The American Churchman: DEI and the Imago Dei

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And welcome to the American Churchman podcast where we encourage men to take dominion and love the Lord.

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And we're gonna talk about DEI today. How does that sound? And the Imago Dei. And we have, as always,

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I'm John Harris and my guest host is Matthew Pearson. How you doing, Matthew? I'm doing pretty good,

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John. Thank you for having me on, as always, to co -host this. A bit of a sticky situation.

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You may notice the camera's a bit different. It's just my funny living situation and my podcast equipment's all in the other room so you get me on my phone today.

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People are gonna be wondering what's up with the podcast because we've changed times and days and some, like I think two weeks ago, we didn't do it and it's just because of scheduling.

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So I appreciate everyone's patience with us and we are still getting episodes out there.

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But it's kind of like, you know, from, I think it was a Lego movie, Taco Tuesday on a Thursday or whatever. It's like we're doing the 6pm at 3 .30.

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But we have a lot of stuff to talk about because there's, I think, a lot of questions come up regarding the topic that we're gonna be going over, which is what is the

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Imago Dei? And then how does it relate to things like DEI policies?

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And some of you might wonder what I'm referring to. And I'm referring to the fact that it seems like every time a social issue like illegal migration or racial disparities or even gender roles comes up, there's a

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Christian veneer that some more left -leaning Christians will put on that and they'll say, well, you have to treat people like they're made in the image of God.

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And oftentimes accompanying that are terms like, you need to have dignity, you need to treat people according to their self -worth.

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And whatever policy conservatives are advocating is somehow seen as in conflict with that. We talked about that a little bit last time with that measure from Senator or Congresswoman Salazar down in Florida, the

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Dignity Act, quote unquote. But I want to have a broader discussion just about the Imago Dei. So it looks like Matthew, can you hear me,

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Matthew? Because I see your video went away. You must have been having trouble. All right.

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I do not hear Matthew. I hope everyone else. Yes, my connection is not the best right now. Okay. All right.

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It was a little delayed, but we'll just go on and bear with it.

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And we already have people coming into the stream. So I will show you the article here so you know exactly what

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I'm talking about. This is from TruthScript, which you can support us in our mission.

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You go to the bottom. There's a little tab. It says publish if you want to publish with us. And of course, there's a donate tab as well.

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If you want to donate to the work that TruthScript does, it is a 501 C3. But this is written by Aaron Silver, and I believe he's a

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Presbyterian pastor. Yeah, he's a research scientist in the food industry, actually. Sorry. He is married and the father of three.

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He's a member of the Bible study at his Presbyterian church. Not a pastor, but he is a member of a Presbyterian church.

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And he's a good writer. Do you know him? I'm mutual with him on Twitter.

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I've been for a few years. Yeah, he's a good guy. Excellent. Yeah. So he wrote this.

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And it's called the Imago DEI, which is very clever. Instead of Imago Dei, it's a

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DEI. So he starts off by saying it's a core tenet of the Christian faith that mankind is

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Imago Dei. We are made in the image of God. From the beginning, scripture lays out the

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Imago Dei in terms of mankind's role as stewards over God's creation. Our imaging of God is shown in dominion and care to which we were appointed and which we are required to enact.

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And in contemplating what God has appointed mankind to do, much Christian thought has also explored the way mankind has been fittingly created so that we can accomplish this mandate from our creator.

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So the Imago Dei is a matter of what man has been divinely designated to do in the world and how he has been divinely designated to perform his duties.

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So mankind's purposes, his essence, they go hand in hand. This is understood to have implications for what it means to be male and female, to be cultivators and custodians of the environment, to be fruitful fillers of the earth, and to be builders and maintainers of civilization.

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We are fitly fashioned to be God's stewards over God's world, exercising dominion and hospitality.

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We are called to continue forming and filling the world as a reflection of the way God formed and filled the creation from the beginning.

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So right along the lines of our mission at the American Churchmen, right? To take dominion, to fulfill the responsibilities

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God has for us, to do so in joy and gratitude to our creator. I'm kind of wondering,

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Matthew, if these two paragraphs I read describing the Imago Dei, if there's anything that you would add?

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Because there's a lot of different ideas out there theologically on what exactly the

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Imago Dei is. And some people even wondering whether you can fully even encapsulate that in words.

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Yeah, so in regard to the Imago Dei, the more traditional definition of it can be seen.

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Someone like Aquinas or in Franciscus Junius, which is that, you know, to be made in the image of God is to be endowed with intellect, reason, and will.

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Something of that regard. But I mean, the way that Aaron has summarized it here is also good because there's the dominion aspect as well, which sometimes those more classical definitions don't always stress enough.

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I mean, sometimes you can say that those things will flow from having intellect and reason. And by intellect and reason, perceiving that which

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God commands and part of the commands is dominion. But that is something important about the Imago Dei is this idea of dominion, which is pivotal to what

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Genesis lays out. So I think that, I believe that Aaron does a good job at grounding this notion of the image of God with the command to exercise dominion such that the

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Imago Dei is not just a status that you have. It's not just something that God creates you with.

