I Believe in Giants - So Of Course I Dont Fall For CRT

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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. Alright, well, before we begin, just two quick things.

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The first thing, if you have not considered doing so, please consider becoming a Fight, Laugh, Feast Network club member.

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Use the show code ROBLES, that's R -O -B -L -E -S. Use the show code ROBLES, that's R -O -B -L -E -S.

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Now, what you're going to get from the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is straightforward, direct speech.

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We do not pretend to be perfect, but one thing that we do absolutely commit to is that we are certainly trying to understand the

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Bible in every single way, and to apply it in a very straightforward way, without regard for what is popular, without regard for what is going to give us good standing in the culture or anything like that.

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That is something that I don't think you can say about many other networks in the evangelical movement.

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So please, consider supporting the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as a club member. Use the show code

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ROBLES. Now, the second thing I wanted to cover really quick is just a quick chicken update.

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That's right, I have not updated anybody about my chickens very much lately.

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And they're all doing great. I bought ten chickens in the spring, and they've been laying eggs like crazy. Like, I get eight or nine eggs a day, something like that.

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Sometimes I even get ten eggs a day. It's pretty crazy. And for the fall and the winter, they're supposed to slow down in production, but I haven't really seen any slowdown whatsoever.

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It's been cold, the days are shorter, and all that kind of thing, but I'm still consistently getting eight and nine eggs.

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There was one day where I got four, and I was thinking to myself, oh no, I'm not going to get any eggs for the winter, but they're still going strong.

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For the very first time, I had a broody hen. If you don't know what that means, a broody hen is a hen that's determined to hatch her eggs.

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And so she sits on them, and anyone that comes near her, she pecks at and tries to defend her eggs and stuff like that.

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Now, the breed that I got is intentionally bred to not go broody, so they're not supposed to care if you take their eggs.

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But this one, for two days, or a day and a half really, would not let me take the egg. But eventually she got up, and I took the egg, and it was delicious.

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So, all that to say, my chickens are doing great, so if you're wondering about them, thank you very much.

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Everything's going very well. Now, let's get into the topic today, because I was initially planning, in fact,

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I did record a video about J .D. Greer's recent shenanigans, but I decided not to upload it.

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And I was also considering doing a video about some of the despair and the nonsense that we're seeing with this coronavirus lockdown, and churches closing down, and all that kind of stuff.

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But I decided not to do that, because I think that there's a foundational thing that I think might be more important to talk about today.

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And I've been talking with my brother, my biological brother, a lot about this exact topic.

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And it's this idea of having a mentality that believes

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God first. The first reaction that you have when you read something in the

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Bible that doesn't make sense, or maybe goes against what you believe, or goes against what you've been taught, and you read it there in the scripture, like, we ought to have a situation where we just believe it.

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We start with belief. And I think that at foundational levels, evangelicalism has capitulated to an idea where you really are kind of like, you want to believe the

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Bible. Like, I don't think that they teach that you shouldn't want to believe the Bible, but you want to believe it in a respectable way that also takes into account other information that you see from science, and you see from your teachers, and stuff like that.

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Like, we need to take that into account, too. And so we almost approach the

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Bible with those lenses already on, and so we know that there are certain things that respectable people just probably shouldn't believe.

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And so we have all kinds of ways of figuring that out, all kinds of ways of negotiating it.

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Sometimes we allegorize things. Sometimes we say, oh, that's poetic language, and stuff like that.

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And those can be effective tools because there is such a thing as poetic language, right? And so that's a very plausible thing.

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But I don't think I'm the only one who's noticed that that excuse, those kinds of excuses, are deployed way more often than is appropriate,

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I think. And I was on Twitter just the other day, and somebody, a social justice warrior named

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Scott Coley, I think he's a teacher of philosophy, but his thinking is so often extremely muddled, it's really hard to understand how he's a teacher of anything.

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But anyway, he tweeted out how he doesn't want to be committed to a hermeneutic that requires him to believe that God created the world in three days before he created the solar system, because what he's doing is saying, well, astrophysics and stuff like that tells me one thing, and so I need to understand this

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Bible passage in light of what I know from astrophysics, and I know that it would be impossible for him to have created the world before he created the solar system.

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That wouldn't make any sense. And that line of thinking is very common, and not just with Genesis, but just very common in general.

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It's not just with Genesis, it's with lots of things that we have this kind of approach, and so we need to reject it.

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We need to reject that mentality. Now I'm not saying you have to agree with everything that I say about the book of Genesis or about whatever, but you do have to fight against this tendency that we have to try to believe things that are culturally respectable to believe.

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And everyone has a different way that they do it, but I was just thinking just today about God creating the world in six days, because that's not a very respectable belief in our culture, and we have a scripture that says that he created the world in six days.

