The American Churchman: Conservatives and Nostalgia

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00:25

Welcome to the American Churchman podcast. I was muted there for a minute. Hope everyone's doing well. And coming into the stream,

00:33

Matthew Pearson is going to be here soon, probably like five or 10 minutes, but I'm on my own schedule, unfortunately, because I got a lot going on.

00:41

I got to pack tonight. I'm going to see some of you, I guess, in Texas over the next few days.

00:46

And just, I don't know, just a lot of things. So hopefully you're all enjoying the beginning of spring.

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I know I am. I'm really not missing the winter weather. We'll put it that way. I have just a few announcements before we get started.

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We are still having a conference coming up, Christianity and the Founding. You can still sign up.

01:07

It is not too late to sign up. And you can go to Christianityandthefounding .com

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if you are wanting to come to that. Here's what it looks like. That's not what it looks like.

01:22

This is what it looks like. And if you scroll down, there's a registration. There's also a

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VIP dinner. So if you want to come out, I mean, this is honestly a steal. If you want to come to the VIP dinner, it's only 50 bucks.

01:34

Registration's only 30 bucks. We try to do things for at -cost. We don't, we're not making money off of any of this stuff.

01:40

We just want people to be able to come. Great lineup of speakers. Sam Smith, who is the chairman of the history department at Liberty University is going to be here.

01:50

Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism. Jared Lavelle and Zachary Garris, both pastors.

01:57

Sean McGowan, also a pastor. Actually, Zach and Sean are going to be introducing a new book, as I understand it, that they have coming out about Southern Presbyterians, which will be fun.

02:07

You can go to church at Jacob Tanner's church on Sunday. I'll be there, of course, and Paul Godfrey from Chronicles Magazine.

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And this is really just a history conference. We want to understand what does it mean when we say we had a Christian founding or America is a

02:21

Christian country? What does that even mean? And so we're going to be exploring some of these things and some of the traditions, the various Christian traditions that have led us to where we are today and the schedules there that might be modified very slightly, but for the most part, that's what it's going to look like.

02:36

And so it's Friday night into Saturday. So we'll see you there if you're coming and looking forward to it.

02:43

You can also, if you want to support True Script, go to truescript .com, scroll down all the way to the bottom.

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There's this little bitty tab that says donate. We are a 501C3, you can donate there. You can also publish with us by clicking that publish tab.

02:58

And we really appreciate the great writers that we've gotten to know. And there's a lot of great content. I don't know if you've noticed this on the

03:04

True Script website. There's really a lot of great content. And this was something

03:10

I thought about years ago, wanting to see, and it's here now. I mean, we do have these short form articles that I think communicate well to your average person, your average

03:20

Christian going to church in a bite -sized format. There are articles that encourage you from the

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Bible, from history, from, I mean, we tackle political things sometimes, but literature, it's all kinds of things.

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And of course, the American Churchman podcast is more geared for men, but we have things geared for everyone on the

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True Script website. So check it out. We have some cool articles that are featured right now. Of course, the one that's featured right now, most prominently is a review of my book,

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Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. And I actually, this is our first publication, really.

03:57

I went through True Script Press. So hopefully there'll be more books to come through True Script Press. And today, the article we're gonna be focusing on the most is called

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A Biblical Case for Nostalgia by Matt Borish. And so we're gonna get into that a little bit.

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I don't know if some of you might've noticed, if you're following me on X, this was like maybe a week or two ago.

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I posted this AI -generated image. I didn't, I actually already did a video on this for my other podcast.

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I didn't know it was AI -generated at first. It was just something I saw on Facebook, copied it, put it on X.

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And I was kind of like, I think I put just, this is the world our grandparents, or the world of our grandparents.

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And this got, this became like a dividing line. Like people who thought this was this really,

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I guess, sunshine and roses depiction of the 1950s and others who thought, no, that's what the 1950s were like.

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And it's interesting because like, there's a political fracture, but it's, the fracture was along the lines of how do we remember our own past?

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What kinds of things do we emphasize? And so we're gonna talk about that from a biblical standpoint.

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But we do have Matthew Pearson with us now. So I'm gonna let him in. Hey, Matthew, how's it going? Can you hear me all right?

05:13

How you doing? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, doing good, doing good. So I don't know if we've had you on since you are engaged.

05:22

So congratulations. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's good to be back. Yeah. What was that?

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I said, I don't know. I can't remember. Maybe we did do one podcast, but if not, congratulations.

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No, we haven't done one since, but thank you. Yeah. So you're on a really important journey and I think probably really excited right now and no longer a single

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Matthew Pearson, all the girls just, you just heart broke everyone, but that's okay.

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I mean, you're very happy. And when's the date? Do you have the date yet?

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Or can you announce? You may not be able to announce the date publicly. That's okay. Like, can you give us a season? Like when you're thinking of actually getting married?

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Can you hear me at all? Okay, Matthew, I know we were having technical problems there, what was going on there? All right, we'll let

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Matthew come back in the chat. I asked him a question, but I did not get an answer yet. So hopefully

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I didn't offend him with the question I asked. He's like, no, it's a secret date.

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I can't share. All right, well, since we're waiting for him to reconnect, let's get into this piece a little bit.

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This is from Matt Borish and it's called A Biblical Case for Nostalgia. A Biblical Case for Nostalgia.