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It's not less than that. That is part of it. But it also is a call. You bear this image in order that you might yourself image

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God. So you're made in the image of God that you may image God. So it's not just a status you have, but it's something that you live.

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And I'd say like, you know, something similar as well. Your status might be righteous before God because of imputation, but that nevertheless should also be a calling to live righteous like Christ himself.

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So that's all I would add to that. So to go back to the Bible verse that this is predicated on primarily is

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Genesis 1, 26 to 27. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule, which is what he's talking about right in the article.

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Immediately there's a function over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God created man in his image and the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them.

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One of the things that I know comes up sometimes with this is what about people who have disabilities or children, for example, are they less in the image of God because their reason, their capacity to reason is not as developed or perhaps it's with people who are disabled.

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Sometimes they actually do have the ability to reason, but they can't communicate it. And so people assume that they don't have it.

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But communication itself is one of the things that is unique to God. It's something animals do have some form of communication depending on the animal, but humans can think in the abstract, right?

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And they can do the kinds of things God does as far as they can't create out of nothing, but they can certainly be creative.

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They're not just operating on instinct when they create a dam, for example, like a beaver.

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Beavers create dams, it's instinct. But when humans do that, they can put art and beautiful images on their dam and use precious metals for the railing.

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And I mean, they could do all kinds of things that express something of what it means to be human, which is behind that is the image of God.

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So, I mean, how do you think, how do you navigate that where you have someone with a disability, for example?

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That's a good question because that is something that I've thought about before as somebody who had a sister with severe autism.

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And what I would say to that is you would sort of frame it in a similar way by saying, if a woman is infertile, does that still make her a woman?

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Because what is one of the chief natural ends of women? And it would be the ability to bear children, because that in and of itself, though natural, it's almost like a very miraculous thing.

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And I say this as somebody who has had no children, has never witnessed a childbirth, but I'm sure that those in the audience and probably you,

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Jon, would say, yeah, it's practically miraculous. But a woman that's infertile is not any less a woman because she cannot fulfill her chief natural end.

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What we would say is that there is a disorder because that which is natural to her has been stripped by inordinary circumstances due to her health or body or whatever.

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But nevertheless, she still is a woman. Likewise, somebody who is mentally deficient would still bear the image of God, even if they can't reason or exercise rationality in the same capacity as more normal people can.

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Being abnormal by virtue of their lack of mental awareness and things like that, that still doesn't make them any less human or bearing the image of God.

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Because if we want to say that, when we say, you brought up artists who can accomplish great feats, would we say that a very good musical artist or somebody who can paint very well, do they bear the image of God more than we do?

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Because they know how to exercise certain creative gifts, which more imitate God. We would not say that we lack the image of God, whereas they have it more.

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And so I would just apply that same reasoning. And it's also different than looking at a monkey and being like, oh, well, we can say a monkey's made in the image of God because just because a monkey can't exercise his rationality and it's like, no, no, no, no.

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The point is the monkey in his natural normal state can never reason to the same capacity that we can.

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Whereas our natural state is to be able to reason in a certain capacity. And someone who's mentally deficient, they simply because of some reason or the other, they lack that which is natural.

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So there's much more clear and concise ways to say it. I just don't have the nice words, but I think that you can understand the gist of what

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I'm getting at. Yeah, I think so. Sin also mars. And it doesn't take away, though, the fact that we're made in God's image.

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It seems to be something eternal, something that's wedded to the soul itself. So it is the difference between killing an animal and eating the animal and killing a human and then receiving the just penalty, which is death for doing so.

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One is an attack on the image of God. One is not. One is seen as a necessity in order to provide for oneself.

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So it's it is somewhat mysterious, right? It does seem like there is this thing about humans that there is an intrinsic worth that we have and everyone has to recognize that every ethicist has to figure out what that is.

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It's the people who I'm trying to think of the guy. What's his name?

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Who is pro suicide at Harvard? I don't know why the name escapes me, but he was an ethicist. Those guys are nuts, right?

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They're seen as yeah, I was it was I don't know if he's still there, but it was two years ago like he was obviously for abortion, but but also for euthanasia.

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Was it Kevorkian? I think I think he was. I'm going to look it up. I think it was Kevorkian. I don't know. I haven't heard of this guy.

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Yeah, but anyway, there are ethicists who try to do that kind of thing. Yeah, I think it's

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Jack Kevorkian, if I'm not mistaken. And maybe so maybe I'm wrong about Harvard.

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It looks like he was at Michigan, the University of Michigan. But anyway, if that's who I'm thinking of, the issue that the issue presented there is you can't actually even run a society without acknowledging there's an intrinsic worth.

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Peter Singer. Thank you, Gerard. Just I don't know why I was thinking Kevorkian. They must have similar views or something.

