Mega Edition: Seminaries, Church Meetings and Malum in se, Jonathan Leeman's Identity Politics

Personal Updates, the New Thesis, and Upcoming Projects

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Well, you may be surprised this morning as I am holding this little kitty. I am not a cat person one bit. In fact, I never saw myself being a cat owner in my entire life, but this little guy showed up next to our home the other day and the neighbor actually texted me and said there's a little kitty outside calling for its mother and it was caught in this little area by the window, the basement window, kind of like a two or two and a half foot, three foot, probably more than that, about three three feet or so deep area and this little kitty was was crying down there.

You're getting energy now. You want to go away and anyway my wife, it was over when my wife saw, saw the little kitty. You want to go? All right, well just say hi to everyone real quick. Yeah, we were gonna call it Oliver and now we think it's a girl.

So we're, you know, we're looking at other names. If you have a suggestion for a name for the kitty, this is so outside my wheelhouse. Pepper was the one I suggested, but my wife doesn't seem to like pepper as much.

You don't know how to get down from here, do you? Here, I'm gonna help you. All right, bye kitty. So that is a side of me you likely have never seen and I wasn't planning on showing it to you, but I guess it does exist.

And if you've been watching A .D. Robles, he's been raising chickens. You know, I actually raised chickens when I was younger, when I was like 12 years old. My parents believe in entrepreneurship. So I had, I had a like a bread business, which basically meant I paid my mom to make bread.

Yeah, instead of an allowance, my parents wanted me to learn entrepreneurship. So that was the bread business and then right after that I said, I don't like making bread. I'm gonna raise chickens. I'll sell the eggs.

And I did that for, for a few years actually. I took care of these chickens and you don't get as much attached to chickens. I remember the day, some people are gonna be offended by this, but I remember the day that we had to, we had to mercifully end the chicken's life.

I'll put it that way. I don't know how else. I mean, look, if you go get chicken nuggets at McDonald's or someone's doing that for you. So just, just remember that. Go to KFC, someone's doing that. We tried to be merciful about it, but I did have to rename the chickens.

Things like, you know, like Hitler. You know, instead of Henrietta, you know, I had to, we had to sort of conceive of them a little differently before we did that. But, but I did raise chickens the whole way through a few times and and we had, I had a few dogs when I was younger, but they were outdoors until, until I was in my late teens.

My parents got a dog they kept inside. So we, and we never had cats. We never had cats. Cats, you know, we, cats were evil in my experience. Neighborhood cats would scratch you and my grandparents had a cat.

It was mean and so, you know, I don't know at what stage the demons enter the cat. Right now, that little kitten, yeah, there's no demons in that little kitten. But, you know, it likes to play. It likes to bite around or trying to keep it from doing that.

But when it, when it gets older, that'll hurt. So, so we have to have to figure that all out. But my wife is very happy about it. And, and that's been taking up a little bit of my time. So, for those who don't like what I have to say on this podcast, you can't be too hard on me because I just had a little kitten in my, in my arms.

Or, or actually maybe it works the opposite. Maybe I'm a James Bond villain. Not that I watch James Bond. I'm a good conservative Christian. But no, you know, the villains always have a cat and they're like, you know, petting the cat while they're talking about how they're going to kill James Bond or something.

So I don't know. However you want to take that. I, I have a cat though now, and I'm not sure. I'm having an identity crisis over this. You were not expecting me to start the podcast off that way. I'm sure.

But, but, but there we go. Not only cats, but there's actually something else that is more important that I've been spending actually a whole lot more time on. And that has kept me from doing an episode.

I was going to drop some important things last week and I just, I couldn't get to it because of this. So this is what I've been working on though. So what this is, is a 157 pages, it stands now thesis on the evangelical left.

And I've been writing it this semester. I haven't talked about it much, but it's now going through a peer review process. It'll probably change a little, but I did some research for it last semester as well.

And it's really more of an objective history. It's not meant to be critical. I'm not writing all my opinions. I'm just writing down what happened and trying to answer why it happened. So the interesting part of all this is, and this will come up later.

I'm going to talk about Jonathan Lehman's identity politics episode at T4G. Some folks have asked me to comment on that. I'll keep my comments as brief as I can, but I will talk about it. But, but this principle is going to come up, this, this idea at least.

Evangelical leftists, Jim Wallace, Ron Sider, Sharon Gallagher, you know, the list goes on and on. Wes Gramber, Michelson, you know, John Alexander. These guys who were influenced by new left radicalism, campus new left radicalism, usually they go off to college.