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I mean, we even have verses that comment about the book of Genesis that confirm it, that God created the world in six days.

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This is the King James Version, Exodus chapter 20. So this is the law of God. So God's commandments for his people, his moral law, he gives his people his law, and look at what he references.

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He says, And so it's like, again and again and again, we hear that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.

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Jesus believed that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and the thing is that we need to believe that.

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We do need to believe that. Now, I understand all the other interpretations. I have a long history in the interpretation on all that kind of stuff, but this is a very straightforward belief, and our posture should be believe that, and even if astrophysics or whatever, geology, tells us information that appears to contradict that, we ought to be believing

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God first, and that's the reality. You know, this is something that I said on Twitter the other day.

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I believe in giants. Okay? I mean, I know that that's not respectable, but I believe that the

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Bible teaches that there were races of giants all around Israel. The Amorites were giants.

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They're mentioned again and again and again in the Bible, and it says that the

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Amorites, whose height was like the height of cedars. Cedars are not just normal trees. They're actually extra big trees, and so, yes, there's figurative language there, of course, but I do think that that means that they were probably taller than Shaquille O 'Neal.

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You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Call me crazy, but comparing someone's height to the height of a cedar would mean that they're large people, not just people.

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A lot of people try to get respectable like this. Well, you know, people back then were shorter, so they were probably our height, but they were giants to the shorter people of those times.

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I just don't see that that's the case at all. I believe in giants, like actual giants. I believe in dragons, actually, as well, and you might lose respect for me because I just said

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I believed in dragons, but I also believe in demons, and so we have to also consider that because in the

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Bible there were progressives too. They were the Sadducees, and they didn't believe in the spiritual realms and the demons, and if you believe in the spiritual realm, why wouldn't you believe that when the

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Bible talks about dragons, it's talking about dragons? You know what I mean? So this is the thing, guys.

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Like, I don't think we should—I know it's hard, but we shouldn't be kind of captured to this idea of respectability.

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When I first became a Christian, I really liked Tim Keller a lot, and one of the things

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I liked about Tim Keller is that he was very respectable, culturally speaking. Like, he didn't believe all the wackadoodle stuff that I always heard evangelicals believed.

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He was very soft on creation. In fact, I believe he's an evolutionist, if I'm not mistaken. A theistic evolutionist, which is different from regular evolution because you believe in God, I guess.

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I don't know. But, you know, he's soft on that kind of stuff. He's soft on homosexuality.

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He's soft on gender roles. Why wouldn't he be? Think about it. Like, if you're walking this line to be respectable in New York, which

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Tim Keller does overtly. Like, you ever listen to any of his gospel contextualization presentations?

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I've actually been at them in person. I used to go to his lectures in New York City. And it's very—I mean, from what

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I remember, it butts up against the line of being, we'll change the message to make it more appropriate.

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It's very, very close to that line. He seeks to be very palatable. And the thing is, like,

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Tim Keller might be an extreme example, and you're like, well, not too many people do that. But I disagree. I think lots of people do that.

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I think the masks, for example. Masks are an example of requiring masks at worship and saying that it's a

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Christian imperative to wear the mask. Like, I saw articles from the Gospel Coalition that say, no, this isn't a matter of conscience.

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This is a matter of the moral law of God. This is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself. Wear the mask, you pagan.

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How could somebody say that and read the same Bible that you read? Well, the reason why they say that is because what they read in the

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Scripture, when they read love your neighbor as yourself, they're reading that and interpreting it in a way that is as respectable as possible in our culture today.

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And so, the same applies for this critical race theory stuff and all of this stuff.

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Like, they want to be respectable in our culture. And the only way to be respectable in our culture is to believe in systemic racism and to believe in white supremacy and whiteness.

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None of that comes from the Bible, even if Tim Keller will quote a couple Bible verses to make it appear plausible.

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His message is pagan, and the reason why he interprets those Bible verses in such an evil way is because he's allowing himself to fall for that trap where you believe it in as respectable a way as possible.

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You see, you get stuff like Genesis wrong, the foundations, and there's really no reason to get the rest of it right.

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You understand what I'm saying? So, like, you know, yes, you start believing that the Bible maybe teaches theistic evolution.

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Well, why wouldn't you insist that someone wear a mask? I mean, you're really not believing God at face value, even on easy things.

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So, of course, the pressure to wear a mask is going to be pretty intense. We even had Jonathan Lehman, if you remember, on the

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CrossPolitik episode, talking about cultural capital, right? Like, he doesn't want to spend, this is an overt statement of what

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I'm talking about here. Jonathan Lehman said he doesn't want to spend, and he doesn't think churches should spend their cultural capital by having church on Sunday in the midst of a pandemic.

