Climate Change and Saving the Planet

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00:00

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

00:07

Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie? Or are you gonna bite? Delusional's okay in your worldview.

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I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

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It doesn't really hurt. What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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May he have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

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May desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust.

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I love that. May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tributes.

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May the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him.

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All nations serve him. That's Psalm 72, y 'all. Go check it out.

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And I got a little like jumping around in the back. Is that the audio on your side? I think it might be Skype.

01:56

All right, guys. Hey, we are on today talking with a very special guest. I am

02:01

Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear. What up? This is Apologia Radio. It's the gospel heard around the world.

02:07

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04:07

Luke and I were actually, Pastor Luke and I were just talking about this subject. Yeah, it was last week, I think. Yeah, it was last week.

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And then all of a sudden, I see this ad come up from our friend, Dr. Wilson, about his new book.

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And we're going to bring him on here. I'll let Pastor Luke actually, why don't you play that, the advertisement for the book, because I want people to hear that to sort of get context.

04:28

Some of you guys may remember Dr. Gordon Wilson from the movie that we helped to promote a bit a while back.

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It was called The Riot and the Dance. If you have not seen The Riot and the Dance, you have to watch it tonight.

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It's so good. It is so good. And I do want to find out from Dr. Wilson when part two is coming out. But Riot and the

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Dance, I believe, is available on Amazon Prime and other places, but Amazon Prime at least.

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Go check out The Riot and the Dance. I am in love with that film. Christian worldview, look at creation, and it'll blow your mind.

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It's excellent. I can't wait for the next one. But Riot and the Dance, Dr. Wilson, you'll see him there.

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We love Dr. Wilson. I ran into Gordon when I was leaving Tapped in Moscow.

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With your root beer. With my root beer. I ran into it. Root beer. Root beer. Just to be clear about that. Everyone's freaking out about that.

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Could have just as easily been a Guinness. But I'm leaving. I ran into Gordon.

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We're going to try to actually get something with him while I was there, but didn't get a chance to, which I was bummed about. But we have him on now.

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Gordon, again, did Riot and the Dance. You need to get to know him through that. Make sure you sit down with your family. Watch it tonight.

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You will not be disappointed. I believe you will love it. But I did see that Dr. Wilson has a new book.

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And the name of the book, I'm pulling it up right here, A Different Shade of Green, A Biblical, listen,

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Approach to Environmentalism and the Dominion Mandate. Big question right now.

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Hot topic. Huge discussion. We've got people telling us that we only have 12 years left before ultimately all of creation dies and humans die or start the process of dying along with it.

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We have all kinds of things taking place now in the area of legislation, forced legislation, in terms of the environmentalism that's being propagated around the world.

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And so I think a lot of times Christians will see that and they'll be opposed to this environmentalist and hyper concerned for the earth in a really weird kind of way that ends up infringing on really human rights and ends up being very destructive to the environment, actually.

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And so we tend to go one of two directions. Rather than having a balanced biblical view of the environment, creation itself, all those things, we end up going one of two directions.

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Either we go wonky into the liberal environmentalism that ends up - Which is worship. Which is creation worship.

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And it ends up destroying the environment and it ends up destroying the image of God in many ways. Or we go the other direction where we so are opposed to that nonsense that Christians will say like, don't care, don't care.

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Yeah. And just - Throw their trash on the ground. We're getting raptured anyways out of here. It doesn't make a difference.

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Like the world's going to get burned up anyways, any moment. So - Recycling is stupid. It doesn't make a difference.

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Right. So we're going to talk about that. And Pastor Luke, go ahead. All right, here we go. Here's my new book,

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A Different Shade of Green, A Christian Approach to Environmentalism and the Dominion Mandate by me,

07:44

Gordon Wilson. You know, nowadays there's a lot of polarization happening with the environmental movement.

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There's a lot of crazy governmental regulations and Christians are often confused about what to do.

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You've got reactionaries in both directions, you know, sort of a redneck reactionary against the environmental movement because there's just a lot of fruitiness going on and overbearing governmental regulations.

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And then you've got other Christians that are just falling off the other side of the boat, drinking the

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Kool -Aid of the environmental agenda. What I want people to do is to take the biblical principles in this book and apply it to their sphere of influence and to apply those biblical principles in a non -reactionary way that's guided by the scriptures.

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You know what I love? This is the truth, truth before God. I love the unity. Everything he just said there,

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I never even watched the ad. I didn't even watch it. That's exactly what my feeling about it, and I never even watched the ad.

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Oh, it's funny. Dr. Gordon Wilson is Senior Fellow of Natural History at New St. Andrews College.

