.

Let's go see him. And they did this song by, it was like a Woody Guthrie song, like an old, old, old song. And it had a line in it about some people rob you with a six gun and other people with a pen, with an ink pen or something like that.

So the idea is that there's politicians, they'll rob you and they make it legal. And they repeated the line in the concert. They stopped the song and the guy who was singing, it wasn't, it was actually the drummer got up and sang.

And he said, I like that line so much, we're gonna repeat it. And I, and everyone kind of laughed and clapped. And I mean, it's true though, that that's what socialism ends up being. It's, you know, you're not robbing someone with a six gun.

You're robbing someone with a pen. You're signing a bill. So if you have someone who believes that, like stealing's okay under those circumstances, or they believe, yeah, we should, we should, you know, redistribute according to a concern that, you know, we have an anti-racist concern or something for racial equality, get rid of disparities.

You're gonna end up with a very fundamental disagreement at your church and you have to work through it. And you can't just say unity, unity when there's no unity. But a lot of pastors are doing that.

And I think it's because of guys like Tim Keller. So the church is fragmented. And it's these two, these two children can't get along. These progressives and these conservatives, they're not playing nice.

The Sex Ethic, Justice Ethic, and Philippians 2

So he says this, but to the church, the sex ethic and the justice ethic are a whole cloth. So if they just saw the wisdom of Tim Keller, these two kids in the playpen who can't share the toys and they're splitting off into different ends of the nursery, they would be able to get along and stop crying about things if they just would realize that the sex ethic and the justice ethic are a whole cloth, that there is no contradiction, that really there's aspects of liberalism.

There's aspects of conservatism that we can both bring together and integrate into one another. And that's going to end up being something that constitutes the Christian ethic. It sounds really good, doesn't it?

And the reason it sounds good to so many people is because number one, we can get rid of conflict, right? If we just came to this common ground position, which is apparently based on the word of God, that allows conservatives and progressives to kind of be in the same place, then we can get rid of conflict.

We're sick of this conflict, right? The other thing is it gives us a comfort of being in the center. We're not out on the edge over here. We're not on the edge over here. We're in the center. It's very comfortable to be there because you're not going to be unfairly targeted by either side, really.

You're seen as reasonable, that you can transcend the debate and see it objectively for what it is. And so there's not as much risk associated with that. Pastors, I mean, look, you're sick of seeing your church divided.

And if one half leaves, then you're going to lose a lot of finances. I mean, what's the way that we can keep both sides happy and giving to the church and doing ministry and all that? Well, maybe we can introduce this, that there's some hybrid between the two positions.

Even though they're diametrically in opposition, which I pointed this out, we can somehow make out like they're really not in opposition. Sexual immorality and injustice go hand in hand because the unifying principle that unites them is Jesus, who had ultimate power and privilege, there's that word, but sacrificed it in order to love and save us.

Well, let's finish the story of Jesus. Yes, Jesus did, as Philippians talks about, he came to this earth. In fact, let's go there, let's go there and just read it because I think I don't want to just summarize it.

So Philippians chapter two, I have my Bible open here. ESV translation is what I have in front. Usually I use NASB 1995, but I had an ESV next to me, so that's what I'm using. It says this, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, therefore God has highly exalted him.

Now, hold on, whoa, hold on. Verse nine, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Wait, hold on, hold on. That's not, that's not supposed to be in the narrative.

And then verse 10, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Yeah, so Jesus did give up some things temporarily.

And then what's the end of the story? He's king, everyone bows to him. In fact, he comes back with a double-edged sword. That's also Jesus. Jesus isn't just this suffering person on a cross. That's the Jesus of liberation theology.

If you just relegate Jesus to that moment where in a way that's so unjust, he dies. And that's what they like to focus on. Jesus becomes the symbol for the oppressed because he relates to them. Jesus is, I mean, this is a purpose that he was fulfilling in doing that.

And that purpose, I mean, for the joy set before him, it says he endured the cross, the joy, something came after that. And it includes him being a conquering king. So if you just finish the story, it backfires on this narrative.

Jesus gave up his power and privilege. And that's something that is an example to us. Well, yeah, we should humble ourselves. We should submit to the Lord. But the Lord's got a plan. And guess who's ruling with him?

Hey, you guessed it, Christians. And they're gonna have to figure out what they're gonna do with all that political power that they wield. That's just the biblical story. I'm not adding anything to it.

I'm just telling you what it says. How often does Tim Keller talk about that stuff? The story kind of gets chopped off. And I know this because I've read so much Tim Keller. That's kind of where it goes.

