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on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I have a quick story to share with you before we get into some of the news stories.
I was talking about this with my wife because earlier today, I decided to, well,
I was working, but it was also a break. I decided to have a break. And I went and did an errand and then
I decided to go to Dunkin' Donuts. I know, I never thought I'd like Dunkin' Donuts, but they got these great energy drinks and these wonderful refreshers, they call them.
And I'm a little bit hooked, I'm not gonna lie, but they're, because they're a little too expensive,
I can't go there every day or anything like that. Or else I probably would. But today was a day
I said, I'm gonna go get myself a Dunkin' refresher. And I'm gonna sit at this particular spot at this
Dunkin' Donuts that I know about where I can look out my window and I can see the mountains. It's got a great view.
And I'm just gonna write. And I did write, I wrote a sub stack, actually. You can go to my sub stack, which is
John, well, sorry, it's substack .com forward slash at John Harris. So that's where you can go if you wanna see my sub stack.
This is what it looks like. So I wrote a sub stack called when the right rejects rules. Maybe I'll do an episode on it later this week, but that's beside the point.
Here's how the story goes. I'm sitting there and in front of me, I notice there are three young, maybe upper high school.
I don't know if they were freshmen in college. They could have been, or maybe one of them was, but they were in that 12th grade to junior in college range, somewhere in there.
And I'm listening, I'm not trying to listen, right? I'm actually trying to concentrate on what
I'm doing, but it's kind of hard because the guy in particular is loud. It's two girls and a guy. The two girls are sitting across from each other at this table that's just only has two.
And then the guy's sitting at this table that's a little higher with a stool. And he's looking down, trying to participate in their conversation, but they don't look like they want him in their conversation.
And so I just happened to hear him say to them that, well, it gets really intense for a moment.
And he says that they don't care about him and they're trying to use him to get what they want.
And then he starts saying sexual things to them. Like, why don't you, and he doesn't say it as nice as I'm gonna say it, but why don't you have relationship with me kind of thing?
And I'm just like, what is going on? Why are you saying this in public so loud? This is very strange.
And they would engage him for a moment, maybe make a few comments, and then they would go back to whatever they were doing.
Like they were separate. I don't know, I don't know what was going on. Were they three of them together or were they separate? I don't know.
And then he would make a comment to them that's really silly and just,
I don't know, something about a TV show. Like he's gonna spoil the plot of stranger things to them.
And one of the girls says, well, I don't care. And he's like, oh, I'll do it, I'll do it.
I'll spoil the plot for you. Anyway, this goes on for 20 minutes, back and forth.
This guy is playing passive aggressive with them. One minute he's accusing them of just using him and he seems to desperately want for them to rely on him, but also he doesn't want them to rely on him for the wrong reasons.
He wants them to want him in a physical way as well. It's very strange.
I thought, well, that's odd. That's just, the kids are not all right, at least those three. So then
I'm sitting there and the next couple, there's a couple that comes in.
And I should say this sort of melodramatic guy when these two girls leave, he says, you're leaving me?
Oh my goodness, you're actually leaving me? And he flips them off and they walk out, but then he trails along.
So I don't know, I still don't really realize that they were together or what was going on there. Okay, fast forward,
I'm still sitting there. This guy and a girl walk in and they're probably a little bit older.
They're solidly, I would say they're in college. I don't think freshmen probably getting towards the senior.
I don't know where they, I couldn't see the girl cause she was, I only saw her back, but they're younger, they're
Gen Z. And I, again, try not to listen to another conversation.
The guy gets intense with her and he starts saying, let me look at your phone.
Let me see what you're, who you're messaging. And she doesn't want him to. And he says, well, if you have nothing to hide, then why are you not letting me do this?
And then he says, I know what you're up to. And he starts going off on how she's cheating on him, basically, and that she doesn't care about him.
And she's just using him. He's there at Duncan getting her a nice refresher.
I think that's what they had. What's up with the refreshers? Is that what Duncan's making their money on now? I understand why, cause they're so good.
Duncan is not paying me to say that. By the way, you gotta get green tea in the refresher to get your real kind of nice mix.
But anyway, she's having her refresher and he does kind of the same thing as this previous guy.
And she is sitting there just kind of brazen.
Like she has nothing to hide. She didn't do anything wrong. And you could tell she looks down at times, like she's guilty, but then she's like, he's at her mercy.
That's the sense I got. He's at her mercy. He doesn't wanna be, he does genuinely,
I think, want her. I don't know in what way, it's hard to tell when you're only getting a few minutes of a conversation.
But it was the same kind of spirit as the previous guy who was in there. And he walks out with her.
And I thought it was weird because they kept going from intense, like a breakup's about to happen.
I just thought for sure, if they came in there at Duncan Donuts to have a breakup of all places, why would you do it there in public?
And then they're talking about really inconsequential things, social gatherings.
And what do you think of this person? And then back to intensity land. So I come home and I talked to my wife.
I said, I just had this really weird experience. I'm at Duncan and it's a public place and people can hear.
And I had a guy, two guys interacting with girls and they were really just weaklings in my opinion.
They were just really desperate for the attention of a girl who seemed like she had them, had him at her beck and call.
And then they would get kind of angry and want to assert themselves, but then back off and start joking and talking about really inconsequential, surface level, silly things.
And I don't know what's going on. Like to me, this was at best a rare occurrence.
You know, when I was a young whippersnapper, you know, I'm thinking like even a decade ago, this wasn't something
I would see a lot. And she goes, you know, the other day at the supermarket, I was standing in line.
So she's telling me her story. And she said, there's a guy and a girl right in front of me in line. And the same thing.
The guy is trying to force his way on the girl saying he's gonna buy something for her and she doesn't want him to buy it.
And he gets really intense with her, but then backs off and becomes super jokey with her.
And everything's humorous, everything's a joke. And then back into we're in a serious relationship and I get to dictate to you.
And she said, I don't know what that was about. It just sounds like what you're describing. All right, so I opened up the podcast with this story.
I've taken up eight minutes, I know. The reason I say this is because I don't know if this is widespread, obviously, but it would be indicative if this is more, it certainly seems more common having three experiences between the two of us.
And we don't go out like that much, but just in the last week of Gen Z and where Gen Z is at.
And I'm not far from a college town. And so there's a lot of interaction, at least out in public with younger people.
And I've noticed a number of things over the years that have changed, even drastically in the last decade with styles and the way women look and the way
I see guys and girls even interact. And let's just say there's less and less of a traditional relationship dynamic that I've noticed and more and more of loners or I know hookup culture has, it's funny enough, kind of taken a beating because people are more incels and not hooking up as much as they used to.
But if they are gonna interact, it's going to be purely for self -gratification and pleasure. I mean,
I know these things are present out there. I know there's these trends, but being up close and personal, and here's a few things that I'm drawing from this.
Seeing the lack of shame, talking about intimate things, not just personal, emotional intimacy, but sexual intimacy in public.
That's kind of a new one for me, like on a serious level to actually see relationships, not just lewd things people say, but actually they're talking in the context of a relationship.
I'm not saying I've never, I'd have to think about it. I'm not saying I've never seen that, but to see it so brazen in front of me just in one afternoon.
So that's one of the things that I'm noticing. And maybe that's social media, I don't know, but like everything's kind of public.
There's no shame about those things. The other thing is how weak the guys are.
They want the attention of a girl, and they feel like the way to get it is to try to be a best friend, be like another girlfriend to them.
But then if it's not working out, there's like this aggressiveness that comes out.
And then they reel it in. It's like they're playing a game, like a girl would play a game, like a passive aggressive type of thing, not the way that guys who should be direct should operate.
And then the girls treating the guys like they're appendages. Obviously, we've talked about many of these dynamics already in the podcast, but I'm wondering if people out there have noticed the same kind of thing, like on a new level, because it just kind of hit me.
I came off of this experience and then right straight to the podcast. So that's why I'm talking about it. But it hit me.
I was like, where would you even start with that? If those people walked into your church, for example, where do you start?
Obviously you start at the beginning, right? You need Christ, sin, all of that. But people are coming from such broken areas.
They don't know how to behave as women or men. Men are not acting like men. Women feel, at least the ones
I saw, they seem to be more confident and assertive. They don't really need the guy, but the guy kind of needs the girl.
And I don't know, it's just disturbing to watch it. I would just recommend if you're a guy and you're in a relationship and the girl just treats you terribly and doesn't care about you at all and just uses you, just get out of it.
And I know I'm the big advocate for relationships. I still am. I think you should be patient.