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Get your kids, if they're college age, to New St. Andrews, guys, in Moscow, Idaho, and has also taught a wide array of biology courses at Liberty University.

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He received his PhD in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University in 2003.

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Gordon is the author of the biology textbook, The Riot and the Dance, and is featured in the nature documentary of the same name.

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He is also a regular contributor to Answers Magazine. Gordon and his wife, Meredith, have four children and a growing number of grandchildren.

09:28

What's up, Dr. Wilson? Welcome to Apology Radio. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for having me.

09:34

Absolutely. It's great to be here. Absolutely, brother. Very excited to have you. All right. I actually wore my NSA shirt today. I don't know if you noticed that.

09:40

Yeah, I didn't even notice that. Just for Dr. Wilson. Oh, New St. Andrews. That's great, but I can't see you guys.

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I know, I know, I know. Someday we'll have the technology that allows that. I loved, I think my favorite part of that commercial, what was it you said?

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Redneck reactionary response. I love it. It's so Wilson -esque. I know, I love it. It's so Wilson -esque.

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All right. All right, well, let's get into it. Let's start to talk. Well, I'm going to do two things here.

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Let's layer it, Dr. Wilson. First, let's talk about Riot and the Dance so we can make sure people get a chance to see that. What is the

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Riot and the Dance and why should people watch it? Well, I have the Blu -ray right here and it is basically, just like the subtitle says, a cinematic celebration of creation.

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You could say if you wanted to find an equivalent of sort of a secular version, that would be sort of planet

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Earth. You've got the seculars doing stuff. They've been doing it for a real long time.

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And then our part two is going to be water. So that'd be like, you know, Blue Planet. I don't like to compare it just because it's apples and oranges.

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And their worldview is very almost, not just the

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BBC, but every nature documentary that you see out there, almost every one is completely saturated with an evolutionary worldview.

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And one of the reasons we did this is because an investor in Moscow came to my nephew,

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N .D. Wilson, and said, you know, I'm sick and... This is a, I don't know exactly the quote, but he was basically saying

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I'm sick and tired of nature. Well, he liked nature documentaries and his family liked nature documentaries, but they were so fed up with the evolutionary worldview and he wanted

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Nate to direct a nature documentary.

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So Nate being my next door neighbor and his outdoorsy, nature -loving uncle that took him out insect collecting and did little nature hikes when he was a little kid, he immediately thought of me as the narrator.

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So he asked me if I'd be the narrator and I said, you bet. And that was,

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I think, 2015. And we filmed, I'm not sure exactly the duration of all of the filming because it was off and on and worked in with my teaching schedule, but we filmed in various locations in the

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United States and then we went overseas to Sri Lanka and filmed in a number of different ecosystems there.

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So it has a very wide array of different habitats, ecosystems that we film various animals in.

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Of course, all of the glory, honor goes to our

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Lord, the creator of all of it. And that's what was sadly missing in all of these nature documentaries,

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Nat Geo, Planet Earth, all of the BBC stuff. It is really sad.

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And so we're just trying to give credit to where credit is due. Yes. And I got a chance to, we sat down for dinner with Nate, I think is what he told us.

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He told us about your experience in part two where you talk about water and you guys were off the coast of one of the

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Hawaiian islands and you guys were in the water and being surrounded by sharks and Nate was telling us about a pretty harrowing experience.

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Yeah, he likes that story. Yeah, he does. And you guys are both, you guys are crazy. Yeah, we were off the north shore of Oahu and circled by about 20 to 30 sharks and they were

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Galapagos sharks and sandbar sharks from five to eight feet long.

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And I was getting woozy. There was a bit of a swell. I don't know if I had some kind of bug because I don't normally get seasick, especially if I'm in the water.

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And I had to get out of the water and of course we had pretty strict instructions.

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Always keep your eyes on the sharks and when you get onto the boat, you have to go up the ladder backwards so that you're facing the sharks and not your rear end.

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And I was trying to get out as fast as I could so I could get myself to the other side of the boat and hurl.

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But I made it to the top of the ladder and threw up there and chummed the water quite significantly.

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And a lot of the fish started going after that. Cameramen were in the water.

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Then the sharks started getting agitated and darting. So that was exciting.

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I just couldn't hold it back. It was... Oh no. Yeah, I would never even gotten in the water with you.

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I would have stood on the top and looked down and said I would have cheered you guys on and prayed for the best for you.

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I may chum up this table now after hearing that story. So okay, so just roll. That was just, yeah, filming sharks and that was the behind the scenes there.

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Yeah, so part two, just real quick. Do you know when that might possibly come out? I'm gonna be nice and vague and I'll let you ask

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Nate or Aaron. But hopefully sometime in mid -fall.