Biblical Justice, Voluntary Charity, and Forced Redistribution

All right, so he says this. He says, this was a self-giving rather than self-fulfillment and self-realization. This is the basis for biblical justice. Why? To help the marginalized always will require sacrifice, giving what we have for others.

Now, I have no problem with helping people. That's certainly part of the Christian ethic. We are to engage in charity. But the government coming and forcing us to do it is another matter. And if you seek public policy, that makes the government this bully that forces people to give to certain charities, like I trust them to know which ones to give to or certain causes, I should say, then it's not in the same category as the charitable, voluntary kind of giving that Christians should be engaged in.

And I realize this is a shorter podcast. I don't have time to get into some of the objections that people bring up from Case Law and the Old Testament. But you're not going to find the Old Testament, I'll just say this, like, you know, the corners of fields being unplowed and stuff.

You're not going to find like government coming in and then holding people's feet to the fire and enforcing that and having penalties associated with failing to do that. So, and it was a little bit of a different situation because of the theocratic framework there.

But New Testament, certainly you're not going to, you don't see that kind of thing. So we're being sloppy at best. At worst, we're saying, and really he is saying that progressive policies when it comes to anti-racism, when it comes to anti-poverty are biblical in some way.

There's a connection between them. That's what he's trying to communicate. And we should embrace that somehow. Then he posts an article here that I would recommend to you, Tim Keller on Justice in the Bible at gospelandlife .com and you can check it out.

It's one of many articles he has on this. And Tim Keller's, he's interesting when it comes to whether this should be under compulsion or not. I've read things by him where he says, yeah, I mean, it's totally fine to have political policies that would compel and essentially force people to redistribute their wealth for one of these causes.

And then he has other statements where he kind of backs off of that. And I think this is one of those articles where he kind of backs off. It's like, well, there's forced redistribution, but then the Bible kind of gives this softer approach where we're just expected to give out of this generous heart that we have, but it's also something that the government can mandate, but it's not necessarily supposed to be compelled, but obviously you're presenting a scenario in which it's gonna be compelled.

So go ahead, check it out. We'll keep going with the thread though. He says, if on the other hand, you are one of the marginalized, it also requires self-sacrifice to forgive and reconcile even as you seek justice.

Self-Sacrifice, the Marginalized, and the Limits of Conservative Policy

Today's left doesn't accept B, which is the principle I just read. And today's right, they don't accept, today's right thinks they accept A, but often they don't. And A was his previous treat where we should be self-giving instead of self-fulfilling and self-realizing.

And so this is the kind of like anti, it's the David Platt kind of thing. It's the round cider thing. You're having a big yacht, having nice things, like that's, you know, you should be just self-giving.

You gotta be, you know, don't try to be materialistic and buy into the American dream. It's that kind of thing that he's talking about. And we've talked about that whole notion before. Obviously the Bible teaches it is more blessed to give than to receive, but there isn't a, if you are living for pleasure and riches, then yeah, you're in sin.

You're actually, you can't serve God and mammon. It's hard for a rich person to get to the kingdom of God because they tend to rely on themselves. There's a lack of humility there, but you can also be very rich and also be godly.

And we see examples of that. We see Solomon even, I mean, having all these riches and yet having also being the wisest man. There's nothing in the Bible you're gonna actually find that would say, you know, riches are in and of themselves bad things.

Joseph of Arimathea, right, was a rich man. Zacchaeus, a man who gave the money back that he stole, but I'm sure he's a tax collector. He's probably still a wealthy guy at that point. And so wealth is not demonized.

It's the motivation. It's the making that an end in and of itself. So can conservative, here's the thing. Conservative policies aren't meant to address these hard issues because you can't. You just can't.

You can set conditions for the market, but you can't address hard policies. In fact, socialism attempts to do this, and that's one of the problems, is that you're trying to curb selfishness and force people to be generous, but then at that point, it's not generosity.

And in the name of doing that, there's a third party that gets involved, the middle man, and they end up wanting their cut. And then you just have this whole class of people. They get their cut and they end up being the rich guys and they end up controlling things.

And so that's not a viable solution. You're just actually creating a bigger problem. And you're creating, you're actually giving the notion to those who are allegedly oppressed that they are really owed something and whether they are or not, that can also, I mean, couldn't you say that socialism maybe creates this motivation to want to get wealth and self-fulfillment, self-realization.

So you could turn that argument right back around on him in a way and say like, look, the left is at least just as guilty of this, if not more. And the right's at least not pretending to try to amend these hard issues.