And I have all the episodes you can go watch about tips for dating and all that. But if a girl is gonna use you for rides, for money, for drinks and food and those kinds of things, and they don't,
I'm not saying they should fulfill every longing you have. I'm not saying that. You shouldn't idolize them. But if they literally don't care, if you were to leave the relationship, like as long as they had someone else that they could fall back on who would do the same things, then you're not in a good relationship at all.
It's not healthy at all. If you have to wonder whether a girl is cheating on you, obviously it probably goes without saying,
I'm talking to mostly Christians here, but you shouldn't even have to be asking those kinds of questions to be quite honest.
And if you're a girl and the guy is acting effeminate with you, and I mean by effeminate, like his entire existence and self -worth is relying on your approval.
Guys want girls approval, but your self -worth, your existence shouldn't be wrapped up in that you shouldn't be tagging along like a puppy dog.
You need to encourage the guy, but be honest with them about it. Like this isn't attractive.
And guys, if you're like that, stop. Like, all right, I got it. I've got it off my chest.
I don't know if that hits anyone who's listening to the podcast. I feel like a charismatic preacher out there who's like doing an altar call and is like,
I don't know who needs to hear this, but I've got a prophetic word. I'm not saying this is a prophetic word, but it's a word.
And I felt like I should just share that if it's hitting anyone out there. I'm already getting the comments coming in from people.
Imagine what the Holy Spirit hears from people every day. Oh goodness, I know, I know. Oh my goodness.
Cosmic Treason says they're playing the game they're given. Those of us who don't want to choose between being weak or evil have chosen not to play the game.
Don't play the game. Don't play that game. It's fine to treat a woman with courtesy and even buy her things.
And that's all really good, but she's going to have to eventually, of course, if you're going to be in a marriage, she's going to have to follow you.
And so you can be interested in what she's interested in. You can participate in things she's interested in, but you shouldn't be just following around like a puppy dog, hoping she needs you, but then being upset if she needs you for the services you provide and not you.
That's a lose -lose situation. Don't get into that situation. She's going to have to, if she cares about you, also take an interest in what you're doing.
And in one way, I would say more so, she's going to have to attach herself to the general direction of life you're going in, the career choices and where you want to move up, the vision you have for your family.
Obviously there's theology packed into what I said, but that has to be present or at least growing, going in the right direction, right?
If a girl just has no time for any of that and you have to wonder, I think asking the question answers it.
Beautifully Berserk says, the problem is most men can't see the good girls because they are quite quiet and don't draw attention.
Maybe, I don't know. Sometimes the quiet guy who's sitting there has the better character.
You want to be assertive as a guy. You don't want to be aggressive though, in a way that's like insecure.
Like an aggressive insecurity is such a terrible combination. Like I'm going to really get out there and claim my territory because I'm afraid
I'll lose it. And I got to lock it in now or something like that. I've seen that behavior among boomers, says
BC5441. Well, that may be, it's totally possible.
Don't act needy and overly agreeable. Lead the way and see if she follows.
I think that's good advice. I would agree with that. All right, well, this has been dating escapades, dating observations with John Harris for...
Okay, we're almost done. I got to read this comment because apparently I got something wrong. Beautifully Berserk clarifies, says, no,
I mean, the good gals are too quiet. Ah, and they don't draw attention. So a lot of men miss them. The wallflower type.
Okay, that is 100 % correct. I agree with you even more about that. Yes, and I actually always favored them.
That is the truth. I would look specifically in any social setting
I was in for the girls who were generally more quiet and kind.
Just a smile, honestly, goes a long way. Caring, had a maternal instinct about them, especially the ones that looked for those who were being neglected.
I always was attracted to that. It would add a lot to a girl to have that.
And even if a girl wasn't like your drop -dead gorgeous supermodel, that would give her all these points in my mind.
She would be more beautiful because of that kind of a character, because of that, it's just,
I don't know. A quality guy, and I'm not saying I'm the epitome of a quality guy, but a quality guy who's a
Christian is going to be attracted to that. So that's a good tip for girls out there. Okay, the wallflowers do not smile.
Well, there's maybe different kinds of wallflowers. So the ones that do smile are the ones that I was cheerful, not looking for, loads of attention.
Well, now that we're 18 minutes almost into the podcast, I should probably start the news roundup, right? So I did want to mention two things because people texted me today.
Okay, what was the first one? Now I'm trying to remember a voice. Sorry, Equipping the Persecuted is doing a
Giving Tuesday promo. So check them out, Equipping the Persecuted. I think it's .org.
And then the other thing is, oh, what was it? Let's Church, Let's .Church
is looking for donations and partnerships. Let's Church has done a lot for TruthScript.
They run the TruthScript Church Finder. I'm friends with Ken Powers who runs
Let's Church. So I would just recommend, if you're looking for good organizations, those are two good organizations. And they reminded me, so I wanted to pass that on to you.
I think I already mentioned this, but if you have not subscribed to me on Substack, I am becoming more active on Substack.
And if people don't want to give on Patreon, because I know there's many of you out there who have asked me this.
Like, I don't want to give to Patreon. I'm okay with Patreon at this point. I'm still gonna keep doing
Patreon. And there's gonna be a lot of exclusive things on Patreon. For example, later this week, we're gonna be reviewing this book on Friday, New Views of the
Constitution of the United States with John Taylor. This is our continuing conservative book series where we are tracing the path back to our
Christian Anglo -Protestant roots here in America. And this is the next book on the schedule. But I am gonna try to mirror as much as I can for those who give on Substack, the same content that's exclusive.
So there'll be a video about this book. And by the time you're done, you're gonna have a whole course on the
Anglo -Protestant heritage, at least political philosophy that America has had for hundreds of years.
And you can use the slideshows that I present. You can alter them if you want. You can teach your own course on this.
And I don't know of anyone else who's done this. So that's one of the perks. There's others as well.
Promos, enhancements, sneak peeks. You get to be part of our signal chat. That's for patrons only.
So you have access to me, all kinds of things like that. But I'm gonna try to mirror as much as I can that kind of stuff on Substack if you don't wanna give on Patreon.
So Patreon has a different set of features, but Substack is substack .com
forward slash at John Harris. It's patreon .com forward slash John Harris podcast.
And that's how you would get to both of those. And that's how you'd see the episode on Friday talking about John Taylor of Caroline's book on the constitution.
So there you go. I think that's it for announcements. Let's get into stories, shall we? Story one, religious nuns would outnumber
Protestants among young people in small town America according to Pew Research. Would Christianity still dominate the
United States if it were re -imagined as a small town of 100 people? That's the premise of a new report from Pew which offered analysts of America's religious landscape a new outlook.
The study conducted from 2023 to 2024 surveyed 37 ,000
US adults. That's a lot. And it paints a portrait of a community where belief or lack thereof shapes neighborhoods, generations, and daily life.
Noting that the US has a population of roughly 262 million adults with Christianity claiming about 162 million adherents and 76 million people reporting no religious affiliation,
Pew researchers acknowledge that grasping the full scope of faith in America can feel overwhelming. There are big numbers that can make it difficult to understand the
American religious landscape. What if we imagine though a small town of a hundred people instead of a country? If the
US were a small town, okay? So we're in pretend land here. Religious nuns would outnumber
Protestants among young people. In this scaled down version of America, Christians would still hold a clear majority outnumbering 62 out of a hundred.
The breakdown reveals familial, sorry, familiar American Christian and Christian identified traditions.
23 evangelical Protestants, 19 Catholics, 11 mainline Protestants, and five individuals tied to historically black
Protestant denominations. Pew's report also includes other groups. So, okay, this is the bottom line demographic.
Okay, so this is it. The results appear to indicate an aging out of Christianity. This is the bottom line. More Christians, 35, would be 50 and older than under 50 with just 18 in their thirties and forties and only nine between 18 and 29.
The age balance would be reversed for religious nuns with 20 under the age of 50 and fewer than 10, ages 50 and older.
Race and gender also provide further insight. So it breaks it down further. Here's the concern about this.
I keep hearing Gen Z is gonna save us. I still hear this.
There's some things to look at with Gen Z. They're rejecting things that didn't work for them. The problem is if you think about it this way,
I know we already imagined if the United States was 100 persons, 100 people in a town. Imagine this.
Imagine the United States is a tree. And in order for that tree to survive, it needs roots.
Those roots need to be refreshed with rain and water, sunshine, fertilizer, solid soil.
And if you have branches, okay, on this tree, let's say younger branches popping up with leaves and everything.
And they recognize that there's certain things that are needed. I know this is kind of weird,
I guess. My analogy is getting a little strange. I'm making the tree branches self -conscious, but just stick with me on it.
And we need certain things. We need sunshine. And look, those older branches that kept us, prevented us from sunshine or something like that, or got rid of their leaves, whatever.
