Dangerous Alliances w/Joe Boot

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived.

Who are the Pharisees of our day? This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

We need to do better. The Church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

At the Worldview Youth Academy we bridge this critical gap. Here theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of His Kingdom.

Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges.

So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.

We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom 2 .0.

Non -rockabotas must stop! I don't want to rock the boat, I want to sink it! Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

We're being delusional. Delusional? Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal.

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

It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me? Yes! What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

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

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. But as God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their

God and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the

Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the

Lord Almighty. That is 2 Corinthians 6, verses 14 -18.

Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio. The first of 2025.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. We've got an exciting month ahead of us.

Actually, I'm going to ask our guest in a minute how that's going to affect him. The next couple of weeks, anyways, it's going to be interesting and fun.

And I don't know, fun may not be the right word. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Welcome, everyone.

Pastor Jeff is somewhere in Kentucky or Cincinnati, maybe. He's trying to get back.

He's in transit. Yeah, weather has been no bueno and he's had to cancel a lot of flights.

So he's trying hard to get back here. Pray for safe travels. But he's doing work for an abortion over there. We've got bills in California.

No, we don't. I don't know where California even came from. I guess the wildfires is in my brain. California has got its hands full.

Kentucky was the word I was looking for. Yes, Kentucky and Ohio. And Ohio, thank you. So please be praying for that.

But I want to get right into here because our very awesome special guest has a very limited time with us.

So Joe Boot, hey, brother. Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. You are in England in some amazing

English cottage with an amazing library. And it's 8 o 'clock, 8 .15

at night. And he's needing to eat dinner. So what's going on, brother? Well, yeah, that's a fairly apt description.

Happy New Year to you guys. And yeah, this is my English cottage or house.

It's called Dairy House, actually. And it has a barn on the back where the

Ezra offices are. Very cool. It's a cool setup.

I just got back from Scotland a few days ago. We were up there in Aberdeen in the cold weather doing an education conference.

And actually, after speaking at a conference for evangelists next week in England, I will be on my way over to you guys.

So I'll be two weeks in the US. I think I'm starting in San Antonio in Texas.

And then I'll be in Denver, and then Kentucky, and then somewhere in Chattanooga, Georgia area, so Tennessee and Georgia.

That's quite a tour. Are you glad to be back in the UK? Yes, I am.

But that's not because it's not without problems or issues here. I'm glad to be back for the

Battle of Britain, for the struggle that's on here. Moving home from Canada, although Canada's home from home.

I was there for 20 years. I'm a citizen of countries. But being back home in the

UK is out of the chip pan into the fire in some respects. It's a challenging time economically, politically, socially here.

But I am very glad to be back. And I have to divide my time between our works in the

US and Canada and in the UK. Of course, some of our work as a ministry takes us well beyond that.

So for example, I'll be in the Philippines in February. So it passed us there.

Or maybe even Germany. Yeah, I saw you guys in Germany in the fall last year.

And I'm sure we'll be back in Germany too. So yes, exciting, as you say, an exciting few months ahead.

And I know that you guys have got, well, some minor things happening on the ground there in the next few. Some minor things.

Before we get to that, I was just to say, it's kind of sad that we have to go to Germany to hang out together.

But I got to spend time with Joe's dad, whose name is Michael. Awesome, awesome brother.

But he sounds just like Michael Caine. It's uncanny. No, the actor.

It's uncanny. Sir Michael Caine. Sir Michael Caine. I told him that. But it was like, every time he opened his mouth, all

I could picture was like, Batman or Alfred. Alfred, yeah. It was amazing.

But he's great. I love that guy. Gotta love that. So how is this inauguration going to affect you in the

UK? How do you foresee that? What's the date of the inauguration? 20th. Yeah.

It's interesting. I will be in the States for the inauguration. So I'll be kind of experiencing it with you.

But yeah, it absolutely affects the United Kingdom. The Trump administration will undoubtedly impact

British politics and the global perspective from the

UK point of view in a number of different ways. First of all, there is a relatively new party in the

UK called Reform UK. You guys might have heard of Nigel Farage, who is the

Reform UK leader. And he is very friendly with Donald Trump and has been very supportive of Trump and vice versa.

And reform is rising very, very quickly in the polls here and in popularity, while the popularity of the prime minister, who is basically a socialist who got in in the fall, is cratering very fast.

So even things like this government here, the Labour government, trying to get one or two things done before Trump takes office because they're afraid that he might scuttle them.

So there's a disastrous plan that our government has to give away the Chagos Islands, which has both

British and American military bases on it. Very important, especially with regard to China.

The Trump administration doesn't support this woke giveaway of the island, I think, to Mauritius, which has no legal claim on the island at all.

So they're running around trying to get that done. So even in very sort of practical ways politically, the

Trump administration and its taking office does have an impact here.

I think it will, my guess is that it's going to help the ongoing shift of public opinion in the

UK to the right, and in particular towards reform UK.

We're heading under this socialist government right now into economic disaster area, potentially recession already.

They're looking at interest rates rising. They've done all the usual socialist tinkering with the economy, trying to fix putting up minimum wage, slapping

VAT on private schools, increasing corporation tax, trying to tax farmers' land with inheritance taxes, all the usual things that socialists try and do.

And it's already starting to crater our economy. So the change in administration in the

US will have significant ramifications over here, and for the most part, from my perspective, positive ones.

Yeah, well, I think it'll be positive for us, too. There comes a point, I guess, where there's nowhere to go but up.

Yeah, yes. Yeah, true. Well, I don't want to derail us too far. I'm always fascinated by this conversation.

