What the Afghanistan Situation Reveals

Afghanistan, Alaska, and the Burden of Watching Events Unfold

Hey everyone, good morning. I am in Alaska still and it's Right before we start our day. So I have a few minutes to share some thoughts on what's going on in Afghanistan. I just wanted to say it is absolutely gorgeous here.

My wife and I are loving it. I feel like everyone should go to Alaska at some point in their life. We feel like we hit the jackpot because Right now the cruise lines are down because of kovat and so prices are.

Very.

Deflated they're.

Usually a lot. It's usually a lot more expensive to come here. But as you might want to check maybe it's still that way if you're trying to get over here. Of course now it's starting to get colder, but I'm going salmon fishing for the first time in my life today.

I'm very excited about that the salmon streams yesterday. We went by this river. They're just Salmon are everywhere and it's it's incredible. I think because of last year. They didn't have as many fishermen come through they Did not have as big of a catch that that means there's more salmon this year, so I'm excited about it's a historic opportunity.

But as we are enjoying things here, I am NOT ignorant of what's happening in Afghanistan. I just wanted to share with you a few thoughts. Hopefully quickly here. I wrote a post on Monday about some of my thoughts.

I'm gonna use that I'm grieved over what's happening in Afghanistan and I really am it's The inevitable result of poor decisions, and I am praying for all those in harm's way I can't even imagine I've seen the shots.

You've seen of people clinging to a plane as it's Taking off from the capital city and some of them falling to their death. It's it's absolutely heartbreaking. I saw a post on Monday, and this really got me to reflect of a missionary couple in Afghanistan ready to die at peace they're working in the underground church, and they know because they're foreign and they're Christians they will die when the Taliban finds them and I wondered am I ready for that if that situation came to me?

How would I react and I think it's a good thing to reflect on? God gave us taste buds. He gave us eyes to see he wants us to enjoy the fruit of our labors and and the things that he put around us. But the things worth dying for the ultimate things the people God himself these are.

Things that are worth living for as well, and are we living for them. Are we ready to die for them and So I am thinking about the people who are over there especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I have a couple thoughts about this whole debacle and.

The Failure of Abstract Love and the Abandonment of Allies

I.

Want to Try my best to expose. I think some of the ideas. That the assumptions that even social justice minded evangelicals make about culture. About love. I think there's a red pill that People are waking up to something's wrong right with our either our foreign policy or something was wrong.

And how we manage the situation in Afghanistan, and I want to point out I think what some of those things are because I think they expose deeper. It's an iceberg. There's deeper things behind it. Deeper assumptions that if we get this correct if we understand why this whole experiment in democracy failed over there I think we can avoid some of the perils that we are making in our own society.

So that's part of my motive. Some of these are in the form of a question some of these concerns I have so the first question is will our general government ever be trusted again. Abandoning those who chose to be loyal to the United States in Afghanistan When they could have arranged to protect many of them ruins our country's credibility the way pulling out of Vietnam did.

Right now is not a time to ruin our country's credibility. China and Iran both see it. Apparently they both made statements. Iran about their enrichment program of uranium. China about Taiwan and the United States better back off Taiwan.

They are emboldened by this action. This is a much Less safe world because of what just happened. I cannot overplay this. This is not good.

There.

If you're gonna pull out at least have a good exit strategy and there could have been one and instead we let our own allies. They're stranded. I was reading about one person four years working for the United States as a translator.

His family's in harm's way I don't even know if he's alive right now. I don't know where he is. Meanwhile a Biden's talking about bringing 30 ,000 and it'll probably be more Refugees to the United States.

I don't know how you vet all these people. This quickly there could even be Taliban operatives in that group. Who knows this is just a Trojan horse in my mind. But as he's saying this There are Americans and people that were allies with America who are vetted who are stuck.

I mean from the military that pushes critical race theory the Joint Chiefs of Staff is pushing critical race theory in the name of equality and tolerance and Diversity and inclusion and oh man, this is what loves about right?

No, because that's love in the abstract. It's it's just loving these ideas. It's using these ideas for power. It's the virtue signal. It's not real love. If they if the Joint Chiefs really believed in and our commander-in-chief.