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Hopefully everyone can hear me. Okay, Matthew's back in. All right, Matthew, can you hear me now?

07:02

You're muted, man. I don't know. Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. I can hear you now.

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That was weird. I don't know what happened there. I asked you a question, then I was like, oh no, maybe he's not allowed to say.

07:15

And then I was like, oh, I'm not even hearing him. Maybe I said... So I was just asking you about like when, around the time you were getting married, like how long are you waiting until then?

07:26

Yeah, so that's going to be around September 20th. I think there's just bad lag on our end. So when you asked and I answered, it didn't go through, but if you can hear me now, fine.

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Then hopefully you got that day. All right, good deal. So, all right, so you got a summer ahead of you here, but that's exciting, man.

07:44

Congratulations. So we do have this article I want to talk about, but we normally, since you're here, we'll start with it.

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We normally do an attribute of God and I think we're doing mercy today. So mercy, obviously similar to grace in some ways, but it's different.

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So take it away. Can you hear me?

08:13

I can hear you now. My connection is really shoddy again. Okay. Sorry about this.

08:19

No, you're good. I can hear, I can see and hear you. So I think you're good. So we're talking about mercy.

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So we've got mercy. Yep. Okay, John, I'll tell you what

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I'm going to do. I'm going to present this attribute for us and for our audience. After doing so,

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I'm going to quickly leave, check my router or whatever, because this is not fun, and then

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I will be back. So does that sound like a good plan for us? Sounds good. Okay, excellent.

08:47

Awesome. I'll start going through this. Yeah. Anyways, I'm happy to be back. So sorry for going

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MIA for like two weeks since the engagement. Life got a little busy, of course, but like I said,

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I'm happy to be back. So our attribute today, as John said, that we're discussing is the mercy of God.

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So we'll be talking about mercy as an attribute of the Lord. So to begin with,

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I'll start, as I always do, reading two Bible verses, one from the Old Testament and one from the

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New Testament, touching on God's mercy. So our first Bible verse will come from Micah chapter seven, verse 18, where the text reads, who is a

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God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage.

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He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy. And then second Corinthians chapter one, verse three reads, blessed be

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God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

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Now today, as I always do, right before I do these, I like to cite my sources. So the first source, this is the common one that we always go to every time we discuss an attribute of God, but that'll be

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Richard Muller's Theological Dictionary of Greek and Latin terms. So my primary definition of mercy comes from that.

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And then the second attribute I had today is, or not the second attribute, the second source that I'm using today,

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I was actually just perusing just a little website. It's called Reform Books Online. If you ever want to get access to like very niche reform literature online that hasn't been printed before, you can go there along with Post Reformation Digital Library.

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But I was kind of browsing through there and I found a very interesting work written by a reformed divine from the 17th century named

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William Bates. And this book is called The Harmony of Divine Attributes in the Contrivance and Accomplishment of Man's Redemption.

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So very long title. But those are the two sources I'm using to sort of discuss mercy. So as I said, mercy is the attribute we're talking about.

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And the way that Richard Muller sort of defines the mercy of God in accordance with the reformed divines is that the mercy of God is that according to which

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God has compassion on his fallen creatures and their inability to return to him. So it's that which

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God, basically it's that which God has compassion on his fallen creatures and their inability to return to him.

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This attribute is essentially, it sort of is an extension of God's goodwill or his good willing towards creatures.

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And as an attribute, this is a very relational attribute in that mercy requires an object on whom the subject exercises this mercy.

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Because God the father doesn't have mercy on the son or the spirit. They don't have mercy on one another because they're not proper objects of mercy because mercy would sort of be a passing over or compassion for a fallen creature.

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And because no members of the Godhead can be fallen, that's a literal impossibility. God doesn't exercise mercy towards himself or other persons within the

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Godhead. This is only something which is exercised towards fallen creatures. And in this sense, it's a very relational attribute.

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Specifically, it's a post -lapsarian attribute in a sense. And when I say that, because all that is in God is

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God, when we speak about mercy, we speak about it as a divine affection, meaning that it as an attribute is predicated of God only metaphorically.

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Because when we think about exercising mercy, mercy is in a sense, it's partially an emotion.

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You feel merciful towards somebody. And God does not experience like real emotions or mercy in the same way that mutable creatures who feel these emotions where they change their mind or things like that.

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God doesn't feel those sort of emotions in the same way that his creatures do. And this is because God is simple.

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He's immutable. He is without change. So when we predicate mercy of God, we do so metaphorically. In the same way when we predicate anger of God, when the scriptures speak about how

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God has rage or anger, he's not actually feeling angry because God is simple.

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And so when we speak about the mercy of God, something that we have to realize is,

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I'm kind of just jumping right into the sort of application of this attribute in our lives, is that the mercy of God is one of his most important attributes.

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William Bates actually argues that it's one of the most important attributes in the economy of salvation, because it's the key to salvation for sinners, because while we justly deserve punishment without pardon, like the fallen angels, yet God in his mercy, through his compassion, he willed to forgive sinners through the death of his son.

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So it's through the mercy of God that grace is exercised upon man in order to translate him from a state of sin and death instead into a state of grace.