I'm just curious what the transition has been like for you guys from Queen Elizabeth to King Charles, how that's been.

Has there been any major changes or kind of the same stuff? Well, Queen Elizabeth II was not a replaceable figure in the straightforward sense.

She commanded tremendous respect all over the globe. Even you

Americans tended to refer to her in popular parlance as the queen, not Queen Elizabeth II, partly because she was around for so long.

I mean, she bookended an era, really, from the 1950s, the only monarch that I could remember that is now a 50 -year -old man.

And she did take her Christian faith very seriously and was very public about it.

And she was greatly respected in this country, basically by everyone across the political spectrum.

And in many respects, she represented her death was the end of an era.

Yeah. And it's not been as sort of disastrous as some people feared with Charles.

He did pretty much stick to the traditional coronation oath. And he's a more controversial figure insofar he's on board with a whole load of what

I would call generally left -leaning projects, especially the whole climate issue.

But it's sort of been business as usual for the monarchy. And he's not unpopular, but he's certainly not

Queen Elizabeth II. He's not as popular as she was, and he doesn't command the same global respect.

Yeah. Interesting. Thank you for that. I was actually in Belfast the day the

Queen passed, and that was a very interesting experience. I was in Texas.

Oh, that's funny. It was cool to be there and experience that. I had my middle daughter with me, and that was very – it was cool to be a kind of part of that and see how that all – even though it was a sad day, but just to see something like that.

Anyways, like I said, I don't want to get us too far off track. So there's a couple of things we want to talk about. First, ReformCon 2025.

That's coming up very quickly here in about four months. We're partnering with Joe and the

Ezra Institute and very excited for that. Of course, Joe will be there and Doug Wilson, Pastor Jeff Durbin, James White, Andrew Sandlin, David Bonson, Toby Sumpter, and more.

Virgil Walker is going to be emceeing. Very excited about that. Virgil's a good friend of mine from G3.

So, yeah, we're very excited. We've been talking a little bit, but the tickets are for sale, and we'd love to see you guys out there.

It'll be in Tucson, Arizona this time. We're going to do some cool stuff. I'm excited for that.

Yeah, we're glad to be partnering with you, Joe. And the topic kind of theme is Up from the

Ashes, and so how do we rebuild society from a Christian worldview perspective?

So, yeah, anything you want to say about that, Joe? Can we convince

John Cooper from Skillet to come? I am trying.

There's got to be room for a comment. Brother, I am trying, man. I need to send him another note. I did see him in London recently at one of his concerts.

Yeah. Wow. And I need to lean on him again, see if we can.

I know we've got that sort of question mark, empty space on the website right now to be confirmed.

I think we can try and convince John to come in there. But as you say, we're coming at this out of the ashes from a distinctly

Christian worldview perspective. And for us, that means a reformational perspective.

Yeah. Right out of the reform faith, which centers in the sovereignty of God, the principles of sphere sovereignty, a presuppositional standpoint in terms of the absolute authority of the word of God.

And there won't be any praying to Mary or saints either at the conference. Great transition.

That was perfect. Perfect transition into our first topic. This all kind of relates together.

I think this topic that we're about to dive into, how do we think through building

God -glorifying alliances? How should we think through that Christianly, as you always say,

Joe? What is to inform the kind of co -belligerence we are to demonstrate with other like -minded folks, especially when they don't share our core convictions?

As Christians, we want to, in every way possible, strive to unify around our core principles.

So these would be our beliefs of the word of God and the gospel. And then sometimes we're also faced with opportunities to, as you may say, move the ball down the floor a little bit and advance a social cause.

But that would require working together, cooperating with people that may have the same social goals that we do, but don't share some of those core

Christian convictions. Is there a way? There are foundations. How do we navigate that space?

I guess it's the question of ecumenism, right? Even not just in the ecclesiastical setting, but also in the political, public space, too.

How do we work together, or to what degree can we work together with other people with whom we differ, and how deep can those differences be, and how does the

Bible guide that engagement in that? How should we think through that? Maybe that would be a good place to start.

Yeah, great question. I'll let Joe run with it from there, and we'll chime in.

Well, I mean, probably a general remark is helpful to begin with, and that is that from the reformational starting point, from a biblical worldview starting point, we recognize that there is no neutrality in any area of life.

We're dealing with a fundamental religious antithesis that runs through all of reality. When we think about the world and creation, we don't think of an artificial division of nature and grace, of creation and redemption, as though those are separated from one another, as though there are two kingdoms, a common kingdom and a redemptive kingdom.

We think about the one kingdom of God and God's creation, but the antithesis that runs through history is a religious one.

So it's not about domains of life. So, well, if you think about perhaps the realm of the arts and think, well, the arts has lots of evil in it, so if I flee the arts,

I can get away from evil there, or if politics has lots of evil in it, so if I flee politics,

I can get away from evil there. No, there is both obedience and disobedience, faithfulness and apostasy in every sphere of life.

So the dichotomy that runs throughout existence is the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.

That means there is no neutrality anywhere. And so we can't say, well, we can all, in the area of, let's say, political life, we can just operate in terms of common principles based in natural law.

There's no fundamental difference. And we can just have co -belligerence with pretty much anyone who recognizes a similar kind of principle.

We recognize that religiously and ultimately there is no neutrality, and the task in many respects for Christians is to push that antithesis, as Greg Barnson liked to say.

So we don't lose sight in any of this, first of all, of that no neutrality principle, and Paul's pretty clear about that in Romans 1.

There's worship of the creation or there's worship of the creator. That affects every area of life right down to our idea about social wars and sexuality and so on.