They did damage. We're gonna reject that. We need sunshine. But if you neglect the roots, if you neglect what's unseen under the surface, you don't get any of it.
And that's what's happening to the United States. The roots, what makes the United States stable is
Christianity. That's the foundation. It's also, or was the foundation of Europe.
And as Europe has waned in religion, it's also plummeted in birth rate.
It's allowed more people into the country who are not Christian and not even a religious.
They're Muslims and members of other religions from the third world,
Hindus and so forth, second world. Religions still, religion is actually growing in some of these
European areas, just not Christianity. And if it is Christianity, it's
Christianity from a different region. You have to import your Christians now. That's kind of scary, right?
And I know there's been some outliers. There's been some polls indicating, especially Gen Z males are looking for the roots.
My hope is that they actually find them. And you have to find them in Jesus Christ. He is the foundation ultimately.
If it's not the actual Jesus, if it's not having a relationship with Christ, and I know
I'm speaking like an evangelical here, but I think this is just biblical and true. If it's not a born again kind of relationship with Christ, and you're looking for the outer trappings of Christianity without the source, the substance, the roots, the foundation, it will be a mirage.
You need actual Christians to even have a Christian civilization. To have cultural
Christianity, you need actual Christians. And it is on the percentages. So if you have a hundred people in a small town, okay, if 60 of them are
Christians of some variety, you're still gonna have a Christian flavor to that town. If that number decreases, which it is with younger people, let's say it's now 35, as the poll says, you don't get a
Christian flavor anymore. You might have some areas of town, but the town itself is not gonna self -identify as Christian in any meaningful sense.
The rest of the people who aren't Christian aren't gonna go along with the minority that is. And it's gonna become more that way the more this trend increases.
That's the danger of it. I know I'm blackmailing here, but I'm just giving you the facts, or at least according to Pew Research, what they see the facts as.
What does that mean for us? It means we have to invest in our kids first and foremost, to make sure that you are not outsourcing their thinking to people that hate
Christianity, people that hate Christ. That's the first thing. That's your first job as a parent, is your kids.
Secondly, it's the society around you. So your kids are gonna have to share civilization with other people's kids.
Are you involved with whatever bandwidth you have, as much as you can be, with the church or civic organizations that are instilling character and virtue that comes from religion?
I think that's part of this, but I think, again, the bedrock is you want those people to have that virtue because they are having a actual connection with the real
God of the universe, Jesus Christ. I don't know.
I don't know. I mean, I think you should, if you're a Christian, especially if you're a church, this is non -negotiable. You need to reach out to everyone in your community.
You need to minister to people. I think though, young people, as a demographic though, are rejecting
Christianity, and it would be good to figure out the reasons for that. I've analyzed some of that on this show.
So I'm not going to go into all the details, but to summarize a few of them, I think that there is a sense of hypocrisy.
I think there is self -indulgence and lovers of self. I think there's entitlement.
There is Christianity teaches against all those things. I think that there's an attack on Christianity, obviously coming from science that's been there for years, but more so now coming from social disciplines, like social science and historical field and gender studies and all these things.
If you send your kid to college, I mean, that's what they're going to get. They're going to get that in high school, to be frank, and probably even junior high and maybe even elementary school.
There's a revolutionary kind of sense. I wrote about this in my
Substack article today, wanting to tear down the previous, the old, that which didn't work.
Christianity is part of that and the standards that came from Christianity. So what we need to be is exemplars of what it means to be a
Christian. We need to adorn these things, not in an artificial way, and it's a sincere way of walking with the
Lord, showing that there's stability in that, stability that is rare in this world, confidence in that. We need to actually demonstrate,
I think, that Christianity is not only true, scientifically or philosophically, but it actually works.
It works for a life that's satisfying. And that ultimate satisfaction comes at the end, but it's in the longing for that that you find satisfaction in this life.
And even the moments that you exist in on a daily basis, they're more rich, they have significance to them.
You love people, you want kids, you wanna pass down something, you have something to pass down.
I think all those things matter. And I know I've been saying it for years, but if you live near a college or a high school or any kind of ministry you can get involved with with young people and you feel called to that,
I would not neglect that calling. Seeing stability is so important.
I think it really, really makes a difference for younger people. I've seen it make a difference. Okay, another story here.
70 ,000 evangelicals in France celebrated their unity across the country. Joint worship services in dozens of municipalities could be a catalyst for greater collaboration between the church on the ground.
Promoted by the French Evangelical Alliance, a total of 89 joint services were held the same day to show that spiritual unity has practical efforts and partnerships in the field.
The goal is to praise God and proclaim the good news together. And the evaluation that it ended up being a beautiful milestone in the unity of French evangelical
Protestantism. Now I read something, it's not in this article, it must've been in a different article, that this was a reaction to a gay marriage ruling.
I'm gonna just look that up real quick. I thought I had the right story, maybe I didn't. All European Union member states must recognize same -sex marriages.
Okay, so I don't know why this article left that out. That was, I believe, the catalyst for this.
And that just happened. That's a story from the 26th, so, oh man.
So I guess while we were all celebrating Thanksgiving the next day, the
European court the day before was making sure that all European states must recognize same -sex marriage.
It's good for evangelicals to come together and show a solidarity. You have to connect this to political action, obviously, even if it's on the local level, if you're gonna resist this kind of thing.
Otherwise, you can show all the solidarity you want, but it's not gonna make a difference for your civilization.
Here's another one. Speaking of Christians showing solidarity, Christians fill mile, oh, and let me just say one last thing here.
Jumping off of the conversation previously about the nuns. Europe is the place we're going.
Europe is filled with nuns. Not nuns, Catholic nuns. Nuns as in religious nuns. They don't have an affiliation.
They're secularized, totally. That's what you get is everyone has to recognize gay marriage.
There are no standards anymore. There's no rules. We are losing rules in our own country. One of those simply, and I know
I said it before, but the way that profanity has been normalized among Christians is just one of those things.
It's just an abridgment of the standards that older generations held to that were, maybe they were the dusk kind of, that yellow kind of beautiful dusk that you see when the sun's going down.
It's like sort of the end of something. Maybe that was sort of the end of something that there are still people who don't hold to Christianity, but still operate on some of its values.
Like, well, we don't say profane things in public, which is what I heard today. Sexually, completely gross things that it's like, you can just talk about that.
Even if it's serious and personal, you can talk about it. Previous generations didn't tend to do that as much, right? Even if they didn't agree with Christianity.
Well, that dusk is becoming more and more dark and it's turning into night.
That's what's happening. And that's what's happened in Europe. And that's the result of it. Christians fill mile -long communion table on National Mall in historic
Communion America Gathering in Washington, DC. What is
Communion America? Well, this is kind of an old story. I don't know why I'm, I think this was on a new website though.
So I guess I'm reporting it a little late. So this is from October. The communion table span a full mile between the
Washington Monument and the US Capitol. How come I didn't know this? The symbolic place setting fit for Jesus, the
King of Kings. Am I sure this is a real story? I think it is a real story. I'm like now wondering if this is all
AI generated. This is the first I've heard of it. Where did I find out about this story? Has anyone heard about this who's in the comment section?
I just thought it was a little odd. I don't know how I feel about this.
I think I am against it to be quite honest with you. So like, I look at it this way.
Here's a picture. Let me show you the picture. Here's a picture of everyone doing this. Okay. Okay.
So here's, I love displays of faith in public, Christian faith.
However, this is an ordinance of the church or a sacrament depending on your tradition that I still think needs to be, have some decorum around it.
I know some of this is traditional, but I think the tradition represents the seriousness by which you take communion.
And so you have someone who is authorized. In my church, it's elders, shepherds, who administer this ordinance in a setting that is for the purpose of reflection, personal reflection, confession, and then celebration in what
Christ has done. And the unity that you share in that moment is with people you know from in your church.
This looks like a bunch of strangers coming together. And it's to, like, it's a spectacle.
It's to do it in public. That's why it looks like it's happening. I just think it cheapens the, so think of like other things that you would do in church,
I guess. Like, you know, like a baptism would be where this is appropriate, right? Because it's a proclamation to the world,
I suppose. But the Passover meal and then the communion and the way that Jesus changed the elements, these were all like intimate things that happened in more personal corporate settings.
They were corporate, but they were closed. They were, they weren't for the whole world to see necessarily.
So like, okay, so what's a good example? I'm trying to think now of other things that happen in church that just wouldn't be appropriate because they're serious.
Like if church discipline, right? You wouldn't do that, right? That's not really exactly a parallel, but that's something for the church body itself.
It is, it's for the people who know Christ. I just think it's very hard to vet this kind of thing.
It ends up looking like more of a spectacle. It'd be, I don't know. I keep thinking about this.
