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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. All right, let's jump right into it today. First off, it's been a few weeks since my last podcast. Thank you for everyone who reached out to me with concern for my well-being.
This is just how I do it. I don't announce my vacations, but I just took a vacation and nobody knew what I was doing. People thought I was dead, people thought I was sick, all kinds of stuff. When I was partying a lot back when I was a pagan, this is how I would leave parties, too.
What do they call that? I think it's the Irish goodbye, if I'm not mistaken. But that's the part when you go to a party, and then you're there, and it gets a little late, and you want to leave, but you just leave.
You don't tell anyone you're leaving. I used to do this when I would go to bars and stuff. I would just disappear. This is what I was known for. I wouldn't say anything. I'd just go home. I don't know why.
I was just like, enough is enough. I didn't need to say anything. I guess that's how I do the vacations on the podcast, too. In any case, I did want to talk about—oh, one more thing. There will be a new episode of The Rise and Fall of The Gospel Coalition coming out next week.
The episode is called The Grift. I can't wait for you to hear it. It's going to be a good one. Speaking of Gospel Coalition, I wanted to talk about this Brett McCracken tweet. Man, this is a doozy. This is a doozy.
Let me start this off by saying, these days, I feel inadequate to decipher the news cycle, just the hot takes that you see from public figures. I'm trying to see the big picture, and I find it very difficult to understand what's going on in the big picture.
There's just so much nonsense that's spewed at us constantly. Some of it is real nonsense, like fake stories and just, oh, the monkey pox is going to come out. There's just nonsense in that regard. Some of it is legitimate nonsense, like these tragic stories that come out, these various shootings and food shortages and stuff like that.
I mean, that's nonsense in a different way. It's tragic. It's awful. And then you see other nonsense. You get Beto O 'Rourke just being an idiot, and you got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pretending she's a Christian.
I can understand some of it, but putting it all together, I feel really dumb a lot of the time, almost like I don't know which way is up, if I'm being totally honest. Which is why the advice that I've been given, and I also give this advice, is that the lion's share of your thinking, your time, your efforts, should be focused on the things that you know are real, the things that you know about.
And that's going to be stuff close to you, so your family, your local church, your local community, and then maybe even the church at large. I focus a lot on the evangelical church, on my content, and even though that's a larger context than just my family, it's much smaller than the nation as a whole or the economy as a whole or the global whatever as a whole.
And so, not to say that that stuff's unimportant, it's just I don't have any control over the stupid stuff that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, right? But I have a little more control over what people believe in my local church and the Reformed world and stuff like that.
And so the best advice that I got about this is just make sure it's not out of balance, right? Make sure you're spending the time on the things that matter the most to you and your individual context, and that's good advice for anybody.
But I did want to talk about this Brett McCracken tweet, and I think I've figured out a way to think through some of this evangelical, just childish—but it's not even childish. It's like an insult to children, just awful foolishness.
This tweet has a level of foolishness that is sinful. You're sinfully stupid at this point. You're so stupid that you're morally culpable for your stupidity if this is how you think. I mean my 7-year-old would probably be able to figure out why this is a bad take this logically.
It's just horrible. And I'm not even talking about the anti-gun position of Brett McCracken here because I don't think that a Christian ought to be anti-gun. But at least I can recognize that the case that you would make about gun rights from the Bible is a little bit more complicated than murder should be illegal, right?
Like thou shalt not murder is a very clear, easy—you don't have to do a whole lot of thinking about it to understand. Thou shalt not steal, stuff like that, much more easy. The case for gun rights is a little bit more—you do need to have a little more maturity to understand why the Bible teaches gun rights.
So I'm not even talking about that. Like the point that he doesn't like gun rights, I don't even care about that, right? Like I'm so used to that position. It's not—it doesn't—it's barely a blip on the radar, right?
So if Brett McCracken said that he was anti-gun and that's all his tweet said, I wouldn't even have mentioned it. Like who cares, right? Like I don't care if you're anti-gun. I think it's silly. I think it's dumb.