So I think probably that's our starting point. Practically, though, when it comes to thinking through questions of co -belligerence and partnership, it is in part a prudential question, and it does depend somewhat on the sphere of life and its guiding principle, the sphere of life that we're talking about.

It's going to look slightly different, isn't it, in the sphere of marriage and family or the sphere of the church as opposed to maybe looking in the sphere of business or the civil sphere as to what degree of partnership or co -belligerency might be possible.

We can come to them in just a second. I want to punt it back to you so I don't do all the talking, but I think there are two texts

I'd like to look at, one of which Luke has read part of already, but there's another one. I think there's a text that I think applies for us within, that is within the

Christian community, and then there's a text that applies with relationships without, outside the

Christian community, that I think give us guidance into how we work this through in the different spheres of life.

Well, let's go for it. So we have 2 Corinthians 6, which has come out from among them.

Be ye separate. Would this be what you're referring to in terms of the ecclesiastical sphere?

And then in terms of the other text, where would you point to as a jumping -off point? Well, we've got 1

Corinthians 5, and let me see here.

I think it's 10 through 13, which is the text that I think that deals with actually relationships within.

I think 2 Corinthians 6 is actually dealing with the external relationships, not being unequally yoked.

So if we looked at 1 Corinthians 5 and verses 10 through 15, let me read them to you.

Paul says, In the letter I wrote to you, I told you to avoid the company of fornicators, not meaning everyone in the world around you who is debauched or a miser or an extortioner or an idolater.

To do that, you would have to cut yourselves off from the world altogether. No, my letter meant that if anyone who is counted among the brethren, that's the key thing, counted among the brethren is debauched or a miser or an idolater or bitter of speech or a drunkard or an extortioner, you must avoid his company.

You must not even sit at table with him. Why should I claim jurisdiction over those who are without?

It is for you to pass judgment within your own number, leaving God to judge those who are without.

Banish then the offender from your company. So there

Paul is talking about, I think, how we address relationships, questions of partnership, questions of co -belligerency, questions even of fellowship with those on the inside, that is those who claim to be

Christians, who claim to be brethren, claim to be brothers. And actually, if you look at the list that he deals with and addresses, it's quite challenging, isn't it?

The debauched, the fornicator, the miser, the extortioner, and, of course, the idolater, even those who are bitter of speech, and that might relate a little bit to the conversation we can have about social media.

Contentious, right, fighting one another, stirring up strife for the sake of the controversy.

For the sake of strife. I'm reading from the Knox translation, bitter of speech, the drunkard, and so on.

We're to avoid their company, we're told. That's the jurisdiction there of the church.

And, in fact, in the case of the unrepentant, we're told to banish the offender.

So there's pretty clear guidance as to how we are to build relationships, partnerships, fellowship, and co -belligerency with those explicitly who claim to be brothers, who claim to be fellow

Christians. Paul is pretty clear about the kind of standards that would dictate who we can build meaningful partnerships with.

Okay. Now, I have an example of our own activity here that we use in the area of life and fighting for the unborn.

The example I think that maybe people that watch this will currently have swirling around in their minds is what's going on on social media with,

I mean, I don't have any reservations about name -dropping here, but Calvin Robinson. So he was invited to this conference by Clear Truth Media, and then his invitation was recently rescinded.

There was a lot of assumptions made in terms of, you know, he's had commentary against WOKE and DEI during this time, and even the

COVID tyranny, and so a lot of evangelical Protestants were under the impression, okay, this is an

Anglican in the same vein as J .C. Ryle. But, you know, the last several days here, and even week, there's been an increasingly contentious pattern of speech on the part of Calvin to, you know, you know, denounce

Protestantism, John Calvin, and, you know, speak badly about the

Reformation in that sense, and then also positively putting forth the Marian dogma, which you alluded to earlier.

So he was disinvited. His invitation was rescinded, you know, once the board members of Clear Truth found these things out, examined this pattern of speech, and saying, listen, if you're insulting your base, you know, we can't in good conscience allow you to participate in this.

And he's also taking part in another conference coming up as well. But this is the example floating around in people's minds right now.

That's why I wanted to speak to it, because I think we need to have an answer. We do need to have a fully formed biblical engagement on this topic, because as we deal in the area of abortion, we're confronted with the possibility of partnering, working together with Roman Catholics often that are very involved in the pro -life world.

You know, their methodology is secular humanism, if you look at the bottom of this, whereas ours, we're approaching this from an explicitly

Christian perspective. We're saying this is a gospel issue. We're saying that the woman is a sinner, and the problem is a heart that needs forgiveness, that the gospel needs to change the culture, and that we need to actually apply biblical standards of justice in terms of how we care for and protect unborn children.

Those are the lines that we're drawing up front. That's what we're making clear. And we would never, say, have this person from a different system or worldview come in and speak, perhaps, at one of our gatherings, because we realize that the gospel is the line.

It has to be that. We've drawn this line because we believe God draws it here. And we say we can't have partnership in that way, right, in this context, to this degree, in the same way we wouldn't, if we were invited to speak at one of their events, we would make our position very clear up front.

Listen, we're Christians. We believe in the authority of Scripture. I'm Trinitarian, et cetera, et cetera. So we draw those lines very, very clearly up front.

But at the same time, we realize that in a social political context, when you're trying to affect political change, you want people pulling the same direction as you politically, even if they don't share your core

Christian convictions, right? They may vote very, very similarly as you. They might have the same views on family and sexuality and life and so on and so forth.

So you want that in place. So I guess that's what you're providing here, a framework,

I suppose, Joe, with introducing these two verses, of how do we think through the context of co -laboring, working together with people in these various aspects of life.