You know, they started out in these conservative Christian homes, just about in every case. And then they will go off to some either seminary or usually college, secular college, sometimes high school.

And they get along the way somewhere. They are influenced by new left ideas. They start rubbing shoulders with Marxists or, you know, some variety of Marxism. And they accept the new left critique of America and how the church has just been so complicit in this.

And it's America is a crummy place and the church has been complicit in its crumminess. That's basically the critique. And so what they do is they, they, they try that on for size for a little bit. They get, you know, like Richard Mao, Jim Wallace, both members of Student for a Democratic Society, right?

Jim Wallace is like organizing protests. He's really deep into it. And so they start, they reject their Christianity or they have a crisis of faith or they change denominations or something happens in their, their, their religious outlook.

They, it gets rattled by this new left critique. But then they realize, you know what? Secularism doesn't work. That's not a foundation. I mean, you know, Sharon Gallagher, Christian World Liberation from Berkeley, California.

They were, they really liked Francis Schaefer over there. And you think Francis Schaefer, he hated communism. Well, yes, but they were looking for a critique of secularism. They, they wanted some way to have a moral foundation for the new left critique that they now believed in.

And so they adopted the new left ethics, if you will, but they tried to, underneath it, put a metaphysics that was still Christian. And so they were turned to their evangelical roots and they brought with them their new left ideas.

And what they would say, and I have all the original source quotation and everything. They would say, we accept the new left critique. We accept Marxism. You'll even hear that. We accept the Marxist critique.

Marxist, but the problem is it doesn't go far enough. They, we need Christianity to change souls, not just change the system, but that's important too. That's part of, you know, if you accept, you know, the Neo-Cyperian Richard Mao kind of take or the liberation theology take, well, that's important too.

You know, we got a salvation. The atonement of Christ extends to institutions and government, et cetera, which in their minds also meant the new left critique. That's part of the salvation, part of the redemption of society.

So they would say that's important, but individual souls are where a lot of this evil comes from, from there. So it doesn't go far enough. So we need the Marxist critique, those ethics, those principles, but we need it to, the foundation to be Christianity.

And then eventually what they would say, and different, you know, figures in this movement at different times, they would just say, well, we don't need Marxism at all. Marxism is not even part of this.

It's just the Bible. It's only the Bible. We see all these things. And what they would talk about was redistribution of wealth, egalitarianism. All the things that the new left critique was saying, they would say, but they would just try to find Bible verses to back up what they're saying and say, it's just biblical.

That's all it is. And we're seeing the same show again. We're seeing the same exact show again. And there are those within the established evangelicalism who are winking and nodding at it. Today, Al Mohler is a good example of this, by the way.

And in the coming weeks, I'm going to talk some more about this. I know some of you have asked, when are you going to talk more about what's happening at Southern? I will. I am going to talk, not this episode, but I will say this about Al Mohler.

Al Mohler was mentored by Carl Henry. Al Mohler, you know, he endorses Donald Trump. He's against critical race theory. He blasted on his podcast, but then he winks and he nods at the guys in his own seminary, at the guys in his own denomination.

What's up with that? Well, Carl Henry did something very similar. Carl Henry signed the Chicago Declaration in 1973, which if you read that, it is the new left critique. Talks about mutual submission of husbands and wives.

It talks about the disparities and how bad they are worldwide and rich and poor, etc. The church has been complicit in racism, etc. It's all that stuff, right? Carl Henry signs this thing. And then Carl Henry turns around and I have the quotes in this work that I've done.

Carl Henry says, well, you know, Chicago Declaration, after he signed it, it really doesn't address Marxism like it should. It really needs to go after Marxism, you know, essentially is what he says. And Carl Henry endorses Richard Nixon.

And so the evangelical left doesn't really know what to do with Carl Henry because Carl Henry and there were more people than just Carl Henry that were like this. But Carl Henry is a really he's kind of a he's a figure that I think stands out more than even Billy Graham.

Billy Graham wasn't so much a theologian. So when Billy Graham platforms, you know, speaks alongside of Samuel Escobar or, you know, platforms some of these other guys like Tom Skinner or, you know, John Perkins or something.

You know, Billy Graham's not thinking in the same terms as Carl Henry. Carl Henry knew what was going on there. He did interview with Wes Gramber Michelson and Jim Wallace. But and for those who don't know Carl Henry, he's the guy.

