Don't Resent Nominal Christians

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. All right, let's jump right into it today. I'm still a little bit under the weather. I'm mostly feeling better, but my voice isn't quite there yet, and I'm still a little short of breath.

So I'm pretty much good. If you've been praying for me, thank you very much. But we'll try to get this quick episode out of the way. Let's jump into it. I actually have what I consider to be an important point to make today.

But I'm going to use a stupid example about the New York Jets to make the point. So I'll try to put in chapters on this episode, so that way if you want to skip the stupid stuff, you can. But I think it'll be helpful for you to understand where I'm coming from.

But before we get into any of that, I just wanted to point this out. This one made me laugh for too long. I laughed out loud, not even just the LOL on the computer. I actually laughed about this. There's an article from Christianity Today where Dr. Russell Moore is quivering with rage again.

It's just too funny. It's so gay when he talks about how he quivers with rage. But it's so funny because he always quivers about the same thing. It's so obvious that this guy serves and worships the state.

Like the state. Like the pagan, idiotic, brain-dead state of the United States. That's his god. That's what he worships. I say this kind of stuff from time to time. And I'm usually half serious, half joking.

But with Russell Moore, I'm totally serious. This guy serves the state. And you can tell because he gets all hopping mad. He starts shaking with rage. And that's the flight or flight. I don't think he's lying here.

I don't think he's making this up. I think some people think this is just rhetoric for him. He thinks that for some reason his readers want to hear about him quivering and shaking. I don't think so. I think he actually is.

I think when somebody sent him this tweet from Rod Martin with the underwear and the hammer captioned Paul Pelosi Halloween costume. Which, you know, I haven't mentioned that situation because it's such a ridiculous story that they're telling us about Paul Pelosi in a hammer fight with his friend.

Who knows? Who knows? It's nonsense. It's Fugazi. It's Bunko. It's obviously not real. But anyway, he sees that picture. And I think he really was shaking. He was quivering. And if you remember the last time he told us about his quivering, it was when the Olive Garden enthusiasts decided to do an insurrection on January 6th.

And he was quivering because of the sacred halls of democracy have been breached. And it's like, I mean, this guy's a drama queen. I get that. But I think he really does quiver when you kind of disrespect his idols.

I think this is really what we're seeing here. I don't think he's actually lying. He's quivering with rage when you disrespect the sacred halls of democracy and you breach the Capitol with your insurrection.

And he really just goes, he comes unglued. You know what I mean? He comes unglued. And it's like, you know that feeling you get when somebody like, let's say someone insulted your wife or something or came after your kids.

You'd get that. Your blood would start pumping, your blood pressure. You know, it'd be like Eminem, you know, palms are sweaty, knee mumps are wetty, mom's spaghetti. It'd be like that. You know, that's a flight or flight response that Eminem was describing there.

Not a very good song, but you know what I'm trying to say, right? And you would feel that way if somebody threatened your family or threatened, because these are the things that are important to you. These are the things that are near and dear to your heart, right?

And, of course, God would have you defend your family. And so if you're going to serve God, you're going to, that flight or flight response is a good help to you to defend your wife, to defend your children and stuff like that.

But Dr. Russell Moore feels that way about democracy. It's like democracy isn't even, it's not even a biblical thing. This is an idol of his, right? And so if you ever want to see Dr. Russell Moore quivering, I don't know why he thinks we need to hear this, but if you ever want to see him quiver, just disrespect democracy.

That's his real, that's what he really serves, you know? In any case, it's just a joke. I mean, I saw the Rod Martin joke, and I didn't think it was that funny because I didn't pay any attention to the story.

And then I found out what the story was after, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty funny. Like, it's not a big deal. It's not like I wasn't laughing out loud at the picture. I mean, Rod Martin is a funny guy, but this was a particularly kind of tame tweet.

I just can't even imagine being an adult and seeing that picture and saying, I'm going to quit. I'm going to talk about how I was almost literally shaking. Unreal, man. Unreal. Too funny. Too funny. But in any case, that's not the point of this video.

Patience, Perfectionism, and Getting Started

The point of this video is about patience, and patience is something that I have to practice every day. It does not come naturally to me. I want things to be perfect. I want things to be perfect immediately.