Yeah, and I think, and I'll let you speak, Joe. I mean, that's why Joe said at the beginning, it's important to what sphere of jurisdiction are we talking about.

And there are degrees. Yes, for sure. And so, yeah, I'd love to hear you take, and obviously even Calvin Robinson's British, I believe, right?

So I know Joe has a lot of kind of inside information. I don't know if inside is not the right word, but he's very much more familiar with Calvin Robinson, his work in the

UK. So yeah, I want to hear your thoughts on that. Well, to the general point,

I think that when we look at the history of the

Western world since the Reformation, you know, cultures in Christendom developed along very different and distinctive lines, depending on whether they were

Roman Catholic, whether they were Protestant. I mean, in England, in Britain, we have an establishment of the

Protestant faith. It's not a Roman Catholic faith. And of course, our forebears thought that that was significant and important.

It's not that there's not toleration, the act of toleration, following basically the bloodless revolution of 1688, there was increasing measures of toleration for Christians of all shapes and sizes and types.

But the establishment, which the king, even at the last coronation, and we've already talked about the king briefly, swore to uphold the

Protestant faith. And so that is established by law in Britain.

And of course, in the United States, in the earlier constitutional period, there were states that established different churches,

Protestant churches. So this is not an insignificant issue if we're to take the historical questions and the actual substantive issues seriously.

Now, that doesn't mean to say that, you know, John Calvin said of Rome that there was a true church amongst them.

It's like a snowball that's rolled down the hill. It's not what's in the center, the ecumenical creeds and confessions that are at stake so much as all the accretions that were picked up as Rome rolled down the hill of culture, as it were, like a snowball picked up all this other stuff to the point where it eventually was obscuring the gospel itself.

And so, yes, I obviously have observed some of the online activity and commentary that you raised the issue of the personality, the character of Calvin Robinson.

He has been involved, I think, in a number of different churches in a very short space of time, has been a media personality on television and on podcasts and so on and so forth, has seemed to bounce from one thing to another quite quickly.

I'm always a little bit reticent and concerned when I see somebody bouncing from one thing to another very quickly.

The Free Church of England, which he was a part of until very recently, was actually established in the 19th century when

Anglicans, many Anglicans thought that the Church of England was becoming too Roman.

And so they established a much more distinctively sort of Puritan, evangelical free church in England.

But he was part of that. Now he appears to have bounced over to Rome. And then now

I have friends who are Roman Catholics, and I've had lots of dialogue with Roman Catholics.

I've seen some evangelicals in Britain go over to Rome in the last few years.

But what that does, inevitably, is with the organizations they were once part of,

I can think of one former bishop in particular, it tends to breach a certain degree of fellowship and partnership.

You can have partnership on a certain level. You can have things that don't tie you in.

But having a deeper level of fellowship, for example, having them preach in your church or speak and preach at an evangelical conference, that becomes highly problematic because of the step that they've taken.

And when somebody starts talking about John Calvin and Luther as heretics, as the

Reformation as a mistake, talking fairly anti -Protestant terms, talking about Mary as the

Queen of Heaven, England as Mary's dowry, prayers offered to saints, the notion that even the thief on the cross was converted because of the intercessions of Mary and this sort of thing, all of those sorts of dogmas, well, in the sphere of civil life, of civil government, there's a certain amount of co -belligerence you can have with a

Roman Catholic who believes in God and accepts the creeds, the historic creeds of the church, who's concerned about abortion.

You can sign the same petitions. You can present the same pieces of legislation.

But the degree to which that partnership can be sustained, I mean, if you go to,

I think, Luke, you read from 2 Corinthians 6, didn't you?

Yes. But in my translation here, he says, Paul says, you must not consent to be yoke fellows with unbelievers.

What has innocence to do with lawlessness? What is there in common between light and darkness? What harmony between Christ and Belial?

How can a believer throw in his lot with an infidel? How can the temple of God have any commerce with idols?

And you are the temple of the living God. God has told us so. I will live and move among them and be their

God and they shall be my people. Come out then from among them. The Lord says to us, separate yourselves from them and do not even touch what is unclean and I will make you welcome.

So the question becomes, with the Christian, we saw in 1

Corinthians 5, there's some very clear lines. They're moral lines. They're questions of faithfulness, idolatry, immorality, and so on.

With the unbeliever, there's this question of being yoke fellows. Now, the

Roman Catholic, the challenge comes is, are we going to refer to them as brothers and sisters in the

Lord? Well, that's a prudential question that would very much depend on the individual, wouldn't it? On the particular person.

We'd have to say that, you know, in general, nations and indeed many persons that identify themselves as Roman Catholics who think they are

Christian because they attend mass twice a year, it's problematic for the evangelical to refer to them as brothers and sisters in Christ because their understanding of salvation and redemption and how that takes place and what is going on there is different.

But with the unbeliever, and I think we could put many who identify as Roman Catholics, certainly as Muslims, atheists and so on in the unbelieving camp, not all, as I say, in the

Roman Catholic Church, as I agree with Calvin, there is a true church amongst them. I want to be careful to state that.

There is a limit then put in 1 Corinthians 5 on the depth of fellowship.

In 2 Corinthians 6, we've got this question of what does it really mean to be yoked? My take on that is that, again, depending on which sphere we're talking about, if we think about the sphere of the family in marriage, well, of course, you cannot, which is led by the moral aspect of the dimension of life in the love relationship.

Well, if we don't love the same thing, we don't love the same person, and we can't structure marriage around love for Christ, mutual submission to Christ, then obviously that's an unequal yoking.