But, you know, whatever. You have a dumb opinion. I mean, what else is new? So let me just say that again. This is not about the position itself. This is about the logic he uses to get to that position.
This is so stupid. Again, childish is unfair to children. Children understand why this is stupid. And we're left in that place where I often—we often talk about this on this show. It's like, okay, so is it more charitable to believe he's just stupid?
Or is it more charitable to believe he's just lying? Because he's morally culpable for both. This is so stupid that you're sinning for being this stupid. So that's the question, right? And I don't really know which is worse, which is more charitable to believe.
But I just can't—I find myself—I can't believe that Brett McCracken is this stupid. I can't believe—like with the Tim Keller content I've been doing. And, you know, I'm going to reference that. Watch my YouTube channel if you want more about that.
But I don't believe that Tim Keller is so stupid as he was in that thread about abortion. And how, I don't know, the Bible doesn't say what to do about murderers. Like, I don't believe he's that stupid.
Let me read the tweet, and then I'll talk about what I—the framework that I use when I see this kind of stuff now. Here's what Brett McCracken says. He says, We've utterly failed our children when, one, they can be brutally killed in the womb because enough adults clamor for abortion rights.
And two, they can be brutally killed in the classroom because enough adults clamor for gun rights. A child's life is more precious than our rights. So he's talking about the latest school shooting. And what he's attempting to do here is make a moral comparison between people—they want abortion rights, and so kids end up dying, and people—they want gun rights, and so kids end up dying.
And he's saying that, you know, children's lives are more precious than our rights, and he's trying to make some kind of moral comparison and some kind of equivalency here between the two. So basically you're being selfish, according to Brett, if you want gun rights or abortion rights because kids are going to die.
Do you remember in The Simpsons that—I think it was Reverend Lovejoy's wife, which would be so appropriate because Brett McCracken is the ultimate church lady of the male gender. Remember it was Reverend Lovejoy's wife who would always go, Please think of the children!
And, you know, in that sense, you're using children as a political pawn to get your policies through and all of that. But—and instantly every adult understands what's wrong with this tweet, right? Because children die because of abortion rights because abortion rights give you the right to kill children with impunity, right?
That's what abortion rights are. It says it is legal to kill children if you feel like you can't afford them, or if you feel like you don't like children, or if you feel like your husband's going to leave you if you have the child, or for whatever reason.
It doesn't matter. You don't need a reason. You just kill—that's what abortion rights are. They give you the right to brutally kill children. That's the point of an abortion right. That's what it is by definition.
Now, every adult knows that that's—it's not the same though with gun rights, right? Like, there is no case being made that we should have the right to kill children with guns. That's what gun rights are.
Like, you should be able to kill children with impunity with a gun. That's what a gun right is. That's absolutely—nobody has made that case ever. Not even psychopaths make that kind of a case because psychopaths believe in morality for everybody else except for them.
So not even a psychopath would make such an idiotic case. Brett McCracken is trying to compare the two. You see? Like, it's—we got to—we don't—our rights don't matter. It's about children. It's like—so everyone in the world can see that the logic of this comparison makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I mean, my son, I would be disappointed in my 7-year-old if he made a case like this. My 7-year-old, right? And, of course, I wouldn't get mad at him. I wouldn't treat him like an idiot because he's 7.
I mean, whatever. But I would be disappointed because he knows better than to make a comparison like this. He's 7. And my 7-year-old's probably not special in that way. I'm not saying he's super smart.
Your 7-year-old probably understands this as well. And so here's the thing, right? So why doesn't Brett understand this? And you could think, well, maybe Brett just misworded this, right? Maybe he didn't mean it like this.
He didn't use the exact same construction of the sentence. See, they can be brutally killed in the—is the same here—in gun rights and clamor. Like he didn't do this. It was an accident, right? But then you recognize, no, no, that's probably not it because Brett McCracken's job is an editor.