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Okay, so I'll talk to the guys and find out. Maybe we'll have you guys on and talk about that too. Yeah, that would be great.

15:55

All right, so here we go. Dr. Wilson, you have a new book coming out. And this book,

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I'm assuming that there's some critique in it of the modern environmentalism that we have to face.

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And then you're also talking about the biblical balance of caring about creation, the dominion mandate.

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So go ahead and start firing away. Give us some foundations. I guess let's do that first for our audience listening live right now.

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When you critique the modern environmentalism, I would say, what are you saying? And what's wrong?

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Like, how do you go after it? Well, do we lose you?

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Oh, looks like, oh, did we lose you? Dr. Wilson, you there? Nope, just in time for a pagan.

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Not much of a difference, but biblical approach to environmentalism and the dominion mandate.

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You know, as the title sets up an antithesis, we see that,

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I say, a different shade of green. So I'm setting myself up against what we think of as the green movement.

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We are not green that way. So I have to address that and talk about some of the problems.

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The environmental agenda, like you said, is often reactionary because they want people to put their faith and their trust in the state.

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And in order to do that, you have to convince the people that there is a big problem and that the state is their savior.

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And they are really good at really exaggerating environmental problems.

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And like I said, there's reactionaries both ways. When we see the environmental agenda making non -problems into problems or exaggerating real problems, but making them over the top so that people think it's going to be global doom very soon if we don't do something now and if we don't vote in all these green candidates or left or liberal candidates, we're all going to burn up on this planet because of what we're just destroying things so quickly.

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And that kind of exaggeration will get people worked up.

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And then the other side of the boat, people say, that's just ridiculous.

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And then they react against, like you were saying, Jeff, they react against everything that the environmentalists hold dear and then they lose the balance because they forget.

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It's very easy because you're wanting to reject everything an eco -tyrant is saying.

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You wind up throwing some baby out with the bathwater. Man, I like that. Can we take that?

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Can we just start hashtagging that eco -tyrant? I love that. That's such a great way to express that.

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Eco -tyrant. Hashtag eco. Did you make that word? I don't know.

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I would think that it would have been coined by now. I think I use it once in my book, but I'm not sure.

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If I coined it inadvertently, that's great. All right, we'll make sure you get some royalties for it.

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I'm not spending my whole time going after the secular agenda.

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What I really want to do is lay out biblical principles that we need to follow without being reactionary for or against.

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I sort of lay out some stereotypes at the beginning from Andy Green Andy to Green Greta and everything, several in between, like apathetic

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April and pre -mill Pete. I lay out some stereotypes sort of humorously, but then talk a little bit about real people that fit those camps.

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It's broken into three parts. The first part is biblical reasons for wise dominion.

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You know, I want to think biblically through this whole thing without reacting one way or another.

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What does the Bible say how we are to treat the creation that he's given us? And so the main verse that is our charge is

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Genesis 128. That's called the dominion mandate that we are to rule over the birds, the beast of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea.

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Basically, the dominion mandate is, if you look at it, if you really just ponder that verse, it is global wildlife management.

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That's big. We think of, oh, that's a major at college, wildlife management. Now, the dominion mandate is global wildlife management.

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And in order to manage well, you have to know your charges. And we've been given dominion over it.

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And one of the, and so the part two is, you know, practical. You know, once I established a biblical theology of, you know, what are our duties there?

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Then I go and how we're to exercise wise dominion.

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I look at the biblical reasons and then the practical reasons, the practical reasons, the ones that we've discovered through our own trial and error and scientific research, ecology and things like that.

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What have we found out? Notwithstanding all of the crazy rhetoric from our green and eco tyrants.

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I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about real level headed ecologists. What do we know about the world?

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What have we done badly? And how should we remedy that from a biblical perspective?

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Right. So biblical reasons and practical reasons. And then part three is just problems that we are facing today and solutions.

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Ultimately, I get into the gospel as the ultimate solution because I don't like,

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I'm not a political person. Unlike my, well, my brother is much more interested in politics than I am.

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I am not just because it's really hard to sort through all of the chaff to find the wheat.

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You're busy with other things. Yeah, I've got other things to do. I'm not against knowing and being in the know about all the political winds of doctrine blowing in every direction.

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But I want in this, I don't like top down command and control.

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I do know that there needs to be laws that, you know, it says in Romans 13 that the laws are for those that are to keep the people without consciences in check.

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You know, whatever they can get away with, they all get away with unless they get possible punishment.

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If they get punished, they'll be kept in check. But the Christian is supposed to be, the

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Christian is to be self -governing. That's right. So that all society just wouldn't unravel if you didn't have law enforcement.