You can't be married to an unbeliever and not expect difficulties and disaster.

Paul gives very clear guidance, of course, to those who have become Christians and are already in those relationships.

He says, look, if the unbeliever will stay with you, stay, and perhaps your faith and your conduct will be sanctifying and bring that peace.

Win them over. Exactly, win them over. But you don't enter into such a thing as a

Christian in the life of the church. Obviously, you can't place an unbeliever in a position of an office of authority or responsibility in the life of the church.

The unbeliever can attend church, but they can't be admitted to the

Lord's table or to baptism unless they turn to Christ. In the civil realm, though, and in the business realm, civil life, economic life, the lines, the sphere of life that we're in there, which

Paul talks about, you can't take yourself out of the world, of the world of human culture.

It's a much more prudential kind of question. And I think the yoking then has to do with the depth or the degree of partnership that we're talking about.

I mean, there are varying degrees of relationship, partnership, and collaboration. I think that the yoking has to do with entering into relationships, partnerships, agreements, contracts, whatever, that would be very, very difficult to get out of that are binding in a very unique kind of way that would lead to difficulty or trouble for the believer.

Most business relationships, you know, contracts have clauses that you can withdraw from relatively easily.

We can have all kinds of political co -belligerence that doesn't involve us in binding, yoking kinds of relationships that have a kind of lightness of touch, as it were.

And so I think in those political and business economic sphere of life, commerce, and in certain elements of culture, there can be degrees of co -belligerence on the basis of creation, grace, or common grace.

The fact that the whole of creation is governed by God's law word, it's bound to his law word.

For example, most non -believers agree that we need some kind of criminal law system, that we need a police force, that we need courts.

Of course, many of the things that we sometimes assume are to do with some natural principle are actually the result of the influence of the biblical world and life view.

Exactly, right. Because undifferentiated cultures, what we might call primitive cultures, that have not opened themselves up to a biblical world and life view and to the reality of the kingdom of God, to Christian mission, are often stuck in undeveloped stages of cultural development where they're tribal.

There are actually no separate or distinctive forms of civil government, separations of powers, the rule of law, and so on.

No, it's governed by some kind of a patriarchal, tribal, chieftain -type system. So sometimes what we assume are, oh, well, that's everybody accepts that, are actually just the result of the disclosure of the kingdom and of the word of God in a given culture.

Nonetheless, there are many areas where we can find that the word of God in creation as it manifests itself in culture and the impact of the

Christian world and life view has left us with a variety of areas, many areas in which co -belligerence is possible.

What we have to be very careful of is binding ourselves, yoking ourselves in depths of relationships and partnerships that we can't easily withdraw ourselves from if they move in an antithetical direction to the gospel.

And that becomes very much a prudential question, just as the issue of believer and professing believers in the church is a matter of wisdom.

What is their life? What is their confession? What is their testimony and their witness? We're not

Pharisees, you know, and I can't judge the heart of a man like Calvin Robinson, but I am called to inspect the fruit of people and their public witness and their public statements and what they say they believe, and you have to take that seriously.

And that should dictate how believers respond to that. That's good. One thing, and then

I'll kick it over to you, Luke, because you got to the track I was just thinking of in my mind when you were talking about what the binding agent is that holds together that cooperation that can exist to a degree sometimes, and it's the fact that we are all

God's creatures, right? We're all made in His image, and so naturally we are going to hunger for or exhibit the kind of desires that come from living in accordance with His world, right?

And I think you brought up Romans 1 already, but Romans 2, you know, unbelievers even occasionally stumble over the truth and get it right from time to time, right?

They do the right thing even when they're not meaning to sometimes, and where that overlap exists, we can say, great,

I'm glad that you believe in that and that you want to come along this journey with us, but here's what the truth is, and also on top of that, it can't just be left there to say, here's

God's creation word, here's what you know inherently to be true in your heart of hearts, and your conscience bears witness to that, but also here's the explicit truth of scriptural revelation that makes sense of all of life, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do that and act as a consistent creature in God's world.

What would you say to that? Is that accurate? Yeah, yes, absolutely.

I was thinking there as you were talking that sometimes even

Christians can do the right thing from a wrong motive, and it's certainly true of non -believers.

He's at work, and the binding structure of his law order in creation. Unbelievers know many truths, small

T. They stumble over the truths within creation, and as sometimes things that are historically disclosed all of the time, what they lack is the unity of the truth, large

T, to understand and interpret all of that in terms of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation in Jesus Christ.

And that's why when sometimes we might have agreement about an issue, maybe say a criminal issue, or a life issue, or a social relational issue, when you actually, you can have what we might call an external agreement that allows for a certain degree of partnership and co -belligerence.

When you start to drill down, though, into the religious root and into the heart of the issue, that's when you start to find that the motivations or the driving force or the thing that gives the issue shape is quite different.

And that will mean that eventually how the issue is worked out and expressed culturally will start to become divergent over time.

That's why, you know, well, let's take the, even within the broader life of Christianity, what

Roman Catholic culture looked like over against Protestant culture, expressing the same creedal orthodoxy looks quite different.

I mean, the ideal social order for Rome is Vatican City, a total union of church and state, a unified ecclesiocracy, and the ecclesiastical totalizing structure.

And then the Roman social principle of subsidiarity rather than sphere sovereignty.

Now, eventually those things express themselves very differently. So yes, you can have co -belligerence to a degree on the basis that you've talked about.

But as those things come to fuller expression in culture, cultus, which is religion externalized, you will start to see differences.

And of course, they're most obvious when you take Islam or an Islamic culture, say, in comparison to Christianity in a broadly

Christian culture, it expresses itself in the diet, the dress code, the architecture, the law, the education, every aspect of life, the treatment of women.