And I'm the kind of guy that in my business by the way, this was kind of like a hardcore gear shift, right? I just kind of changed pace instantly. Anyway, in my business, if I'm not careful, I will do that paralysis by analysis thing where I want to have the perfect word track.

I want to have the perfect approach. I want to have the perfect email, the perfect LinkedIn message, the perfect phone call, and then it's a few days have passed and I haven't made the call. So I need to discipline myself every single day to not do that, to say, you know what?

If you fumble over your words, if you don't have quite the perfect approach, that's okay. That's okay. It's better to start working than to do things perfectly, right? Because you can always adjust on the fly.

Anyway, that's not the point. I want to talk about the New York Jets because me and my brother for a long time have wondered about, you know, why it is that the New York Jets just stink so much. I mean, they are the single worst franchise in sports history.

And then we also think, you know, at the same time, we're also Mets fans and the Mets are also pretty bad. Like they're not the worst franchise in history, but they're pretty bad. And it's amazing because the players change, the coaches change, and sometimes even the owners change, right?

Like the general management and even ownership will change, but the result is always the same. It's just disappointment after disappointment. It's just public humiliation after public humiliation. And it's amazing.

It's like how does this keep happening? Like it's almost like we always talk about we're cursed. It's like we're cursed. And this is something that's totally irrelevant. Like this doesn't affect our lives anymore, but we kind of joke about it.

It's like how is it that the Jets and the Mets are cursed? And seemingly we have teams in New York, right? In New York, we share the same stadium sometimes, the Giants and the Yankees, and they're good.

Though the Giants and the Yankees are good, the Mets and the Jets, they're just perennial losers. What is the problem? We think we figured it out. We think we finally figured it out. It's not a curse.

God has not cursed the Jets and the Mets. At least I don't think so. I guess I can't be sure. But we think we figured it out, and it's the fans' fault. It's our fault. And bear with me for a second, right?

Because New York fans are notoriously impatient. If you stink for just a few weeks in a row, fans are going to turn on you. In fact, I remember the very first time your boy, A .D. Robles, was quoted in the media was I was quoted on ESPN.

And we had a quarterback controversy. The Jets quarterback was Chad Pennington. And the week before, I was in the stadium. Chad Pennington got hurt, and our other quarterback, kind of the young guy that everybody was thinking, and maybe he's going to be the guy, this guy Kellen Clemens, who stinks, by the way.

He stinks. Kellen Clemens came in, right? So Chad Pennington got hurt. And, by the way, Chad Pennington has been our best quarterback probably in the last 20, 30 years. And so maybe Vinny Testaverde, but whatever.

So Chad Pennington gets hurt, and Kellen Clemens comes on the field. And every fan is cheering their brains out for Kellen Clemens, right? And a lot of people misinterpreted that as us cheering that Chad Pennington was hurt, which I can understand why.

And I remember saying something like, you know, Chad Pennington is the future. You know, Chad Pennington, oh, yeah, it's too bad he's hurt. But, you know, whatever. It's in the past. And that's kind of the kind of thing I was saying.

And it's just a lack of patience, right? Like we have no patience. We needed to get this guy out there. He's the future. He's the next guy. Next guy up. And we're just constantly putting pressure on the team to put on the next guy.

And there's just a lack of patience, right? And because of that lack of patience, the Jets and the Mets are doing things when it comes to trades, when it comes to contract extensions, when it comes to putting players on the field that actually are not in the best case.

They're not in the best interest of the team, but they're trying to placate the New York fans that are just very aggressive. And you might be saying to yourself, well, AD, that doesn't make any sense because the Yankees and the Giants are good and they have the same fan base.

And you're right. They do have the same fan base. In fact, Aaron Judge, one of the best players the Yankees have had in a long time, got booed in the playoffs because he was in a little bit of a slump, even though he's the only reason they were in the playoffs in the first place.

The fans are the same. But the difference is that the Yankees and the Giants, they have enough cachet as an organization to say, I don't care what the fans say. We're going to do what we know is right.