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Even though God commands to meet for church in the midst of a pandemic, and without the pandemic, he commands you to meet as a church, even though he commands you to greet each other with a holy kiss and to lay hands on the sick and pray for each other and sing songs unto the

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Lord. Jonathan Lehman's saying, yes, I understand that, but he's interpreting that in a way that allows this idea of cultural capital to play a factor into how you obey

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Christ. And so when you think about cultural capital, who divvies that out? Who gives you the capital?

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Where are you getting this capital? Because cultural capital doesn't come from God. Cultural capital can only come from the culture.

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And so what is Jonathan Lehman tacitly admitting? He's saying, when

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I interpret the Bible and I read the passage in Genesis that commands the death penalty for those who commit murder,

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I turn it into, you must shut down in the midst of a pandemic, or you must wear a mask.

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And the reason he's doing that is because he's attempting to gain cultural capital.

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He's interpreting the Bible in such a way that allows him the most respect that he can muster from culture and still be plausibly a

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Christian. Because I don't think that these guys are ready to cast off the cords of Christ. Like they're not trying to go into abject rebellion.

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They think that they're following Christ. Excuse me. So they wanna hold on to some of the foundations they wanna hold on to the idea that they're following Christ but they want to interpret the

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Bible in such a way that really isn't just faith first. It's not faith forward.

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It's faith in a way that's culturally acceptable. That's why you can be against abortion but not for death penalty for people who kill babies like Jonathan Lehman, again, in the same conversation.

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Being against abortion is culturally acceptable in our culture. As long as there's no teeth to it.

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As long as you're just saying you're against abortion. The minute you go to the clinic and try to stop women from having abortions that's when the culture doesn't put up with it anymore.

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If you notice, that's also where Big Eva people tend to say well, you're being unloving by doing that.

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The minute you actually put teeth on your beliefs that's where the culture doesn't put up with it anymore.

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The minute you say, no, you're not my God I have my God, I believe in dragons that's when the culture goes crazy and likewise, that's where Gospel Coalition goes crazy.

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That's where ERLC goes crazy. If you look at the passages in the

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Bible that the Gospel Coalition proudly believes it's all the stuff that's culturally acceptable to believe.

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Then if you look at the ones where they sheepishly believe and apologize for believing and anyone who boldly believes it gets talked down to as if they're some kind of a lunatic fundamentalist it's all the issues that the culture finds unacceptable as well.

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It's acceptable to be against abortion so long as you don't do anything about it. The minute you do something about it then all of a sudden you become a racist white supremacist, evangelical bigot.

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Just like the world believes. And so, we need to make sure that we're looking at ourselves because I know that there are parts in the

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Bible that I do allow an air of respectability to flavor how

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I interpret them. And I fight against it. I have to recognize that in myself and I have to believe in such a way like a child believes his father.

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I could probably go right now and convince my children of almost anything because they trust me.

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They trust me. And they know that what I say is true because daddy told me.

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You know what I mean? My dad told me so I know it's true. I could convince my children of just about anything right now and they would believe me and I want to have that kind of faith with a totally reliable, infinitely capable completely knowing all things infinitely good and for me

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God that we serve. And so when God says, I created the world in six days

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I'm going to believe it. When God says that the Amorites were a race of giants

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I'm going to believe it. When God says whatever he says an axe head floated

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Jonah was swallowed by a great fish I saved all the animals in the ark whatever it is the posture should be

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I believe you God I believe you and that's that. I don't care about cultural capital.

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I mean, I do not care. I've got a couple of atheist commenters on YouTube and they they attempt to make fun of me all the time and it has zero effect on me.

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I'm not interested in their capital capital that comes from people like that. I'm not interested in the capital that comes from culture.

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I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in trusting God as best

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I can and look, I'm not perfect. I just admitted that. I'm not perfect and neither are you but the posture should be to believe

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God the way my son believes me. I'm not worthy of that much trust but yet my son looks to me as if I am.

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God is worthy of that much trust and so we ought to look at him like he is.

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I believe that allowing the interpretations and allowing a posture of unbelief in the beginning books of the

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Bible Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers has caused us to come to this point where all of a sudden we're not really so sure if gayness is an abominable sin or if it's just a gender identity that is a minority opinion that we ought to make room for in the church.

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A lot of our leaders are saying stuff like that. Of course we don't know how to deal with racism. That's way more nuanced than God created the world in six days.

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And so if cultural capital is going to affect how we believe when Genesis talks about giants and how

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God created the world of course it's going to affect how we deal with race issues. Of course it's going to affect how we deal with mask issues and stuff like that.

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And so it just stands to reason. So we need to kind of reclaim that posture of just believing

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God. It doesn't mean you turn your brain off but it means you just believe what God tells you because he's trustworthy.

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Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the

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Fight Laugh Feast Network. We'll see you then.