That's a big controversy right now in the UK because of these grooming rape gangs of largely

Pakistani Muslim men. There are things that are acceptable in some of these now.

Some people say, well, we can have co -belligerence with Muslims on marriage and being opposed to the

LGBTQ woke culture. But yes, on a very surface level, there might be some external rejection of the culturally

Marxist woke LGBTQ agenda with Muslims, but it's pretty surface level.

When it comes to the question of marriage, Christianity and Islam has a radically different conception of marriage and of the family.

And so again, we see cultus culture, how this gets fleshed out, the antithesis starts to express itself.

So the partnership or the co -belligerence can only be on a certain level when you don't have a root level religious agreement.

Yeah. I know we want to transition to another subject, but just to summarize,

I think this is how I'm thinking through this. You really have to take each circumstance on a case -by -case basis.

You can't just broad brush this. We've done a lot, obviously, legislatively. All the legislation we've put forth or that we fought for is legislation that we feel honors

God, upholds biblical principles, upholds God's law, is honoring to Him. But when it comes to the civil legislative realm,

I'll work with someone that will vote for our bill and they have the understanding and they know this is where we're coming from with this legislation.

This is what we did here in Arizona. We ran our equal protection bill. We had a Mormon running the bill. He knew where we were coming from.

We were very open and clear when we had our rally. It's God's word that we're standing on, and he voted for that.

But like you were saying, Joe, I would not invite that Mormon then to come speak at a conference that is laying out the foundations, that's saying this is how we address these things from a biblical perspective.

That's where I think you draw the line. But again, I would want to take it case -by -case. I wouldn't want to broad brush everything.

And you're right, it's a matter of wisdom. Now that makes sense, case -by -case. I know you have limited time with this here, brother.

So the other thing was you just put out an article, was that last week, I think? Two weeks ago, okay.

Taming the Tongue in an Age of Mockery on Social Media. Yeah, and so again, this ties in. You mentioned earlier, this is all connected, right?

So why don't you just, with the time you've got left, bring us through that article. I wanted to ask you something specific about that, just to maybe set the stage for people that haven't read it.

Some of the things that you're getting into here. It is linked, by the way, in the description. Yeah, and some of the things that you get into in that have to do with patterns of speech and behavior and conduct on social media in particular.

And how there are influencers and personalities, you might refer to them as shock jocks, people that are attempting to build followings by using inflammatory rhetoric or the most sensational or provocative thing that they can possibly put out there in order to influence people and gain a following.

There is a concept, though, that you use to describe some of the operating principles and assumptions that lie under that, and I think you use

Rush Dooney to bring it home, but it's called living by disgust. And I know that you had a quote in there from Rush Dooney, but I'll just read maybe a small excerpt from the article and then have you comment on it real quick.

Part of the appeal, you say, of living by disgust in the abstract and unreal world of social media is found not just in constantly pointing to the failures and faults of other

Christians and churches, but in the moral glow felt in publicly defining oneself down to the last doctrinal and sociopolitical point of contention to show how different you are from the sinful and deceived people around you.

And by engaging in constant historical debunking that refuses to accept the received account of anything, imagining everything is based on lies except one's own thinking.

And you compare this to the mindset of a Pharisee. I'm hoping that you can flesh that out a little bit more.

Yeah, let me just turn to that there. Well, yeah, the Pharisee's essential claim was to be the only,

I think I cite Rush Dooney saying the Pharisee saw himself as the only true believer, the only true activist and the only person truly alive to the issues.

And there's sort of two primary things I'm trying to drive at in the article.

First of all, when you refer there to that living by disgust, yes, that's the fact that it comes to a point where we can sometimes so live in that world of trying to do these constant exposees of the evil of others that we actually lose sight of the gospel of the kingdom itself and the good news of the kingdom that we're making known and declaring and the positive vision for transformation that we are putting forward.

But part of that living by disgust is governed by the temptation to be wanting to build, constantly build a following and by building a following, some sort of a movement.

And I think I say in the article that in order to, the movement leaders as it were, in order to move something, if you're going to try and move a wheelbarrow in your garden or move something else, you have to be standing in a position of strength.

To move something, you have to be still and then be able to step forward.

That's the idea of motion. It needs something that's going to move it. And very often what you find is that the living by disgust is a kind of endless clickbait so that the person can build a movement, actually not so much so that they can, although they claim that the goal is to move others, it's actually they want people to hold on to them.

And if you're not grounded in the word of God, then your confidence is going to be in your following, in the clicks.

And you need the following, you need the clicks, you need the crowd to hold on to you so that you can feel as though you're standing firm on something.

You actually ironically become dependent upon the mob and that drives the desire for constantly becoming more and more controversial, more and more close to the line, dangerous, so that people will click, hold on to you and then you're seen as this movement leader standing upon the brink when in fact it's actually these people who you need to hold on to you to make you feel secure.

If you stand though in the word of God, you don't have this digital anxiety and I see this everywhere now, this fear, this digital anxiety of losing the following, of people moving on to the next thing, the next sensation, the next idea, the next clickbait.

And so unless you are constantly being gossiped about or talked about, the fear is that people will move on to something else and to somebody else.

You become irrelevant. And that's sort of the temptation then is to always be trying to grab every passing dog by the ears, always trying to be commenting on absolutely everything.

And I think at the beginning of the article, I identified two major problems with social media.

I mean, I came into the use of social media and I'm the only one platform

I'm on is Twitter because I was urged to do so by, I came kicking and screaming,

I was urged to do so by others. This is where the conversation is happening. And I think in 2019, it took me until I joined any social media platform.