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So it's Peter Singer I was thinking of. OK, thank you. Yeah, so you can't run a society, though, if humans are just animals, there has to be a separation between the animal kingdom and humans.

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And I don't know, I just I think it's important as we begin the article to just recognize that there is a distinction there obviously is an intrinsic worth.

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We do believe in the value of the soul. And this isn't predicated or this isn't based upon mental capacities or IQs or anything like that that doesn't diminish your value.

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It may diminish your abilities, but that's something that is ontologically part of you from the moment of conception.

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You are made in the image of God. You are made to have a relationship with him.

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So so anyway, he weds this to the responsibilities that got a certain duties, and they're not the same as the duties that he gave the animals.

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He says the image or the Mago day is a matter of what man has been divinely designated to do in the world and how he has been divinely designed to perform certain duties.

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See, I lost my place. OK, mankind's purpose and its essence go hand in hand. Sorry, I'm trying to move it around.

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I have actually my mic is like blocking the view. So I'm sure it's a unique problem.

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And let's move my mic around here. OK, it goes on. This is understood to have implications. We're both having guys.

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I don't know why you're watching the podcast now. I'm also lagging a lot because I every time I talk, you start talking and then it's wild.

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We'll get through it, though, guys. We're going to give you a good shot. Yes, this is understandable to have implications for what it means to be male and female, to be cultivators and custodians of the environment, to be fruitful fillers of the earth and to be builders and maintainers of civilization.

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We are fitly fashioned to be to rule. I think I already read that moving forward. Adam and the last

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Adam are the image of God. And there's much that could be said about how being images of God and being sons of God are linked.

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But suffice it to say that one description of life's purpose is that God is informing all believers to the image of his son.

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And at present, what that looks like is an image that we see in a mirror dimly. But the day will come the day that the creation yearns to see when the sons of God will be revealed openly in their consummate glory.

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Interesting thought, because I think the argument he's making here is to be a Christian is to fulfill this ultimate design that God's made.

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So the image of God is fulfilled in you when you commune with God. To be truly human is to follow

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God's ways, right? That's the natural thing for humans to do. Being a Christian is about being human.

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So he says in the present cultural moment, the reigning errors we see are not only heresies against orthodoxy, but heresies against creation reality.

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Mankind's rebellion against our maker has run deep in a world where increasing technological innovation has muted the constraints of nature.

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Fallen man is busy denaturing his own divine design further. The meaning of the imago

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Dei is being attacked. And so he talks about how this is happening, and he links it to DEI.

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When all manner of perversion is defended and championed with youth enthusiastic appeals to the universal human dignity and worth, you can be confident that the doctrine of the imago

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Dei has been distorted and weaponized against the reality of the imago Dei. Perceptive and pithy wordsmiths have been quick to call this monstrous distortion and weaponization of Christian teaching the imago

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Dei, or the imago Dei in reference to the diversity, equity and inclusion policies and initiatives that are the enforcement arm of this macabre militants.

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And our view of the imago Dei perfected in the son of God is like something we now see in a dark glass surface, a dim but accurate glimpse.

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Then the imago Dei is like something we now see in a funhouse mirror, a distorted and inverted monstrosity.

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Interesting point, because we so often hear that some innovative leftist social policy requires our attention because it's forwarding a valuation of the imago

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Dei, implying you're not really a Christian if you don't get behind this, right? It's very manipulative language.

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But really what's happening is it's actually the complete opposite.

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It's an attack on the imago Dei. It's a distortion of the imago Dei because it distorts, as we're going to see, the responsibilities, the obligations

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God has given to mankind to fulfill as part of their duty before him and really as part of who they are, their identity at their very core, which is the imago

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Dei. So going on, he says the motto and proof text for the post -Christian vision of the imago

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Dei is Galatians 3. There is neither Jew nor Greek. Neither is there slave nor free. There is no male or female.

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For you are all one in Jesus Christ. The distortion and misapplication of the teaching in this passage perfectly mirrors the distortion and misapplication insidiously at work in the imago

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Dei. In short, the apostle Paul is teaching the universal equality of access to the person and benefits of Christ by all believers and access provided by God that is not limited by the otherwise very real social structures and relationships that define everyday life.

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These structures and relationships are rooted in the design and operation of the world that our creator has established.

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But to the champion of the imago Dei, this passage is the justification for the complete dismantling of those social structures and relationships as any kind of fitting limitation on and direction for reality.

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It's a hideous commitment to radical egalitarianism. It's an assault on God's intention that there should be legitimate differences and particularly in the lives of human beings.

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It would regard all humans as interchangeable and destroy all human excellence in the process.

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So I want to stop there for a moment because I've been reading for a while. You remember 2020 when we were all told we had to wear a mask so you couldn't see people's faces and you go out to the store and it was kind of dystopian, right?

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You would interact with people in exchange at the store or even going to church.

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You would worship together, but you felt incomplete about it. Like you weren't really with the people.