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If it was all Christian, it wouldn't unravel. And what

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I want to do is appeal to the Christian and say, let's look at the dominion mandate, not what kind of legislation do we need to impose on you to make this planet a better place, but what can we do at the grassroots level?

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What does the gospel do in our lives? I use,

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I quote some of Francis Schaeffer's book called Pollution and the Death of Man that he wrote back in 1970.

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And one of his quotes was, if I love the lover, I love what the lover has made.

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It sounds sort of sappy, but if you look at it philosophically, if I love

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God, then I should start to love what he made.

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Apart from the dominion mandate, if God is the artist, if God is the engineer, the sculptor that created all of this, then

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I should be interested in taking care of that, especially since he told me to.

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That's right. That's right. Very, very important. So when you talk through this,

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Dr. Wilson, you mention some of the things that are overstated or overblown that people will hear about on the other side, that Christians will react against.

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And there's all kinds of science and all kinds of studies that examine those things, refute them publicly, and we're dealing with those on a regular basis.

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But what are the sorts of things that are said about the environment and people are saying the sky is falling and we have 12 years left.

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What are some of those examples that you would have, maybe one or two of something that is either a myth or it is overblown that we can sort of like say, okay,

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I can put that in the right category. And then we don't have to overreact against in terms of like, let's not balance that out with like, this is what

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God says. And here's what we can be doing. What would that look like? Well, some of the things I talk about,

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I talk about alternative energy. And I look at, you know, whether it's wind and solar, and I don't want to spoil the whole book.

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But I deal with those things and saying, are these things that are promoted as green?

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Are they really green? And I look at behind the scenes and saying, a lot of these things that are supposed to be our savior are not green.

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Plus, they require enormous, and enormous is an understatement, enormous government subsidies.

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And they never pay for themselves. And so I'm not categorically against somebody having a windmill if they've crunched the numbers and it works.

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And they can actually power their farm with the wind. That's great. But if you need government subsidies to make it affordable, then no, we need free market solutions to energy.

27:28

I'm not opposed to having other energy sources, but they must not require these outlandish government subsidies.

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Well, and I think to put this down, I don't want to take you too off course here, Dr. Wilson. The government doesn't have the mandate before God to be involved in those sorts of things.

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It is theft to steal money and property from citizens to pay for these sorts of things.

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It's not the government's role. So it's wrong in principle, but in God's law to be doing such a thing.

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Right. So two different issues there. It's wrong to tax us like crazy to pay for these things that don't pay for themselves and are not that green.

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And so we look at the cradle to grave type expense and what they do in the mining of these rare minerals to make solar panels or windmills.

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It's just not green. Plus it can't pay. It's just not economically good.

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I look at that. I look at global warming. And the thing is,

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I don't get it. My book doesn't have all these pie charts and bar graphs.

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I don't get into all of the data. But I do want people.

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I don't want to get people to tell. I don't want to tell people what to think.

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I want to tell people how to think. How to think through these issues. How to do homework.

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And don't just be blown by winds of doctrine. Look at the...

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Well, again, I don't want to be a spoiler for the book.

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But we have to ask three basic questions, which

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I'll do in the book. And that is, is the globe warming? Okay. Secondly, if it is, did we cause it?

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And three, is it necessarily bad if it is warming?

29:53

So we look at those three questions and I go into some detail.

30:00

No, that's important. And I think that should get everyone excited in terms of getting the book itself.

30:06

Because that's the central thrust of the attack from the other side.

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At this point, is it's warming, we caused it. And I want people to realize that you can actually be...

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That you can love God's creation without... And be green of a sort.

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But a lot of seculars think, well, if you love the environment, you're going to automatically agree with us on all of our reforms and all of our advice.

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And my point in the book is to show how Christians can be truly green without falling for all of their craziness.

31:02

Well, I think we should work towards biodiversity conservation, which

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I don't think that God made all this diversity so that we can whittle away at it. That's a good point.

31:17

You know, I don't think extinction is wise dominion at all.

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Good point. I think that if we are just only concerned about filling the world up with us,

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I don't have any problem. It says we are to fill the earth.

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But it also said to have the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.

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I think where it is in the Bible, it says in Genesis that some of the creation is also supposed to fill the earth.

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Let's see. Well, that's... God bless them. This is on day five, the birds and the sea creatures.

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It said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth.

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So it's not just us multiplying. It's at least sea creatures and birds.

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And I think by analogy, the rest. Wow, that's actually a pretty potent little point there,

32:32

Dr. Wilson. Yeah, I never thought about that. That's a good point. That's a very good point. So let's do this.