And part of the reason for that is the equalitarian character of social media.

And here's a couple of points that I think are relevant and I think are important in helping us discern how best to utilize the tool of social media.

So by equalitarian, I mean that social media, and I'll come to the fact that it's inherently not social in a moment in its true sense, invites everybody into the conversation.

Millions can eavesdrop on a given conversation. That's the nature of the public character of the platform.

And that brings us into a world that's never existed before. The incarnated social settings.

So for example, I was with Luke and Jeff and others in Germany, in Frankfurt, a couple of months ago.

And we were sat having meals together. Now that's an incarnated social setting.

And at the heart of the social dimension of life is the idea of relationship, of social intercourse, of building sociality, of friendship.

And the incarnated context of social relationships means that that setting puts certain restraints on those involved.

The setting matters. So the people that are often very loud -mouthed, very belligerent, aggressive, rude, and so on, in general,

I mean you might have the odd real outlier, but in general would not behave like that in company, in incarnational company, because the social setting exercises restraint upon people.

And that's why in the past, in many situations, if you were older perhaps, more experienced, wiser, had a good reputation, had, for example, been married for many years, recognized in the community.

In a sense, think about the qualifications for eldership in the Bible. Those kinds of people were respected and were listened to.

And in those settings, you generally will have a sense of, I need to give place to this person in this context or on this subject, for example, or on this issue.

All that is out the window in the egalitarian, equalitarian setting of social media, where everybody, every fornicator, drug addict, abuser, bitter, arrogant, envious person, believes that they have the same absolute right to speak to any given issue or any given person in any way they so choose.

And that means that in some respects, the abstraction, I argue in the article, the abstractness of sociality and social media, ab literally means away, to lift away, to take away.

So there is a removed, there's an important digital removal of social relationships on this kind of media that lacks those incarnated restraints that were always in place prior to the existence of these social media platforms.

In that sense, I sometimes call them anti -social media because they're not really social.

And because of that, because they're abstracted sociality, we need to treat them as such and therefore govern how we interact on them in terms of the limitations that they have.

And so that means very practically for me, for example, I very rarely engage in any kind of debate or discussion on social media.

I've never found it a useful platform for that. Very occasional comment. Most of the times early on when

I tried to engage in those things, it didn't really go anywhere, especially if the issue was controversial. I don't answer everybody.

I answer very few people on these social media platforms. I rarely take the bait.

Everybody slips into these things sometimes. So in other words, what

I'm saying is I seek to, and not always successfully, but I seek to govern my conduct on social media in terms of the limitation of the platform.

And in many respects, there's been some discussion recently about anons and anonymity on social media.

The anon in many respects embodies the distortion of sociality that social media represents in these digital platforms, because they think that they can scream and shout and abuse and goodness knows what other human beings, that because of the abstractness of the context, the lack of incarnational relationship, they behave with this kind of anonymity.

And in many respects, there is a certain distance that leads eventually to retreat into total anonymity so that you can let loose in an unrestrained way your bitterness, your vengeance, your rage, your hatred, and so on, on other human beings, because the abstraction, the awayness, the distance that the platform itself has created.

And so those two things, the equalitarian idea of social media, where it's basically the mob that you have to be on your guard with, and the abstractness of the sociality that is being created, must always be kept in mind when we deal with the very limited amount of genuine sociality that can be had on these digital platforms.

Look, it's the same critique that I would have of digital church. There is no such thing as digital church.

In the very sense, you can watch a church service online, but the essence of the life of the church is the presence of the

Holy Spirit with the gathered congregation around the preached word and the Lord's table. You can't do that digitally.

You can't have a digital baptism. You can't have a digital bread and wine. You can't have a digital marriage.

The marriage relationship, the loving relationship, ultimately a sexual relationship, you cannot have the intimacy of sexual relationship of marriage online.

The substitute for it is pornography, and that's destructive of true relationship.

So these are some of the limitations that I don't delve into all of the details, but some of the limitations that actually can lead to living by disgust.

In the end, we can start to treat other human beings as kind of human refuse online because we lose actually sight of the incarnational reality both of the kingdom of God and the gospel and of our fellow human beings.

That distance makes us feel that we can speak to them in a way that we wouldn't in person.

Thank you for that. I know you got to go, brother, so I'll just say to kind of wrap up the conversation, there's probably three things

I've learned and tried to implement when it comes to social media. One, do all things to the glory of God, which includes what you type on social media.

Two, never say anything on social media that you wouldn't say to someone's face because that's what happens a lot of times is people, it's a breeding ground for digital courage.

A lot of people say things they wouldn't say to you in person, which is exactly what you were just saying with the incarnational social aspect of it.

Three, know that whatever you put on social media will be screenshotted and will be used against you or at least attempted to be used against you at some point.

It's a permanent record, really, if you think about it. So if we all - Including - Go ahead. Including any pictures of yourself.

Right. So be careful what you post by way of pictures. But I think in a few places,

I cite Proverbs, which talks a lot about the problem of mockery and folly and the person who's constantly running their mouth.

I mean, that's an issue on social media. Let me just, very quickly,

Proverbs 17, 27, whoever restrains his words has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.

That's what I seek to govern my social media activity by.

And of course, James tells us the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison.

We've got to tame the tongue. And social media is probably the hardest place to do that.

And I think that's a warning for all of us as Christians, a self -criticism for all of us as Christians as we seek to interact in some of those spaces.

Let's recognize the limitations and establish the principles for us. You don't need your tongue to sin when you can just use your thumbs.