He's an author. He's the senior editor of the Gospel Coalition. So it's not that he doesn't know what he said here. That's his whole job. His skill set is to make sure that what he's saying is quite clear in writing.
This is what Brett McCracken's entire job is. He knows exactly what he said here. And we have a choice, right? Does he not understand that this is logically a disaster? Or does he understand? And I think that the conclusion that makes the most sense— and personally, I think this is the most charitable conclusion— is not that he's sinfully idiotic.
It's that he's doing this intentionally. He knows the logic makes no sense. But his prime directive, in my opinion, is to normalize liberal, progressive, democratic talking points in the political realm in the church.
He wants that to be normalized. And so it doesn't matter that this comparison makes absolutely no sense to him. It's about narrative, right? When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, Oh, you Christians, you're a bunch of hypocrites.
You're not pro-life because you're for guns. Brett McCracken is like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. Slay, queen. He wants to promote the acceptability of democratic talking points in the church. That's something that is part and parcel for so much of this stuff.
Tim Keller's doing it. Brett McCracken's doing it. All of these guys are doing it. And it's so stupid that it only serves really one purpose. And it's not going to convince—conservatives aren't going to be convinced by this kind of a thing because this is a non-argument.
Again, the logic of this, it makes us either laugh or feel sorry for you. Like when an adult says something—when an adult face plants like this with basic logic, right, a basic comparison, one of the simplest things you can imagine.
When an adult fails at that, we feel sorry for you. We laugh at you, yeah, but we feel sorry because you're an adult yourself. I mean, he's probably my age. He says he's a geriatric millennial. I am too, right?
So he's probably my age. And it's like, man, someone did a number on you, Brett. This is stupid. So it's not—that's not what—and Brett knows this, right? Brett knows that this argument will never work with someone who can think more than a few steps ahead, right?
Like at any depth, he knows this is not going to convince anybody. But what this does do is it does make it comfortable for liberal and progressive ideas in the church because Brett is doing what the village atheists will do.
Oh, you're a hypocrite. Oh, you Christians are a hypocrite. It's the same thing with the Tim Keller stuff that I talked about yesterday. It's like this is what this is. And by the way, my brother noticed this right away.
This is not about gun rights in the church. He understands that this is—he's not going to get anyone to change their position on gun rights for this. But what he wants it to be, he wants it to be comfortable for abortion-loving Democrats to be in the church because it's like, well, after all—because he's not speaking to conservatives here.
He's speaking to liberals, right? And guns are totally acceptable in the church. Everyone knows this. This is just part and parcel of the church in America. A lot of churchgoers hold guns, and they like gun rights.
And so with Brett McCracken's little tweet here, he's trying to make this moral comparison where it's like, well, you see, you can't really be too mad at abortion Christians because you're a gun Christian.
See, it's the same thing. So all this serves to do in Brett's twisted fantasy world is pull the church further and further into leftist depravity because his whole mission here is not about convincing Christians that guns are bad.
He knows the logic is so dumb. It's so basically caveman, obvious dumb that he's not going to convince anybody. What it is going to do, though, it's going to make leftists feel more comfortable with bringing their leftist demonic ideas into the church because, look, after all, those conservatives, they're for guns.
So they don't care about kids, and they don't take it that seriously. So therefore, we don't really have to take it that—that's what I really think this is. It's all about pulling the church leftward.
Even if they're not going leftward themselves, they want it to be okay for you to be preaching and believing and teaching the doctrines, the political doctrines of the demonic realms in the church. That's what I think this is.
When you read Tim Keller's nonsense about abortion, I don't know what God doesn't say. When you read Brett McCracken about this, when you read that what's that guy, Slavich, whatever his name is, and all this stuff, and they're talking like this, right?
This is what they're saying. I think it's helpful to see it through that lens. This is about bringing the church down into the depraved depths of the most idiotic pagan ideas that you can imagine, politically speaking.
It's really disgusting. It's really disgusting. I'm going to talk more about this in the next podcast. You don't even know what to say about this. You don't even know what to say. In any case, 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.