32:38

Let's take a break. We're going to take a quick break here, guys. Pause, bathroom break, all that stuff.

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A couple minutes here and we'll come right back. A few more minutes with Dr. Wilson talking. I'm going to ask him hopefully some more questions, though, a probe and challenge with this issue a little bit more and get us in a place where we can think about it biblically according to biblical principles and biblical law with the

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Bible underneath us so that we can actually do stuff related to this discussion to the glory of God and for the sake of his name and all of creation.

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And to really, I think, take back some of this stuff. I don't like it when unbelievers and humanists and secularists are thinking about creation in a

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Christian way and we're not. I don't like that at all. It shouldn't be that way. So we need to take it back biblically and think about these things in a more biblical fashion and make sure that we take all of this back for the glory of God.

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So stay with us, guys. Quick break. We will be right back. Make sure you share this across your social media and we'll see you in a minute.

34:18

The goal for New St. Andrews College, as it trains its students, is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs, people who will just be bricks in the wall of our society.

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The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

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I want their faith to not just be something that stands, but something around which culture can be built.

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We want students who can think critically about arguments, but also about the culture around them. They can then speak clearly to it and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message.

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Because that's really what the gospel does. The gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people.

35:11

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37:30

I'm Jeff the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear right there. What up? We are back right now. Go to ApologiaStudios .com to get more content.

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37:52

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38:07

Hey, so we're talking today about environmentalism. We're talking about the biblical dominion mandate.

38:14

And we're doing it with our good friend, Dr. Gordon Wilson. He is a professor at New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho.

38:21

Make sure you guys go check out NSA .edu for more info of New St. Andrews, guys.

38:27

Get connected there. It's a wonderful, wonderful college and school. So, Pastor Luke, it's all yours. Yeah, so just to kind of bring us back from what we talked about there before the break, the reason why this discussion is so important and in case people missed this, just recently at the

38:45

Democratic presidential circus, this was a big topic.

38:53

You know, the green stuff and environmentalism. It's like the main thing. And I can't remember which candidate it was, forgive me.

39:00

But he said that, he literally said that if all fossil fuels are not completely done away with in 15 years, essentially that we're done.

39:09

The earth is done. And it's just like, you know, it's stupid. There's no science to back it.

39:15

It's just ridiculous, right? But I listened, Gordon or Dr. Wilson, we were talking about this before the show.

39:22

And if you guys haven't had a chance to check out the cross -politic episode they did recently with Dr. Cal Beisner, you have to check it out.

39:29

It goes right along with what we're talking about. And this was brought up in that show. And it's a really, really fascinating discussion.

39:37

But the point I'm getting to is that it's in the news. It's being talked about.

39:44

It's a popular thing. And this is the sort of thing that we as Christians have to be able to have answers for when someone makes a ridiculous claim like that.

39:52

It's important for us to not just say, oh, that's stupid, right? We need to be able to say it's stupid.

39:57

And this is why it's stupid, right? Like we need to be able to, just like anything else, we need to be grounded in truth and be able to speak into that.

40:07

Well, they're very good at exaggerating a lot of things. And back in the 70s, instead of global warming, it was the population bomb.

40:20

And the alarmism there, the doomsayers, they were basically saying that there's going to be hundreds of millions of people starving to death.

40:33

We that was the prediction. And these were predictions by very, very big and prestigious scientists, ecologists who are making these predictions.

40:53

And they were catastrophically wrong. And we need to realize that their track record is very bad.

41:04

They're treating humans as animals. From an ecological perspective, animals will have a particular intrinsic rate of increase.

41:14

There's a doubling time, whether it's bacteria, which is a fast doubling time to elephants.

41:21

Some increase slowly. But humans are different. They all things kind of increase until they reach a carrying capacity, which is that level or population that supports them.

41:37

And once they exceed that, then their population goes back down. And the predictions were that it would just keep on increasing until we would just exhaust all of our food and just die.

41:49

But they didn't really factor in very well that humans are very innovative in solving problems.

41:57

And we are not like the animals and the beasts. We find solutions and we defy these barriers and these boundaries.

42:06

We fix things, things that look like it's going to be a problem. And all of a sudden, people are just innovating like crazy.

42:14

And what was a potential problem has now been averted just because people are smart.

42:25

Think about Holland. They've been below a good... I don't know how much of the country is below sea level, but they've been holding the seas back for centuries.

42:38

And so we're problem solvers. I'm not saying that...

42:45

I really doubt there's going to be that much of a sea rise. But we discussed that.

42:53

Even if there was warming and there was a sea rise, we have solutions to these problems and we can deal with them.

