Owen Strachan and His Latest Little Tirade - Part 1

All right, let's jump right into it today. God bless you. I hope you had a good weekend. I hope you had a good Lord's Day. I hope you had a good everything. We had a good Lord's Day. We had a good Lord's Day.

In fact, it was unfortunate. We didn't get a chance to go to church because most of my kids are coughing up lungs. You know, my wife is under the weather. I wasn't feeling that great. I probably could have gone, but we're all just kind of sick, basically.

And so we stayed home and watched it on video, which was, you know, it's not the same, but at least it's available there if you're not feeling well. That being said, my pastor was preaching through the part in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, do not think I've come to abolish the law.

I have not come to abolish it, but to fulfill. And that's always risky because I have very particular beliefs about the law. Now I'm not the kind of guy who criticizes my pastor's sermons. I am always looking for the good in the sermons because I know that I have some very particular beliefs that are not that popular today.

And so I don't expect everyone to handle every nuance exactly the right way. But in my opinion, of course, the right way, my way is the right way, obviously. But, you know, I was like, oh no, this is gonna be a tough one.

This is gonna be a tough one. That's what I thought when I heard the passage that we were going through. But it wasn't, he did a really good job. I mean, you know, he doesn't believe everything I believe about the law, but I thought he did a great job.

I thought it was very edifying. I thought it was just fantastic. I don't know if you watch my videos, brother, but if you do, thank you for that. That was great. I'll tell you in real life too. In any case, what I've decided to do is dedicate a week's worth of videos to Owen Strawn.

That's right, Owen Strawn. I was warned by a few people, a handful of people, less than five, more than two, that I need to lay off Owen because people were noticing, people were catching on, and it wasn't gonna go well for me.

And people were going to abandon me and strongly implied that, you know, I would have no followers on YouTube left and I would have no patrons left because everyone sees that I'm attacking a good brother in the Lord.

And how dare you touch Owen Strawn? How dare you say these things about, especially in defense of Andrew Torba. I've heard this from a few people. And so, consider this my response. I'm dedicating an entire week's worth of videos to Owen's sad little tantrum last week because it was sad and it was oh so little.

And it was a tantrum. It was the kind of thing that you would expect from a cage stage Calvinist. That was the quality of it. That was the rhetoric used. That was everything. And it was just so sad, in my opinion, so pathetic that I was gonna respond to it because it was interesting in its own right.

But then when I got the warnings from people to not do it, that's when I knew I had to do it. And let me just say this kind of in general because, you know, I'm a veteran of the first Big Evil War. But Big Evil War won.

I'm a veteran of that war. And I remember, it wasn't that long ago, I remember how that war started. And I got a lot of the same warnings. Essentially, touch not the Lord's anointed. How dare you even say that about Matt Chandler?

And I had people that, they essentially withheld friendship from me because I dared disagree publicly with the likes of Matt Chandler, with the likes of Russell Moore, with the likes of these kinds of guys.

Tim Keller was another one, these kind of guys. And I didn't care about those warnings then. And I don't care about them now. I don't do this for popularity. I don't do this for, the fact that someone would think that I do this for money and this is the approach I've taken is just so, I mean, you have to think I'm a complete idiot because if I was trying to make money on YouTube, obviously I would choose different things to talk about than the things that I talk about.

I would choose different opinions. I would choose different approaches. I would choose different styles. I'm still doing, I still have the same exact camera that I've been speaking to for years, slightly different microphone because I was gifted a microphone.

But I'm essentially doing the same tired content that I've always done. I'm not interested in becoming a YouTube celebrity, obviously. So no, I don't care that Owen is the chosen one now. I don't care.

Owen has revealed himself to be essentially an opportunist. He's a mini version, and I do mean mini, a mini version of the old Al Mulder weather vane where you lick your finger, you see which way the wind is blowing, and that's the way that you start to signal.