Exactly. I guess the problem is the heart after all. Yep. Bingo. Bingo. Well, thank you, brother.

I know you're probably starving. He wants to eat dinner. So tell your wife we said sorry for keeping you.

But I'll let you go. We'll wrap up the show. Whatever you got to get going. So thank you, brother. And yeah, looking forward to seeing you in April.

Spend some time together. Thanks for having me. And you're bringing your dad, right? Thanks for having me on the show, brother. Did you say you're bringing your dad with you?

I don't think I'm going to be able to bring my dad to Phoenix, but he'll be with us in spirit.

And in the meantime, I look forward to our incarnational fellowship. Bingo. Bingo. Thank you, brother.

I appreciate it. Oh, and where can everybody find you real quick before you bounce? Yeah. So EzraInstitute .com.

And after all that, you can find me on Twitter too. And we have our podcast for cultural reformation, which comes out every

Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. So EzraInstitute .com, podcast for cultural reformation.

And you can find us on the social media platforms. Thank you, brother.

Appreciate it. We'll be in touch. God bless. God bless you. I love that guy.

That was great. Yeah. That parallel there between digital church and marriage stung.

Yeah. I was like, that needs to be said again right there, man. Yeah. Would you have a digital marriage?

We call that pornography. So, all right. Yeah. So, I've been kind of following some of the comments.

People are hilarious. We are going to have an after show. So all you all accessors can stick around.

We'll pop on the after show. To people, maybe one person was upset that we didn't talk about Wes Huff.

We literally just had him on. I mean, this is our last show of last year, the last show we did.

And we had him on right before he went on Rogan. So, we can talk about the after show. Did you watch it? Yes. It was great.

Three hours long. And Wes, if you listen to this, you did your Lord proud.

Yeah. So, we can talk about that. But yeah, we literally just had him on. And I've had this show scheduled with Joe for about two months,

I think. So, needed to be, the conversation needed to be had.

And I will just, what? I don't understand what's going on in the comments.

As far as the Anon accounts, there's a kind of played out argument

I keep seeing and hearing about, well, you know, some people in history have needed to be anonymous. It's like, okay, yes, fine.

We're not, we're not arguing, like broad brushing saying, and the anonymous account is unwarranted and not needed.

Cause I agree. There are times for that. The problem we're experiencing is there's an Anon army of just foul mouth, vile people who are hiding from real accountability.

And we're learning that some of them are even pastors in the reform church who are remaining anonymous and just acting sinfully on X.

That's where they should, it goes back to the heart issue. So, having an anonymous account in and of itself is not inherently evil and simple, but the way a lot of these guys are acting is inherently evil and simple.

So, I don't know what you're talking about there. Um, okay.

So real quickly, um, forgot to mention, I didn't forget. I wanted to wait till the end cause

Joe had limited time, but I want to mention ion layer and I totally forgot to put my patch on it. Did you bring it?

You did too, didn't you? I got my fresh shipment, like a few days back.

I think, yeah, it comes on time. It shows up in a nice little box and man, they're getting really good at packaging it.

It just makes sense when you open it. You're like, there's that, there's that, and you put it together. And then you, when we were dead sick over Christmas, man,

I was slapping those on like, no, yeah. Um, yeah.

And so NAD or as, or as my wife calls it, nutrition all day, nutrition all day.

That's our nutrients all day. There you go. Uh, yes.

You go to iron layer .com and, uh, they do the NAD patches and I know they're having the glutathione patches now as well.

Um, so you guys can go there and check that stuff out. And of course put apology in the coupon code. And, uh, for the glutathione, if you put it in apology, you get a hundred dollars off your first kit.

So love those guys were great for the partnership. Uh, I, it's all, it's still Christmas in here.

Apparently I didn't realize that apparently, apparently, which that's okay. I'm fine with that. Um, so we're very, we're very quick to put up Christmas stuff and very slow to take it down around here.

Um, of course you can go to shop that apology of studios .com. Um, get all these amazing tracks that we've been putting together.

We've got the precip, we've got all the swag. Um, and then, uh, I want to also mention

Amtac blades. Um, you can see those sweet battle axes there in front of me. Uh, bill rapier makes some incredible blades.

He's become a very dear brother, um, friend of mine, uh, retired, uh, dev guru,

Navy seal. Amazing dude. Um, amazing blade. So you go to Amtac blades .com, put apology in the coupon code, get 5 % off your order.

And he donates 5 % to end abortion now. And speaking of ending abortion, Bradley Pierce, our dear friend and brother also runs heritage defense .org.

And so hopefully all of our listeners signed up, uh, at Christmas time with heritage defense.

All, all those who homeschool their children. If you haven't again, please, please do.

I'm not just saying that just cause we partner with them. I'm saying that because I want you to be protected. It's very reasonable.

You can go to heritage defense .org and put apology in the coupon code. Get your first month free. And that's all

I got. Uh, we got a busy, busy season coming up ahead of us. Anything you want to add?

Little Zeezers. Yeah, now I'm hungry. That's it.

That's an Arizona inside joke for a pizza. Oh gosh, but no, no,

I think that was, that was a good show. Awesome. Well, we appreciate all you. Thank you for those who are signed up on all access.

You keep the lights on. Thank you for all those who support and abortion now and our work to, uh, preserve the lives of our preborn neighbors.

I'm hoping to be in 22 States this year. So a lot of, a lot of work ahead of us and we will be back next week.

I'm hopeful we're going to be doing a certain show, but I don't want to announce it yet. Cause I'm not positive we're doing it, but if it is,

I'm very excited for it. So we will see you next week. Pastor Jeff should be back.