The Mets don't have that. The Jets don't have that. The Mets and the Jets cave to the idiot fans, of which I am one of them. So if you're one too, don't hear me insulting just you. I'm insulting myself.

I have no patience. So the Jets and the Mets cave to their idiot fans, and that's why they always stink no matter who owns the team, no matter who's running the team, no matter who's on the team. And the Yankees and the Giants, they have enough gravitas to say no to their idiot fans.

And that's why they're able to put a winning product out all the time. That's what I think the difference is. It's because New York fans have no patience, and patience is very important. Patience is very important.

Now let's shift gears to something that's important to talk about. By the way, if you're a Jets and Mets fan, tell me that I'm wrong. Tell me it's not you, that you're the problem with the team. You're the problem.

Patience with Nominal Christians and the Harvest of Cultural Christianity

In any case, patience. So here's the thing. I think the lack of patience in a lot of Christianity is a big problem. It's a big problem because one of the things I've noticed from people that are very either negative or just flat out against Christian nationalism is they say, you know, what you're talking about is trying to make nominal Christians into real Christians.

Nominal Christians aren't going to bring God's kingdom into— they're not going to regenerate people. It's not good for you to join forces with nominal Christians because then that somehow brings, I don't know, some kind of negative something to Jesus.

And I've got to be honest, I really do feel like that objection comes from a lack of patience. I really do. Here's an example. So 65 of Christians say it's important to be Christian in order to be truly American.

And so Beth Allison Barr here is saying, this is what scares me. This is what scares me. And let's just face it. A lot of those people are probably nominal Christians. They aren't regenerate in the sense of being a true believer, right?

They say they have faith, but they have no works, right? That's what we're talking about here, right? A lot of that 65 probably falls into that category. But the reality is, though, that we need to have patience with a lot of these people.

We really do. What I mean is that having a moral compass that at least acknowledges that, you know, the fact that we mutilate children and we promote that in school, the fact that we have transsexual grooming sessions in public libraries, the fact that we kill children with impunity, and a lot of our country thinks that's a constitutional right to kill children.

Like these things, these things are evil. The fact that people know that this is evil is a good thing. Even if they're nominal Christians. Look, it can't save them, but it's a good thing. And it means that we have a touchpoint with them, right?

Because I've had conversations, and I shared this with a few guys. Actually, I might have shared this in the Q &A at the conference this past weekend. But I've had conversations with literal atheists.

Atheists and people that are openly hostile. Maybe they're not atheists, but they're openly hostile to religion. You know, people that have no love for Christ, but there's something in their soul, in their gut, that's just like, this has gone wrong.

I even had a conversation. This is one of the most amazing conversations I've ever had. This opened my eyes a lot. There's this guy who's an unbeliever. I think he might believe in some sort of a God, but definitely not Christ.

An unbeliever. And he's talking about these kinds of things. You know, abortion, tranny, stuff like that. And he's like, yeah, you know, get rid of prayer and school, and look at what happens. He cursed a few times as he's saying this, because this guy's a pagan, right?

I couldn't believe that he had made that connection. And, you know, we talked about it, but I couldn't believe that he had reached that connection. Like, you take God out of our DNA, out of our culture, and now you have transsexual story hour.

And that's a connection that I don't think even a lot of Christians have made. And so I couldn't believe it. And so here's the reality, right? Like, we're in a position right now where the number of regenerate Christians in the United States is low.

I don't want to even venture a guess for how much it is, but it's low, right? We have to be honest about that. But there's an entire swath of people that are culturally Christian, that are nominally Christian, and do have a sense of right from wrong.

You know what I mean? That goes beyond sort of the sense that everybody has. And so here's the truth of this. To me, that's a harvest that's just waiting to be reaped. That's a harvest. And we need to find a way.

Christian, regenerate Christians who love the Lord, right? Who love the Lord, and we love His law, and we want to see our nation kiss the sun. Because we don't want to see our nation be destroyed because of our rebellion.

We want our nation to kiss the sun, bow the knee to Jesus Christ. We need to figure out a way to harness this 65 and to disciple this 65 to teach them to obey everything Christ commanded. This is a gospel opportunity, to borrow some lingo from the Big Eva crew out here.