You know, if you create a fair economy, a system that applies a just standard to everyone and less regulation, less taxes, all of that, and you have one guy down the street who indulges in everything his money can buy for himself and also reaps the misery that comes with that at the end of his life.

And then you have someone else on the same street, you know, very similar who decides to give to charity. The system isn't causing them to do that either way. So it's, socialism does try though to insert itself into the motivations of men's hearts and change them.

And that's, it's a very key difference. You have to realize this. Socialism, people that ascribe to that think they can somehow tap into the goodness of man or change the nature of man because the problem is external.

Conservatives have always been suspicious of that, thinking no man's actually flawed, sinful, would be the really the Christian word. And they are gonna seek their own. And you want a economic system that is going to use that self-seeking nature that most people are gonna have to benefit others and not, and you also want those who do have good motivations to be able to get wealth and hire people.

And the pursuit of happiness is how Thomas Jefferson put this, but life, liberty, property was the common phrase. And when he meant pursuit of happiness, that's what he meant. It was property. It was engaging in business to secure resources for your family, to carve out a living, have something you could call your own and fulfill the responsibilities God has given people.

If you don't provide for your family, you're worse than an unbeliever. It's not the government's job. It's your job, right? So this is the fundamental difference between these two philosophies. They just look at man differently and they have different ways of different levels of optimism on what the government is able to do to change or tap into some kind of goodness in man's nature.

So this seems to get sidestepped in a lot of things Tim Keller writes. He doesn't either see that or it's not, I don't know. He just kind of attributes to the right that there's some contribution there, some kind of solidarity that people on the right have with this self-fulfillment and self-realization.

And so the right thinks that they're in good shape, but they often don't. They're not helping the marginalized. In fact, they're engaging in this American dream kind of materialism. And many of them who vote for the Republicans, they probably do.

There's no argument here, but that's irrelevant. That's the thing, it's irrelevant. Those hearts would be doing the same thing in a socialist system. Then the motivation just becomes, how do I get a government job so I can get my cut?

How do I lobby so that I can carve out a space for my business, which is where we are at now, and make sure that the rules are in my favor? I mean, you never get away from that. That's the heart of man.

So he's making a moral equivalency here. If in case you can't recognize it, today's left and today's right, today's left has this weak part of them that they're too soft and too accepting of sexual deviancy.

And then today's right, man, way too accepting of materialism, that kind of thing, and not caring about the poor as much. That's really the sense you're getting in reading this. It says, this is also the basis for the Christian sex ethic.

The Christian Sex Ethic, Marriage, and Human Flourishing

The modern world sees sex as a commodity to be consumed, enjoyed in relationships, conducted contingency on a profitable cost-benefit relationship, but real marriage requires mutual self-sacrifice, the giving up of independence for the deeper joy of interdependence.

This is why the Bible and the church has always seen sex only within marriage and doing just as a whole cloth united by the principle of self-sacrifice, of losing oneself to find oneself. They are one and the same that leads to human flourishing.

Now, the language he uses, I'll be honest, it is kind of confusing, okay? I think he's saying, right, from like a conservative Christian, traditional Orthodox standpoint, would be that God has designed men and women differently, and when they come together, there's a special union that takes place that he endorses, and that this is part of his plan.

In general, there's people who have the gift of singleness. Jesus didn't get married, right? But this is his plan. That's what I think he's saying, but the words he's using aren't words that have typically been used.

To talk about, to speak of it in a way that, like what's the word he uses here? He says, the giving up of independence for the deeper joy of interdependence. I mean, unless you have the gift of singleness, I guess.

But if what he's saying is just that God made one for the other, then I mean, absolutely correct. There's no issue there, but it's interesting how he phrases things sometimes, because it's often not the biblical language.

It's coming from somewhere else a little bit, and I don't mean just that one line. I mean like just these two tweets, the way he talks about it, and the way in other writings that he talks about this.

He does this with a lot of things, like sin becomes brokenness. He doesn't really talk about, there is a book where he talks about hell somewhat, but generally he softens it in most of his writings to kind of in a C .S. Lewis way.

It's a place that almost like people choose to go to, and so he tends to soft pedal things that would cause an offense to the secular culture in New York City. And then he ends it with this. So no innate issue with those past, those two tweets.

I'm not saying I have an issue with them. It's just, it's confusing for some. It's just not, a lot of people will look at that, I think, and be like, and not exactly sure wholly what he means by it. He says, don't let the modern world split you.

Don't buy into the packaged deal current political ideologies ask of us. See how Christianity affirms aspects of all ideologies. Now that's a dangerous statement, but also critiques them and redirects them.

