Going Live Tonight - Pre-game Thoughts

Pre-Game Thoughts on the Upcoming Conversation with Ruslan

All right, looks like we are left here. Let me move my situation here. Yeah, there we go. Got my Walmart glasses. I can't read glasses, though. That's the problem. I want to read the comments. But they're just so cool, though.

That's the problem. The glasses are cool, but I can't read with them. All right. So here's the deal. Well, I just wanted to give a couple of pre-livestream comments here to set the whole stage up with Ruslan, Ruslan KD.

So we're doing our live event on this channel tonight at 730 Eastern. So Ruslan reached out to me, and we set it up and all of that. So this will be a good conversation. What's interesting is I asked him what he wanted to talk about.

And what he said was that he wanted to talk about my problems with his theology. Or I don't know if he said theology, but my problems with him. And I said, sure. I mean, if you think that would be a valuable use of time, I'm glad to tell you all the problems I have with you.

I said on Gab today that it would be an airing of grievances that would put Frank Costanza to shame. This is a festivus for the rest of us. But I just had a few thoughts that I wanted to just put out there in the beginning.

Social Justice, Forgiveness, and Keeping a Record of Wrongs

I was talking to my brother earlier, my biological brother. And we were talking about social justice, as we often do. Although I think he's getting sick of it. But he humors me. So we were talking about the social justice issue in the church.

And one of the things he said was that an example he used to show how crazy this is. Because Christians, we're supposed to be people that understand forgiveness, and love keeps no record of wrongs, and all of this kind of stuff.

These are beautiful keys of the faith, right? Jesus Christ taught the parable of the unforgiving servant. And that parable, it's kind of scary, that parable. Because at the end of it, he says, look, God's not going to forgive you if you don't forgive your brother in your heart.

It's a very serious issue to not get forgiveness right. And the example he used would be like, what if your wife, you'd been with her for 10 years. I'm almost been with my wife for 10 years. What if she decided, after 10 years of a good marriage, she decided to go through your old emails from decades ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and see how did you treat women back then, and what did you say about women back then.

And any time she saw something that was suspect, she would bring it up to you and insist that you repent to her. And it's like, well, I mean, I can't really defend myself. Yeah, that was disgusting, what I used to do before I was a Christian.

But you know, why are you bringing it up? Like, that's very weird. You would see, obviously, that if your wife were to do something like that, that she'd be trying to cause trouble with you, obviously.

But that would, so that wouldn't be Christian behavior, but it's actually stupider than that. It's like, is it like, imagine if my wife, after 10 years of a good marriage, she didn't go into my email inbox or Facebook posts, she went to my father's from decades ago, and my father said this about a woman or did that, or did something bad, and she held me accountable for it.

She's like, now you need to repent to me. And it's like, again, I can't really defend my father's actions if he did something bad, but like, why are you bringing this up? Why are you holding me accountable for it?

This is not a way for a Christian to act. This is like the opposite of not keeping a record of wrongs, right? And it goes to the nth degree because now it's keeping a record of not only your wrongs, but also your dad's wrongs.

That would obviously be stupid. But it's actually stupider than that. It's like your great-great-granddaddy. It's like your great-great, I went through the records, you know, I did my 23andMe. Oh, I did your 23andMe.

You know, I got your saliva while you were sleeping. And I pulled up a document that said your great-great-grandfather did this. And you're like, honey, I don't even know my great-great-grandfather's name.

Why are you bringing this up? It's like, it's like, it's that stupid. And I would hope that, you know, pastors, if my wife were doing that to me, going to like the archives and finding out where my great-great-granddaddy said something evil, I would hope that my pastor would be like, you know, hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't do this, at the very least, right?

Like these days though, I don't know. Pastors are very effeminate and they just assume that women can't sin. So I guess maybe they would get her back. I don't know. But it's actually even stupider than that.

It's not even any, it doesn't even have to be someone related to me. Like this is what social justice is doing. It would be like if my wife went back into the archives and my great-great-granddaddy's generation, and then anyone who had the same skin color as me that did anything wrong, I'm now accountable for it.

And she's going to cause a problem in our marriage because of that. Like if my wife were doing that, she would be deeply in sin if she were doing that. That's the opposite of not keeping the record of wrongs.

That's the ultimate version of keeping a record of wrongs. And that's how stupid social justice is. It's not just this periphery thing, because I have a feeling that Ruslan is going to probably say, well, it's not an essential, you know, and, you know, I'm going to try not to mock his voice in our call.

It's not an essential, but I'm not so convinced about that. I mean, if you don't, Christ said, if you don't understand forgiveness and worse, if you don't forgive your brother in your heart, God won't forgive you.

Like that's so foundational to understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ that he says like, there's no way for you to be harboring this resentment and keeping a record of these kinds of wrongs, holding your brother's feet to the fire for things that they didn't even do.

Like things that they're people that had the same skin color decades and decades and centuries ago did. It's like, if you don't get that, that you should probably forgive for that. And again, I don't even know if you can forgive, you know, someone who like me for something that someone who looks kind of like me from decades and centuries ago did.

Like, I didn't even do anything. So can you even forgive me? I don't know. But the point is like, it's definitely striking at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I think the idea that this is some kind of periphery kind of not important issue, it doesn't make any sense to me.

It really doesn't make any sense to me. And so that's kind of like a pregame thought. And again, we're gonna do this conversation tonight at 7 .30 Eastern. So be live, it's gonna be on this channel. And if you have comments or questions, I'm not like a pro live streamer.

Like I don't do this. This is, I told the Roost Sounds, like I don't invite people on my shows because like, this is not my thing. I don't like, I'm not a good interviewer, you know, that kind of thing.

I'm glad to be on other people's shows and I've done that a lot, but I don't invite a lot. So if I don't get to your comments, sorry, but definitely come and comment and like it and share it and all that kind of stuff.

Cause I think it'll be an interesting conversation. Again, it's gonna be about my grievances. This was not my idea. This was his idea. So credit to him for that. It's gonna be about my grievances with his theology, I guess, but that should be a good time.

I hope you guys will enjoy it. Let's see what the comments have to say. If there's anything interesting here. Gotta get transition glasses. Yeah, I do. That's a good point. What's up, bro? Hey, what's up?

Audience Comments and Clarifications About the Livestream

Wait a minute. Wait a minute, what? What's up? Doctrinal Watchdog does not want me to do this conversation. This'll probably be the last thing we'll ever do. I don't know. I mean, I can't guarantee that Doctrinal Watchdog, but you know, I do think of you every time I consider doing a Roost Sound video, so.

But the point is though, Doctrinal Watchdog, he does have credibility with certain people. You know, he's got a pretty popular channel. I mean, he's got 100 ,000 followers. You know, people really like him.

And I think that, you know, one of the things that's interesting about Ruslan is that he, what I've noticed for people that comment about Ruslan on my channel, he seems to really make a good impression.

Like when conservatives hear him talk, they think that he seems like a reasonable guy. Like they understand that he's not like totally conservative but he makes a good enough impression for people to like him.

But then over time they start to notice like, oh yeah, this guy's just a liberal. That's my brother calling. I don't know. Maybe he's watching me live. Who knows? So yeah, that's what I've noticed. So he does actually have credibility.

And I think that there's a certain kind of conservative that will like him at first and maybe even forever. I don't know. A lot of people do like him. So there's that. Aiden says, first of all, he isn't a Calvinist.

Yeah, well that's, I'm a Calvinist. So that's okay. But we probably won't be talking about Calvinism. Although I could, I mean, obviously I could bring up anything. He didn't put any restrictions on what we could talk about.

But I'm talking mostly about social justice. That's good, bro. Hopefully it's helpful. Yep, I hope so too. Such a, yeah, thanks Grant. Thanks. By the way, we got to connect our wives and we will get together for sure at some point.

All right. Largest following. Yep, he's got a large following. That's why the conversation's happening. Yeah, Aiden's right though. It's actually even stupider than I put, even said. It's like, it doesn't even matter if your great, great, great granddaddy who looked like you didn't, it doesn't matter if he did anything or not.

It's like, well, other people that look like him did something, so you're still responsible. Yeah, it's really, it's the stupidest thing you could possibly imagine. All right. William Vaughn. The live stream is at 7 .30 tonight Eastern.

So take a look at that 4 .30 Pacific. That is right. Dr. Ana Walshog says he's a rapper, not a Bible teacher. That's true. He is a rapper. That is very true. Can't deny that. People are stoked. I like that.

Thanks, Kenneth. I appreciate that. Looking forward to this. Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. The radical middle frustrates me more. I agree, Mark. The radical middle frustrates me also, but most of the radical middle, I think, are just liberals.

And I would include Ruslan in that. I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point because I think Ruslan is a liberal. I wish he would just admit that. But what bothers me more than the radical middle though is the people that are conservative.

They do actually believe the right things. They believe what the Bible teaches, but they don't do anything about it. They act like it's not that big a deal. Those are the people that really bug me, the conservatives that just do nothing.

I hate that. All right. Not true. I listened to him one time and never have since. I've actually listened to him very rarely. So I listened to him with Marcus. I watched a video he did critiquing God's Not Dead 4 or 3 or 5 or something.

And I didn't really get the critique that much. I mean, sure, the movie looks stupid, but it was a weird critique. And then I also watched a video he did with this woman who he considers a spiritual mother, pro-women pastors and leaders and stuff like that.

So that was interesting. All right. And in my experience, I find it very hard to find him explicitly drawing lines on cultural issues. It's always wishy-washy or redefining of terms. Very argumentative on rhetoric without deep substantive.

Yeah, I agree. I think that there's a lot of wishy-washiness. But actually, I think it's a little worse than that. I think that he has unequal standards. Like I'm trying to be consistent in everything I do.

So if I say something's wrong for Republicans to do, I also think it's wrong for Democrats to do. If I think it's wrong for conservatives, I think it's wrong for liberals. Like I try to use the same standards as much as I can.

Obviously, I'm not perfect. But I think that Ruslan often has unequal weights. Like he treats certain people with kid gloves and other people with very exacting sort of logic. And it's along party lines, essentially.

The liberal progressive people, that's who he treats with kid gloves. And all the fundies out there, that's who he's exacting with. And I think he does it intentionally. I don't think it's accidental.

I think it's, put it this way. I've actually, I think that people in my comments think that Ruslan's not smart. I think Ruslan is extremely intelligent. I think he knows exactly what he's up to, exactly what he's doing.

And he's moving his audience left on purpose. But anyway, that's all I wanna do. This wasn't supposed to be a long live stream, but I appreciate you guys. I will see you again at 7 .30. Again, if I ignore the comments, it's because I'm a terrible live streamer and I don't know how to operate it.

But hopefully I'll get to some of the comments and we can all have a nice chat. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.