That's what Owen's doing on a much, much, much smaller scale. Al Mulder is a giant. He's a giant in the evangelical world. There's just no question about that. And I believe, I believe that Owen has seen what guys like Al Mulder is.

I don't know if he's actually looking at Al Mulder. I mean, it's very likely because they're both Southern Baptists. Well, at least Owen used to be a Southern Baptist. I don't know if he still is. But they had the same circles, roughly.

Owen saw how Al Mulder did it, and of course, Al Mulder rose to essentially the pinnacle. I mean, this is the pinnacle of evangelical life just about. And he's copying that kind of approach. It certainly seems that way.

People have shared numerous tweets that are just, I find them mind-boggling of flip-flop Owen, just he believes one thing one day, and the next day, he believes something different. And it's like, he pretends as if nothing's changed, right?

And it's just, I don't have a problem with people changing opinions because that's the thing. Owen did change his opinions, at least I thought. You know what, let's wait, because what I've decided to do, is I've decided to react to John Harris's podcast the other day.

It's called The Shadow That Follows Liberalism. I thought he did a fantastic job organizing everything in this video. I thought it was really good. And so I just figured, and I asked his permission to do this.

I'm just gonna piggyback on this. I'm just gonna make, because I agree with what John said in this, but I've got, of course, my own perspective. And I think John and I, you know, we're often in very much agreement, not 100 all the time, but we're often in agreement.

But we have very different styles. And so I'm gonna bring my patented AD Robla style to John's words about this whole thing. But we're gonna have a lot to talk about along the way, because it's just, it doesn't have to be this way.

It really doesn't, but it is this way. And you gotta, sometimes you gotta accept the world as it is. And even if you're seeking to change things, you do have to be, you have to give an honest appraisal of where you're at.

In fact, I think that's good advice for any, if any changes you wanna make in your life in general, in any way, in any way, you need to be honest about where you're currently at in order to get and understand the steps needed to get to where you want to be.

And sometimes the truth of the matter is pretty ugly. So let's do that. Let's follow up in John's very, very capable footsteps. And let's talk about Owen Strawn, because this is the exact thing I've been warned.

This is big, this is, sadly, this is Big Evo War 2 .0. And it's not that big, but it's a similar kind of war. And the strategies have all been the same. I've been warned in the exact same ways I was warned against talking about Russell Moore.

And in my opinion, this is going to go the exact same way that war went. It's going to go the exact same way, where yes, a lot of people still follow Owen and Russell, but it's gonna be a lot fewer than used to.

And pretty much his name has become a byword amongst conservatives. Simple as that. If you're compared to Russell Moore, you understand that's an insult. And that's what Russell Moore's name has become now.

It's an insult now, to be compared to Russell Moore. And that's what's gonna happen with Owen and the rest of the gang, unless they change course. But I don't think they're capable of changing course at this point.

Let's get started here. We've got a lot to talk about, and I'm sure a lot's gonna come up, and here we go. So yes, guys, those who have warned me against doing this, consider this my answer to this whole issue.

In walks Owen Strahan into this. Now, Owen Strahan, by the way, I'm starting around minute 29. This podcast is about various things. So the Owen stuff starts around 20. Oh, he has, of course, John has it all organized.

You don't need my advice here. You could just go to John's podcast, and he's already organized it into chapters. So there you go. Strahan is, for those who don't know, he wrote a book, I don't know, two years ago, three years ago, called Christianity and Wokeness.

And I've been familiar with Owen's work, at least, I don't know, since 2018 or 19. In 2018, though, and prior to that, Owen said some pretty woke things. And I gave some of, I have some of that information on my hard drive.

We're not gonna go over it today, but I gave it to A .D. Robles just because I was like, true, maybe this makes sense of some of the things that he was doing a few months ago. And A .D. did a whole podcast on it if you wanna go see A .D. Robles on this.

But yeah, I sure did. And I'm gonna create a new folder on the channel. It's gonna be the Owen Strahan folder. And yeah, absolutely, we're gonna have a lot of content about him. So yeah, this is true because I remembered Owen.