Especially really believed in in these things that they say they believe in. Wouldn't you think that they would love the people who have been loyal to the United States in Afghanistan? Wouldn't you think that they would have had an exit strategy instead of treating them like an afterthought?

Real flesh-and-blood tangible concrete people right there. Not abstractions not ideas. People and.

We're.

Being I've gotten the emails the messages from people in the military. It is being shoved down the throats in certain sectors of the military this critical race theory junk and in the name of Tolerance and all that is good in the world yet the same military that's pushing this stuff the same Joint Chiefs.

I'm talking about the policy decision makers. They won't take responsibility for abandoning people to whom they owe an obligation. No one seems to want to take responsibility. The buck keeps shifting and that's another.

It shows that the character the quality of our leadership is going down and it's it's a very scary thing I'm gonna be honest with you that no one's taking responsibility. It seems like for this. So that's the government social media.

The Taliban spokesperson is Aba hula majahid enjoys free reign on Twitter. President of the United States Donald Trump can't can't go on Twitter, but the Taliban spokesman can. So that's interesting the Taliban was using whatsapp apparently a lot to communicate in order to execute their plans and Like I said, China smells weakness.

Iran. Iran smells weakness you have Abdul Ghani Baradar who will probably be the next president of Afghanistan met with China counselor Wang Yi in July. How much of this is also the result of? Resources being given to enemies of the United States from bigger enemies like China.

Now they have our infrastructure our Our weapons everything that was given from the United States to the Afghan government is in the hands of Taliban now. This this is one big. This is a very concerning thing guys.

This is a very concerning thing and It reveals a number of things. So that's one of the first things that I wanted to mention though that it reveals is the nature of true love protection. Preservation the things that we honor the military for Loving your country ultimately right at the rock bottom of this.

I mean, why does the military exist to protect its people? That was what many people thought and who signed up to go to Afghanistan thought they were doing.

And.

What in the long run in the end? We're finding a military a joint chiefs of staff devoted to pushing critical race theory but not devoted to helping the very allies who assisted them. And. This is a disgusting thing to me.

And it I just want you to think ponder in your own minds. What's the nature of true love? Is it loving abstractions of it? Is it saying I love the world but not loving any of the people in it. Where is loving your neighbor.

Loving the people close to you. Loving the people that are proximate to you.

And.

These are real tangible flesh-and-blood people that to whom you have responsibilities and obligations. Something to really think about because we have a notion being pushed is very abstract distant view of love.

That does not value thing actual tangible people so much as it does just the concept of love itself supposedly. The other thing I wanted to point out and this is I want to kind of Attack the notion of principle pluralism here.

Why Principle Pluralism Cannot Hold a Society Together

So I'm gonna sort of reverse engineer this. I'll start here principle pluralism is a buzzword that I heard a lot when I was in seminary that there's this neutral space that exists and This was kind of a way of navigating the disagreements between LGBTQ lobby and Christians.

How do they exist? Well the principle pluralism they can have their ideas, but they're gonna have a neutral public area where they can interact. Who controls the neutral public area? There is no neutral public area.

That's part of the problem here. To have a quote-unquote neutral public area where freedom of conscience in and the freedoms outlined in our Bill of Rights are respected. You have to have a virtuous people and you have to have a Christian people.

For our particular form of government to work. We've had centuries of British common law influenced by Christianity. We've had We the founders made it very explicit a virtuous people is necessary for self-government.

For the kind of government the United States has you need a religious people a virtuous people and ultimately a Christian people.

And.

The problem is when and we're finding it out right now as soon as the Christian influence starts to wane. So does so do those liberties that are so enjoyed by the people of the United States? Social justice, I believe it is a religion.

I've done podcasts on it. You can get when it comes out my newest book Christianity and social justice religions and conflict I talk about this more. I think I make a pretty tight case for it that social justice is a religion and When you have a secular religion that takes over some sometimes you're gonna as well all the time you're gonna see those those rights start to wane and The things you thought were secure are not as secure you.

We can see that in many cases. I think of the Cake baking situations to be just one of them, but you do not have the same Privileges or rights or things that you enjoyed before. When as Christianity is waning?