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You weren't actually acknowledging who they were and even if you got the task accomplished, you could go out and accomplish every single thing that you could accomplish before those mandates, but there was something disconcerting about it when you can't see someone's face.

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And it obviously bothered a lot of people. And at the time we were told this was a necessary thing that this had to continue on because if we really value human life, we have to protect human life from a virus.

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And one of the points that I remember people started to bring up as this continued for weeks and then months is that actually, if you really want to value human life, you have to look at people in the face.

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Like you're actually not valuing human life. You're not, it is a dehumanization to not interact with people, right?

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It, at a certain point, like it is a, like if it becomes policy that you have to continue this indefinitely, it does become an attack.

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It does become a devaluation of like, it's not necessary to look at someone in the face and there's something communicated through the face.

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I don't really understand it fully. It's somewhat mysterious, I suppose, but you can hear someone's words. They can communicate, but if you're not seeing their lips move and you're not seeing the expression, you're missing something.

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And it's more than just nonverbal communication. Even it is, it's something even deeper than that.

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And I think that sums up our society, right? Like I was watching a video of this girl who, young Zoomer girl,

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I think probably around your age, Matthew. And she is talking about her generation. She lives in Great Britain, but she's saying that people that are coming up now don't even know what it's like to flirt with someone of the opposite sex.

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They don't, the whole excitement of that and going from friendship to courtship or dating and marriage and that, they don't have that concept of it because everything's mediated through a digital device.

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And that this actually dehumanizes her, and she wasn't even a Christian, but she's saying, this actually takes away from God, from the image of God.

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I mean, she didn't use that term, but that's basically what she was saying. Like, we're not even human anymore. Why do you even need humans?

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Couldn't you get like an AI software to function and be your best friend and you could bond with that, right?

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It won't let you down like a human will. It will know your needs and all that. So I guess the point

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I'm making and the point I think that he's making is when you bring in a technology that interferes, and I'm not just talking about like digital technology or mechanical technology, but when you bring in a technique, policies, barriers that stand between people and their interactions as people, their natural interactions, non -sinful natural interactions.

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And then the goals that they have, the mission that they're on, the way that they conduct themselves in the world naturally with other people, the way

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God intended, it's actually an attack on who we are as humans.

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And it's done in the name of dignity. It's done, you have to, I have to take all your money,

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Matthew, and I need to give it to this other person because there's a disparity that exists or all your privilege, or I need to,

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I don't know, cut you down to size because someone else of a different identity needs help.

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And like, these are the policies of DEI, right? They force corporations to make unnatural policies and in businesses and so forth, in churches even.

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But the whole thing behind it is it's actually creating dissonance and interference in the way that humans would naturally get along.

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And it's not for some kind of sinful thing. It's, it's the assumption is that God's creation and the way that we interact in that creation is somehow dirty or wrong or produces something wrong, you know?

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So, I mean, thoughts on that. We'll continue reading, but I've been going on for a long time.

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No, no. Yeah, I thought that was very good insight. And it reminds, the

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COVID example is also very good because it reminds me of a principal. I think it was Peter Lightheart who made this point and it stuck around with me back during COVID was he said that there's a difference between bare survival, bare living, or bare like just surviving versus actually living.

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So theoretically, you could just sit in your room all day and do absolutely nothing, nothing productive at all.

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And you technically would be alive. But would you really be living versus like, actually going out and interacting with others and doing things shows and more fully,

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I would say, accommodates, I guess, I'm trying to think of the words, but the Imago Dei, like part of that involves human interaction with one another.

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That's why God said that it was not good for a man to be alone. He needed some actual human interaction and things like that.

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And you're absolutely right that a lot of these people will, I say you're absolutely right, but it's the guy in the article and you're right with your tangent about COVID too, is that people will use

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Imago Dei to just accomplish whatever they want to, because what they'll essentially do is they will not argue for their particular political position.

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They will simply assert it. And then as evidence of why this ought to be done, they'll assert man's inherent dignity given by virtue of the image of God.

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And they're not giving an argument. They're just saying something that two parties may agree on, but that's like saying the economy is bad, therefore we need to do tariffs or this or that.

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Okay, sure. The other person might agree that, but you have to explain why the tariffs would help fix the bad economy.

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You can't just say, therefore this, then this, unless you're Trump, then you can say it and I'll laugh because you're funny. But I mean, with something like this, you can't just assert it because the other party will also agree that man has inherent dignity, but they'll disagree on what the proper solution for it is.

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But that's part of upholding modern liberal orthodoxy is just giving theological assertions to justify whatever the popular political program is.

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And it's frustrating to have conversations with people like that because what ends up happening is they try to take the higher ground by saying they're standing on scripture's principles.

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But then when you try to add like a bit more nuance and say it's a bit more complicated than that, they act like you're blaspheming

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God. And it's just like, no, no, that's not how it works. Life is complicated and difficult and hard and you need to think through things.