A gospel opportunity. And I think we have to start simple, right? I think we have to start simple with the simple gospel. And one of the ways that I think we do this is we look at that Great Commission, right?

We look at the Great Commission. What does the Great Commission say? It says to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ commands. I think what we need to do, and this is a phrase I'm borrowing from Doug Wilson, we need to grab them by their baptism.

We need to identify those who have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as Christians, and we need to call them to live worthy of that name. Because they have the name of Jesus Christ.

They are wearing it. They were baptized into the church. And whether or not we think that they're sophisticated enough or knowledgeable enough about their theology, I mean, God forbid that we're judging people based on their knowledge of theology.

Right? Because Paul doesn't do that. Paul doesn't do that. Whether or not we think they're sophisticated, that they have real faith or good, we need to hold them to that standard. Say, look, you are baptized in the name.

Maybe it's time we start taking seriously what God commands, right? And that's what we need to do, I think. We need to have patience with people. When you have patience with people, we've got to start simple.

I mean, we're talking about basic things here. You know, you recognize that abortion is wrong and that transsexual story hour is wrong. Let me tell you why that's wrong. I know exactly why it is, and here's what else is wrong.

Here's what else is wrong with our world. Because here's the reality, right? It doesn't do you any good to get rid of the trannies at the library, but also be patronizing hooters whenever you want. That doesn't do you any good.

That doesn't cleanse you of anything. And so there's an opportunity here, guys. I see people just disparage nominal Christians all the time. And you know what? That makes me quiver with rage. I can't even say it with a straight face.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to be serious here. That does make me mad, though. It does. I've said this many times. I had a co-elder who used to disparage the Bible Belt all the time. He used to disparage people.

It was just like nothing disgusted him more than these people that grew up culturally Christian. And I want to tell you, those are your brothers. That's who we're talking about when it says, in 1 Thessalonians, it's talking about having patience with people.

And it has these categories, right? And not everybody's in the same category. This is 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 14. Now we exhort you, brothers. Talking about the brethren here. These are the believers.

These are the people that have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly. Comfort the faint-hearted. Uphold the weak. Be patient with all.

I fully believe that we need to change our mental attitude towards these nominal Christians, these cultural Christians. And they're going to fit into one of these categories. Some of them are unruly. There's just no question about it.

We've got to grab them by their baptism. You have the name of Christ, and you need to start acting like it. Warning the unruly. Comforting the faint-hearted. These are the people that they're black-pilled.

You know what I mean? They're black-pilled, and they're, woe is me. These are the ones that need to be comforted. Uphold the weak. Be patient with all. We need to have patience, and we need to start simple.

You know, that's the thing. Like a lot of, you know, one guy, Thomas Kutuzis, was saying how and I didn't engage with a lot of what he said because, honestly, I was confused by a lot of what he said.

And I think he thinks I'm pretending I'm confused. I'm really not pretending. Sorry. But there was one thing he said. He said that he's not post-millennial, but if he was post-millennial, he wouldn't dare try to, I guess, vote or team up with Catholics because, you know, that's not post-millennial.

And I think that there are some post-millennials that do kind of they want to wait for, like, a perfect moment, right? They'll act, but only if it's perfect, if it's clean, if it's nice and neat. And I don't think that's the way that we need to be doing this.

I think we need to change our attitudes about those who bear the name of Christ and they're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's part one, and we've got that part taken care of with a large percentage of the people in the United States.

The discipleship, though, is what's the problem. And I think that the problem that we have a lot of the time is that we major on the minors, at least as far as Paul presents it, and we minor on the majors, right?

Minor on the majors. I think that's what I'm trying to say. If you notice, you know, Corinthians, right? Corinthians had all kinds of theological problems and things like that, and Paul is correcting their theology all throughout Corinthians, right?

He's correcting it, but you know what he's not doing? He's not kicking them out of the Church for having a poor theology, right? He's not doing that. He's not giving someone a doctrine test and saying, you guys are going to be handed over to Satan because you didn't pass the doctrine test.