And I think What does it have to do with Afghanistan? I think our leaders think it's possible to just plant democracy or American notions of equality in Afghanistan. So whether you're talking about 1789 the Constitution and all of that or whether you're talking about today and the egalitarian ideas I mean you have the embassy of the United States flying the rainbow flag in Afghanistan, right?

You know that you think this is compatible with with those people who believe in Islam. This is offensive some of them. I've read Favored the Taliban just because it was it was less offensive to their Islam.

So.

You the flawed thinking is that you can just go into a country? that does not have the cultural elements that America has had that have been crafted for hundreds of years and You can just plant democracy there as if it's as universal or equality this universal human value.

And and that they'll it'll just work. The worst. I mean that's the kind of colonialism the United States engages in. It's not the normal kind of colonialism where you go and you Look at the resources and businesses come in and people settle.

No, this is the kind of colonialism where you're just trying to get them to adopt your ideas and you're not getting anything in return. Just adopt our ideas of equality and it's not working and it hasn't worked and it's now it's it's a red pill for everyone.

It doesn't work. I think of what MacArthur said when United States went into Japan. We need to send an army of missionaries over here. They need the from the ground up. They need to they need to be different to basically to adopt the kind of government that the United States wanted would want them to have and.

So.

Some.

Situations are if you're gonna go in there long term and be there for a while and Try to plant democracy. Quote-unquote. At the very least. You're going to need to change the culture somehow and you're not going to do it just by introducing these abstractions that offend them.

The other thing here is. Was that the only option if you can't change the culture right. Which which in in Afghanistan would require changing the religion. Is the form of government they really need a republic or a democracy.

Maybe they're better off with a Benevolent but heavy hand that limits the options that. That that they have to commit crimes against one another they're not going to have self-government is what I'm saying is.

There's inevitably going to be a heavy hand and now they have it. Now they have it. Now the Taliban is going to be that heavy hand and.

So.

My my personal thinking is you if you're gonna if you're at war you you defeat the country and then you get out and I I do understand that there there there is I think the lesson of World War one was you don't want to build up bitter resentment in a country that is defeated.

And so I think they're sort of this commitment has arisen to what we got a nation build there, but that nation build Idea has extended beyond just picking up the rubble and helping them get back on their feet.

It is now. It is basically making experiments of these places to see if we can plant little Americas. I mean look at the letter that George Bush wrote about this look at the Twitter and what Millennials are posting.

I mean Bush said, you know all the forces that were there for progress and he's so encouraged by all the young people under 25 in the Population as if they're gonna be the key to the future. They're gonna embrace equality.

People on Twitter who are young Millennials, you know, oh, there's such a missed opportunity for women here. That's the concern. That's the concern. CNN there was a journalist over there who you know confronted the Taliban on their treatment of women and are they gonna let women go To school, but even in that is funny.

She treated them. She said to her anchors That they were nice. She said it was to be expected that there they didn't let me in the palace because I was a woman. But would they ever treat any group of conservatives the United States that way?

No. They were bitter enemies. They would never go to a MAGA group and say well, you know. It's to be expected their ideas on the border or something would never do that CNN, but they will treat People that are members of the Taliban this way and it shows you what their real purpose is.

It's one of the things I want to drive home Egalitarian utopians whether they know that they're that or not. They're their purpose is to basically Promote egalitarianism where other missionaries for it and Whoever stands in their way is an enemy.

And sometimes those who are closer to them like Christians in the United States. Like conservatives in the United States are more enemies to them than someone like the Taliban. But there were both on the enemies list because we believe in a certain form of hierarchies.

Well, the Taliban believes in a very different form of hierarchy than Christians United States. But both believe in hierarchies that are antithetical to this egalitarian social justice agenda. And so I guess my whole point and bringing this up because I went on a little tangent there is that there is no neutral space.

Whatever there's this interesting thing that's happened in the Western world where secular humanism has been running off of the inertia of Christianity for so long many secular humanists adopt so many of the notions that are unique to Christianity because they're products of it and they just don't understand where they got it from.

But that's how they're operating and they try to base it on different things. But you're not going to get this without Christianity this kind of respect for quote-unquote human rights. That that's my firm belief on this.

It is you look at the rest of the world. It's a these are foreign concepts. These are just they don't have the same kind of understanding that people in the West have and They should not be expected to without completely changing their entire way of looking at things they're not going to have that same outlook and It's so that is the flaw of principal pluralism.