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Yeah, I think it gets back to kind of like rights language. And it seems like the liberal understanding is your net worth is it is the sum total of the rights that are extended to you.

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And so if you don't extend a right or you take away a right of some kind, it means you're attacking the image of God.

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But there's two different assumptions of what rights are. You have the liberal assumption that rights are intended to produce equality.

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So if everyone has, let's say, an Xbox and Matthew doesn't have an Xbox or I don't have an

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Xbox, we demand an Xbox, right? Like it becomes a right because everything it's and actually, you know,

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I think I just made a good point. We probably should have an Xbox. I wouldn't have time to play it.

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And neither would you. You're getting married. So yeah, we'll pass on that. But unless you already have one, maybe you already have an

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Xbox. I do not. I do not have an Xbox. I used to when

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I was in college, but it's gone. I was a PlayStation guy. I had PlayStation two.

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That's how old I am. I had first PlayStation one and then PlayStation two. But I digress.

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You know, everyone's having so much fun playing their Xbox, but we don't get to have that in fun.

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So we have a right and you're denying the Emonga day if you don't give us an Xbox. Well, that seems kind of silly.

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And I picked that example on purpose because it is silly. But I think it's silly because the Christian understanding of rights comes more from the idea that God actually gave us duties.

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And that is encapsulated in the Dominion mandate that we are to have charge over this earth and that keeping and cultivating the garden is more extensive than just farm work, that this is engaging in all the kinds of things that people do to produce value in culture and in economics and all the rest.

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So God gave you abilities that some of them are unique to you. And so a right is something that is a negative right.

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I should even phrase it that way, is the ability to serve God. Ultimately, that's what it is.

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That's what a right should be. It's always rooted in that. So we have a right, for example, the

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Second Amendment, right? It's not it's not about guns as a right. That is it's really what's behind that is it's about self -defense.

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It's like you should be able to protect yourself. God's given you a duty to protect yourself and your family and your fellow man.

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So government shouldn't stand in your way. You should be able to do that kind of thing. Right. Or there should be a mechanism to do that if, you know, if it's not going to be government.

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So anyway, that's that's kind of one of the things I think that maybe is the dividing line here on and to, you know, to see it get into the realm of like the

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Imago Day itself, something so intrinsic and fundamental to Christianity is a little bonkers.

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You know, like I said already, it's manipulative, but it's also just kind of bonkers. It's kind of crazy to the champion of the

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Imago Day. This passage is the justification for the complete dismantling of those social structures. I think I already read that it would regard all humans as interchangeable and destroy all human excellence in the process.

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OK, the goal of this post -Christian radical egalitarianism is an eschatology, a vision and goal of a future to be sought that is both perverted and overrealized.

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It's a perversion of what the true Christian eschatology is, and it's an overrealization of what that eschatology is trying to fully bring about the consummated future in the here and now.

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The Christian vision of the world to come is marked in part by imagery that shows the passing away of certain everyday social arrangements, for instance, neither marrying nor given in marriage, something that is because shadows are giving way to reality.

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For instance, earthly marriages point to and give way to the finished reality of the lamb and his bride.

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But in this disfigured vision of the world to come and what it ought to be, the passing away of everyday social arrangements in the human history is recklessly reduced to the mere doing away of all particularities and inequalities.

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This becomes the overarching value and moral compass. It's a distortion where liberty to be the best of what

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God meant each individual to be becomes freedom from all constraints, even and especially constraints on our sinful impulses that tell us we could be or must be.

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In truth, the glorious future imagined by the foolish, faithful adherents of the Imago DEI and which they seek to bring about on earth looks much less like a heavenly paradise and much more like a hellish wasteland.

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So he's not talking, obviously, about different flavors of eschatology in Christianity. He's saying the broad

32:51

Christian eschatology is looking towards new heavens and new earth, and it is going to have different arrangements and their shadows in this realm, this temporal realm.

33:00

But the alternative to that, this liberal DEI arrangement is a utopian scheme that seeks to bring about what they think of as a similar arrangement, but in actuality, it doesn't work at all.

33:19

For example, if you dismantled marriage, which is honestly, that's what a lot of the policies that have been foisted in our face in the name of human rights and so forth for, you know, give you a few examples, things like, you know, no fault divorce or the legalization of pornography and obscenity in prostitution and all the sexual deviancies,

33:43

I suppose, will go into that. The redefining of marriage so that it is no longer a man and woman, but it's also open to those who have the same gender, same sex.

33:57

They can engage in a ceremony that pretends to sanctify the same kind of arrangement.

34:05

We obviously have the transgender sports issue and all of these blurring of the lines, these created order lines.

34:13

This is an attack on the creator. This is a confusion, and these are roadblocks in the way of trying to fulfill the creator's intentions and fulfill our own destinies that God's given us.

34:25

And so our image of God is actually, in a sense, it's under attack in these kinds of things.

34:32

But from the other side, you'll hear that actually, no, this is a fulfillment of the image of God somehow.