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And so for the rest of discussing this attribute, there's a quote that I want to read from this work by William Bates, the

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Harmony of the Divine Attributes, these long titles, and the Contrivance and Accomplishments of Man's Redemption, where William Bates states, the object of it, that is mercy, is man in his lap state, that means his fallen state.

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In this respect, it excels the goodness that created him at the beginning, and the creation as there was no object to invite, so nothing repugnant to man's being and happiness.

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The dust of the earth did not merit such an excellent condition as it received from the pure bounty of God, but there is no moral unworthiness.

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But the grace of the gospel hath a different object, the wretched and unworthy, and it produces different operations.

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It is healing and medicinal, ransoming and delivering, and hath a peculiar character among the divine attributes.

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It is goodness that crowns the angels, but it is mercy, the sanctuary of the guilty, and refuge of the miserable, that saves man.

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The scripture hath consecrated the name of grace in a special manner, to signify the most excellent and admirable favor of God in recovering us from our justly deserved misery.

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We are, quote, justified freely by his grace, Romans 3 .24. Quote, by grace we are saved,

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Ephesians 2, verse five. Quote, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, John 1 .17. It is, quote, the grace of God that bringeth salvation,

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Titus 2 .11, and this is gloriously manifested toward man in that, one, considered in himself, he is altogether unworthy of it.

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Two, as compared with fallen angels who are left under perfect, irremediable misery. All right, so that's the end of that quote.

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And the big takeaway from this attribute of mercy is that mercy is directly connected with God's grace and his gracefulness, because without mercy, we would never receive pardon.

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And this is also a big thing with this concept of unconditional election, that God doesn't foresee the future, look at somebody who exercises a work or responds to God's grace in a particular way and says, okay,

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I'm gonna elect this person as salvation. No, God looks at nothing. God simply looks at us, not considering anything we have done or anything of that nature, and just says, you are mine,

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I pardon your sins. Why? Because of the sacrifice of my son. And so mercy has an attribute, all these attributes, to meditate on all of them is to truly contemplate the love of God for us and the grace of God for us.

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But it is mercy in particular, contemplate, always like, I think it was Calvin who talks about how like studying theology is almost like, is itself like anthropology, it's studying yourself, it's looking in the mirror and seeing how

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God treats us. And I think mercy is an attribute, really causes us to look at ourselves where every time that we commit any sort of sin, be it even a heinous sin, we can always know this deserves punishment from God, yet God in his mercy, pardons me.

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And in my place, the son takes my punishment. And so that's, as I always say, that is the divine attribute of mercy in a nutshell.

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You know, as a kid, I was always told grace is, or mercy, or grace is unmerited favor, right?

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And mercy is withholding something we deserve, right? Those are like the very simplistic descriptions.

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And it seems like that's correct. That's exactly what they are. And we always pray for grace and mercy.

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I find myself, I don't know if it was because I was trained to pray that way, but those are the two things that I'm always asking

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God for. Just give me grace, give me mercy. Withhold bad stuff that I deserve and give me good things that I don't deserve.

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And all based, of course, upon Christ and his work. But yeah, mercy is one of these things that I was actually, so the last two weekends

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I had funerals that I had to go to both in separate Catholic churches. Interestingly enough,

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I know Catholics say that like they have a one true church and they're all unified and everything. These are two very different services.

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One was very low church, one was pretty high church. It wasn't Latin, but it was, I felt like they were gonna break out into Latin any moment.

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And anyway, one of the things that they both prayed for the priests was mercy, right?

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And on these departed souls. And even after they're dead, just praying. And of course that's because of their doctrine of purgatory.

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And they still think that there's an influence that we can have on someone after they've passed away while they're in this holding place, determining when, well, depending on the priest,

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I guess. But I think official Catholic doctrine is whether they go to heaven or hell. So anyway, it struck me as just like a big contrast because like in Protestant circles, and I think this is what the

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Bible teaches, like mercy is just something that you're given, like in the ultimate sense, in the sense of like being justified by Christ.

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Mercy and everything that comes with that. Mercy is just something that God gives to you.

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You don't deserve it just like he does with grace. So all these punishments you do deserve, you don't actually experience.

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And the term mercy though is used in other traditions to denote something that's not, like,

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I don't know. I guess I was thinking like, it doesn't seem like it's quite mercy. Like we have to do all these things to obtain the mercy.

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Like there's some kind of payment and exchange that we do where we give God something.

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And then he's now going to withhold something we deserve. But it's like, we're the ones that are like convincing

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God and like turning God's face away from his wrath. Like we're doing this because of our works and efforts.

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And anyway, it struck me as like something that didn't stand out as true mercy, as you're describing it.

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Like true mercy is really something that is from God and we don't have influence over it in the sense of like, like we can't bargain with God to make him have mercy on us or something like that, right?

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So yeah, good thoughts. Just wanted to share that. Anyway, I don't know if you've, have you been to Catholic services ever?

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Yes, I've been to a few of them. Some of my family is a Roman Catholic. So I've been to a few of their services and stuff like that.

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So yeah, I'm familiar with like how some of it goes on. I've like studied a bit of Catholic theology and things like that, so.

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Yeah, yeah. So it is very different though, both concepts of grace and mercy. Well, let's go to the article and it seems like the internet connection is doing okay.

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So we're gonna - A little bit, I think we're fine. So fingers crossed. So the article is called a biblical case for nostalgia and Matt Borish wrote it.