And that is also the flaw of trying to do this Nation building these nation building efforts in places like Afghanistan. I think I already mentioned this but I had written why are none of our leaders taking responsibility for this?

It shows us the kind of leaders we have and that should frighten us and Then I said this it will be much harder for Christians living in Afghanistan to live their daily lives. Despite those who believed in principal pluralism.

There is no way to keep this unstable element from exploding without a dominant view that values freedom of conscience. How does this factor into? How does this factor into some of the things that we've seen?

From Christians, I think of even like David Platt's book before you vote.

Just.

This ignorance about what's come before us what's brought us to the point that we are at.

And.

You know, well, you know the we Christian can vote for these egalitarians on the Democrat side. Christian can vote for Republican vote for whoever but they shouldn't feel bad about voting for Democrats.

The you know principal pluralism we should be able to get along you're not going to get along you're dealing with Totalitarians, that's plain and simple whether they're social justice totalitarians or whether it's the Taliban.

Or whether it's the Chinese Communist Party. I just got done finishing a book on Mao Zedong. Which was an interesting and really scary of how China's been playing us for years. But these people are so subversive and we don't see it so much of the time.

We just we project our motives on to them. Well, we wouldn't do that. So they're not doing that. No, there's there's an evil world out there there are evil people that want to hurt other people there really are very bad people and.

So often people in the United States, especially on the conservative side. Especially in the evangelical world for whatever reason. Who should they should understand? Original sin and all of that. It should be just more obvious to them than it is to most people they seem naive when it comes to this the subversion of Marxist the subversion of Islamic radicals all of that.

It's a conspiracy if you talk about it, but it's really happening and so Foreign policy also affects missions. I was gonna say that as well. When you're you know, calculating your vote and who what side am I gonna vote for?

I want you to think about just from a purely Christian standpoint right now missions think of missions. Would it be better if Donald Trump was in office right now for Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan hearing the gospel?

Or is it better with Biden in office? I'll let you ponder that and the last but not least This exposes I think the hypocrisy a little bit of the Romans the hard line Romans 13 is a blank check to the government crowd.

We heard during the kovat stuff that while Romans 13 Romans 13 Romans 13 someone had posted on Facebook I thought it was hysterical a picture of the Taliban in the president's Palace and it just said Romans 13.

That was the caption. I thought was hysterical and. And it's sad at the same time, but I thought this it exposes perfectly Romans 13 is about More so it's it's actually not a treaty song government. It reveals some things about government.

It does but it's really about individual Christians and their personal morality how they're supposed to interact as representatives of God as living sacrifices and it applies to the way that they They shouldn't be going to jail they shouldn't be Breaking laws that are also God's laws but enforced by the government and Romans 13 has been turned into this blank check to government that you just got to submit no matter what and This is it's a horrible interpretation of my mind just neglects the context.

But what do you do in a situation? Let's say you're a Christian living in Afghanistan and the Taliban moves in One day. And just takes over. I mean, are they the government now? I guess they are so you have to submit to them, right?

Anything they say just about and unless it I guess impacts preaching the gospel, right? That's the one exception, which is I Mean that should be an exception because we're commanded to do it. But there's a lot of other commands God's given us other than preaching the gospel, right?

So Are we are you just pay the tax? Do you the? Just attacks and what to what extent does Romans 13 apply to this situation and It's something I think it's good to chew on and I think the more you chew on it the more you'll develop an understanding of why.

It is perfectly. It's actually right and good if you if you know really what's going on. And if you if you see the subversiveness and and how the kovat stuff Lockdowns and regulations are being used. It's the right thing to oppose those things.

And it's not a violation of Romans 13. And so anyway, I wanted to share all those thoughts with you. I hope that's that's Giving you some things to think about to say the very least. Please pray please and this is serious.

Please pray pray for our The missionaries that are still over there the people that are stuck and have been abandoned essentially it's it's the most sad thing to me and I Just pray that God is merciful to them in this situation whether that's giving the grace to withstand The persecution if they're Christians or just getting them out of there.

We need to see the grace of God in this. So anyway, I wanted to make that point to you. I hope that was helpful for some of you more coming later in the week. God bless.