34:39

This is about dignity. This is about extending rights and all of that. And it's like, man, that's like literally calling good evil, evil, good in that scenario.

34:50

So anything to add to that, Matthew? No, I totally agree with everything that you said there.

34:58

It just, especially the part, Aaron makes a really good point about eschatology and by sort of saying that there's an over -realizing of the eschatology, and that sort of gets back to the common

35:14

Theo nerd thing to say, where you use the big words to sound smart. Amenitizing the eschaton, basically, like trying to bring about the end on your own, you know, or looking like too quickly ahead and being like, oh, we can bring this about ourselves.

35:32

And that sort of is the pinnacle of human pride, believing that you can achieve that which only

35:38

God can directly and primarily achieve by virtue of his own power.

35:46

It's probably because you try to place yourself essentially in the position of God and you enact all these things with these eager expectations that it'll come about this way, but you're just, you're never going to achieve it.

35:58

And that sort of is what DEI seems to do or seeks to do because it values, you know, we need the same outcomes for everybody.

36:08

And it doesn't leave room for, you know, the fact that, hey, maybe the reason why this person got the job instead of this person is because they simply do it better.

36:17

They simply perform better. And therefore we're going to choose this person. Maybe it's not just, you know, their upbringing was bad or whatever.

36:24

Maybe Jim really is just better at James at doing this than that. But, you know, there's this notion that, oh, well, all hierarchy is bad.

36:34

This person can't be better than that person at doing this, yada, yada, yada, which is actually funny enough.

36:40

It's strange because I would even argue that while all people have equal grounds before the throne of the father, have equal access to, you know, receive forgiveness from Christ, even in heaven, there are still going to be some people that are like higher than others.

36:59

Like I think that the apostle Paul will probably be of greater regard in the kingdom of heaven than myself.

37:06

I don't think that when I get to heaven, I'm going to be on the same status as the apostle Paul, David, or all these other people, not to sound like a papist or anything, but heck,

37:16

I think even, you know, the Virgin Mary is probably at a higher spot than me, you know, than a lot of people.

37:24

I think that the way that it works is just like, you know, some people are worthy of certain honors and dignities and things like that.

37:31

Hierarchy is not a result of the fall. It's not inherently bad. Even in the Garden of Eden, Eve would have submitted to her husband.

37:39

There are all these things that are ingrained in creation that are, it's not just a good relative to the fall.

37:45

It's a good even prior to that. And so DEI not only seeks to amenitize the eschaton, it seeks to basically say, oh, well, we're going to make it better than the actual eschaton.

37:57

So I don't know. It's just something I thought about, something, yeah. Yeah, well, James one talks about a crown of life and there's other warnings in James that you will receive judgment and it's written to Christians, but there seems to be levels of some kind, like not that you're going to be jealous or care once you get to heaven.

38:18

If you aren't in a position, but it does seem like according to our deeds, we are, there's still a system, a reward system of some kind.

38:29

And I don't know what that looks like, to be quite honest. I don't think the scripture gives us enough information, but it does seem to indicate there is something like that.

38:38

Yeah, absolutely. And Dante's Paradiso actually, I read through the whole trilogy of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso a few years ago.

38:49

And something that was really remarkable, the last but Paradiso where he's in heaven is,

38:56

I can't remember the exact line because I have a ridiculous memory that is not able to recall anything verbatim, but it essentially boils down to, he's talking to somebody and they look ahead and they see someone higher and he's like, aren't you jealous?

39:10

And it's just like, no, it's actually a cause for rejoice. First off, that I'm even here. And second off, the fact that my brother or my sister is doing better than me, that means they're sharing in a good and that is for my good because they're my brother or sister.

39:27

So this idea of hierarchy is even being rejoiced in because the eternal joy and felicity which surrounds you makes you rejoice even if others are ahead in that regard.

39:39

Yeah, the whole idea that these disparities in economics and social arrangements are evil seems to root back into some kind of a jealousy where you don't think that they should.

39:54

It's not fair. They should have that when you don't or something. And of course, in a democracy, it's inevitable that that becomes a political tool to use to stir up those kinds of things.

40:06

And instead of pursuing justice, you end up just pursuing, trying to gain,

40:13

I forget which founder said it, but a larger largess at the public trough, I think, is the way one of the founding members of the founding generation put it, who was arguing against democracy.

40:24

So anyway, that's not the point of this, though. I mean, Matthew's off in Catholic territory reading Dante and St.

40:30

Mary's. Here I am ripping on. All right.

40:36

Radical environmentalists and antinatalists outlooks, lifestyles and policy proposals that amount to nihilistic and misanthropic death wishes toward mankind are attacks on our common calling as sowers of the field and the womb inherit in the imago dei.

40:50

Claims of not wanting a child to grow up in an imagined future dystopian wasteland as reasons to not have a child are a perversion of compassion and is devoid of hope and claims that it's doing my part to lower the carbon footprint and save the planet are akin to a pharisaical public display of almsgiving and prayer.