I met Owen a number of years ago at the time when he was in that transitionary phase where he was woke the day before. This is figurative language, but he was woke just a little bit earlier. And he was in that transition of starting to speak out.

And I remember meeting him and he was giving a presentation. It was random. I didn't even know he was gonna be there. In fact, I don't even think he was planned to be there. He just showed up and it was a very nice thing, whatever.

And he gave a presentation that was kind of a mix. It was signaling non-woke and warning and cautioning and again, this was his transitionary period, but it was still kind of tainted with some woke stuff.

I remember meeting him afterwards and he knew who I was because of my Twitter engagement. He looked a little wary to be perfectly honest with you. Not that I was gonna do anything, but just like he didn't trust me.

And I can understand that because all of his friends, he was in those circles, the circles that I was ripping apart at the time. And quite frankly, the circles that he started to rip apart, but not quite in the same way because he is absolutely positively a product of Big Eva.

And so he doesn't criticize certain people directly or by name. It's always the general vague stuff. And that's a strategy that he's continued to this very day. Of course, it doesn't apply to certain people, but we'll talk about that.

But I remember he was transitioning and I remember at the time, many, many people told me, you can't trust Owen. He's obviously not changing for real. This is just kind of a sort of a grifty type thing.

He's just doing the all molar weather vane thing. And I remember at the time, in fact, in my content, I would say, look, I understand why people wouldn't trust Owen. And there were some other guys like this.

And I said, but here's the thing, you gotta hear me out. You gotta encourage this kind of behavior because whether or not he's a true non-woke believer or not, you wanna encourage this behavior in public because the more people that see other people, just saying it, just going out there and saying, no, no, this is evil.

We can't do this and just say, that encourages more people to do it, empowers people to do it. In fact, this is what my channel is all about. I told someone privately just the other day, one of the guys that was warning me about Owen or warning me to not criticize Owen.

I said, my channel, all I do on my channel is I'm preaching to the choir. I'm trying to encourage people that they're not crazy, that the things that they're seeing are actually really true. And they don't have to pretend like they're not, even though Big Eva taught you to pretend like it's not.

Like you don't actually have to go along with that stuff. That's those extra pharisaical type laws that you don't have to obey. You can just obey God's law. You could just do it God's way. You don't have to have their rules of decorum.

You don't have to have their 11th commandment. You don't have to pretend like everything's just fine and you never can criticize Russell Moore because he's the anointed saint. You don't have to actually do that.

You're not crazy and you could only... Anyway, you guys get it. That's what my channel is about. It's about encouraging people. And so I was encouraging Owen at the time. In fact, John in this video is gonna say, I reached out to Owen to encourage him in an email.

And I did the same thing. I said, look, I believe... Let me not say what I believe I said, but I reached out to him to encourage him either on Twitter or on email or something like that to encourage him because I said, it can't be easy to take these attacks.

The liberals are coming for you. And look, I got your back. I appreciate what you're doing. God bless. All while I kind of knew like, yeah, there's some problems here, but I'm gonna be encouraging. I'm gonna be building up because this is the kind of behavior that I want to encourage.

And so I will encourage it. I've done this many times to many different people. And there are probably people in the audience right now that used to hate my guts that know that I was encouraging very early on kind of thing.

That being said, let's continue. That was, which is fine. I defended Owen on this podcast because people went after him. Liberals, progressives went after him and said, Owen used to be with us. What happened?

He just wants power. And I said, people change their mind. Owen's never acknowledged this as far as I know publicly or talked about it. But I just assumed, okay, people change their mind. It's okay to change your mind.

We all do it. And hopefully, that was what was happening. In fact, I emailed Owen in like 2020 maybe and just said, I appreciate what you're doing. You're trying to go after this stuff. And not many are.

And I remember at the time, it was hard to stand against that in some ways. It was A hundred percent. And you gotta give Owen credit where credit is due. Whether or not he did it for good or bad reasons, or he's just grifting or whatever, he did take a good stand at a time when it was hard to take a good stand.