43:05

But notice that the people that are dealing with problems, they may not be

43:11

Christian nations now, but their heritage had a very strong Judeo -Christian ethic.

43:20

Science and technology arose out of a Christian worldview, and they're still really operating on the capital that the

43:29

Christian worldview gave them. And so they have the tools now, even if they're considered post -Christian, they have the tools to hold the sea back.

43:42

And other countries that may be in a similar predicament of being at very low elevation, like Bangladesh, they are in a different position because they don't have a long, long heritage of a

44:03

Christian worldview. Yeah, you can import great engineers, civil engineers there, but again, it's a different deal.

44:13

There's not that saturating of centuries of a

44:19

Christian worldview. Now, these are things that are hard to prove, but I mean, even secularists will say that...

44:29

even non -Christians will say that Christianity gave rise to science and technology.

44:35

Of course. And we can overcome these problems. But at the same time, rather than react, you know, for example,

44:45

I don't think CO2 is a bad gas at all. It just increases photosynthesis.

44:51

When you do burn fuels, we do make some bad chemicals, and I'm all for trying to figure out ways to make our emissions cleaner.

45:03

I mean, our bottom line principle is love your neighbor. Love your neighbor is the principle. Love your neighbor and love

45:10

God. And when you love your neighbor and love God, you're going to do good to your neighbor.

45:16

And that means if you're just a single homeowner, you're going to love your neighbor by not having your home look like it was just hit by a tornado last week.

45:30

I mean, it shouldn't be an eyesore. Yes. And people should look at how you run your little green space and not be disgusted.

45:43

And if you are a CEO of a huge power plant and you're a

45:49

Christian, what should you do? Love your neighbor. Does that mean only love those that are your consumers?

45:58

Or do you just love those that just are ready to pay the money for your product?

46:05

Or do you love your neighbors as far as those that are affected by all of your effluent and all of your emissions?

46:13

And of course, they'll say, I do follow all the regs. I jump through all the hoops. But often we're so busy looking at and obeying environmental regulations that we forget about loving our neighbor.

46:26

And I think sometimes loving your neighbor means that you exceed the environmental regs.

46:33

Yeah. Not see what you can get away with and not get busted and not pay compliance costs.

46:42

We are only thinking profit margins. And sometimes to love your neighbor means that you have to pay more money out.

46:51

I'm glad I'm not a CEO. That's a lot of responsibility. But you might have to pay more to mitigate all of your nasty chemicals that you might be making.

47:04

I'm not saying it's wrong to make those nasty chemicals. But you, again, the underlying principle is love your neighbor.

47:11

Yeah. You don't want to be cranking out awful gases into the atmosphere, even if they're at acceptable legal levels or you're polluting the streams at acceptable.

47:26

Well, you know, love your neighbor. If I was...put

47:32

yourself in the shoes of your downstream neighbor that was there before your factory went in.

47:38

You know, just love your neighbor. And these are hard questions. I'm not saying they're easy answers.

47:43

But a Christian needs to think hard about not just obeying laws, but loving

47:52

God, loving their neighbor. And that's why I'm very keen on a grassroots love of God's creation, not a top -down command and control.

48:06

This is what Uncle Sam is telling me I've got to do. He's breathing down my neck.

48:11

I've got to do this, that, and the other thing. We should be motivated out of a love for God and a love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

48:20

And those that don't know the Lord, love your neighbor. God made a wonderful diversity, and I think we should maintain it.

48:30

I think there's so many ways that...that's a big part of what my book's about is whatever your sphere of influence is, whether you just own a cat, a dog, a turtle, a snake, exercise wise dominion with the things that God has given you.

48:53

And if you have a bigger sphere of influence, then again, love

49:00

God and your neighbor in that bigger sphere. Bigger sphere, bigger responsibilities, more homework.

49:10

But that's... Very good. Yeah, I've been rambling, but... No, no, no, it's good. That's excellent. So let's send everyone to the right spot.

49:18

Dr. Wilson, where can people go to get, one, The Riot and the Dance, and two, your new book addressing this subject?

49:27

Okay, Riot and the Dance, you can get it at Canon Press. If you want a

49:32

Blu -ray, you can get it at Canon Press. There's a number of places where you can get it streaming.

49:40

You can get it streaming, I think, on iTunes and Google Play. You can, as you had mentioned,

49:46

Amazon Prime. I think you can watch it. Is it still free on Amazon Prime?

49:52

I don't know. The last time I saw it, I'm not sure. The last time I saw it was too. You can also get it in DVD on Amazon.

50:03

So, a number of outlets as far as streaming. And the book.

50:10

And the book, you can get it at Canon Press. And I don't know, is it up on Amazon now?