Like if you were gonna do communion with cheese and crackers or something, like there, can I say that that's not biblical?
I think in some traditions you certainly could. And maybe I can make a case biblically that no, it's gotta be wine or even if it's grape juice, that's an unfermented wine, whatever.
It's what it symbolizes though, right? So in Protestantism, isn't it about what it symbolizes? In the
Bible, I think that's what it is saying, but there's still something about it that cheapens it. And that's what I think about it.
So there you got John's two cents on it. No one has weighed in in the comments as to whether this is real or not.
I'm gonna assume it's real. I'm just gonna assume. All right, let's go to the next story here.
I saw, who is it? Brian McLaren, haven't heard that name in a while, but I saw him on Twitter saying, oh, you gotta look at this article.
They're doing to America what they did to Christianity. It's the infamous they, it's
Trump. Trump's wrecking ball approach to America has a precedent. The MAGA evangelical persuasion, excuse me, of Jesus's message of radical love to one of hate and aggression.
I'm still on the tail end of this cold, I apologize. Okay, thank you for those who prayed for me, by the way.
I got a really good night's sleep last night and I'm getting there. But anyway, this article says that Trumpism's most revealing and defining moments, not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating came earlier this autumn.
In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom, twice the size of the
White House. People are very upset about this. I think there's a lot of thoughts I have that I can't share right now.
The optics of it aren't great, but he's, it goes over like not even
Richard Nixon would do this kind of thing. I mean, Trump is just the worst. How can you cut from these other things that are so needed?
How can USAID stop the great work that the United States is doing in these other places, and at the same time, build this gaudy ballroom?
I'm not gonna read this whole article. It's actually quite long, but I'm gonna get to the conclusion here.
Talks about Jerry Falwell. It just sort of goes through a thumbnail history of the religious right, and Donald Trump has terrible character, and all of that kind of thing.
America is best defended by reference to the best about American history, just as Christianity is best defended by reference to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus.
In neither case does it mean pretending the worst of both America and Christianity did not happen. Apparently, Trump is the worst.
It means both humility and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
So they call it in the article the new Republican Christianity, and this is out of step with what they see as authentic Christianity.
It's something the left's been doing for a long time. The left is gonna oppose the deportations because they're inhumane, but Trump is going to foster more deportations because he's not really behaving as a
Christian, and it turns out Christianity is about universal human rights or something. Now, put that aside for a moment.
I think what's going on here is Donald Trump, there has been, and there is still to some extent, a dissonance between Donald Trump's representation of Christians and then his stated beliefs and character at times.
He even said not long ago, you have to be good to go to heaven, essentially. He hopes he's good enough. Now, I think the left wants to just exploit that.
I think they want Christians to get off the fence, join the left, oppose Donald Trump, because look at these things that are incongruent, and then they wanna highlight all the things that the left supposedly has that is parallel to Christianity.
The way they treat the poor, the migrants, the way they have compassion for those who are minorities.
That's what they want you to focus on, and they elevate that to this place of importance as if it's fundamental to what
Christianity is. That's the play that's been going on forever. This article is just a redux of that.
It's another reminder, and they're gonna keep doing this kind of thing because it does two things.
It gives moral high ground in the minds of those who wanna hang on to the label Christian who are on the left.
It gives them a sense that they are actually authentic. And then it also, like I said before, gives a weapon in their hands to try to persuade evangelicals who are more conservative and might've voted for Trump to part ways with him, and not just him, but MAGA, right?
Because Trump's not running again. Well, we don't think. So this is about trying to ruin the whole movement.
You know, don't listen to any of the Christians who told you to vote for Trump. They were all hypocrites.
That's what it is. And can you believe Donald Trump? Like one of the examples here is there's this private
Christian college, Belmont University, and they're gonna lose their federal funding because they have a DEI department.
Can you believe that, right? Trump is just so mean. And look how he's targeting Christians. Well, he's targeting
Christians on the left. It's not because they're Christians. It's because they're on the left. It's because of their political philosophy, which
I would argue actually overcomes their Christianity. They just Christianize leftist progressive politics.
That's what they do. There's nothing Christian about them really, other than sort of outer trappings.
There's a form of it, but it's not, their ethical beliefs aren't really Christian. DEI is not
Christian. DEI is a liberal, it's really a post -liberal concept meant to forward a liberal end, which is to produce social equality.
Christianity is a hierarchical religion. It acknowledges the natural hierarchies and differences and all of the things that God wove into creation.
So anyway, that's an article. I figured I would just remind you the evangelical, supposed evangelical, some of them use that word, some of them don't, but the progressive
Christians, they're still out there, still trying to persuade you. I don't think most of you are aware though.
I mean, this is the Guardian. So this is a mainstream liberal publication and that's the relationship, the mainstream media that's progressive, more than happy to give
Christians a hearing if those Christians are also progressives, because that's their commonly shared statement of faith.
That's their actual religion. If you're a conservative and you're a Christian, of course the mainstream media doesn't wanna give you the time of day.
You just must be a fake Christian, right? You're a mean Christian. Your Trumpism, it's sort of like gaslighting, right?
Because they're saying, your Trumpism is essentially counteracting your
Christianity, when in reality their progressivism is counteracting theirs. Here's a story from The Federalist.
I'm glad The Federalist is not a mainstream legacy media company, but they do a lot of really good work in commentary.
And I do believe they have some journalism as well. And here's a story. Roman hierarchy should discipline
New York City church for confirming unrepentant gay TV anchor by Zachary Mettler. So I live not far.
I was actually just in Manhattan last week or a week before doing a documentary and last week,
I guess it was. And so it's not like foreign to me.
I can go down there every once in a while. I tend to try to avoid it, but the Catholic church down there still does hold some influence, despite how secular everything is.
And this is recently an openly gay ABC news anchor, Gio or Gio Benitez joins the
Catholic church with his husband. Oh, his what? Serving as his sponsor. Benitez says his confirmation mass at the church of St.
Paul the Apostle of Manhattan was inspired by the late Pope Francis. Well, the church has no credibility.
That's really the bottom line. If the church does this kind of thing, if this spectacle happens and the
Catholic church is incapable of doing anything, the article says Cardinal Dolan should say something.
Well, then, I mean, you know what's going on. There's really, there's nothing to this, right?
This is a playing religion. This looks like a ceremony that's religious, but there's something so fundamental and abhorrent, something that God calls to a va, something that's an abomination.
We're literally in the midst, right in front of you, right there. And they see, they have little will to do anything about it.
You have to wonder at some point, like when do they actually agree with it? Christianity Today, got a new, brand new
CEO. This is fresh off the press from Colin Redimer, Christina Day's new
CEO and the future of American evangelicalism. Dr. Nicole Martin is her name.
And she is reaffirming Billy Graham's vision, she says. And just as Billy Graham created
Christianity Today for believers who did not feel at home in progressive mainline congregations or reactionary fundamental settings,
Dr. Martin's gonna bring in that balance. Well, it goes into some of the history of Christianity Today, which
I'll spare you. We've talked about it before. If you listen to the podcast, it boasts over 100 ,000 physical copies.
I'll mention that. And over a million views online every month. So they actually have influence. Takes in over 18 million in annual revenue.
How is this possible? I think of evangelicals and I'm like, they really read Christianity Today. But the truth is guys, they do.
People actually still do attend Gospel Coalition concerts. Concerts, conferences and concerts,
I don't know. They have singers there. Keith and Kristen Getty have concerts, they attend that. People actually still are going to those things.
Even if your corner of the internet has not seen that kind of thing for a long time, because that's not where you are or your friends or those you follow.
It's still going on. Like there's still a new evangelical Christianity out there that is kind of center left.
And the center is kind of falling out. So it talks about the announcement.
Let's see. What else does it say? It says, several pointed out that Martin's previous role, she had gone by the title
Reverend Dr. Nicole Martin. So you have an ordained pastor, it looks like, in Dr.
Nicole Massey Martin, which is kind of,
I mean, that's not a typical evangelical thing, but at least not a conservative evangelical thing to have a woman pastor.
It says that Dr. Martin entered her role as the executive director of trauma healing. So this is her background in 2020.
And she began experiencing serious institutional problems. Let's see, these problems have been described as systemic and cultural.
They cannot be blamed on a single leader at any point. Dr. Martin was rising leadership at ABS, which is
American Bible Society. Okay, that's the role she had there. And she was a member of the
American Bible Society. They had deficits, wow, over $55 million between 2016 and 2022. That's not a little deficit.
2021 alone, they ran a $16 million deficit. Well, the American Bible Society is not in a good place.
And they focused resources on trauma healing initiative apparently. So, I mean, these are kind of left -coded places she's coming from.