That's not what he does. He does hand someone over to Satan, and that's the one who has reached such a depravity that he's doing things that even the pagans don't do. Even the pagans don't allow. That's who he kicks out of the Church and hands over to Satan.

Now, I'm not saying theology and doctrine is not important. It's very important. But we need to have patience with people, especially in those areas, because the discipleship process for those who were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit when they were kids, and now they're adults, and they're like, I don't know, I mean, we got to pray in the Church, and now we got trainees.

There's a lot of discipleship that we miss there. And so to catch people up, they're not going to be able to pass your doctrine test right away, and you need to have patience with those people. Nominal Christians, cultural Christians, they're of course going to be important going into the future, right?

I think there is a harvest there, the likes of which that we have not ever seen before. There are people that bear the name of Christ. That's no small thing. That's no small thing. We need to take that seriously, and we need to grab them by their baptism, like Doug Wilson said.

I think we got to have patience. We got to be willing to crack a few eggs to make the omelet, and we have to understand that it's not nice and neat. You know, like our ideologies, this is something I got from this video.

Somebody sent me this video, and this guy Thiago here, I think he saw what I was struggling to say. I had my mind around what I needed to say, but I couldn't figure out how to say it right, and he sent me this video called Mere Christendom by Doug Wilson.

I almost cried when I watched this video, because he said it perfectly. And we've got these ideas of what the country should be and the kinds of laws that we need to implement and stuff like that, and that's great.

You need to have nice and neat and clean ideas, and everything can be organized and perfect. Our theology is like that. In our minds, our theology, the way it works out, it looks like nice and neat. I think Toby Sumter calls it a stainless steel theology.

That's how it's like in our minds, but the reality is very different. When you're applying your stainless steel, nice and neat compartmentalized theology to real life, real life is not always nice and neat.

Real life can be a little dirty. Real life is, we're dealing with people, like real people that are complicated, and everyone's got different motivations and different things. And so when we're applying our stainless steel theology to real life, it's not always easy.

It's not always clean. It's not always neat. It doesn't always happen in the order we say it does. It's kind of like coming up with a script to call your next prospect client, and you call your next prospect client, and then the call goes very differently, right?

You've got to be okay with not having a perfect call, not having a perfect approach every time. You do it in practice, and it works out perfectly. You do it in the game, and things are a little different.

Listen, this video, I don't know if this honestly made sense. Watch this video by Doug Wilson, Mere Christendom. It's so good. And then just have patience. Just have patience with those who bear the name of Christ.

I have not always been the best person at doing this, but I'm trying, man. Man, I'm trying. I'm trying. I love you guys. I hope you found this podcast helpful. I'm going to talk more about this topic, and I need to organize my thoughts a little bit more on this topic of having patience with people because at the end of the day, I think sometimes this—.

I was talking to my brother about this, and he mentioned to me that I think people assume that we've got all our I's dotted. We've got all our T's crossed. We're at the pinnacle of theology that we're going to reach.

I mean, the Westminster Confession, my goodness, how could you improve upon it? And a lot of people don't say that outright, like, how could you improve upon it? But they act like it. They act like there's no way to improve upon it.

And I think that there's a disconnect because a lot of people kind of see us at the end of times right now. And so, of course, how could we do better? We've got everything buttoned up. But this time right now, I mean, we can improve upon a lot.

I don't think we're at the pinnacle of our understanding of what God is up to. I don't think so. And I think that there's a lot of room for improvement. And so when you realize that, hey, there's a good chance that we are in early church history right now, I think that's another thing Doug Wilson said.

I might have heard that from someone else. That could have been another Doug Wilson thing. I'm not sure. But when you account for the fact that we're in early church history right now, it's a possibility.

It's a possibility. I think it's a probability. But you might not agree. That's okay. But you don't know that tomorrow Jesus is coming. You don't know that it's going to be in the next 10 years or something.

So we could have thousands of years for all you know. When you think that way, I feel like patience comes more naturally. You know what I mean? Because you're not expecting people to be with all their I's dotted, all their T's crossed, when you realize that you don't even have all your I's dotted and all your T's crossed.

I hope you found this podcast encouraging, helpful. I hope to expand more upon this idea of patience in the future. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast.