- 00:00
- I just wanted to welcome you to another episode of my newest series, Reading in Exile. And before we get started with today,
- 00:07
- I just wanted to say that I've seen a lot of young Christians that are kind of skeptical of our severe crisis that we find ourselves in this country.
- 00:19
- A lot of Christians flaunting the orders to stay home, to not meet for church, to not gather really with anybody, or even a social distance within your own family.
- 00:28
- I mean, if we're not sleeping in separate beds from our family, our wives, and in separate corners of the room, then are we really loving our neighbor?
- 00:37
- That's a question that I think we need to ask ourselves in this perilous time.
- 00:43
- How do we love our neighbor? How do we show our reverence for the government? I mean,
- 00:48
- Romans 13 is in the Bible for a reason. And so I want to make sure that we're all taking this very seriously.
- 00:56
- Honestly, I haven't seen my family in two weeks since the quarantine started. And so wear your mask,
- 01:03
- N95, wear your goggles, make sure you're not touching your face, make sure you're not doing anything. Don't even look at me.
- 01:08
- I mean, let's just make sure that we're obeying the government where the government is inside of its purview.
- 01:14
- We all know that the government has been placed there by God for our good. And so Romans 13 says that you must comply with that.
- 01:21
- Now, I want to talk about some books today that are very important, near and dear to my heart.
- 01:27
- This is a book called Never Deal with a Dragon. It's an allegory of the gospel.
- 01:34
- It's a Shadowrun book from the Secrets of Power series, volume one. And it says in the cover, in 2050, magic is a commodity money cannot buy.
- 01:44
- This is a very important book, especially for a time like this, when so many people are trying to become magicians and sorcerers and mages of different kinds.
- 01:56
- Shadowrun is an interesting juxtaposition of magical fantasy and technology.
- 02:02
- It's a perfect allegory for the situation we find ourselves in today. The second book that I want to recommend reading today is
- 02:10
- Choose Your Enemies Carefully. This is, of course, the volume two of the Secrets of Power trilogy.
- 02:15
- And in the beginning here, as you can see, there's a lot of good female representation there.
- 02:22
- That's very important in this time of Me Too and Church Too, that we empower females.
- 02:27
- This is a mage who's also—she's a street mage. As you can see, she's got a very large gun, and her right hand is glowing with magical powers.
- 02:39
- It's very good to see this representation here. That's important. A maze of magic in the streets of London leads a young man to an evil order older than life.
- 02:50
- Yes, that's right. And then finally, of course, Secrets of Power volume three,
- 02:56
- Find Your Own Truth. Now, this is very important. As you can see, the representation on the cover there, there's a shaman there, a shaman.
- 03:04
- And what I love about this is it represents indigenous peoples and non -whites, persons of color.
- 03:12
- And Find Your Own Truth, that's so important, because we need to listen to our brothers and sisters that are not—they don't look like us, they're not white.
- 03:21
- And in this case, it is a shaman, a young shaman unwittingly releases terror from the ancient reign of magic.
- 03:28
- We need to listen to these people, and we need to take care to note all of the different ways that we may have oppressed them over time.
- 03:35
- Find Your Own Truth. Shadow Runners, it's a great allegory for what the Church ought to be engaged in, loving your neighbor as yourself, being culturally relevant.
- 03:44
- Shadow Run is very culturally relevant, the series. And finally, I just was feeling a little bit humorous, a little bit, oh,
- 03:52
- I don't know, mischievous, and so I just threw in Star Wars, Tales of the
- 03:57
- Bounty Hunters. This is a great book. If you ever wanted to find out a little bit more about the bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back, I always, as a kid, remember loving
- 04:09
- The Bounty Hunters, Boba Fett, 4LOM, Zuckuss, Bosk, and of course,
- 04:17
- Dengar up here. How did Dengar get those bandages? I don't know, but maybe you'll find out in this book, and I'm sorry, just,
- 04:24
- I'm sorry for the rant in the beginning, and also, sorry, I just wanted to be a little bit humorous.
- 04:30
- Anyway, I hope that you're enjoying obeying the government today, and of course, keep your distance from your family, do the right thing, flatten the curve, social distancing, everything.
- 04:42
- Now, you know, listen to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Burke, listen to Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton has your best interest in mind, of course, and, oh, one last thing.
- 04:53
- I just want to take a minute, though we may have disagreed on many things, I think there is no question that the run for president from Bernie Sanders was a historical event.
- 05:07
- It was a historic run, and we can look at what he stood for, and as Christians, if we're going to love our neighbor as ourselves, there's so much in his platform that we can agree with and we would want to, if we're going to be a people that loves their neighbor as themselves.