41:05

Egalitarian tendencies and approaches to human sexuality, both overt and subtle in both our conduct and existence as sexed beings are attacks upon our distinct and differentiated callings as males and females informing and filling the world inherit in the imago dei.

41:21

It's not merely the most egregious outworkings and celebration of the alphabet soup of sexual diversity that must be affirmed because tsk tsk, we must remember that they too are made in God's image and have dignity and worth, even though the very things they're living out in front of us, uh, affronts to the meanings and implications of the image of God.

41:42

It's also the waves of feminism that eroded male spaces. Let's see. So he gives all these examples. Um, you know,

41:48

I was gonna just to get into like super controversial territory here. I, I just thought of it, but you know,

41:54

Paul didn't even challenge, not directly at least the social arrangements of his day that were, uh, not in and of themselves sinful.

42:04

Like he, for example, he did not, um, say that, you know, Christians cannot at any point engage in slavery of any kind.

42:13

Now some would say he sowed the seeds that later, uh, led to emancipation and this kind of thing.

42:18

But I think if you honestly read the new Testament, you'll find there's, uh,

42:24

Paul is actually, in some ways he's reinforcing those relationships by saying when

42:30

Christians enter into these relationships or, or Christianity enters into this kind of relationship, it actually creates a mutual, uh, trust and a mutual benefit there between even master and slave.

42:42

That's new Testament Christianity. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Go read, you know, uh, go read

42:47

Ephesians, go read Philemon, go right. And it's not to say that that arrangement, that labor arrangement is a creation norm because it's not, it's not something that God has mandated.

42:58

But the interesting thing to me is whenever you tinker with, uh, labor, um, arrangements, uh, because there's a disparity of some kind in them, you inevitably have disparities coming out in other places.

43:13

Once you end those arrangements, uh, there, there's going to be disparities. There's going, that's inevitable.

43:18

That's part of creation in our own existence in America. When, uh, we ended the kind of slavery that we had in the 1800s, um, you know, which, which is a good positive thing, the, unfortunately the way we did it and what we've reaped afterwards has been a population that has had dependency on the federal or the national government and has, uh, essentially, um, uh, we've, we've actually kicked the can down the road in a way we still have high crime rates and we still have, um, out of wedlock birth rates that are high in the descendants of that particular population.

44:00

And, you know, like, do you pat yourself on the back? Do you say, well, look at the good we did, or do you, do you look at what's happened since then?

44:10

And you're like, wow, the disparities never went away. They changed, they morphed. Um, you know,

44:15

I'm not trying to black pill on all this kind of thing, but I'm just saying that, um, you, you have sin and you also have creation norms and, and creation norms are good.

44:24

Sin is bad, but both of these things actually produce disparities that you have to deal with in the real world, different kinds of disparities, but it's part of life.

44:35

You can't eliminate it. There's no system that eliminates these things completely. You could try to, you know, be a monarchist, right.

44:42

Or P uh, some of the more innovative, your Protestant Franco is not going to eliminate these things for you.

44:48

Right. Um, we, we can say that there's arrangements that might be better suited for our population or something, but, um, but there's always going to be a disparities,

44:58

I suppose. It's just part of the world that God made. And, uh, of course, sin Mars that and so forth.

45:04

But, uh, anyway, I figured we get really, really controversial here at the end. And I think we're only three paragraphs from the end here.

45:10

So, uh, it says yet, yet, yet other subversive forms in this distorted image takes are the depersonalizing of people, groups, and power structures, proper

45:20

Christian teachings about love the stranger and love your neighbor as yourself become bludgeons that harm our actual neighbors in the name of the misguided and unaccountable enabling of strangers to undermine a culture, proper

45:32

Christian teachings about honoring authorities. And the last shall be first. And the first, uh, last give way to notions that Christians and authority can never exercise real authority, but must be servant leaders, which is to say doormats.

45:45

Okay. Those allowed to lead as those they, uh, lead see fit worst

45:51

Christian teachings about the right exercise of authority by civil rulers give way to characters like Christ rejected power, right?

45:59

We hear this from Tim Keller. Um, let's see, uh, I'm going to skim here. It's just foolish masochism disguised as wise martyrdom.

46:08

Entire books could be written to explore and expose the extensive repertoire of mockingly hideous distortions that are expressive of the

46:14

Imago DEI masquerading as the Imago day. Um, so he's basically saying this is all a deception and, um, interesting food for thought on all of this, because, you know, this is one of the things

46:25

I've been focused on quite a bit is trying to, uh, combat social justice and point out the problems with it.

46:34

And now liberalism more broadly speaking, and this seems to get at the heart of the issues with that.

46:40

Why do we have a, um, a population that is disconnected from each other?

46:47

Communities are, uh, ravaged. You know, I, I was commenting to a friend of mine this morning who called me and we grew up.

46:56

So this is my might even be before Matthew was born, but, uh, maybe Matthew remembers some of this.