He helped start Fuller Seminary Christianity Today. He National Association of Evangelicals. He is Mr. Neo evangelical. We got to get away from fundamentalism. Evangelicalism is a new thing. It's neo evangelicalism.

So he opened the door for the new left to come in. But then he would say, I'm not not I don't agree with the new left. It's very similar to what you see Al Moller doing. And and so the way was kind of open for them.

And the way is open today for the current crop of social justice warriors. And there's a connection between the two. There really is. And I have found it. So I'm excited about putting this history out there when I get a chance.

I got some other things in the works as well. But but that is why I didn't put out a podcast last week. And hopefully that whets your appetite a little bit. Another project that's happening that I'm part of is this.

This is the trailer for First Baptist Naples documentary that Enemies Within the Church is putting out. Check it out.

Why does someone need a gag order on a church? What's up with that?

But it is undeniable that race played a part in the final days leading up to this election. You were branded as a racist. Yes. But you're not a racist.

No, it was slander. Total. Thoroughly social justice driven components of the Southern Baptist Convention, J .D. Greer, Kevin Eazell are involved in changing the direction of a large megachurch in one of the most conservative areas of the swing state, Florida.

All of a sudden, Pastor Wicker's now retiring, but then he's just gone.

It wasn't just pushing to get him to leave. They had to ruin his reputation.

For some reason, that was important. And, you know, that pastor transition team that went on even before, you know, there was a consulting group, Oxano, that was called in.

And eventually they came up with some candidates. And of course, Marcus came up. Homosexuality is it's a sin.

Now, if you have now maybe somebody even in this room, you may have same sex attractions. I don't know. I would say that's not a sin. He just was not qualified.

We had different guidelines that they were supposed to fall under and they changed the guidelines for him because he was a plant by the SBC to come in and take the position of senior pastor.

Hey, First Naples family, this is Kevin Eazell, president of the North America Mission Board. He's going to be a fantastic pastor. You're going to love him.

Every one of these woke young pastors have some connection with Al Mohler. They were ruling with an iron hand. They're running the church now. There's a lot of individuals that don't even realize that that's happening.

And they're just going with it. I don't want to see other churches go this way. This will destroy the church in America.

So that is going to come out within the next few weeks, I'm told. Enemies within the church is doing a great job. Throw him a few pennies if you can. I appreciate all the support you're giving me, by the way.

It helps me do what I do. I've been doing some of my work with them. In fact, this week, I'm actually going to fly somewhere to do a top secret mission that you will find out more about soon. But it is important.

And look, paying for flights, hotels, that kind of thing. When you know, I don't really make money off this. This is something that I do because I love the body of Christ and I see the gospel being corrupted.

I see foreign ideas that are actually antithetical to biblical teaching taking root. And I don't want to see that. And you're not alone in this. You need to know that. There's get contacted by so many people that are interested in what I'm doing and what others like me are doing.

And, you know, they feel isolated. You're not isolated. And I appreciate those who have supported me on Patreon and beyond. You know, sending me checks, praying for me is more important than any of that.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Please pray for enemies within the church as well. They have a lot that they're sitting on right now that needs to be released. And they're trying to make up the difference so that they can have the money to promote it and to get it out there.

If you are, by the way, if you're a whistleblower and I get contacted all the time by whistleblowers, right. But ninety nine percent don't want to go on camera. They'll lose their job, their reputation, et cetera.

The people you just saw in that trailer. I mean, they risk their reputation to come on camera. I really appreciate it. And look, some of you aren't in a position you can do that. I get it. But if you are in a position you can do it and and and you're inspired by what you just saw in that trailer, please, please contact enemies within the church.

It's easy to do. You can go to their Facebook page. You can go to their website. There's there's tons of places you can go to contact them. But they would love to get your story. Again, if you're willing to go on camera and talk about it, we would really appreciate it.

They would appreciate it. So there's my little spiel. I want to give you some coming attractions here before we get to. We're going to talk a little bit about the quarantine situation again. And I have a few thoughts to share.

And then we're going to talk about Jonathan Lehman's identity politics thing. I you know, I've been critiquing like I will later kind of on the fly, but I haven't put together like a step by step. Here's the hard copy printed out.

Share it with your Sunday school kind of material. And this summer I intend to do that. Your support definitely helps make that possible. But that's really that's where I'm going. I don't want to spend as much time on the exposure, though.