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Matt Borish is a faithful supporter and great friend of the podcast and truth script.

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And it's, why don't we just go through it? I mean, it's not that long of an article and there are some biblical things that he brings up and that we can even add to it.

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But he says, during the past few decades, life in the Western world has undergone an enormous cultural transformation, family structure, the towns we inhabit, societal norms and even how we eat have radically changed.

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For many with conservative values, this change has not been positive. We are emotionally stressed, longing for the good old days when life was simpler, more wholesome, less plastic and happier.

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We want idyllic towns, kids playing outside, the French fries fried in beef tallow. In short, we feel and want nostalgia.

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The word nostalgia has an interesting etymology, is a combination of two Greek words, nostos meaning return or homecoming and algus meaning pain.

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The pain of longing for returning home or more simply homesickness. On social media, incidentally, one of these radical transformations, people often relay their feelings of nostalgia through memes and pictures.

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Mountain landscapes, cities with well -dressed and well -ordered citizens and county fairs with nuclear families having fun are a few examples.

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We are broadcasting their desire for a world that once was and many believe will never return.

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Reactions to these are varied. Some say get over it, the world has changed, move on. Others say the world of nostalgia isn't even real, it is an idealized fiction.

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Still others say this nostalgia is something to be ashamed of as humanity has rejected its transgressive past and has progressed toward a future with more egalitarian principles and freedoms.

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The bottom line is that for many, nostalgia is a dirty word that promotes backwardness and spiritual lethargy.

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I would argue for the opposite, that not only is nostalgia a positive virtue, but it is also in a certain sense of biblical command.

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And I think I'm pretty sure that Matt Borish wrote this, Matthew, because of what

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Mike Cosper from Christianity Today said about me about a week, week and a half ago, when

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I shared this meme. I don't know if you were here when I was talking about that, but he used the word nostalgia and described this longing for the 1950s or that kind of stability as this fake nostalgia that I guess we, it's not actually real, we just have to manufacture it.

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We have to use AI and rely on artificial things to convince us that this was once how things were because things were never really that good.

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That's the assumption behind it. Things were always pretty bad in America. So I'm kind of curious to hear the

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Zoomer angle on this because I know for me, I do have some 90s nostalgia. Like I do look back before smartphones and even before internet, like we had dial up, but I can remember before dial up.

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And I do have nostalgia for that. It was a different world in many ways, but I know you've probably grown up since you can remember people had cell phones and internet.

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And I don't know, I mean, you probably though, do you have things that when you look back, you think of, oh, like the early 2000s, those were the days.

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Yeah, I would say that a lot of Zoomer nostalgia. So for myself personally, I always grew up like, there were always like computers around and not necessarily like,

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I guess, smartphones as in like an iPhone or something like that. But you had things like the

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BlackBerry and all of that. And so a lot of Zoomer nostalgia is primarily gonna be like pop cultural things.

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And so sometimes if you're a fellow brain rot reels consumer, such as myself, and you go on Instagram reels and you scroll for ungodly periods of time when you should be doing your schoolwork, sometimes you'll pop up on these like Zoomer nostalgia things where we'll show like clips from old shows or old toys or old video games.

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And that one's a big one for me because growing up, I was athletic,

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I played outside, I played baseball, football, soccer, I threw shot and discus,

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I was an athletic kid, but I also, I played my fair share of video games and I can't lie,

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John, I often get like this, if I hear like the right Minecraft song, I might tear up a little bit because I just,

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I think back to that or I see certain video games. And so it's kind of weird, maybe somebody has talked about this before, but yeah, a lot of Zoomer nostalgia is primarily pop cultural, but I've like experienced like little bits of nostalgia for Tampa because I only moved away from Tampa here to Central Florida for seminary back in like,

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July I moved here. But even like since leaving in that short little period of time, like I go by places,

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I'm like, oh, the Barnes and Noble on North Delmabry just shut down. And it was there when

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I was young and it's weird because I went there growing up or oh, this place that I used to go by, this little park that was always super popular is there's nobody out there anymore or oh,

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I spend holidays at home with family and barely anybody's putting up Christmas lights or Halloween is just a dud.

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Those kinds of things are very weird because like these sort of like communities that even when I was growing up, it was very vibrant.

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Like sometimes they're still active and things like that, but they take on like a whole like new sort of feel.

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So despite being a Zoomer and having a lot of what I already grew up with or whatever, I do still get these little bits of nostalgia that will kick in.

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So yeah, but again, lots of Zoomer nostalgias and is very pop culturally based. And I would say that for most people, a lot of nostalgia is not just gonna be like actual culture stuff, but a lot of like popular culture things as well, especially with the 90s and certain movies or video games that were out during that time.

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So it's not too, too different. Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be like terrible. And like pop culture is something that people share in common.

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They watch movies or play video games. Like you could be raised in different areas and still enjoy those things.

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So that's what I would expect to be emphasized. It's not until you have to sit down and really ponder yourself what makes your unique life like different that you start getting nostalgic for those other things.

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Like you just mentioned the park. But I worked as a furniture repairman in people's houses.