I think that's part of the point. Let's see, the mission of the
American Bible Society clearly states that ABS is focused on the goal of translation and access to the gospel for all people.
But while Nicole Martin was at ABS, the Trauma Healing Institute, which she oversaw was the center of a scandal in which donations to that organizations were seeing administrative fees of nearly 30%.
And further, the Trauma Healing Institute saw programs canceled midway through their operation. In the words of one such partner, the
Bible Society of Lebanon, you didn't know who could talk to ABS, something is wrong. Whether Nicole Martin was the one to launch a program that the parent organization was not going to be able to finish.
Okay, so it's this big mess. And they're saying, we don't know exactly what's going on. There's a lot of smoke around this, but that's not the kind of person you would normally hire that you think is competent to jump from a disaster to we're just gonna put her at the helm of Christianity today.
So, good or bad, I mean, depending on what you think, if you think Christianity today is doing really bad things and you put someone who's incompetent at the helm, maybe you like that,
I don't know. Maybe that'll be the demise of Christianity today. But if you really wanna see Christianity today reformed, this is not good.
This is someone who appears from associations, we'll put it that way, that she is going to lean progressive left, which is not a surprise for Christianity today.
And I'm wondering, have they ever had a female in that role? I don't know the answer to that, actually. Maybe someone in the comments can tell me, look it up if Christianity today has ever had a female in that role.
Okay, Jonathan Lehman is next on the agenda here. Jonathan Lehman from Nine Marks Ministries.
Here's what he recently had to say on the Room for Nuance podcast.
That you don't hold anymore. In, I think it was 2018, the SBC, we did a Nine Marks at Nine, in which
Mark and I on stage talked about the freedom to vote for pro -choice or pro -life candidates.
Not because we believed in pro -choice, we are both vigorously opposed to it, but we recognized or we believed that there was still space for Christians to, there's multiple rocks on the scale, right?
And wanted to say a Christian might choose to do this in, for other reasons.
Okay, I'm looking at these five issues and I disagree on this issue, but as I do my cost -benefit analysis,
I'm gonna vote for this dim for this reason. And we created space for that.
Even as we were saying it, I was thinking to myself, and it's the sort of thing that we had thought for a while and been saying for a while.
Keep in mind, just to give a little charity to us, you're in Washington, D .C. in the 90s, in the early 2000s, and you're desperately trying to, not desperately, you're trying very much to appeal to both
Republicans and Democrats for gospel purposes. I think we're, I think I said that, we said that too long.
I don't think you should vote for a pro -choice candidate. I think that was wrong. Okay, so that was one clip.
There was a few clips that were going around X from the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm gonna say something that maybe some of you might not like.
I'm gonna actually say good for Jonathan Lehman on saying this. Now, I'm gonna follow it up with this. If you start pointing out that there were those of us who were right about this, and I'm not looking for personal affirmation or glory or any of that.
I'm just saying that it's not just me who was doing this. But pointing out, there were those of us who called
Jonathan Lehman and Mark Debra on this when it happened in real time. And we were excoriated for it.
We opposed them at several points. It wasn't just this. And there's another clip out there, I don't have time to play, where Jonathan Lehman is essentially saying, well,
Mark Debra's not woke, come on. The guy who recommended divided by faith, one of the first guys to do that.
The guy who, I remember him at this panel wondering if George Washington was saved, because how could he be?
He had slaves, right? I'm thinking like, well, how could, I mean, a lot of characters in the Bible be saved, right?
What are we changing? You don't have the gospel anymore? What measuring rod are we using for this?
I mean, the question is, was he biblical in how he treated them? But this not only undermines your
American history, but what about the way we approach biblical ethics? The guy who thought you should just go with what the state was telling you during COVID, shut down the church.
But meanwhile, Jonathan Lehman himself goes and marches with this, it was like a
Christianized BLM type march as the church is closed because of COVID. I mean, the list just goes on.
I mean, all the articles Nine Marks put out there, the Sunday school material that they put out there that talks about white privilege and systemic racism and CRT adjacent stuff at the very least.
I've tracked a lot of this on the podcast and I know Mark Dever is a registered Democrat. I think I've told the story before. I was in DC at a pro -life thing.
It was when Amy Coney Barrett was being confirmed and there was all these, well, it was actually all these people protesting it.
And I remember there was a guy there protesting it who went to Capitol Hill Bible Church where Nine Marks is based out of basically.
And I was like, I talked to this guy, I was like, why are you protesting? And he thought, he loved
Mark Dever, went to that church and everything, said they had no problem. Now this is just one man's opinion, right?
So it doesn't mean that anything he said was necessarily true about the opinions of the people there.
What I found interesting was that he felt because racism was so wrong and Donald Trump represented that, that he had to oppose
Amy Coney Barrett because it was Trump's pick and Trump is racist and Amy Coney Barrett's probably racist. And that's a higher priority than the abortions that are taking place.
And I just was like, how is this possible that you feel comfortable even going to that church? That should have been confronted,
I would think. You shouldn't at least feel comfortable with it. But it's nine marks, all right?
Nine marks is decent ecclesiology stuff. There's political stuff has been bad for a long time.
Lehman's article on identity politics was bad. I did a whole review of it. So I would just say to make good on this, it would be nice if Lehman, if you're really gonna do the rebrand thing, you have to recognize we really goofed like big time.
And there were some people that are right. And it takes a lot of humble pie, I think. And to pretend like, oh, I think we were wrong in this one point.
Like we said, it's okay to vote for pro -choice candidates, which they did. I'm glad he's retracting that now, but I'm glad he's at least saying that was a mistake when we said it, the way we said it, whatever.
It's a little bigger than that. I just, I don't trust them. I just don't trust them. And to regain trust, it would just take a lot of time.
It would mean starting with repentance on that though. And you can't be pretending that, oh,
Mark Dover, he's not woke. Of course he's not. Let's acknowledge where Mark was.
Mark was pushing woke stuff. Nine Marks was pushing woke stuff. Maybe I'll do a video.
Some people have asked me to do this of like the top 10 articles, if they still even have them on the Nine Marks website. I don't know if they've scrubbed them.
The wokest articles, because they were coming out fast and furious between say 2017 or so and then 2020.
All right, so I, cautious optimism there, but I have no, the vibe shifted.
And as the vibes are shifting, you got these guys shifting their own posture on these things.
And it's hard to tell whether it's legitimate or not. And I don't think you're required at all to assume that it is.
Okay, here's another one. Ra, this is all about Summit Church, okay? Radul Hernandez, the
Spanish pastor at Summit Church has an Advent teaching for his congregation. I had this on this day with everything that is happening.
I gotta say, this is an English translation. It's in Spanish originally. The Bible does not hide the tasteless of this world.
We live in a broken world. And that gives us testimony that we were made for a better world.
And there is something about the story of Christmas that many people do not tell.
After Jesus was born, Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus, had to emigrate in the middle of the night to another country, because agents of the government of Herod were looking to kill
Jesus. And in the middle of the night, he leaves with Jesus and Mary.
Okay, let me just stop there. This is all I wanna say about this, okay? And I know some of you are like, what's the big deal?
Here's the big deal in my mind. You're a pastor, you're telling your congregation, and the way you frame it is, there's so much hope at Christmas time, you know?
Paralleling the trials that your congregation is in, the trials Jesus went through. You know the trials he went through? It's kind of like what you're going through.
The government, agents of the government came, and they forcibly made him emigrate to another country.
You know, in the middle of the night, inconvenient time. Now, what does that sound like? What does that sound like to you? Now, in the story, who are the bad guys?
In the story of Jesus, right? And having to go to Egypt. Well, obviously, Herod's the bad guy.
The agents of the government, the soldiers, are the bad guys. It's not really another country.
It's part of the Roman Empire. People have pointed this out many times. Like to say that Jesus was an immigrant or something, that's not true.
Jesus was going from one part of the Roman Empire to another part of the Roman Empire, and then back. He was,
I mean, he traveled. He traveled to take census, first census, and that kind of thing too. He traveled to escape.
So this is not immigration that's going on anyway. You're forcing the text to do something the text isn't doing.
It's not immigration. It is, and the bad guys in the story, if you're gonna parallel it are, who are they today?
They're ICE. ICE is the bad guy. Agents of the government, so terrible. They take you in the middle of the night. Because why?
Was Jesus there illegally? Was Jesus and Joseph and Mary, were they illegal migrants who snuck into a country to take advantage of its social services or whatever opportunities were there without going through the legal process?
No, not what happened at all. But that's the parallel that's being created in the minds of congregants at Summit Church.
And this is not new for Summit Church. In fact, the same kind of thing, and here he is just to prove it to you.