Every time I say that something crazy happens and I feel the need to expose. But I want to start spending more time on the education. Let's talk about these ideas. Let's identify them and let's root them out when we see them.

So that's where I'm at. That that's an exciting thing. Other oh, here's the other thing I want to share with you. I'm going to talk about just just for a minute, if you wouldn't mind, seminary education, because I've been reached out to about this by a number of folks since I think it was two episodes ago.

I talked about, hey, we need to have another seminary. And I'm talking in the context. It was what's happening at Southern. We have professors now who are free to teach that are conservative. We have donors who are pulling out of some of these places so that we finances are now becoming somewhat available to do something.

You know, let's do something. And I didn't you know, I gave you the tip of the iceberg. Really, what's happening is behind the scenes. There are people who are watching the SBC implode. And they are thinking they're already thinking about what's the next thing.

And I know of at least so. So I think I've been contacted. We think about this two online seminaries, I believe, have contacted me. And then two, they haven't started yet, but their potential attempts.

I'll put it that way. So preliminary stages, but a potential attempts at brick and mortar training institutions of some kind. And so I'm in contact with folks about some of this stuff. And my my whole goal, I'm not going to I don't want to be part of leading any of this stuff.

I'm you know, I'm a 30 year old man who is, you know, I'm looking at other things. If I was 60, maybe and, you know, had had some of this experience under my belt. Sure. You know, I would be maybe thinking I was a pastor.

I had a church. I had resources. You know, maybe I'd look at doing something like that. But my goal is to just get people talking to each other to make connections. Some of these guys don't know each other.

I want to connect donors with with professors, with churches, with, you know, see what we can come up with out of this. And I'll certainly express some of my ideas. I definitely have thought through seminary education.

I've been at three different brick and mortar campuses for seminary. I've been at masters, I've been at Southeastern, and I've taken classes at Liberty. And here's here's the thing I want to say about seminary education, because I've seen a little bit of this.

There's there's number one, there's an advantage to having a church on the campus, not but it's not enough to just have it on the most. I mean, even Southeastern had a church on the campus, but it's a church that's actually invested in the seminary, a seminary that's invested in the church.

And the two are, you know, they're they're not separate entities. They actually, you know, dovetail with each other. The closer you can get that to happen, the better. And we know this. And that's one of the reasons every single time.

I'll tell you what I tell students who reach out to me or potential students, because this happens multiple times a week, usually. John, where do I go to seminary? I don't know. Everything seems bad now.

It's all social justice. And I say, look, there's no perfect seminary. Number one, there's no perfect place because we're people. But I would start start out looking, depending on your theological tradition, etc.

I would start looking at expositors. That's the first one that I always say to look at, because they don't have their seminaries as these separate institutions. They actually blend, which is which is really the model you want to begin with.

Sort of a discipleship church ministry model combined with the education. All right. So that's the first place. Now, most of the time, the people that I'm talking to who ask me about this, it's not an option for them to go to a place like expositors for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes it's they want to go higher in education and they need a certain kind of accreditation in their minds to do that. Or their denomination, they're just they're Presbyterian or they're usually they're Southern Baptist, but they might have an eschatology that doesn't necessarily line up with expositors.

So you need to do your research. When I say go to expositors, do your research and see if it's something that fits. But but I do recommend them first. After that, I should say this, too, by the way, if you're looking at undergrad, because that's a seminary, if you're looking at undergrad, like Bible school type of stuff, I always recommend first Appalachian Bible College.

And that is just because I know enough about what's going on there behind the scenes to know that they are trying to take a stand against this woke social justice movement. And that is rare, I will say, for especially sort of a fundamentalist era institution, because and this is what I've noticed is that because there's such a line between politics and religion, we just don't talk about politics.

We just talk about, you know, theology here. It's hard for them to sort of get outside that box and realize there is a political movement with theological assumptions. It's an alternative religion, but it's political that is coming to you.

So it's not that you're getting involved with politics. Politics is getting involved with you and the battle is coming whether you want it or not. And so preparing your students for this is really important.

This is the biggest apologetics issue right now of our day, and it probably will be for a few years at least. And so it's good to know about Mormonism and cults and all that stuff. But you know what? This is actually, this is the thing.

This is what secular humanists, which most of our country, practically speaking, is. This is what they're all falling into. And so it's important, I think, to try to go to a school that is at least trying to address that apologetically.