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I was fixing furniture for people from about 2011 to 2021. And I feel like somewhere in the middle of that,

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I saw a big switch from kids playing outside. Like when I first started, I still saw,

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I had to watch myself. I get into like a cul -de -sac, a certain neighborhood. I'm like, I gotta watch out. I don't wanna hit a kid. Like they're gonna be playing basketball or baseball or something on a skateboard or whatever.

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And somewhere around like 2015, it all stopped.

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I didn't see it anymore. And of course it was nothing like when I was a kid, like we had like 15 people in the neighborhood would all be playing outside.

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And our parents wouldn't even know like whose house we were at. Like that was, I guess that world. But anyway,

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I stopped seeing people, kids play outside. It just like disappeared overnight. And I get nostalgic for that.

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I think about like, oh, that was really nice when kids were not just even in their backyard. Like they were in their front yard or on the street and they were with other kids and what happened?

28:12

Well, the world changed, obviously. And there's a million things like that we could probably point to even in our lives. But the other thing

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I've noticed though is there is a nostalgia. And I know I feel it to some extent. And I think

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Zoomers, you could tell me if I'm wrong on this, but I think Zoomers also feel the sense of like brokenness or being deprived of their birthright almost.

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And like, have you ever gone on these YouTube channels or they're probably in the reels on like Instagram where it's like, you're at your grandma's house in 1985 and nothing's changed.

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Like you woke up, it was all a bad dream. You know what I'm talking about? Oh my gosh. Some of those videos, oh, they get you.

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You're like, oh my goodness, that is what it looked like. And it's like half of it's

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AI, if not all of it. And, but they have like, the colors are right. The what's on TV, the car and what the car look like.

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And just, I don't know the sounds. It's pretty wild, some of these channels. And I -

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John, have you ever? Yeah. Sorry, sorry, keep going, keep going. I was just gonna say, and I'll let you talk.

29:18

I'm thinking like, I wasn't there in 1985 at my grandparents' house, but like, it tugs at me.

29:24

I'm like - Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. No, I was, I mean, this is like a little silly and not as insightful as your point, but have you ever been to Chuck E.

29:33

Cheese? Oh yeah, many times. Yeah. One of the weirdest cases where I was just like,

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I felt like something was taken from me and it was so small, was I had a bunch of, you know, my senior year of high school class, we were a bunch of silly goobers.

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And so for our little senior, like little mini senior trip, we have like a bigger senior trip or whatever, but we all wanted to go to Chuck E.

29:53

Cheese, relive nostalgia, we're graduating high school. It completely changed. It's like not at all the same.

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They heavily modernize. And it's just like, I think of those like memes where it's like, look what they took from you.

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And I just think of Chuck E. Cheese. But yeah, no, it's wild. Even in like the little things where it's just like, oh yeah,

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I can relive some childhood stuff. And yeah, so no - I would never be in a ball pit. Like, I never experienced that.

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And that was like everywhere. Every like fast food restaurant had to have a ball pit, but yeah, like, and this can go back even further for like the 1950s or even before that, people will post old pictures or videos.

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And I think what it communicates is stability and order and maybe even hierarchy that, look, things used to work better, maybe not perfect, but there was something better and you're missing that in your life.

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Don't you want order and stability and that kind of thing, a tie to the land and to the people around you.

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So anyway, Matt Bourish talks about this and he goes on, he says, he talks about Nehemiah and Ezra reintroducing scripture.

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He says, God gives us another example of the virtues of nostalgia in Nehemiah chapter eight. Nehemiah had just completed rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem after he had petitioned

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King Artaxerxes through tears. In fact, the whole reason Nehemiah wanted to rebuild the walls was because of longing for returning to the traditions and land of his fathers.

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Nehemiah called an assembly and had Ezra read the law of God in the hearing of the people. Many heard it for the first time.

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The words of the scripture were so novel to the returning exiles that they wept. Afterwards, however,

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Nehemiah told them the following, go eat the festival foods, drink the sweet drinks and send portions to him who has nothing prepared for this day is holy to the

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Lord. Do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your refuge. And all the people went away to eat, drink, to send portions and to celebrate a great feast because they understood the words which had been made known to them.

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The Israelites rejoiced in the rediscovery of the scriptures because they knew that this was excellent, noble and worthy of praise.

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Their ways had returned to them and they could begin with a fresh start in both their societal and spiritual lives.

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So I thought of some other things in scripture. So he gives a positive case here.

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And I think he's right about Nehemiah wanting to return to something that he knew was good and right, they were deprived of it.

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But there's also some warnings. So I wanted to read for you. This is Ecclesiastes 7, 10.

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It says, do not say, why is it that the former days were better than these for it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.

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And that's an interesting like warning. Psalm 143, five says,

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I remember the old days I meditate on all your doings. I'm used on the works of your hands. So there's a positive reference to it.

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And then you have obviously in lamentations remembering negative things. Like, you have bad memories too.

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It's not just like all memories are good. And Isaiah 43 says, do not call to mind the former things or ponder the things of the past.

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Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth. Will you not be aware of it? So the only thing

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I wanted to say about this and there's probably some other verses we could bring up is there probably needs to be a distinction here.

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Like there is in the Bible, a kind of knowledge that is very good. Obviously remembering the things that the

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Lord has done. And I can do that with my own life looking back. I think remembering things like stability and order and hierarchy and just family gatherings and some of the good things that used to exist.

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Like that's very good. There is a danger though in making that, like in losing yourself in that so that you can't see what's actually in front of you.