This is, let's see here, Radul Hernandez.
There he is, Summit Church's website. Okay, the same thing happened, Summit Church, Capitol Hill's campus.
From a man by the name of Spencer Smith, who's I guess the pastor there. So they have these like under shepherds,
I don't know what they call them, but directional elder or something like that. As the church family, we believe God has placed us here to point people to salvation found in Jesus.
Okay, we're gonna bless Raleigh -Durham. We're committed to loving people in tangible ways. Okay, alleviating suffering, that's all good.
Here it is. We know immigration questions are complex and we pray for our leaders to act with wisdom, justice, and compassion. Yet we also affirm that every person is made in God's image and we're called to love those in our midst in Jesus's name as citizens of his kingdom.
We hold both truths with humility and conviction, trusting the Lord to use our faithfulness to point people to him. There are many ongoing tangible ways to serve this community with our local ministry partners to learn more.
Okay, so you're serving this community, the immigrant community, and you're saying the things are so complex.
Well, this is the question I have. We've been browbeaten for years with the idea that the
Imago Dei means you gotta support illegal immigration. You have to apply the
Imago Dei and apply compassion and apply benevolence and charity, which is what this is all about, this whole announcement, to those who are migrants.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do any of that, okay? Like, they are obviously made in God's image. There obviously is charity and all that.
This is what I'm asking, though. What about the American citizens? What about the people who have lost loved ones?
What about the people who have lost loved ones because of illegal migration? What about the fact that it's a net tax drain?
It's a form of theft on a grand scale. What about the people in this country that don't have jobs, that are suffering, and their own government has foisted this upon them?
And what about that, and that the people in this country who are here illegally, at least, have done so by breaking the rules?
Do we have any compassion, any kind of heart for the natives in this country?
Or is it just charity for illegal migrants, or just, or immigrants in general? Is it just, is that the only direction this is supposed to go?
Like, they, because when any discussion of immigration comes up, really the question is, for Americans, right, who do you have a responsibility toward?
Who does the government have a responsibility toward? And those are the people whose welfare you should be concerned with.
Now, in a church, a universal outpost of the kingdom of God, which does have a local kind of manifestation that's particular to that area, and a character of local people in it.
But in that universal outpost, of course, you are gonna have members of the congregation that should be ministering to all the people around you.
If that includes migrants, good. I think you should, they should receive the gospel as well.
What about teaching obedience, though? I never hear that. If you're here illegally, especially, you gotta obey now.
As a Christian, you gotta obey. You gotta go back. Trust God. We'll help you as much as we can, but you gotta go back.
What about assisting the government as they bear the sword, right? We were all told during COVID, you have to assist the government all the time. Why all of a sudden now?
It's just so complex, right? With COVID, did we hear that? It's so complex. J .D.
Rear's church, it's so complex. No, it wasn't complex at all. We shut it down, guys. We may never open up.
I mean, come on. It's, and I'm being superstitious, but they were closed for well over a year,
I'm pretty sure, at Summit. It was a while. It's not a nuanced conversation. But now with this, and this is just as much the legal, at least legal end of it, there's laws on the books.
I mean, that is what they're talking about, I think, obviously, because this is, if we're talking about an ongoing issue that is a political football, and we need to be about justice on the one hand and compassion on the other, you need to also be about compassion for Americans, for citizens.
It's not just about like justice for them and also compassion for them. Yes, and justice for those who are being stolen from, justice for those who are being, some of them murdered because people were here that shouldn't have been.
It's a criminal justice thing. The hypocrisy to me is just, it oozes.
And Summit Church, I was gonna point this out. It was a very short period of time. Both these things were sent to me. It's that they're still on this woke light bandwagon, in my opinion.
The way the whole thing's framed is to pull your heartstrings towards the immigrant, including the illegal immigrant, and to leave out, to not even mention the citizen who,
I'm sure someone from Summit would say, well, we have programs for them as well as stuff. Well, good, but how often do you remind people on the immigration issue that they're made in the image of God?
That's the whole reason the government is applying the law here is to protect citizens. That's their role.
This isn't as complex as you're making it. Derek Owens says, just testing how the super chat works.
Thanks for bringing clarity to these issues. Thank you, Derek. Thank you for the encouragement. Thank you so much for the financial support as well.
And I appreciate that with everyone. I know this is a time of year that's tough for some people with Christmas. It means a lot to my family and it definitely helps me do what
I do to have your support. So I really, really appreciate that. Right On John says,
Anita Smith, about the biblical twisting of the migrant issue. STVNHR says, just tuning in, listening to the first story, sounds like you got a really tiny dose of the red pill.
Just saying, maybe more than a tiny dose. Beautifully Berserk says,
I battled illegal labor my whole life. They never talk about how it keeps wages low. Yep. So let's keep going here.
We have a few more stories and we're gonna wrap it up. Some of these are pretty quick. Keith and Kristen Getty still having
David Platt for their sing concert. I don't know why they do this. And it just, it does bother me because I have liked and benefited from some of their music, but David Platt, if you watch the documentary that I helped out with the real
David Platt, that's probably the best, but there's so many things out there on David Platt.
His theology from radical onward, his, the way he lied to his congregation about affiliation with the
SBC, his social justice views. It just bothers me so much that this stuff is so public. And yet this guy continues to be platformed.
He should not be platformed anywhere. He should be called to account for all the horrible things he's done.
And it just shows, the managerialism just seems to be so strong. This guy can run his church into the ground and he doesn't have a consequence on the big evil level.
They're still gonna just kind of, and I guess that's where the Gettys are. I don't know if anyone's close to them, but I just figured
I'd highlight that, point it out. Shows a lack of discernment. We'll actually focus on this at the end.
I wanna get to the good news last. So, okay, I was, I'll be very quick on some of this stuff because I'm running out of time.
Alex Kochman, who I actually know, he's a pastor. He said, as of today, I'm officially the father of a teenage, pray for me.
And he shows a picture of his son there. His son happens to be black. Alex Kochman looks like he's white.
41K, that's a lot. I got a lot of traction. How many, 13 .5 million views according to X.
How many of those are bots? I don't know, but that's a lot of views. And I wrote a little post.
I'm not gonna read the whole thing. I just basically make the point that look, and this was in reaction to a lot of the stuff I saw there, a lot of the white identitarian stuff.
And this is specifically what I said. I said, I do wanna get this quote right that I said. I said, a more authentic, patriarchal, identitarian
Christianity sounds good at first, but if whiteness is the chief of allegiance, key word is if there, it won't last in the face of pagan advocates who tied the
West downfall to Christian softness and promote pre -Christian, pre -modern, masculine religions without the Hebrew connection.
Now, let me say this. Some of you may not be as aware about this. I've been pretty aware of this for a while, maybe not like an expert on it, but I've been aware of it.
I've known it's out there, that there is an anti -Christian flavor to the pagan right. And part of the dissident right is the pagan right.
And they look at Christianity as a late comer. It's not authentically rooted in Western societies.
It is a weak religion, it has Jewish connections, and it pacifies the men. And people who follow like Bronze Age pervert type stuff are some of them, they go along this line.
Some even advocate for homosexuality, not in the passive way that you think of homosexuality, but like an aggressive, masculine kind of homosexuality in their minds.
And Christianity is a pacifying religion. I mean, you gotta limit yourself to one wife, come on.
You should be assertive, you should be dominating, you should take what you want. I know that stuff's out there, it's appealing to a certain kind of person.
And I don't know to what extent some of the guys in Christianity who are pushing hard, and they should push hard, you know, patriarchy.
I think I'm gonna write an article on this. They should push hard paternalism though. We have a certain specific type of paternalism in Christian societies, in Anglo -Protestant societies here in America, especially, that it's not just patriarchal.
It is a specific kind of patriarchy. It's not just, I'm gonna dominate. It's not, you don't find it in many
Muslim countries and that kind of, in African tribal regions and stuff. We have a very specific type of patriarchy.
I don't think this gets talked about nearly enough. One of the things, features of that though, is that you have a community responsibility.
And you are, you're the kind of person who takes care of not just your own kids, but if you have the bandwidth, you try to take care of others as well.
In the context of a family, I was thinking even about Jefferson Davis, right? The reason he came to mind is, cause
I don't know if any other president had this, but he actually adopted a black son, essentially. Kind of like Alex Kochman did.
I mean, are we really to the point where so many people think Jefferson Davis isn't based, he's pacified, he's, right?
But there were a lot of people that were going in on Alex Kochman like he is compromised.
And I highlighted just a few, I didn't wanna give undue publicity, but I'm like, look, there's these guys saying, here's one,
I'm just glad, here, I'll show you, sorry. Here's it on the screen. I'm just glad people are waking up to the subversive Christianity.