So if you can't go to Appalachian Bible College, if you can't go to Expositor Seminary, here's my advice to you. And most of you who reach out are Southern Baptists, so this is what I'll say. Find a school where you can shadow a professor who agrees with you on this.

Someone who is conservative, who sees those political, the theological implications of this political movement, who knows what's happening on their campus and is against it. The safest bet for you is probably Mid-America if you're Southern Baptist or Midwestern.

You're still going to come up with, there probably are some woke things there that you're going to find, but there's professors there who you can shadow. And you're going to have to do some of your own research on this.

I would advise this, don't talk to the administration. They're going to give you all the right answers. Their job is to try to make you feel comfortable. We're not woke, we're not. Talk to professors if you can and just see who you'd be comfortable with maybe shadowing.

Southeastern, now Southern, probably not the best options, but you can survive there. And this isn't the only issue. If you're Arminian, you may not want to go to a Southern. If you're Calvinist, you may not want to go to a Southwestern.

So there's other things to consider, but if the main thing you're looking at is the social justice movement, that's kind of the range. You have your Midwestern and your Mid-America over here, and you have your Southern and your Southeastern on the other end.

And here's what you can do. And the three brick and mortar places I went for my seminary education, all taught this. Learn Greek, learn Hebrew. I'm not one of these guys that necessarily says you have to be an expert at it.

I would say I'm not an expert at it. I'd like to be someday, I really would. But enough to at least really know how to use the tools. You should be able, I would think, at least after you're done with Greek to Greek 2, to open a Greek Bible and kind of at least get through it.

To be able to give your own translations to things. And so that would be my advice is to try to learn those things. And you can learn that anywhere. You could actually don't have to go to seminary to learn that.

There's plenty of online tools for that. Or you can go to, for Hebrew, you can go to your local rabbi. So those two things are important. And you can learn that at the Woka Seminary. They still have to teach you Greek and Hebrew, or they should have to teach you.

They should at least offer it. The other thing, and I'm probably biased in this, church history is important to me. I think you should have three semesters of it, but that's because I'm biased. Most places do two semesters.

And if you're Baptist school, they'll probably make you take a course on Baptist history. So get some church history. Understand kind of in general, theological ideas, time periods. And then the other thing I think is really important and this is maybe another area I'm biased, but I think apologetics is really important.

Know kind of, okay, what kind of objections am I going to get once I am pastoring? And apologetics will help prepare you for those objections and to be able to minister in those contexts. A lot of the other stuff, honestly, you're just, you're gonna learn on the job.

I mean, theology is important. It really is. I tend to think though that in hermeneutics, I honestly, I forgot about that. Hermeneutics is very important. You need to be able to take hermeneutics. And that may be a class.

If you go to Southeastern, you're gonna get kind of a more of a reader response hermeneutics most likely. So you may wanna do some research on that before you go. Get a good grammatical historical book on hermeneutics and learn that.

But yeah, hermeneutics, church history, languages. Theology, I would say is, I would put that fourth, I guess. Theology is important. But I think you learn theology as you're going through the text and engaging with the text as well.

Some of the other classes, I call them fluff classes, but classes on discipleship, pastoral leadership, that kind of stuff, honestly, if you can avoid taking those, I would avoid it. That stuff, it might be helpful for you.

I mean, depending on who you are, but I wouldn't consider those necessary. You learn that in a mentorship situation. With another older man and elders that you can shadow, you can learn from, that's where you really should be learning that stuff.

But like visitation, the ordinances, that's all stuff you shouldn't need a class on that. You should be able to just learn that from whoever you're being mentored by. That's my two cents just off the cuff on seminary.

But I wanted to get it out there because I've had a number of you contact me after two episodes ago and you're really interested in this idea of maybe a new theological institution of some kind. And we are talking about a church-based model.

Some of those I have talked to about this. And I'm excited about it too, but it's not gonna be off the ground right away. This will take time. And so that's why, like I said, if you're interested, I'll put you on the list.

But until that happens, there's other options out there. And I will always, even if what I'm talking about now gets off the ground and there's an alternative in the Southern Baptist world or that orbit, probably outside the convention, but in that orbit, I would probably still recommend to you, yeah, go to Expositors, go to Appalachian Bible College.

Check out those places. There's probably a lot of other places. And I'm sorry if I left out your favorite seminary. A few people said, how haven't you looked at this one or that one? And here's the truth.