And there were consequences to taking that good stand. And whether he's doing it for money or notoriety, or he's doing it for pure motives, it really isn't relevant to me because I wanted to encourage the stand.

I wanted to encourage others to take those stands. And I wanted to treat him like a friend. Doesn't mean I have to agree with everything he says because at the time, he was still kind of saying things that weren't exactly right.

But again, encouraging. That's what I was trying to treat him like a friend. I wasn't going to countersignal him because he was a friend and not an enemy. We're gonna be talking a lot more about that kind of thing in just a bit.

Maybe not today, but we're gonna get to it because we're gonna dedicate an entire week of videos to this pathetic little display of Owen's. It's pathetic. And there are things I wish he would have done, name names more, like the names actually in his circles, like Southern Baptists.

And he seemed kind of reluctant to do that. And it's like, okay, but he's doing something. And that's really what I had. Exactly, he's doing something. And I can understand, look, I was naming names and I encourage everyone to name names because that's the only way to really kind of move the needle because otherwise it just stays this weird, like amorphous threat that nobody really can understand.

But when you say, no, what you're saying, Russell Moore, is wrong. And here's why it's wrong. That wakes people up. That wakes people, oh, so even Russell Moore's woke? And then you'll get some people that'll say, how dare you say that about Russell?

He's a conservative stalwart. And then a few years later, he's writing for Christianity Today. You know what I mean? It's just that simple. Yes, of course it would have been better for Owen to name names, but I can understand being hesitant to do that.

I can understand. A lot of these guys were his friends. I can understand not wanting to attack your friends by name. In fact, I don't. I don't want to attack my friends by name. I get it. I totally understand.

It would have been nice, but it didn't happen. And I was encouraging it all the way. Whether you push back a little bit, I've said this many times, whether you push back a little bit or a lot, you're pushing back against the zeitgeist, I'm encouraging you.

I felt at the time, I still feel that to some extent. If you're doing something to help push the needle, I'm not gonna rain on that parade or critique you too much. But now, Owen, and I would say more broadly speaking, some of the people who tend to run the G3, not the speakers at G3, I'm saying, I would encourage everyone who isn't coming to the men's conference, because apparently the weekend's conflict.

I didn't realize that when I was scheduling it. But everyone Big mistake, John. And enjoy it and have a great time. I'm gonna be at the men's conference. You guys gotta come to that. It'd be a real fun time.

I just know that the way that people like myself even have been treated, and I'll just use myself as the example, has been frankly rude in my opinion. It's been rude. And I haven't been as transparent, but I'm starting to wonder if I should be more transparent with things that exchanges behind the scenes.

And the attack has been, and this is public, so people have seen it, has been some of the people who run G3 against Christian nationalists or people who want cultural Christianity. And it's been a lot of strawmanning.

It's been a lot of painting positions in such a way that is just inaccurate. I don't even know. What I believe hardly resembles what some of those guys think people like myself believe. It isn't this integralism.

It isn't a watering down of the gospel in a political gospel. It's not Nazi-esque or fascistic or any of that kind of stuff. A lot of the things that are being attributed to it, I'm just like, it's just not a fair dialogue.

And I've invited that. I've wanted that. I know others who have really tried to say, can we get together? I know guys who have had longer conversations with Owen about this kind of stuff. And I'm sad to report to you, we haven't been able to get anywhere.

And it's just ought not to be with Christians, in my opinion. I would love to have some public exchanges, I think that would edify the body, but it's not happening. And so, because it's not happening, when attacked, we're kind of forced to...

Do you remember when I was interested in this kind of thing and I would regularly say, hey, let's have a conversation on my channel. Let's do it. Let's talk about it. Let's hash these issues out. Let's have a give and take, respectfully, all that kind of thing.