You willingly brought a threat into your family, so I'm race traitor and I won't read the rest. And this guy saying, this is so depressing and pathetic, so happy I'm no longer a
Christian. This is what's wrong with Christianity. Most Christians today are not Christians, they're all weak left -wing minds.
This spirit exists out there, guys. It's more prevalent than many of you, I think, realize. And I think there's an opening here to make a contrast.
The contrast is this, when a father rejects their responsibilities and has a son, and that son grows up fatherless, what happens?
I mean, the chances of them going towards crime and other things are very high. What happens when a
Christian dad comes in and says, I'll fill that role? I'll take care of it. Well, you've just not just helped that kid, you've helped your whole society.
You've helped your own kids. That's the kind of patriarchy that Christians have been known for.
It's a paternal patriarchy. And if that's weakness, what solutions do you have?
Alex Kochman is solving a problem, a social problem as well, when he does this kind of thing. If you don't do this kind of thing, or if you think that no one should do this kind of thing, how does that young boy grow up and what does he do?
Food for thought. All right, let's keep going here. I have it on my list, so I'm just gonna talk about it real quick.
I couldn't, so there was Joel Webben, there was a clip of Joel Webben in this documentary on Christian nationalism and I couldn't find it.
I couldn't, I guess it was deleted, I don't know. It was, I remember what it said though. This was like going back two weeks, but it was like half my
Twitter feed one day was this clip of Joel Webben saying, Christians are fake and gay.
And that's what's, he was asked the question, what's gonna, what would prevent Christian nationalism from taking place? He said, well,
Christians, why? Well, because they're fake and gay. And I was looking at this and I'm like, you know, reading it in the best possible light.
And there's a bigger point I wanna make here. This is bigger than Joel, okay? That's why I'm bringing it up. I'll tell you where my mind first went and then
I'll tell you the most charitable way to read this. Where my mind first went. Where my mind first went was Russell Moore.
Russell Moore had a habit and still does of bashing your normie
Christians. Your normie kind of conservative voting Christians who like to grill on the weekends. They're like latent fascists or something.
I don't know what, like he would use all these different terms, they're Pharisees, they're this, they're that. And I'm thinking, you know, you're talking about the majority of actual
Bible believing Christians who love the Lord, believe the gospel. They're all really subverted.
And it's like the New York Times or Washington Post is somehow right. But all these people that you are so embarrassed by have it wrong.
And he would just make, maybe not quite as drastic statements as that, but he would make statements about, you know, if Christians in this country only love the
Imago Dei, if they only practice the gospel but like Martin Luther King did, we wouldn't have had these problems.
And I always pointed out when he did that, that look, you start blaming the majority of Christians for social ills.
You're creating an off -ramp from the church. That's all you're doing. Furthermore, there's a theological problem.
If what you mean by that is the bride of Christ that is being perfected on a daily basis, which scripture talks about,
Ephesians five. If you're saying that that is the problem with society, you have a theological issue there too.
Now it's unclear sometimes what someone means by that. So here's what I'll say is the most charitable reading of this. If Joel means, and if Russell Moore, Russell Moore obviously has a different ethic he's using, but if Joel is looking at like revelation and the letters to the churches, like, oh, to the church at this location, this physical church there, it's like, you've left your first love.
You're neither hot nor cold. I'd spit you out. It's that kind of thing. And it's like, you've got problems at this specific location, this physical location, because I think that's what it represents, an actual church.
I don't think it's ages of the church or anything like that. Then there's a point to be made that if you say, okay, the
American church has a weakness here. This is a tendency that they have, fair.
Fake and gay, I think just, I don't really use those terms much. I can't remember the last time
I said something was gay. That was something on my soccer team when I was 13, everyone said, and I still have that in my head.
Like, I just don't, I don't know. I just, I can't really, I'm not saying I never wrote it in a text or something.
I can't remember the last time. I just don't really like doing it. But I think what it means is essentially inauthentic, effeminate, weak, that kind of thing, right?
Which, as I just showed you, there's people out there who already think that that's what Christianity is. It's weak, it's effeminate, fake and gay.
That's the lingo that they're using to communicate that. So if you reinforce that, you give them, they have all the reasons and reinforcement.
Hey, look, a pastor's even saying this. I think that you can point out that the church in the
United States has problems, but I guess this is my hangup. To make it the reason you can't have a
Christian society, for example, we can't have a Christian society because Christians are this way. I can sort of see a point of the like, hey, if Christians really got going with the
Holy Spirit, following Him, obeying Him, all the things that Ephesians says are gonna happen when you let the
Spirit dwell in you, and Colossians says when the word of Christ dwells in you, you're gonna have all these things. Social arrangements are gonna be better.
Okay, I can kind of get my head around that and be like, I think if Christians really acted like, people who call,
I'll put it this way. This is the careful way to put it, I think, or in my mind, the accurate way to put it. If people who call themselves
Christians, who probably aren't a lot of them, but they call themselves that, if they were to actually be real
Christians and obey Christ, then we would see transformation in this country. Transformation isn't happening the way we'd expect it to because Christians are not doing it.
I can see a route for that, but even with that, I'd have to qualify it and say, look, I'm still gonna blame
Satan. I'm still gonna blame the world of flesh and the devil. I'm still gonna say, hey, the forces of darkness, man, there's maybe some so -called
Christians playing on the forces of darkness side, but the actual theological invisible church,
I wouldn't be saying negative things about her, or saying things that would lead people to think
I'm saying negative things about her. I'm gonna be very careful with that. She's the bride of Christ. She's pure.
She's this beautiful thing that Christ is making. And there may be a lower amount of authentic Christians in this country than identify as Christian on a pole, but I'm not going to then reach the conclusion that it's the
Christian's fault. And I guess I'm sensitive to this because I'm sick of hearing it for years coming from progressive left people of like, it's always the church's fault.
It's the Christian normies. And I know I titled this, and nothing personal against Joel here.
I just, I think there is a broader narrative that I'm noticing, that I'm seeing ascend, that Christianity is fundamentally, it's weak.
It's not what should come next. There's a competition for what should come next. And in the kind of Christianity you can be advocated, if you think like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Christ is
King stuff. If that's like the Christianity, the sloganeering. I mean, I look at that like Lakota go -shirts, to be honest with you.
It's like, we're in the death knells of our society and we're going to like ring up, rise up the banner of something that we used to bind us.
But there's, it's Christ. It's Christ himself that's got to bind us. It's the power of Christ we need. It's looking to Christ as a real person, a real power as God himself that we need.
So I'm, I don't want to create off -ramps from the church. I need you guys to know, if you're listening to this voice and you are not a
Christian, and maybe you're curious, you're listening to this podcast or you are culturally Christian, but you never really knew
Christ. I need you to know something. Christianity is true and it's real and there's power in it. There is real power in Christianity.
And when there are real Christians following Christ, because they will follow Christ if they're real Christians, they will be on that trajectory.
You will see transformation take place in lives and then broadly in their circle of influence in society.
That is inevitable. The gates of hell do not prevail against the church. It is going to happen. He is going to complete the work he started within you.
Even if you're a Christian ensnared in a sin, you're going to not be ensnared one day. And it's going to be because of the power of the
Holy Spirit. Okay, because our faith is, we rely on him, not horses and chariots. We strategize, but at the end of the day, it's out of our control, it's in God's hands, and we just leave it to him because we know he's the one with the power.
And your society actually doesn't have to go downhill. God can help a president dodge a bullet or a bullet miss a president and create a whole different outcome than you expected.
There are so many different things that can happen. I don't know what's around the corner, but I do know this,
Christianity is real. The Holy Spirit's real. God is real. Christians are the force for good in this world.
And I think you need to hear someone saying that for once, that we are the salt and the light.
It's not like we are all... I'm telling you, the real authentic Christians, Holy Spirit -led are salt and light in the society.
They are the ones that have any hope of not just creating a Christian society, but preserving society and civilization in general.
There is no hope outside of it. I'm convinced of that. I think your boomer dad or grandpa was right or maybe you're a boomer listening.
I think that generation was right when they said that the only hope is a revival. Now, you can do political action without a revival, but I think that's basically right.
We need a revival. And the only force that can create a revival is the Holy Spirit.
So here I stand, here I stand. So I wanted to share that with you as a way of hope and maybe a counterbalance to, if you're hearing all this ripping on the church,
I see it coming from different sides. And I just don't wanna do it.
If I go after the church or evangelicals or something, it's gonna be... I'm gonna try to temper it with neo -evangelicals, so it's like a particular kind of philosophy.
And it's Big Eva, it's elite. It's the evangelical industrial complex. It's the managerialists who have set themselves up in the, so to speak, the seat of Moses.