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Cause God puts you here, right? God puts you in poverty in 2025 and he has things for you to do in this year and next year and the years after that if you continue to live.

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And if you are constantly, as Jesus even said, like putting your hand to the plow, you're not worthy.

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You're not, if your life is so focused on the world and getting something back that isn't going to come back and you miss the opportunities that are right in front of you, then you're not fit for the kingdom of God.

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There's a problem there. So I do see a distinction. I've never heard anyone ever talk about this.

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I don't think that's what Mike Cosper was talking about. I think he legitimately like hates the way that America used to be in some way.

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Like he sees like stable families and stuff. He's like, oh, it's too white. And it just like the women didn't have enough authority and like, it's just a terrible place.

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And so I think he like legitimately sees problems. Like we could be drawing the same picture and he would pick out the issues, but a lot of those weren't about this.

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So I don't know if you've ever thought of that. Like if there's a distinction between like good nostalgia and like unhelpful or bad nostalgia.

35:12

Yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot to think about there, but I mean, it's very clear that like there can be a bad form of nostalgia where it leads to a sort of discontentment with everything in your life.

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And like a sort of discontentment, which is driven only towards resentment rather than like, because we can also like distinguish sorts of discontentment.

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Like if you're discontent with the way things are, but that means you're more driven to improve your life. So if you're discontent with like your state, like spiritually or whatever, that may drive you to pursue a better spiritual state versus a discontentment where it's just, there's only sadness and mourning and like you're not actually doing anything about it.

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But, and so that can be like something with nostalgia as well, whether it's like a happy longing for something that once was and sort of using that as an inspiration to move forward towards a better future and like make your present well versus an unhealthy nostalgia, which makes you passive and depressed.

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But I mean, the scriptures definitely speak positively of sorts of nostalgia. I mean, you know, even like the type of nostalgia that does lead to weeping maybe.

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So I think of Psalm 137, that entire Psalm is basically about nostalgia where I'll just read a few verses from it.

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But when the Psalm says in Psalm 137, by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered

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Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof for there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song and they that wasted us required of us mirth saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.

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Then the next verse, it says, how shall we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land? If I forget thee,

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O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cutting. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

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If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. And he then goes on to wish various imprecations on their captors.

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This is also the famous Psalm that atheists love to use because it talks about dashing the heads of the little ones against the stones.

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Like they're referring to the Babylonian captors. But I mean, there's a very positive assessment of nostalgia here, even in the midst of sadness.

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He speaks of in the rivers of Babylon, we sat down, we wept remembering Zion. And the

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Psalm says here to the Lord, like don't let me forget. If I do not remember thee, referring to Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

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If I prefer not Jerusalem over my chief joy. So there's a sense of longing, even in the midst of sadness that can be good as well.

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And so you just need to be able to do this in a healthy manner because there's a lot of people that only ever black pill, only ever doom pills where they're always just sad.

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And it's like, the situation is unfixable. There's no going back, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, okay, even if we can see there is no going back, don't like, you know, make something positive.

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Work with what you have and don't just be a depressed loser all day because the

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Lord does not rejoice when you're a depressed loser. You know, if anything that, you know, we're talking about attributes of God in a metaphorical sense that really disappoints him and makes him mad.

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So, yeah, I don't think that's the right mindset for any Christian to have because, you know, and this is not a

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Jesus Duke, the scriptures speak this way. So if I have any like feisty CN come at me for saying this, don't care.

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You know, Christ is our ultimate hope. Christ is our ultimate joy. And you can always, even in the midst of temporal things, earthly things that go wrong, it's not a

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Jesus Duke to, at the end of the day, rest in Christ, realize what Christ has accomplished for you, realize how that empowers you, use how grace empowers you to not just, you know, be sanctified by the spirit of God, you know, not just work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but also use it to create virtue in yourself through the spirit of God.

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And in that virtue, that will outpour into other actions in the temporal realm, which can lead you to building things for the future.

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So yeah, I think that's so important for us to do that even in the midst of, even if you're feeling bad, don't let that just make you stagnant, politically or spiritually.

39:35

That's 100 % correct. I'm totally tracking with you on that. And one of the things that I've, and I haven't done this perfectly, but I've been probably,

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I've tried to do at least, is look at situations squarely, because I see that in scripture. Like there isn't really, you don't have rose colored glasses in scripture.

39:55

One of the worst cases of nostalgia, like the case that was a bad case, right, was when they're in the promised land, or sorry, they're waiting to go to the promised land, they're in the wilderness at Meribah, and they're saying, what about the spices of Egypt?

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It was so much better when God just let us be in slavery, rather than to kill us in the desert, right? You guys remember?

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It was so much better. And everyone's like, yeah, it was better. And I guess getting sick of eating this manna, and we're just gonna die out here.

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And there was a nostalgia at play there for certain fine things that they enjoyed, but they got their eyes off God and onto a condition they once enjoyed.

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And they couldn't see what God was actually doing, where he was bringing them. And I do wanna look at things squarely.

40:39

And sometimes people don't like my assessments. I made, I wish I could have rephrased it maybe a little to make it more clear, but I made this assessment maybe a day or two ago.

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It doesn't really matter what it was about, but it was about like, it was about the online kind of reform

40:54

CN movement and how things have kind of fractured in that world. Anyway, you had some guys that were like, very upset.