There were like two people who would. Two. Two people who would, and then it never, ever, ever happened. And it never happened with anyone big Eva, big Eva. It happened with one guy that was kind of connected to some of that big Eva stuff, but that was it.

And it was very clear that that was not something they were interested in. And okay, eventually I stopped asking and I stopped caring. But it's the same thing happening here. There's no interaction with Christian nationalists.

It's just an absolute disregard for the body of Christ and edifying the body of Christ. They just want to sling mud over and over and over and over again. And if you dare respond, they're going to call you, you know, you're a wolf or, you know, they're gonna completely try to disregard you, almost like disregarding you even as a brother.

That's the approach that many of these G3 connected guys have taken. It's really pathetic and it's upsetting. G3, I don't consider you an enemy. Owen, I don't consider you an enemy, but it's very clear you consider us enemies.

It is abundantly clear and it doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be that way. And so we're kind of forced like John's about to say here to respond publicly, but I'll still get your back, man. I'll still, when the liberals come for you for whatever reason, I'll still get your back because I don't think you're an enemy.

And it's just a shame. It's a shame. Respond publicly, when attacked publicly, we have to kind of respond publicly. And so that's part of what I'm doing, but the greater goal here is to help everyone think through the common sense, hopefully common sense that we talked about at the beginning of this podcast and apply it to this particular situation.

So here's some tweets from Owen Strawn on, this was over the So we're going to get into the tweets here and I've got another, I don't know, maybe seven minutes to go into this. So this video is going to be about a half an hour.

That being said, we're going to go into all these tweets. We're just going to do them all because I'll give you what my reaction to Owen's tweets are. I'll give you what my reactions to Andrew Torba's tweets are because I remember the other day when this was all going down, a couple of people had reached out to me privately about Andrew's tweets.

And I'm not exactly sure why they reached out to me about Andrew's tweets. Why not just ask Andrew? You know what I mean? But I think one reason is because I consider him a brother in the Lord, which I do.

Some people were wondering if I still do. Yes, I do. Because I like Andrew and that's, I made that very clear. I like Andrew Torba and all of that. So they were asking me about his tweets and I hadn't, I don't follow Twitter that carefully, but they were asking me about his tweets and I want to give you what my reaction in real time to those tweets was at the time.

And then at having looked at them in context and heard more about them, I want to give you how my reaction changed because there is a change there. And I think it'll be helpful for you to understand how I think through these things.

And the people that I've kind of messaged with privately, they know this is how I thought through them because this is what I told them. You know what I mean? So anyway, let's continue. We're going to go into this.

17th, I think these are all from August 17th. He wrote a blog, first of all, and he talked about Matt Walsh in that blog. And I'm not going to go through it, it's long. I think it was poorly written in my opinion.

It was poorly argued, I should say, not poorly written, but poorly argued. But he put out a bunch of tweets that were even more flame throwing. So he said, if your pastor has been radicalized and now preaches paranoia and a false gospel of ethnocentric nationalism and graciously raise, you need to pray and speak to him and graciously raise major concerns.

It may be time to find a new church home because the pulpit is no place for fear mongers, which of course we agree with that. But who's doing it is the question. Where do you see a The gospel of ethnocentric nationalism.

The gospel of ethnocentric nationalism. So the idea here, and keep in mind the irony, because there's such irony in this one tweet. He's saying you might need to find a new church home if your pastor is preaching fear mongering in a tweet where he is fear mongering.

It's unbelievable. The gospel of ethnocentric nationalism. What this is designed to imply is that there are preachers out there that are preaching the scripture and they think they've got the gospel right, of course, because everyone thinks they've got the gospel right.

And the gospel that how you're saved according to them, the good news of the Bible is ethnocentric nationalism. That's the good news. That's why he chooses the word gospel because he's saying this is a false gospel, which of course, if you were preaching a gospel of ethnocentric nationalism, that would be true.

That would be a false gospel. Of course. And the idea is that they're preaching either this in replacement of the actual gospel of the forgiveness of sins because of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for his people.