50:18

I imagine it would be by now, yeah. So, Canon Press. And then give everyone the title of the book again. The title,

50:24

Differentiate of Green, a Biblical Approach to Environmentalism and the

50:29

Dominion Mandate, forward by N .D. Wilson. Perfect. All right,

50:35

Dr. Wilson, go ahead. And also, it'll be available in audio because Canon Press is having me come in and read it.

50:46

So, they're taping it and it will be available sometime in audio.

50:51

It's not up on Amazon yet. It's up there, but it says unavailable. Okay, all right. So, Canon Press, I think it's canonpress .com or org, yeah.

50:58

All right, Dr. Wilson, thank you so, so much. Canonpress .com. Okay, perfect.

51:04

Dr. Wilson, thank you so much for joining us today, giving us all of your time. We love having you. Can't wait to have you on again and talk about more of this and even to talk about writing this part two.

51:13

Can't wait for that. All right, brother. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, our pleasure. We'll talk to you sometime soon.

51:19

Thank you so much. All right, you bet. Bye. Bye -bye. All right. So, you know one of the things that I was interested in bringing up there.

51:27

We have just a few minutes left here, guys. So, if you guys are hanging on, I think this is really important. Go check out, everyone who's watching right now, go or listening on podcasts.

51:34

Go check out Dr. Peter Jones and his content on one -ism and two -ism.

51:42

It's really interesting to have it really whittled down to that, those two points, one -ism and two -ism.

51:48

There's some great lectures up right now. I think actually Peter Jones did something at Canon. Yeah, I think it's canonwired on YouTube.

51:54

Yeah, they did. He did a lecture there and he did some stuff recently with Ezra Institute.

52:00

He's written some books on this subject. We are going to have Dr. Jones on soon. Soon, yes.

52:06

Relatively soon. Yes. But before we do, go and listen to his lecture on one -ism and two -ism.

52:13

I'm telling you, it's going to blow your mind. He really takes Romans chapter 1 and he unpacks that discussion about people who are fallen, who worship and serve the creature rather than the creator.

52:27

And he really displays how all of human history, all religion and belief really comes down to one -ism and two -ism.

52:37

And if you're like, what in the world does that mean? He does an excellent job of actually taking biblical explanation here and describing it in such a way as, look, you're either going to have a one -ist mindset and worldview or a two -ist.

52:49

And what that really is, and it comes down to this environmentalism discussion very, very closely, is that you're either going to view humanity as sort of coming from the creation itself without God, devoid of God.

53:02

So there is no creator -creation distinction like the Christian worldview has.

53:09

And you're going to have all of creation sort of coming from the same soup and it's all one, one, one.

53:16

And so new age religions, humanism, atheism, agnosticism, environmentalism coming down to this one -ist mindset that there is no creator -creation distinction.

53:29

It's just all one. It was crazy too. We're going to do a show about the

53:35

Charles Manson murders and even Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's new film where he sort of goes back to that mindset and time in history.

53:45

Remember that section of the film where it was Charles Manson's cult that girls, when they're introduced, start dancing down the street and they're singing the song about one, all is one, everything is one.

53:58

I was just like, it perfectly codifies and expresses that cultic mindset. All is one, as long as everything is one.

54:05

And I was like, Peter Jones would eat that right up. One -ism and versus two -ism. Listen, here's the deal. You're either going to have a creator -creation creature distinction, or all is one.

54:18

And listen, all the new age nonsense and hooey and all of the cultic stuff that's come into the world and all the environmentalism, the radical eco -terrorists have a one -ist mindset.

54:29

There is no creator -creation distinction. All is one from the same created order, or not created order, it's sort of order, just came out of nothingness.

54:40

And we're all one with it. Now, if you do that, like Pastor Luke said earlier, as Dr.

54:45

Wilson was talking, you're going to end up worshiping the creation. It's creation worship. And so all this environmentalist eco -terrorism, all of it is just creation worship.

54:59

It's worship of the creation and creature, rather than recognizing that the creator himself has created this.

55:05

And there's a creator -creation distinction. And he places his image into the creation, and he tells his image what to do with it.

55:14

So his image is different than all the other beasts of the field, and all the plants, and all the atmosphere, and all the rest.

55:22

The image of God is above. It holds a very special place in creation.

55:27

And then creator gets to tell image of God what to do with all this, which actually brings value to the creation because it's not just a pile of mush floating through the universe.

55:40

And it actually gives a particular mandate to say to creature, image of God, here's what

55:46

I want you to do with my creation. And there's actually an ought to it.

55:51

It's not just sort of like a willy -nilly, maybe, what do you think? Let's try this.