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And I'm like, I'm just trying to like, I'm just trying to tell you what's happening. Like this is what I see out in front of us.

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It does not mean though at all that some of the positive developments, and there have been many positive developments aren't gonna carry on.

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They are, of course they're gonna carry on. Like we know now, it seems like we know better what a nation is.

41:20

It seems like we understand the Ordo Amoris better than we did like three or four years ago. I said, we as, you know,

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Christians who are politically active. Seems like we wanna take power more.

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Like we know, hey, we should be involved. Like these are all really, really good things. And that's gonna continue even if people go in different directions, even if they're slightly different.

41:43

And, you know, that's just the nature of life, right? Like things change. But, you know, we're in a situation in the

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United States in 2025, where there's a lot of really good things to see in the Trump administration. And I mean, it's such a relief we didn't get

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Kamala. But there's also bad things, and you can find both of them. And that's, I would suggest every moment we've ever been in in history has always had good and bad things.

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And you can focus on either one. But I think God expects you to take inventory of your own life and figure out where you fit into the grand scheme and where he's taking you.

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And where he's taking you isn't to destruction and peril. If you're, it says, right? If you're in Christ, you're a new creation, old things have become new.

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It says that he's making you into a new creation. You're being sanctified. You're going somewhere good.

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And ultimately you're going to a mansion Christ has prepared, even if you die in this life. And so that's where we have to,

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I think, make sure that's the direction we're heading, while at the same time acknowledging, yeah, we have a history, we have a heritage, we have good things that we wanna preserve and pass down to our children, and maybe even recapture.

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Which is the reformation, right? That was a recapturing good doctrine that had been lost, right? It, that's gonna be part of what we do too.

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We're gonna learn from the past. So anyway, yeah, good word on that. And don't, yeah, try to look at things realistically.

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I guess it's by encouragement, not with overly rose colored glasses and not with black filling either about stuff.

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Like God put you here for this time. So Matt closes with this. He says, in his recently published, oh,

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I guess he's quoting me. Okay, hold on. Application for some personal examples. He says, far from being transgressive, having nostalgia and reminiscing on the virtues of our past can fulfill

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God's examples and commands to us to meditate on excellent, worthwhile endeavors. Throughout my life as a church musician, when

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I was playing a prelude on the piano before the worship service, older Christian ladies would come up to me afterward and thank me for playing their favorite hymn.

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They would make comments like, I sang that all the time when I was younger. Thank you, because we don't hear those that much anymore.

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Patients in nursing homes with dementia who hear these hymns also start singing because they are integral part of their past and cemented into their memory.

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Nostalgia is a part of human beings and it is virtuous, especially for a Christian to meditate on its positive aspects.

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He says, recently my family and I took a vacation to Michigan. One of the reasons we went was because my two sons rarely see snow.

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I wanted to show them what it was like to go sledding. I used to do it at recess in school.

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We also stayed in a town that I frequented as a child and even ate at the same restaurants and shopped in the same stores as I did in my childhood.

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It was nostalgic, but it was a good gift. And then he says, I guess he quotes me in my book,

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Against the Waves, which just came out, againstthewavesbook .com. But I say, I guess on 279, restoring order on a mass scale while institutions are controlled by corrupt elites is a daunting task.

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However, there are many ways for us to build and cultivate counter institutions that reflect the wisdom of the ages and the timeless truths in creation and scripture.

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Perhaps like a person recuperating from amnesia, we will begin to remember what we have lost as we start to familiarize ourselves with what we do know.

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And then he talks about the Philippians, how Paul instructs the Philippians and then in Nehemiah also to remember the good things and meditate on those.

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So, yeah, so yeah, I actually, sometimes I read my stuff and I'm like, oh, that is,

45:27

I don't remember writing that, but that's a pretty good point. So I just, that, I guess when

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I was writing that, that was maybe, maybe I was in the moment. And I agree though, with what

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I said, obviously, that I think the West is in this place of like rejecting

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Christianity, rejecting their culture. And we have an opportunity right now to recapture that.

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And it is like, that is the image that comes to mind, someone who's recuperating from amnesia, like maybe we'll start remembering why we do things the way we do them and why we did things the way we did them.

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And hey, why isn't God we trust in that court building? How come we have church bells and steeples in our skylines?

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And maybe we'll start thinking about those questions and realizing, oh, there was something good there, something we've forgotten about.

46:19

So yeah, anyway, I know there's one other analogy I just thought of, Doug Wilson did this actually in a documentary that he was part of, and I think 2015 or 16,

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I think it was called the Free Speech Apocalypse, but he makes the analogy of going to the dump. And he's like, the West is like on their way to the dump with all these archaic things they don't think matter anymore because they don't conform to science.

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And they're about to throw them all away. Religion's one of them, all kinds of traditions.

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And he said, on the way to the dump though, maybe there's some things in the back of your truck that you realize like they need to be dumped, they weren't good.

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But there's also things, maybe you'll realize, you know what, that doesn't need to be dumped and you miss it because you dumped it.

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And so you go back to the junkyard to find it. And that was his hope that the West will do the same thing, like go back to try to find the things that were valuable, that made us strong once again.