Or it's either a replacement for that or it's in addition to that. So yeah, sure, Jesus died on the cross, but the whole reason he did is so that we could be actually saved through ethnocentric nationalism.

That's the implication here that this is an addition to the gospel and it's being put forward as this, this is the script, this is what Jesus died for, or it's a replacement for the gospel of what Jesus died for.

That's the position Owen Strawn is wanting to put forward in this tweet. And that is classic fear-mongering because I've never heard, even I've paid attention to some actual kinists now because I've been wondering.

In the past, I didn't really care, right? But now I actually care. What are these kinists saying? Even the kinists that are self-referentially kinists do not preach this. They don't. They don't. I don't like what they preach, but it's not this.

So what is he even talking about? I'm sure there's somebody that preaches this, but it can't, it's not a big enough threat to even register on the radar. It's not even, and this is one of the things that somebody asked me when they asked me about Andrew Torba's tweet.

One of the first things I said to him was, okay, it's clear you disagree with this tweet, right? Let's just put this on a register, right? On a scale of one to 10, how serious is this? You know what I mean?

Is this error on a scale of one to 10? Because I would put this at a three maximum. Not that important. Because everybody has beliefs that I don't agree with. Some of them are more important, some of them are less important.

It's like, one of the things evangelicals really need to practice is their sense of proportion. What is a huge deal and what is a small deal? That is something, we don't have a very good gauge for that versus what's a huge deal and what's a small deal.

That's gonna save you a lot of grief, getting that right, practicing that. But anyway, so ethnocentric nationalism. Who's preaching that? Who's preaching that gospel? That's the gospel, that's what he's saying.

It's a false gospel. Who's preaching it? A gospel? A false gospel of ethnocentric nationalism. A false gospel. I mean, I don't know of anyone. No one comes to mind. In fact, there was a guy, a more woke guy that was trying to give me all these examples of this and none of them were gospel.

The closest he got was one guy who said, there's a difference between false teaching and a false gospel. Like, I think that some people teach wrongly, or incorrect teaching, let's say, and a false gospel.

Because I think there are a lot of people who teach wrongly about baptism, wrongly about the law. Do I think that they're preaching the false gospel of credo baptism? No. Like, again, there's gotta be a sense of proportion.

And one of Owen's biggest problems is he has absolutely no sense of proportion. Everything is a, well, I guess I can, maybe I understand why everything to him is a gigantic problem. Let the reader understand.

I am an idiot. I am an idiot. There's just no question about that. I'm not, I'm an idiot. Not too bright, this guy. Anyway, you know what? We're gonna stop there. This episode is the first of a few. We'll see how many we do.

Sense of proportion, guys. Sense of proportion. If Andrew Torbas says something about ethnicity that you don't like, you wouldn't word it that way. You wouldn't say that. You're not quite sure where he's coming from.

Owen Strawn's gonna get all hot under the collar, get red in the face, and put on his dress and clutch his pearls. That's what Owen's gonna do. Because he has zero sense of proportion. But you know what happens when I see Andrew Torbas say something that I wouldn't say?

Most of the time, it's like, yeah, I wouldn't have said that. Oh well. And I'm gonna move on with my day because it's very rarely that much of a big deal. It's very rarely. There are certain things that are a big deal.

There are certain things that are not a big deal. And we're gonna get into some of the differences, especially in relation to Andrew Torbas' tweets because I had a reaction when I saw the tweet in isolation.

Somebody screenshotted it to me and sent it to me to get my reaction. I had a reaction. I'll tell you how I thought of it. And then I'll tell you what I did afterwards when I got more information. Evangelicals, all of us, all of us, you and me, we need to work on our sense of proportion.

Not everything is a huge deal just because liberals have taught you that it's a huge deal. I hope you found this video helpful. I hope you're looking forward to this week of Owens. I'll probably lose a lot of subscribers doing this week on Owenstron.

Jimmy Crack Corn, and I don't care. I love you anyway. God bless.