There's some others that I'm thinking about that I'm like, yeah, those are good. But I don't know enough. I'm not comfortable in every single way, maybe to like put my wholehearted endorsement out there and say, yes, go there and it'll be great.

Expositors and Appalachian Bible College, I'm pretty comfortable giving an endorsement to. So again, that doesn't mean they endorse me. It just means that I do endorse what they're doing. All right, let's get to some meat now.

I feel like I've been doing an introduction for about half an hour and I'm ready to get into some stuff. So let's start off with a question. Was the Apostle Paul a criminal? Was the Apostle Paul a criminal?

Verse eight of 2 Timothy chapter two says, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel. Verse nine, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not imprisoned.

I was reading this this morning in my devotional time. And I wanted to point something out to you. I'm scrolling right now over the word criminally saying I'm in prison for the gospel, but I'm suffering, I'm in prison as a criminal.

Click on the word. The word is kagourgos. And it means criminal or evil worker. But the reason you can say evil worker is if I scroll down here and if you know Greek, you can tell very easily, but this is from another word, kakos.

If you go to Romans 13 and you go to the word evil here, verse three, for rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil, it's the word kakos. It's the word for evil. Paul is being, is suffering here, as he says in 2 Timothy chapter two, as an evil worker for sharing the gospel.

And it struck me as I was thinking about this that it depends on what perspective you're looking at this from. Whether or not you think Paul is a criminal, an evil worker. Is Paul an evil worker? He describes himself as an evil worker.

He's suffering as one. But was he an evil worker? Was he a criminal? That's what a criminal is. One of the things that I think it's important to understand whenever we're talking about ethics, especially when we're talking about government and the civil magistrate is this.

There's a difference between malum and se and malum prohibitum. Any first year law student would learn this. Malum and se, these are both Latin phrases, means evil in and of itself. Wrong in and of itself.

It's morally wrong. It could be legal, but it's wrong. And then there's malum prohibitum. Malum prohibitum means, well, it's wrong because it's prohibited. Not because it's evil in and of itself, but because the government says that you shouldn't do this or some kind of, you know, it could be a parent telling a child you shouldn't do this.

It may not be evil in and of itself. You know, and there's lots of examples we could use. Is it necessarily evil to go 65 miles an hour on a road? No, it's not. But is it evil to go 65 miles an hour on a road in a zone that says the speed limit is actually 30 miles an hour for the public safety of those that are using the public taxpayer funded road?

That would be wrong, right? But then it's not because the wrong isn't in the fact that you're going 65 miles an hour. The wrong is in the fact that you're not valuing human life. That would be the actual evil.

And that's what you would be punished for. But it's all underneath the veneer of this law, the speed limit law. And so there's a difference between those two concepts, malum and say, malum prohibitum.

So let's go back. Let's talk about what we just saw in 2 Timothy and in Romans 13. When Paul says in verse 9, I suffer hardship even as to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not imprisoned.

Is he talking about malum and say, or is he talking about malum prohibitum there? He's talking about malum prohibitum. He's talking about the fact that he has gone against what the authorities have said he can do.

And he's being punished for it. Did he actually do anything evil? No, but he's calling himself an evildoer, right? From the perspective of the governing authorities, he's an evildoer. That's how he's suffering.

He's suffering as an evildoer, but he's not an evildoer. Romans 13, what's the purpose of government? Verse 3, for rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil, kakos, same root word.

What's the context? What's Paul talking about? Is this malum and say? Is this malum prohibitum? If you look at chapter 12, I'm not going to go through all this with you. I know I went through some of this with Pastor Kerry Gordon, but the context is really set in verse 1.

It's about being a holy sacrifice. And if you go through the rest of Romans chapter 12, and I would encourage you to read it, we're not talking about malum prohibitum. We're talking about things that are actually evil.

We're talking about malum and say, keeping ourselves pure from those things and doing the right thing, actual right. And so when he gets down to, do not become by evil, right? But overcome evil with good, that word for evil there is again, kakos.

Do not, he's talking about things that are evil in and of themselves. And that context continues into Romans 13. So what can we draw from this? Turn with me, not if you're driving, but if you're not, turn with me to Daniel chapter 6.

And I am using, of course, my assault Bible for this. We have to do that. Let's go to verse 7. It says, all the commissioners of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the high officials and the governors have consulted together that the king should establish a statute and enforce an injunction that anyone who makes a petition to any God or man besides you, O king, for 30 days shall be cast into the lion's den.