55:57

Maybe we'll add a little oppression of government into this. Like, you know, whatever. It's actually an ought, a moral ought, where the creator can tell the image of God here's what

56:06

I want you to do with my stuff. It's very valuable. And here's how I want you to actually take care of it.

56:12

But you're never going to fall into the eco -terrorism of people who actually start saying that the image of God is less than, and they do that, less than creation, or somehow subordinate to it, right?

56:28

Like the world, and the stuff, and the trees are more important, bro, than the humans.

56:35

You're not going to get in a proper twoist worldview where you have God and creature.

56:40

You're not going to get idiots worshiping trees and crying over trees and treating the trees like they are actually more valuable than image of God.

56:53

Like, are we allowed to cut down trees? Yeah. How come we can't cut down humans? Like, can

56:58

I take an ax? Well, you can if they're in the womb. Right. Well, there you go. And there you go. There it is right there.

57:04

That's the unbelieving worldview that gets into that. So, am I allowed to swing an ax at a tree for the benefit of an image -bearer of God, say, to build a house, or to print paper, or to make paper we can print

57:15

Bibles on? Yeah, I can do that. But how come I can't just swing an ax at a human being? Well, because I recognize the creator -creature distinction and the fact that the image of God is something different than snails, horses, dogs, rocks, trees.

57:29

But however, watch. If you have the creator -creation distinction, you're not going to be so foolish as to say, burn the whole thing down.

57:40

Right? Like, it's meaningless because the image of God is so much more important. So burn the whole thing down. No, proper creator -creation distinction says proper dominion, respect for God's creatures and creation, but more importantly, respect for the word of the creator who tells me what the ought is in this stuff.

58:00

Exactly. So. Yeah, I was just going to say a perfect example of this. Again, I go back to that cross -politic interview.

58:08

A perfect example of what environmentalism looks like when it becomes worship.

58:14

So you have these people that want to eliminate all the fossil fuels, right? And like Dr. Wilson said, that's not the problem.

58:19

The problem is that people aren't cleaning the exhaust. Like we have the capability to clean that exhaust and so that all that's left is

58:30

CO2. So when you have these environmentalists say, CO2 is good. Yes. So when you have them say, let's eliminate fossil fuels, actually what they're doing is eliminating

58:40

CO2 production. Which we need for. Which we need for crops. And so if you listen to that episode, he said that essentially the amount of, it's trillions of dollars of crops.

58:51

Trillions of dollars of crops we'd be eliminating if we get rid of fossil fuels. So this is a perfect example.

58:57

These people worship the earth. They're more concerned about the environment than they are how it impacts humans because ultimately humans can't survive if we're not producing crops.

59:06

If we're not eating. Yeah. We die. And so that's the perfect example. You worship and serve the creature rather than the creator.

59:12

You end up actually killing the creature. Yeah. So let's not be foolish, but let's make sure that we honor and glorify

59:20

God in our biblical and our thinking on this subject. I say this. Look, I say this. Look, the Christian worldview gave the world its technology and science and all the blessings and benefits of the

59:33

Christian worldview we have today. The unbelievers borrow from the Christian worldview because they can't produce this stuff on their own.

59:39

Their worldview doesn't give rise to logic and mathematics and technology and all the rest and human value and dignity and laws and justice.

59:46

Atheism and humanism doesn't do that. However, today, because Christians have backed away from culture, now the humanists take over this stuff and pretend like it was theirs to begin with.

59:55

It wasn't. So let's take it back from them because it doesn't belong to them in the first place. It doesn't fit in their puzzle.

01:00:02

But even in the situation of environmentalism, let's take back the creature -creator distinction.

01:00:09

Let's take away the oneist mindset, get back to the twoist God and creature mindset, which gives you a proper balance and understanding of loving

01:00:17

God, loving neighbor, caring for creation, but also not being an idiot. Not being an idiot.

01:00:24

Let's start with that. And doing the stupid things that Richard Dawkins and all the other humanists are suggesting about creation and environmentalism.

01:00:34

Let's not be stupid, guys. And the way to not be stupid is to be a Christian and read God's word.

01:00:40

So does that work? I think so. I like it. All right, guys. So apologiestudios .com is where you guys go to get more.

01:00:45

Make sure you guys pick up the episodes there. Sign up for all access. And if you don't have it yet, get your

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No, you don't. It's about reformation in the public square, bringing the word of God in the public square.

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Toby Sumter, Sandlin, Joe Boot. We're gonna have a bunch of people here, guys. Rusty Thomas.

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Here's the deal, y 'all. Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus is perfect. He died for sinners and he rose again from the dead.