47:02

Like it seemed like people did a lot more hospitality. It seemed like, especially women, um, as they grew up and they, they were trained by their mothers to be hospitable, to be, uh, to do the kind of duties that accompanied, um, you know, being a wife and a mother that it just naturally was, uh, seen as part of what it means to keep house.

47:23

You do hospitality. There's play dates, you know, between kids and that kind of thing. And we were noticing that it just seems like that's less and less frequent, at least in our neck of the woods.

47:34

Like it's not done as much. And you know, what is that? It's like a war happened almost.

47:39

And people are suspicious of one another. And, uh, but like, but no one got shot.

47:45

Right. Um, and you know, is it liberalism? What is it? I'm not exactly sure.

47:51

It's probably a bunch of converging elements. But I have to think that this, uh, as the author calls it, this, uh, a

47:59

Mago D E I contributes to this because it does vilify certain classes of people.

48:08

And it, uh, it, it makes the entire purpose of human existence to be a leveling, uh, a rod that levels everything.

48:18

Like that's how you gain virtue is by leveling, uh, by giving up.

48:23

If you're too high on the totem pole, giving up privilege and so forth, like that becomes the leveler. And it's,

48:29

I don't know, like there's, I think it stirs up and creates suspicion in people. It's like, you know, am

48:36

I going to be judged for what I have? Am I going to be, uh, you know, condemned if people see that,

48:43

I don't know, maybe I have more money than this is probably not going to happen with me, but, or someone who has a lot of money, um, is that going to be like the avenue for condemning me or, you know, are, are people going to, uh,

48:57

I don't know, think less of me because of the opposite of that. Because I'm, I don't know, I'm not meeting some egalitarian standard of some way in some way.

49:05

Um, I don't know. I, I just, it's food for thought, but, uh, it, it does seem like the duties that accompany being made in the image of God and then fulfilling his law.

49:18

Uh, and part of that being loving other people seem to be going the way of the dodo bird a bit in, in just general society.

49:27

Um, and that gives us an opportunity. Like I think Christians can certainly be the instrumental faction in society that determines whether or not there's going to be an actual community of, of loving people who act neighborly and that kind of thing.

49:40

And that's attractive. I don't know about you, Matthew, but it seems like Gen Z wants that and they just don't know how to go from A to B to get there.

49:48

Yeah, no, I mean, they want that sort of thing because it's just so lacking already.

49:54

Um, but because it's been so lacking, they don't know how to get there. So no,

50:00

I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Man of few words. We're going to, uh, probably in the podcast here after we take a few questions and queries, make sure that you, if you have questions for Matthew specifically, put them in the chat and address

50:15

Matthew. So, uh, conceptual clarity is here. Conceptual clarity is always here. He's like probably the most faithful listener.

50:22

Um, Imago Dei is the evangelical left get out of jail free cars, right?

50:28

It's like the red button you press when you don't know how to like argue for a mandate or some kind of policy.

50:35

You just say Imago Dei, uh, whatever they advocate is not biblically supported. It may even be biblically wrong.

50:42

Uh, we have, um, Sam, Mick Mara saying excited for the men's conference this

50:49

September. I'm looking to do a sort of personal American history to our new England, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

50:54

Are there any places you recommend I visit? Well, that is a, uh, a large area, man.

51:00

And off the top of my head, I'm going to totally forget things that, um, are important.

51:05

I'm sure in this, it depends what you're interested in to some extent, but if you're giving me all of new

51:10

England, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, my goodness, uh, I would go to obviously Jamestown and Plymouth.

51:17

If you can go to those two places, those are kind of the seedbeds for what became the United States. And if you can visit

51:23

Williamsburg, it's a wonderful living history down in Virginia. Of course, there's a lot of battle battlefields.

51:29

You know, Gettysburg would be a big one. Uh, the battle of, uh, Yorktown's a big one.

51:34

You have Lexington and Concord up there near Boston. Uh, I'm near actually

51:39

George Washington's headquarters, West Point and the National Purple Heart Museum. And the Hudson Valley is rich.

51:45

So if you come to the Hudson Valley, but I don't want to just nerd out on all this. Uh, if you have a, a specific question, you can certainly message me on social media.

51:53

I'll also say that I'm upset that you're having the men's conference at the time because John is now not able to make my wedding.

52:01

No, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's the same weekend. So, um, let's see.

52:08

We got Gerard saying that part of the commandment is to go out and make disciples, not just repopulate the earth physically to spread the knowledge of God and his law.

52:16

Thank you for reminding us of that. Very true. Uh, let's see.

52:22

Well, it seems like those are most of the comments. Um, Jill, Jill says, reminds me of certain

52:27

Christian leaders who say we make an idol of the family. What they really mean is we try to protect traditional marriage and the sanctity of human life, both designed by God.

52:35

Fair enough. All right. Well, um, I got to run. Matthew's got to run. We really appreciate you being here and we'll, as always be back next week, hopefully at the regular time.