They're like the Pharisees who have... It's that. The normie Christian who's out there just trying to read his
Bible and follow God, that's the majority, I would say, of actual
Christians in this country is they're not in the upper echelons. They're the hope for this country.
They're the ones that are still voting in conservative ways in the Bible Belt. And I know some people,
I just saw recently, it was, what was it? It was, oh, Andrew Torba. Andrew Torba, I guess, had said in his book,
I forgot he said this, on Christian nationalism, that it's cultural that defines a vote more than it does theology, essentially, or belief in Christianity, because look at black
Christians. They vote for Democrats. And I was thinking there's some truth to this in the sense that, yes, culture, things like the
Second Amendment, I like to use that example because that's a very encultured thing. Christians in China might not agree with the
Second Amendment. Christians here do. That's gonna create... So yes, there are conservative instincts that have been formed through the mediation of Christian principles over time in our society in unique circumstances.
And culture carries that with it. Got it. But there's some very basic moral things that Christians everywhere are gonna agree on, like killing babies is wrong, right?
That's in a general agreement, like marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think the problem with most of the black church, quote unquote, is they're just not actually
Christians. And I know you're not supposed to say that. That's racist. But look, they can be culturally Christian and have some of the trappings of it.
They're not actually born again believers following Christ though, when their ethics are, how do
I put this? It's really two things. When their gospel is a gospel of liberation theology, it can't actually save you.
And their ethics are crafted by progressive social policies, not the word of God. There's no reason to think that there's a lot of Christians involved in that movement that are authentic,
Holy Spirit, born again Christians. Now, what does it take to be a
Christian? Just for those listening, I know I've talked about this before, but it takes faith in Jesus Christ. It's by grace through faith, okay?
If you're someone who is in the domain of darkness, you repent means you turn from your sin, you place your faith in Jesus Christ.
Ray Comfort says the way that you would a parachute. I like that analogy. It's you're not trusting in your works or anything you've done.
And once that happens, and you trust that Christ's work was sufficient for you on the cross, he paid the penalty that God has for you.
He satisfied the wrath of God and puts you in a position to be in a right relationship with God.
If you repent and put your trust in him, he says he will give you the
Holy Spirit, the helper, the comforter, and dwells you. And the Holy Spirit's work is involved in the whole process.
I mean, when you were coming from darkness to light, the Holy Spirit is convicting you of sin, righteousness, and judgment. You are understanding fully how you violated
God's law. And then he illuminates the scripture for you. And you live in power, the same power that those in Acts lived in.
That's it. Okay, that's the conversion. That's becoming a Christian. I know John Mark Comer doesn't like to talk about conversion.
That is the power that changes nations. I think that we should engage in political philosophy, in war, in all the things that societies engage in.
But I also know that if you want a stable Christian society, it takes Christians, it takes conversions.
So there you go. I just, I feel like I need to say it just to help people.
Don't black pill on this stuff, all right, guys? Like there's a real church out there. There's real Christians. I had a thing on Nick Fuentes I was gonna talk about.
I don't think we're ready. I don't think we have, we don't have time. I'll summarize it. I won't even play the clips for you.
I haven't queued up, but Nick Fuentes basically said, we need a populist American party or we need the
Republican party to die. And we need this new party that's composed of people on the left who give up the immigration people and people on the right who give up the
Israel issue. And they also give up a free market capitalism essentially. And I said before this,
I said, watch for that. Watch for, especially on the Israel issue, an on -ramp from those on the right who don't like Jewish people or Israel and those on the left, because the left has been doing this longer.
I mean, the mainstream media is, has been critical of Israel for a long time. Watch that. Sure enough,
Schenck, is it Unger, Young Turks guy? He came out and he basically said,
I think we can work with Nick Fuentes. And I'm like, oh, far left Schenck. I'm watching this.
I'm just kind of foreshadowing. When we lead up to the next election, I am, I don't know how important it'll be.
That's the real question. I know it'll be there. I just don't know how big it'll be, especially with Gen Z. I think there's gonna be, as the
Israel issue gets elevated to the primary importance, there's gonna be some communication and coordination between some forces on the right and the left.
That's what I think. And I think you can already tell it's not just that, it's not just the person I mentioned previously, it's others who
I think are gonna be involved with the architects of this kind of coordination. It's a liability obviously for the right because we went on a razor's edge and to blow up the coalition over that issue is very unwise.
But I'm watching that. That's a political aside. I had an article on smartphones.
You'll have to read it yourself. I don't have time. On the Federalist, it's just practical about keeping your kids from suffering the effects of over smartphone use.
There's a great article at Chronicles Magazine, Remembering Roger Scruton, which I don't have time to go over as well.
And then I wanted to highlight this for you. President Trump signed an executive order for Christian families, and it confronts the narrative the
Biden administration tried to cement that people of faith are unwelcoming government -led social welfare initiatives. For thousands of years, the church has been a beacon of welfare.
Okay. Couples who open their homes to vulnerable children have been pushed out of the foster care system. And this pattern stretches back a ways.
So the executive order should serve as a clarion call to believers. Now is the moment to step up.
As the president and the executive director of Lifeline Children's Services, largest evangelical adoption agency, says,
I've seen the contrast firsthand. Trump is appealing to Christians.
Essentially what this does is it opens the doors again for Christians to participate in the foster care system. Biden was trying to push that out.
And so reason number 200 that I do not regret my vote for Donald Trump, even though there are things
I disagree with, but I don't regret my vote for Donald Trump. Thanks. Oh, thanks, thanks. There's no comment there, but $10.
I really appreciate that. All right. Questions, and then we're done. Let's see.
It looks like there's a conversation going in on the chat that I'm not privy to. So I'm gonna try to sidestep that.
I Am Guardian says, Joel Webbin hurts. He personally helped me find a good church and now he courts grippers.
I pray for him. Yeah, I mean, I would encourage you to pray for me, okay? Pray for Joel, pray for me, pray for anyone in the limelight, especially pastors.
You know, I'm not an elder yet. I'm heading that way, but it's, man, I think every day when
I do the elder training stuff, I'm like, it's scary. Because that is so much more important in my mind than what
I do here on the podcast. It's not even close. Being a pastor in a church, I'm not saying what
I do isn't important. I'm just saying being a pastor in a church, you are keeping watch over people's souls.
And I just think what comes out of your mouth, you just gotta be very careful. So I would just say pray for all pastors in the public light there.
Calming Waves says, if God doesn't like human suffering and he wants humans to be sinless, why did he not do this?
Oh man, you're asking me at the end of the podcast? Okay, so this is the difference between the two wills of God, essentially, right?
You have a will of God that is his perfect will. In other words, his moral will, when he says in the 10 commandments, thou shalt not steal.
He doesn't want people to steal. He takes no pleasure in the death of the ungodly. There's that will. Then there's the sovereign will of God in his providence.
He allows things to happen for a higher cause that sometimes we don't always see, but it will end up glorifying him in the long run.
Even those who are vessels of wrath, as Romans 9 says. There is a mysterious element to this.
And because we're not God, it is hard to understand all of that. But I would say this, there is no philosophical or faith system out there,
I know of, that actually answers this question in a way that satisfies like Christianity does.
Because within Christianity, you have the God of the universe penetrating this finite existence to become man, to relate to man and to solve man's problems.
And we are held responsible for the decisions that we make. That's another conundrum in all this, is how in the world, if God is sovereign, do we even have a free will?
Well, he sovereignly ordains all that comes to pass, including our free choices. We are responsible for them.
So I can't give a longer answer than that because I don't have time on the podcast. I think
I've put out material in the past on this, a long time ago. But the bottom line is that,
God is a God who has a moral will that flows from his character.
And at the same time, part of that moral will is justice and punishing sinners.
And sometimes that part of that justice is felt in this life. Sometimes it is administered by the government, which is his servant.
Sometimes it is through natural disasters and other things. Other times, and this is part of, there's the curse of sin in this world.
Other times, and for everyone who does not repent and put their faith in Jesus, it will be in the life to come.
And so that's how Christians think through that issue. All right, off topic, but can you recommend a book for a skeptical parent about how the canon of scripture was formed?
Derek Owen says, yes. Derek, you've been very generous today. Thank you. So I think Michael Kruger's books, even though I've criticized
Michael Kruger for other things, cause he's a TGC guy. I do think his work on the canon is actually pretty good.
So check out his book, The Canon Revisited. He's got a book, I think three books on the canon now.
Canon Revisited, I believe is his second book, but they're very good books on the formation of the canon of scripture.
So check that out. All right, could John's answer be wrong?
Well, everything's tested against the word of God, guys. God bless, more coming, bye now.