Questions to Ask About Ideology, Redistribution, and Racial Equality

So I guess a question I'd have is like, does it affirm aspects of Nazism, right? That's an ideology. Does it affirm aspects of communism? Like, does it affirm aspects of, I don't know, Freud, Freudian psychology?

Does it, like, so questions to ask, right? After, let's say your pastor says something similar to some of this, uses similar language, tries to bring out that moral equivalency, which just, there really isn't a moral equivalency between the left and right.

It's, he gets off the rails in the first two tweets. And after that, because if you go along with them on these first two tweets, you'll kind of buy into the rest of this. And it sounds really nice. You can have a Christian orthodox sexual ethic, but then at the same time, you can kind of engage in the BLM and socialist kind of stuff, if you want to, in the name of Christianity or a softer version of it or something.

So it's appealing. It's attractive to people who want to kind of, like I said, be in the middle and keep their congregations together and all that. But the question I would ask, number one, is what's an ideology?

What do you mean by that? Let him explain what he would mean by that. I don't want to assume an answer to this. I think I know what it means, but what does he think it means, right? I don't think he thinks Nazism like would play into that, right?

That that's, there's an aspect of goodness in Christianity in that. So that's one thing I would ask. The other thing I would ask, and it's in these first two tweets, is when he says the early church was marked by a deep concern for the poor and racial equality, like, what do you mean by a concern for the poor?

And is some kind of redistribution scheme compelled by a government authority or compelled by even the church, let's say, or some kind of a central authority, is that what you have in mind? Is this a forced kind of thing?

What, is this, is it charity you're talking about or does it include something that's forced, right? So I want to know that. Is stealing okay if it's on a mass scale or at what point does it become stealing, right?

Good questions to ask your pastor. Racial equality, right? What do you mean by racial equality, Tim Keller? Or if your pastor says this, what do you mean by racial equality? Do you mean we're all one in Christ on a spiritual level?

Is that what you mean by it? Or do you mean that disparities should be eliminated in certain ways? Or do you mean that, you know, do you think Paul would have marched with BLM? Or do you think that there are differences between different racial groups that are, that must be rectified somehow?

And how would that happen? Would it be state action? Would it be, are we supposed to just voluntarily do this? And why do you think that that would be part of the left's plan? Describe to me this tie you're making between the left, the political left, and Paul's thinking of Galatians 3 .28.

Because he doesn't really explain that. So those are the kinds of things that I would ask. You know, is this part of the Democratic Party platform? Would they be cool with Galatians 3 .28? Or was Paul talking about a, not a temporal reality in as much as he was talking about a reality, an eternal reality.

And it does have a temporal representation in the church. But that is, it's not to say that someone, let's say, from, oh, we'll say from Russia, as I'm recording this now on the 4th. Is someone from Russia who's a Russian citizen, if they come to the United States, do they get all the privileges that come with being a United States citizen?

Well, no. Well, is that wrong? Should that be rectified? Is that an example of racial inequality? Would Paul be against that? So you can come up with a scenario like that and just ask, you know, at what point, what does that look like?

You know, tangibly, let's not, let's get out of the esoteric world and get into the real nuts and bolts world. And that's one of the things I think that Tim Keller often does. He uses general language.

He uses sometimes esoteric and abstract language. And oftentimes it just flies over people's heads. And it's mixed with sometimes emotionally nice sounding words. And without concrete examples, it's often hard to see what he actually is talking about.

But by the time you reach the end of a thread like this, you're kind of convinced that you're led down this path of thinking that, okay, there's some Christianity in the Democrats, there's some Christianity in the Republicans perhaps.

And we just got to like unite around the aspects of Christianity that exist in both these parties and like kind of create this third way. And that's exactly what this is. It's a third way. And for even, the reason some people think Tim Keller is pushing things towards the Democratic Party is because one, he is a Democrat.

He's registered Democrat. But the other, the real reason is because stuff like this is being introduced to an audience that has traditionally for the last couple of decades voted Republican and voted conservative.

And so it's his audience that is causing this. The people that are hearing this aren't on MSNBC. The people hearing a thread like this are people that have been part of churches or at least a movement that at one time would have been more in line with Jerry Falwell's kind of moral majority.

So that's why it's who the message is getting to and how it's moving people away from a conservative way of looking at certain key issues that are in the news right now. So that's my take on this. Those are some of the questions that I would ask about this.

And I hope that's helpful for some of you. A lot more can be said, but I'm kind of running out of steam right now. And I want to record some more videos for you all. Like I said, more coming. God bless.

Please pray for me as I'm on the road. Bye now.