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And I think nostalgia plays a good part in that. So keep the memes flowing, guys. We need more, we need to do the return memes and the embrace tradition memes, and art, art is good too, and montages.

47:30

So anything to add to any of that before we go to comments? No, good word,

47:36

John, good word. And also, yeah, great little quote from your book. Yeah, John, I feel bad because I haven't read your book.

47:44

Yeah, I haven't gotten it. You will? Oh, yeah, I haven't read your book. And then I also haven't fully listened to your album that you came out with yet.

47:52

It's like, man, I'm a bad co -host. Resumer, you don't have a CD player. Yeah, that's true,

47:58

I don't have a CD player. I remember them though, I remember. And I do remember VHS tapes, believe it or not,

48:04

I do. Yeah, well, that's all I had was VHS. I mean, we had 13 channels, that was it, you know?

48:11

Wow, yeah, my parents had four, so. Oh, your parents had four, yeah, right.

48:16

Yeah, my parents are the young boomers, 59 to 58, so they had the four channels.

48:23

So my, yeah, it's funny, because I think your parents and my parents actually are on the same age, right? So our grandparents were like greatest generation, that means.

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And my grandparents, like, they didn't have electricity. At least my grandpa didn't.

48:38

It's crazy how, like, that's such a short period of time. We went from horses with no electricity to Elon Musk talking about populating

48:46

Mars. So, yeah, but I'll - I'll imagine how our children and great -grandchildren, and grandchildren and great -grandchildren are gonna think of AI.

48:55

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I don't even wanna think about what's gonna happen in the next. Yeah. Wait, I mean,

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God put us here for this time though, but it is kind of scary in a way. It's a little unnerving how fast things are going, and these are big social experiments.

49:08

You don't know exactly how these are gonna affect us, but they're here and they're not going away.

49:14

So, but yeah, you know, if you listen to my album, if you ever do, Matthew, which is okay if you don't, but if you ever do, like there's a lot of nostalgia in that.

49:23

And I realized that, I mean, I don't know if I'm wired differently in that way, or it's just my history, because I like history and, you know, my undergrad and my grad degree are in history, but there's just a lot of like learning from experience, learning from the past.

49:38

What's the ancient wisdom that we have to look to? And so that stuff is all super, super important to me.

49:47

And I actually, it's funny, I don't know of other people who have this. I'm sure there's other people who do, but I get offended a little when

49:54

I see people LARP with the past, you know? Like if they just kind of use an image or a symbol or something from the past, just for like strictly for a political fight.

50:05

Like for example, like, you know, getting out like a Confederate flag or something, and you know, it's just a complete LARP. Like it's just like that person has no, there's nothing about like the men who fought under it, or like, it's literally just,

50:17

I'm gonna just offend someone with this or whatever. Like, I don't know what it is, but I like, when

50:23

I see that symbol, like I think of all the men who marched under it. And the same thing with an American flag, like I immediately go to like veterans and like, it's like always rooted in something.

50:33

And yeah, in my music, that totally comes out. But yeah, if you give me your address afterward,

50:40

I should have it, but I'll send it to you. What were you gonna say something, or were we gonna go to comments?

50:46

I think we're gonna go to comments. No, I think we're going to comments. All I had to say was a dumb comment about VHS players. You don't like them?

50:53

No, no, they're fine. I had fun with them, you know? You ever eat, like have a VHS player eat one of your

51:00

VHSs? No. Oh, okay, well that's something that did happen. Like the other tape would come unwound and like, you'd have to go get like a pencil and try to like wind it back in and ugh.

51:13

You had to clean them? You had to clean your VHS player? Anyway, all right, I'm dating myself now. Dr. Bob says, shalom.

51:19

Thanks, shalom, Dr. Bob. I says, I think part of the reason for the nostalgia is that we actually are coming out of an

51:26

American golden age. Well, that's depressing, Dr. Bob, because I thought we were in golden age of America and we were going to be tired of winning.

51:35

I mean, I'm trying not to be tired of winning. Let's see, what else?

51:42

There's actually not a lot of comments on this. Dr. Bob is the biggest comment here. W .T. Henry says, part of nostalgia is that the past is certain and fixed.

51:50

Oh, that's a good point. The future is uncertain. Humans long for a positive certainty. That's a really good point.

51:56

Yeah, like the past already happened and so you don't have to worry about it being different when you think about it.

52:04

And then U .Tarme said, thank you for your ministry, John, for 1999.

52:10

Thank you, U .Tarme. I hope I'm saying your name right, or Untarme. I don't know how you pronounce that. Well, if there's any more comments, get them in now because we're going to be ending the podcast here in a minute.

52:21

Next week, we will be back and I do want to reiterate one more time because we're getting close.

52:29

Christianityandthefounding .com, Christianityandthefounding .com would love to see you at the conference.

52:34

It's in three weeks, so we're coming up on it. We still have some room and we've got a great lineup of speakers and what else can

52:41

I say? We've got some good barbecue too if you sign up for the VIP dinner and I understand some apple or cherry cobbler or something like, it's an

52:49

Amish country. And so I wanted to go completely traditional and have some of like the local cuisine.

52:56

So that's what we're doing. But yeah, that's my only announcement and we don't have any more comments.

53:02

So I guess we can end the podcast. So thanks, Matthew. Thanks for being here. And thanks for everyone out there for tuning in.